The Kaizen Way

Step 1: Listen to the main explanation

lt really means constant and neverending improvement. But it has this idea of making little tiny improvements again and again and again and again, for one week, for one month, for one year, forever. So kaizen is kind of the opposite of innovation.

Innovation means a sudden, big change, a sudden, big improvement. And that's a great way to learn and improve. For example, you could study English very intensely for one month or two months and you would make a big, sudden improvement.

That's the innovation idea, but there's another way you can improve and that is the kaizen way. And the kaizen way means maybe you just listen to English or read English or study English, maybe you just do it 20 minutes every day. And every day you improve just a little bit. But the key, the secret is you doit every single day. Every day you make one little improvement. Well after one week, one month, one year, two years, five years, you will make a huge change just by making little tiny improvements over time. That's the idea of kaizen.

So l'm going to read a little bit from The Kaizen Way, just a couple paragraphs, and then l'll talk aboutit more. Okay, so here's a section, it's called Kaizen Tip and this is from Robert Maurer, M-a-u-r-e-r, that's his last name. Okay, Kaizen Tip:

'You want to do something creative. Write a story or a song. Paint a

picture. Dream up your peifect career. Learn something or come up with a zinger of a solution to an office problem. But you have no idea where to start. Your mind keeps coming up empty. During times like these, kaizen can help you summon your powers of inspiration.

Although you can't force your brain to cough up creative ideas on demand, you can program to launch the imaginative process simply by asking yourself a small question.

Here are some of the most popular small questions my clients use for creativity. Feel free to come up with your own. Whatever question you

use, your challenge is to ask it with a gentle and patient spirit. When you use harsh or urgent tones with yourself, fear will clog the creative process.

So here are some questions you can ask yourself. Number 1, what's one thing I wish to contribute to the world with my project or idea?

Number 2, whom could I ask for help or inspiration? Number 3, what

is special about my creative process, about my talents, about my team? Number 4, what type of work would excite and fuljill me? Number 5, what small tiny change could I make now, today, to improve?

Remember, if you repeat the question for several days or weeks, or however long it takes, the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that stores information, will have no choice but to address it. And in its

own way, on its own timetable, the brain will begin giving you answers. "

Okay, that's the section from The Kaizen Way, so this is very interesting from Robert Maurer here. This technique of asking small questions to yourself is very powerful. You can use it for anything. You canuse it for learning English, of course. You could ask yourself small questions every day. For example, how could I improve today just a little bit? Or how could I improve my pronunciation 2% this week? The important part of asking these questions is that they must be small questions. So don't say how could I be totally perfect with English in one month? That's a huge question and often you'll feel stress or worry or fear if you ask this gigantic, huge question. You'll think, oh my god, I don't know, can I do it?

But if you ask a very small question, it seems so small, so easy, your brain will say "Oh, I can do that, that's easy." And then you will start to take action. And, of course, action is the most important part. Action is what we need. So if you try to ask big questions, you're trying to improve very fast and you will probably get stressed. So maybe, it's better to change your strategy. Try the Kaizen way. lnstead, ask yourself little small questions. How could I improve just a little bit? How could I learn just one new

word each day? How could I improve my pronunciation just a tiny bit each week? Ask yourself these little questions.

And another point from this article, you need to repeat the questions again and again and again. You have to ask this same question or questions every day for one week or two weeks or maybe even a couple months. By asking yourself these questions again, again, every day you're asking the same question, your brain must corne up with an answer. Your brain must find an answer. It will find answers. Keep asking questions, your brain will give you answers. It will give you better and better answers the more you ask these small questions. So anytime you have some big goal, some big project that seems so difficult, try the kaizen way. Try to approach this problem with little small tiny improvements. Ask yourself little small easy questions every day, again and again and again. Your brain will get more energy. lt will find the answers.

You'll get momentum. You'll start to take action. And then after

one month you'll take bigger actions. After two to three months, bigger actions, bigger actions. Actually these improvements start to grow. The improvements get bigger and faster and faster.

That's the magic of the kaizen way. It seems so small and tiny. It seems so easy but over time it builds. lt grows stronger and stronger.

So try this. Try this method. Try the kaizen way. And again, the book title is The Kaizen Way, that's K-a-i-z-e-n, kaizen, The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer.

Alright, and remember, of course, keep your psychology strong. Keep your physiology strong. I hope you're smiling right now. I hope those shoulders are back. Chin up. Lots of energy. Don't forget that, every single lesson. You must be smiling. You must be moving. You must have energy in your body. That's howyou're going to learn English much, much faster.

