Doodle Card

 

Your calling doesn’t always call you.
あなたの使命があなたを呼ぶとは限らない。

 

If someone says “this is how to find your calling” without listening to you, the person is lying. Or they just talk about their way to find their calling. Most likely, it’s different from yours. And there’s no quick fix.

Face your true self. Or find someone who helps you do so. Dig deeply into yourself. When you think is enough, delve more deeply into.

Quite often, no matter how hard we work on, our true self refuses to be found. It might take a lifetime. But that’s okay. This is our life. No need to compare it with others.

 

 

Embrace changes in relationships.
人間関係の変化を受け入れよう。

 

Either intentionally or unintentionally, people keep changing. People come and go. So do you. That’s the law of the universe.

Today someone might unfriend you on Facebook. Or ignore your post on their timeline. Or unfollow you on Twitter. Or delete your contact information from their address book.

But that’s okay. You don’t need to be offended. You would see them again when they really matter to you. Or you really matter to them. Just keep moving forward.

 

 

Avoid brainwashers.
洗脳を仕掛けるものを避けよう。

 

I spent more than 50k dollars for self-development programs. The majority of them are a con. That’s what I learned.

There are millions of people and companies that try to brainwash us in this world. They say, use this. Eat this. Read this. Believe this. Join a community. Get rich quick. And they try to get paid.

The problem is, while some of them do this with good intensions, the others don’t. We need to distinguish saviors from fakers.

This takes practice. Being deceived is one of the most effective ways to learn how fakers are. But don’t spend too much money. Start small.

Every day, consider every single expenditure as an experiment. Check the cost and the benefit. Be mindful of the outcome of the spending. That tells you the truth.

 

 

Accept contradiction.
矛盾を受け入れよう。

 

We all have contradiction in a sense.

I saw a business person told in public that having a growth mindset is essential to be a leader. It seems that he considers himself as a leader as well.

In short, a growth mindset is a belief that we can develop ourselves at any time. The opposite is a fixed mindset, a belief that all skills and talents are given.

One day, the same business person called someone “born genius”.

Now the question is, what kind of mindset does he have? Probably both. Although he thinks of himself as a leader who has a growth mindset, what he unconsciously says reveals his fixed mindset.

This is nothing special. We do the similar thing all the time. Binge eating while going on diet. Talking about teamwork while bullying someone. Focusing on efficiency while doing ineffective things. You name it.

We just need to find and accept our own contradiction. No need to blame ourselves. Accept it, figure out what we really want to do or be, have a plan and move forward.

Also we need to accept contradiction of others. We have no right to blame them. We human beings are all incomplete. That’s why a growth mindset has an important meaning.

 

 

Make every effort to just be yourself.
自分自身であるために、あらゆる努力をしよう。

 

“You need to study much harder than others to be better.”

My mother kept telling me. Since I was six or seven years old. She bought me many kinds of study materials although my family was struggling financially.

Thanks to my mother, I was the smartest kid in junior high school. But only on paper. Even when I got a perfect score, I struggled with self-doubt. I wouldn’t be recognized as a good kid if I didn’t get a perfect score. Probably my mother didn’t intend to make me feel that way, but that’s what I thought.

Right before I went to college, my mother was hospitalized. She couldn’t come back home since then.

I don’t know what my mother thought in hospital. My mother was unable to speak. But I saw her working hard on being alive although her disease was incurable. Between life and death, she worked really hard to just be herself — not even a daughter, a sister, a wife or a mother. I believe that she made it. Even if no one else recognized that.

After spending twenty-one years in a hospital bed, my mother passed away.

Then I quit trying to be better than someone else. No matter how hard I work on, there’s always someone who is better than me in this world. Instead I continue working hard to just be myself. Not to be like someone else.

Sometimes I still struggle with self-doubt, but it’s different from what I had before. Because my life is no longer conditional. The way my mother lived in a hospital bed is now my DNA.