Treat your actions as opportunities for self- reflection.

Both laziness and productivity can be considered habits and the way you do things in your daily life is constantly supporting one side or the other.

To ensure your polarization to productivity, do all that you do to the best of your ability, whether it be accomplishing tasks at work or doing things as simple as walking, do your best at all you do.

The famed samurai Miyamoto Mushashi, in his book, The Book of Five Rings, wrote that,” a little bit of crookedness in the mind will later turn into a major warp.”

You can relate this to the carpenter who is building a house and because he is lazy, he uses a warped or cracked wooden beam in the supports because he wants to finish the job quickly because he is tired, or he doesn’t want to stop his work and buy another beam.

Whatever the reason may be, although the house may stand for years, eventually that warped beam can become a major problem, causing serious damage to the house.

Doing one thing in a lazy manner can eventually become a habit and seep into other facets of life. Walking or sitting with poor posture may seem harmless to the young person who is too lazy to correct their posture until in old age they are bent over and in pain as a result of slouching over years.

And then because this person is warped and in pain they fall into the habit of negative emotional patterns. Damaging their relationships with others as well as the relationship they have with themselves. Eventually, that person is consumed by negativity all because they were lazy and didn’t try their best to maintain good posture. It just didn’t seem important at the time.

This is all a hypothetical example, however, the example’s purpose was to impress upon the reader that all are subject to the the Principle of Cause and Effect and it is thus important to do all things to the best of your ability in order to prevent major warps in your future.

Take time to reflect on your actions and question whether or not you are giving your upmost effort to all of the things that you do, despite how unimportant some of those things may seem.

A fellow sushi chef once told me a Japanese saying that a chef who trained her told her and although I cannot recall how to say it in Japanese for the life of me, in English it roughly translates to, “every cut is better then your last.”

That wisdom had a deep resonating impact on me and my work. I applied it resolutely and soon elevated my skill, leaving lower levels of energy that had previously held me down behind.

This brings me back to one of the simplest equations of self- improvement which is, better you= better life. So if you are committed to being better, do all the things that you do to the best of your ability, big and small things alike.