There is a philosophy called Kaizen. This started with Henry Ford (assembly line) but was adopted and perfected in Japan into an overall philosophy that can be applied to all of life.

The philosophy is like a favorite saying of Jaianniah's "How can you eat an elephant? By taking one bite at a time." It says that by making small changes daily we can achieve big changes in the long run. This makes sense as it is the way we all learn, we don't just start walking as a baby. We slowly learn to pull ourselves around then, eventually crawl then walk.

For me to play my guitar like a guitar wizard I learned slowly listening to music and copying the sounds I heard until I could do all the tricks I had heard Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn , and Roy Buchanan doing on my own. Later I incorporated the styles of many of the great blues masters that influences the core three influences, Albert King, Freddie King, B.B. King, Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters. Then for added fun I threw in guitar greats as Danny Gatton, and Dick Dale. Later still I incorporated Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson. But all of this I had to do one step at a time learning and figuring out things on my own listening to what I heard on my CDs.

Everything was a tiny step at a time, I read of a woman that lost weight by standing on the tread mill 30 seconds a day! She would just go stand on it 30 seconds, that is not too hard to do! After a week she increased it to a minute every day, just standing there on the tread mill. After another week she increased the time until she made it to five minutes then decided to take a step walking and little by little she worked her way up to running on that tread mill maybe 15 to 20 minutes a day.

I made it to sixth degree black belt a tiny step at a time since 1975 when I really had attention problems and couldn't tell my left from my right.

Kaizen says we can achieve anything as long as we take it a tiny step at a time for improvement. My great grandfather built the house my mother grew up in, this is an entire house he built himself! To look at it we might say no one can build a house by himself, impossible he had to have had these and those experts the blue print guy the contractor the plumber and electrician, the guy that does the roof and the guy that does the foundation he had to have had very many people because that is how we do it today! No! He did it all himself from nothing to complete, how he did it one board at a time. One shovel of dirt at a time, can you imagine shoveling out an entire foundation and cellar with a hand shovel not a backhoe?

With this philosophy of Kaizen I believe we can achieve much more than we give ourselves credit for being able to do. I remember reading of a monk that for penance he shoveled out a tunnel through a mountain himself it took him like fifty years but he did it all by himself one shovel at a time.

To what degree and application have you used or could think of to use the philosophy of Kaizen?

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/excerpts/2004-09-08-kaizen-way_x.htm

http://www.selfimprovementnow.com/kaizen.html

http://ezinearticles.com/?Kaizen-For-Self-Improvement&id=54880

http://www.nightingale.com/Offers/one-small-step-2.html