Nothing in life is permanent.
Everything we value doesn't just magically run the way we want it to.
Things you see around you, ideas, your body, and your mind are all in constant motion.
Everything is constantly changing.
The whole universe is in motion.
When it comes to personal development I see people missing this point all the time.
For example, they will say something like “I don't listen to people like Anthony Robbins because I listened to one of his CD's once and it worked for about a week and then it stopped working.”
With food, I see the same issue.
People go on a “diet” and then give up because they stopped for a week and gained back all the weight they lost.
With business, people start executing an idea to start a business and then give up after a month because the idea “stopped working.”
I can go on and on about this type of thinking you find it in every part of life.
One of my favorite books is called Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
The underlying theme of the book is about “quality”.
“Quality” is a word that in the modern world gets thrown around a lot without much thought.
It's probably one of the most important words in the English Language.
It's one of the most important words in human history.
It's made possible all the human advances in history.
So how does quality have anything to do with the introduction of this article.
Well, quality does not last without one very important thing.
That thing is maintenance.
Maintenance is probably the backbone of all human advancement in the past and future.
Nothing of any value can ever last without maintenance.
You can not have anything of value or quality without maintenance.
When you create something of quality it needs to be constantly improved and kept to the same standard.
This is what maintenance is all about.
It's about keeping and improving on a standard that was there in the beginning.
Like I said at the beginning of this article.
With personal development, people would say for example “I listened to Anthony Robbins but after a week his ideas stopped working.”
OK, but how many times did that person listen to that CD?
And did that person maintain that concept, principle or discipline that they learned from Anthony Robbins?
Personal Development sometimes gets a bad rap because people say a lot of it is bullshit.
Sure I agree there is a lot of bullshit out there.
However, there is a lot of good too.
The point is that most people give personal development a bad rap because they never maintained whatever they implemented in their life.
There is a discipline to Maintenance it has to be consistent and it has to be repeated over and over until it becomes second nature.
With diet, it's the same.
You need to maintain your diet. Diets fail because people see it as temporary.
They see it as something they have to get through so they can return to their old way of eating.
The only way to apply maintenance to diet is by making it a lifestyle.
You accept the new way of eating as your new normal.
That is it.
That is your diet maintenance.
With business, it's the same.
If you want to run a successful business that creates a quality product or service then you need maintenance.
You need to maintain your standard by constantly working on your service or product.
The key to quality and the maintenance of quality is sometimes confusing to people.
They say OK fine, I need to be consistent.
But when does it stop?
Well, the answer is simple.
It never stops.
Anything of real quality will eventually deteriorate and disintegrate if you don't maintain it.
Objects and ideas are fragile even if they seem indestructible.
Your body, mind, business,car, etc. needs maintenance in order to function at its full potential.
Maintain everything in your life and the quality of those things will reward you in ways which you never expected.
Maintaining everything of quality in your life is your art.
It's your Zen and the Art of Human Maintenance.