Okay, I will see you next time.

Step 2: Listen to the mini-story and answer questions

Now it's time for the point of view staries. Now the point of view story, or staries actually, are designed to teach you grammar intuitively, as you learned in Chapter 4. Now, I'll repeat a few tips which are important to think about when you're doing this lesson.

Or actually, there's a few things that you need to know that you should not think about and the number one thing you should not think about are grammar rules. Do not think about grammar rules. Very important. Now I know you've been taught grammar rules for many years so it's hard to get that out of your brain. But it's very hard to unlearn that information. Because you learned grammar in an analytical way.

What that means is you intellectually learned grammar. You learned, okay, well the past progressive is this and we use it in these specific situations and blah blah blah...and you took all these

grammar tests. And it totally confused your brain so that when you actually speak, you don't know how to speak with proper grammar. It cornes out wrong. You take a grammar test, maybe you do very well. But when you speak your grammar sucks, it's terrible! What's the problem here? Well, it's because you learned grammar rules and terms. You studied it. You analyzed it. You memorized these rules. But you didn't learn it intuitively, naturally. It did not get deep into your brain the way a native speaker knows grammar.

So the point of view staries are designed to teach you the way a native speaker learns grammar. And we learn grammar by listening, by understanding meaning, by understanding patterns.

So when you listen to these staries, here's the good news. Just listen. Smile. Shoulders back. Feel great and just listen. Don't think about anything. Don't think about rules, none of that. Just relax and enjoy the story. Notice the patterns. You can notice the changes in vocabulary because in each story what l'm going to do is I'm going to tell this exact same story from the mini-story. So in this story you're going to hear the same story about Jan being rude. But I'm going to tell it from a different point of view. It means from a different time.

So, for example, I might tell that story but from the future. I might say that I have an idea for a movie and the movie will

happen in ten years, ten years from now. ln ten years there will be a woman and she'll be very rude. Her name will be Jan. And l'll tell the whole story from the point of view of the future. Of course, l'll change some of the vocabulary, especially the verbs, in order to tell it from the future. Now all you have to do is just listen toit. Just say "Okay, this is the future" and just notice. All you have to do is just listen, notice some of the words change. l'll be using will, for example, and you know that that's the future tense. But forget this idea of the future tense. Forget your grammar books. Just notice the changes in vocabulary. Sometimes I might change the word order. Sometimes the structure might change a little bit. Just notice it. That's all you have to do. Listen carefully. Don't think aboutit. Don't analyze it. Don't write clown rules, none of that. Listen and notice, listen, listen, listen, that's all you need to do.

Now in the point of view staries l'm going to use two basic points of view. One is the future, which I just mentioned, and the other is the past. All you need to know is l'll start most of those staries with something like "Since she was young... Since 2001..." Right, it means something started in the past and is continuing up until now.

So that's one of the points of view l'll use and the other one will be the future. The main mini-story, you may have noticed, most of the regular mini-staries are from the past. Right, I said Jan was very rude. She wanted to change. So I did that by design. I did it on purpose. Because most people need a lot of help, a lot of practice, a lot of listening for the past, the past, the past. So that's why the main mini-staries are almost always told from the past point of view. Alright, enough talking, let's get toit. Areyou ready? Let's start with the first one.

*****

Since she was a child Jan has always been very rude. Since she was a child Jan has been rude.

How long has Jan been rude?

She's been rude since she was a child.

W as she rude when she was a baby?

No, no, no, not when she was a baby. Not in the very beginning, no. Just since she was a child, maybe since she was five years old.

So since she was a child she has been very rude, very harsh.

And who, who has been very rude and harsh since she was a child?

W ell, of course, Jan. Jan has been very rude since she was a child. From being a child, maybe five or six years old, until now, all that time she has been rude.

Has she always been rude?

Not always, just since she was a child. Not when she was a baby. But since she was a child, since she was six or five or seven, she has been very, very rude.

She has always said rude comments to people.

Has she always clone this? Has she always been rude to people?

W ell, yes. Since she was a child she has always been rude.

Since she was a child she has always been rude to friends, to family, to everyone.

Since she was a child has she always been rude or just sometimes?

W ell, since she was a child she has always been rude to everybody.

