Anthropology and Kaizen Versus Other Being Here and Small Steps Techniques
Anthropology and Other ”Being Here” Techniques
You might not have heard about the possibility of studying yourself anthropologically before. And you might wonder if there are other techniques to non-judgmental seeing and living in the moment.
There are. For example, if you are acquainted with or are practicing mindfulness, then the ideas to study yourself non-judgmentally might remind you of that.
Here is a definition of mindfulness from one of the sites that gives advice on how to practice it:
“Mindfulness is the practice of purposefully focusing all of your attention on the current moment, and accepting it without judgment. This is a great place to start if you are looking for the key element in happiness.” — Develop Good Habits
Today, many people have heard at least something about mindfulness. I discovered many other blog posts, articles, books, and online courses on this now popular discipline.
Mindfulness is very popular in Denmark (where I live). There are meet-ups for mindfulness meditation, and they even teach it in school. My son had been taught mindfulness at school since zeroth grade (preschool year), and my four-year-old daughter practiced yoga with some meditation elements every Friday in kindergarten.
I am happy that my children are learning to be here and self-aware in kindergarten and school.
A few more words on mindfulness. Here is how Wikipedia defines it:
“Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, which one can develop through the practice of meditation and through other training.” — Wikipedia
So mindfulness relies among other things on meditation.
“Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique — such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity — to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.” — Wikipedia
Thus meditation promotes slowing down and observation of both bodily reactions and thought processes.
I don’t practice either mindfulness or meditation, and I wouldn’t do so in order to achieve something or to manipulate my thought processes, as many people attempt, and as Wikipedia’s definition of meditation above would suggest.
I find the idea of studying myself non-judgmentally as an anthropologist would more natural.
What I am interested in is the Practical Enlightenment, which is the title of one of Ariel and Shya Kane’s latest books. (I often quote the books by these award-winning authors, radio show hosts, and seminar leaders, and find their work utterly inspiring.) In other words, I am looking to achieve a “mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state” in this moment of now by being aware and observing myself, the world around me and my thought processes in reaction to it, non-judgmentally. And by engaging actively in each moment of my life.
But if mindfulness and meditation are more practical and more helpful for you, then use them to become aware of the present moment. The most important thing is that you don’t judge yourself and the world around you, and instead become interested in the processes you observe. Like anthropologists do when they study a culture.
I enjoy taking on the role of an anthropologist when I observe my thought processes and my interactions with the world around me non-judgmentally, as if I were a culture or a country. It is like a game in itself. It helps to reduce the drama that might be building in my head due to resistance to the way my life is unfolding.
Kaizen and Other Small-Step Techniques
Many methods have a similar approach to kaizen at their core. Here are some that I discovered after “stumbling upon” kaizen: micro-progress, mini and atomic habits (books Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results by Stephen Guise and Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear), micro-resilience (book Micro-Resilience: Minor Shifts for Major Boosts in Focus, Drive, and Energy by Bonnie St. John and Allen P. Haines), and others. I continue to discover more versions of these today. They all have the same idea of making progress in small steps.
Kaizen sounded like one of the first of these approaches to be consciously developed and applied, not only by many individuals but by whole corporations, and to even be widespread among people of the same nation. It had its start in the USA at the beginning of World War II and was then applied to rebuild Japan’s economy after the war. I discovered that kaizen was very popular on both a corporate and personal level.
Just like with the variety of “being here” techniques (see the previous section in this article), you should also choose whatever approach works for you here. For example, I discovered that I had been applying kaizen (or a version of it) without having heard the word before, or known about the concept.
But what appealed to me most about kaizen and in the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer was the hint that if we resisted a step we wanted to take, however small we thought it was, then this step was still too big. Learning about the structure of the human brain and how it behaved when we feared something was a highlight too.
These observations about kaizen very much resonated with the concept of awareness as defined by Ariel and Shya Kane and with their idea of studying ourselves anthropologically.
A note to this article: It is a modified compilation of two excerpts from Self-Gamification Happiness Formula: How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games.
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About the author:
Victoria is a writer, instructor, and consultant with a background in semiconductor physics, electronic engineering (with a Ph.D.), information technology, and business development. While being a non-gamer, Victoria came up with the term Self-Gamification, a gameful and playful self-help approach bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together to increase the quality of life. She approaches all areas of her life this way. Due to the fun she has, while turning everything in her life into games, she intends never to stop designing and playing them.