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Using systems and habits to improve your life is a proven method to succeed. It requires seeing the work as a system and then adjusting your thoughts and behaviors to be able to take advantage of your opportunities in life.
There is a big difference between contentment and complacency. Being content means that we don’t need anything more in order to be happy. Being complacent means that we have given up because we don’t feel we can have any more than what have already.
The first difference is the fact that being content contains an element of being happy while complacency holds unhappiness at its core.
Read MoreOne of the things that come from taking the systems and habits approach to improvement is that we start to see the complexity around our goals. We see that there are many factors and they all play a role.
Some of these factors are things that will strengthen the current systems and habits and make it difficult to change. Some are things that will be impacted by a new system change.
Read MoreI read a lot of articles on nutrition, health, finance, education etc. I always have a biased view because of my belief in the systems and habits approach to improve. The bad thing is that this could shift the way I take in new information.
But the good thing is that I can pick out techniques and principles that come directly from the systems and habits approach to improvement. It could be that someone stumbled onto something that just seems to work without seeing the full system at play, or it could be that they learned it from someone that is using these techniques to improve.
Read MoreThe systems and habits in our lives are not easily changed. Whether it is a habit that we want to stop doing or a new habit we are trying to create, we push against something very powerful.
This is why, so often, change fails. We see this in the world around us as much as we see it in ourselves. A new leader emerges but after years of their change policies, we aren’t really left in a better position. More often than not the change is subtle and becomes change for the sake of change, rather than for improvement.
Read MoreOne of the concepts that came out of systems thinking is feedback. Feedback in the systems view is very similar to the feedback you hear when on stage and the microphone and speakers work together to create that loud, annoying, piercing sound we have all heard at one point or another.
In a very basic sense, the microphone picking up the sound output from the speaker causes the feedback from the PA system. This tends to happen to frequencies that get accentuated through the system and are boosted slightly above the rest of the sound spectrum.
Read MoreWe all have strengths and weaknesses. Nobody is perfect so there are always things that can be considered strength and things that can be considered weak.
I had a former college professor tell us “a strength overdone becomes a weakness.” At first I was surprised by such a statement but have since realized the wisdom in those words.
Read MoreThere is a major difference between more and better but most people misunderstand this difference. They lump the two together, since they are often found together, and then assume a push towards more is a push towards better. But it isn’t.
Much of this stems from the difference between contentment and complacency. Being content means that we don’t need more in order to be happy and fulfilled. But it usually results in continuing to improve, not to achieve more but to keep getting better.
Read MoreWhen most people hear about systems they immediately get the misconception that this must involve rigid rules with no flexibility. They hear about processes, procedures, habits, and structure and automatically assume these are inflexible.
But the best systems can be described as flexible. And if we are using the systems and habits approach to improvement in our personal lives, we have to embrace the idea of a flexible system.
Read MoreThe Tao Te Ching is a 2500-year-old text that has provided wisdom for decades. It has been referred to as the wisest book ever written. It uses paradoxes (opposites) to break down common thinking to show flaws.
Studying systems thinking, I have always been surprised by the similarities between the Tao and systems thinking principles. I’ve written about this and recently found a book that molds these two together in a very insightful way.
Read MoreIn life, we always have a choice yet many of us go through life feeling as though we don’t. We feel that we don’t have enough opportunity or the right situations never seem to come up for us.
This negative mindset tends to create a feeling of hopelessness. We feel that there’s no hope for improvement so we shut down and look for external sources to point the finger at.
Read MoreFor the most current version of this article click here.
Habits are very important parts of our lives. Psychologists have estimated that up to 95% of our lives are controlled by habit.
Habit dictates more than just the commonly thought of behaviors like biting fingernails or smoking cigarettes. Habit controls our behavior much more than this. It dictates how we get through the routines in our day. It tells us how to do everyday tasks such as driving a car. It even controls how we think and the patterns of thought that then strongly influence our behavior.
Read MoreMost people misunderstand taking risks. When I was younger I thought taking risks meant that I needed to take chances in order to expand my knowledge and abilities and grow. But I also naively assumed that taking a risk didn’t have consequences.
Looking back now it seems ludicrous. But I really thought that I could take risks and by working harder than others I could avoid the downside of those risks. In other words, I thought I would immune to the failure part of taking a risk because I would work harder.
Read MoreThe danger of too much linear thinking and not enough systems thinking is that you miss seeing interconnectedness that may be very important. Everything around us is made up of systems and without a clear understanding of the system you may be doing more harm than good.
I heard that doctors have a saying, “first, do no harm.” They use it to establish a common ethos that leaves the patient the same or better than they would be without the professional medical help.
Read MoreFrom time to time, we all feel the need to change something about us. Maybe we want to quit smoking or lose weight. Maybe we want to get more education or pay off our credit card debt.
Maybe we want to be a better student, or better at work. Maybe we want to be more invested in the relationships in our lives or develop a deeper spiritual connection with God.
Read MoreIt is really easy to find fault in others. Nobody is perfect so it is extremely easy to point out things that we don’t like about others or things that others are doing wrong.
But there really isn’t any value in that. In fact, by doing that, we tend to quickly shift blame when things go wrong in order to bypass any responsibility. But this responsibility is exactly what we need in order to improve.
Read MoreThere are a lot of authors that explain goals and how important it is to have goals. They tend to stress the importance of setting goals in order to improve throughout one’s life.
But despite the overabundance of information available, many of us still struggle. The reason is simple… having knowledge of something doesn’t mean it magically gets done.
Read MoreWhen it comes to most systems we want to better understand their purpose. What do they do and why are they there?
We may be able to gain insight into the system and the elements of the system and then use this to understand why certain parts of the system exist.
Read MoreFor the latest version of this article, click here.
Read MoreI often hear of people resist systematic improvement due to their worry they will ultimately lose their creativity. They view these things as opposites and assume striving towards one will loosen the other.
But this isn’t true. If we look at some of the most creative people in history, we usually find that they are extremely dedicated to their craft and follow set patterns throughout their career.
Read More