But one day, she invited all her friends. And she said "I will never be rude to you again." She was very friendly. She gave compliments to each one. She said "Oh, ugh, you're very nice and you're very intelligent." She coughed them up. It was difficult in the beginning. But then over the course of two years she was very, very kind. She was always kind during that time. Over the course of two years she was very kind, kind, kind, very friendly. And, of course, after two years everybody loved Jan. They gave her kisses.

They gave her money. They gave her love. And how did she feel?

She felt very fulfilled.

*****

Okay, so this is the end of the first POV story. Now something happened in that story and you should notice it. Don't think about the grammar terms but just notice that something changed, I don't know, around the middle of the story. Now the beginning of the story I was saying "Since she was a child she has been rude.

She has always said rude comments to people since she was a child." And then I said "She invited all her friends one day." One day she invited all her friends, right? Different vocabulary, different point of view, the point of view suddenly changed. So in the beginning l'm talking about since, since she was a

child. Something started in the past and then it continued. lt kept

happening again and again and again up until now or up until a

certain time. There is a range of time there. Started in the past and then kept going over some time. But then it changed, it became a sudden one time event. She invited her friends.

Now she didn't keep inviting her friends every day for four years or for two years or for one year or anything like that. It just happened. She invited her friends, boom, it was a one time event.

She did it, it happened, it finished. So then I changed. And, you know, all you grammar people already know, I started using the past tense, right? So don't think about that, don't worry aboutit. The point is that it changed. And you'll notice that happening in most of the POV staries when l'm starting with "Since 2003..." or "Since she was a child" you'll notice that often, probably most of the staries l'll start that way and then something will happen.

Suddenly l'll talk about one single event and it will change. The point of view will change. Just notice that. ln each of those point of view staries in the future, this one and all the other ones. Just notice when it changes. That's all you need to do. You don't need to think about the grammar. You don't need to think "Oh, he went from the present perfect to the past tense." Don't need to worry about that. Just notice the change. And notice when it happens and that's all you need to know.

Alright, our next POV story, we're going to the future. Here we go, let's start.

*****

I have this idea for a movie. Let's just imagine this is a movie idea. And it's going to happen in ten years, ten years from now. ln ten years there will be a woman. She'll be very, very rude. This woman will always say rude comments to her friends. She'll be rude to her friends every day. She'll always be terrible, always harsh, always rude.

How will she be?

She'll be very rude. She'll be very harsh.

What will her name be, this woman in the future?

Her name will be Jan.

Her name will be Jan. And Jan will be very, very rude. She'll give rude comments to her friends all the time. She'll be rude to her friends all the time. Her friends will cry and cry and cry. They'll be very unhappy. But one day she's going to change.

One day she's going to invite all her friends to her house. She'll cough up compliments to each one. She'll say "Oh, you're very nice and you're very intelligent."

Of course, this will be very tough for her in the beginning. She'll have to cough up the comments. But she'll continue to be nice and kind over the course of two more years. She'll always be kind.

She'll be super friendly during that time. And, of course, at the end of those two years everyone will love Jan. They're going to give her kisses. They're going to give her money. They're going to give her love. She'll feel very, very fulfilled.

*****

Alright, that's it. So easy. Now just a couple of things to notice in these future point of view staries. One thing to notice is a little difficult to hear sometimes is this "11" sound, its that L sound, right? Sometimes l'll say, for example "Jan'll be very rude." Of course that means Jan will be very rude. But in real conversation, normal conversation, we often will just say "11", we add "11" to something for the future. Jan'll be very happy. Jan'll be very fulfilled. That "11", "11", "11". You don't need to say that, it's maybe difficult to pronounce so it's okay if you can't say it.

Just say will or gonna or going to, but you do need to be able to hear it so that you understand what's happening. You understand someone is talking about the future, something that hasn't happened yet. So listen for that "11", that "11" is a little bit difficult to hear sometimes so you have to listen carefully. So in these future staries listen for the "11", Jan'll, they'll. Okay?

Another one is gonna. Now "gonna" means "going to". I am going to eat this food tomorrow. Now that's what you learned in your textbook, l'm going to. But what we actually say very often in real conversation - we say gonna. l' m gonna eat this food tomorrow. l' m gonna go to the store tomorrow. So gonna means going to or will, it means future, future, future.

Alright that is the end of the POV staries. Just listen, listen, listen. Relax. Burn your grammar textbooks. Throw them away. Get rid of them. Stop thinking about that crap. Of course, crap means what? Crap means shit. Crap means bad stuff. You don't want to think about that stuff. Just listen to these POV staries. Relax. Notice what's happening in the staries but don't think aboutit too much.

Alright, I will see you next time.