Author: Satoru Hirose

 

Your family is paramount.
家族は何よりも大切。

 

“They thought that was an excuse.”

About twenty years ago, my boss told me. I was just hired by a company that gave me an accountant job. When I signed an offer letter, HR manager sitting in front of me asked me if my parents knew about the offer. I briefly mentioned that my parents were sick and in hospital. Then the manager frowned a bit and said, “Did you talk about that during the interview?”

According to my boss — well, ‘ex-boss’ already — management of the company thought of my statement as a sign of weakness. A lack of commitment to my job. Just because I mentioned my sick parents. The company didn’t withdraw a job offer because of that, but this episode gave me a strong doubt about the culture of the company — a lack of humanity. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I proved myself right later, and left the company.

Our family is as important as our life. Our employer will never be more important than our family. Of course we need a job (or our own business) to make a living, but that doesn’t mean we must sacrifice our family to get a salary. Our employer is replaceable. Our family is (basically) not.

We are all mortal beings. Do your best to spend more time with your family. After they are gone — like my parents — we can never catch up on it, although they will keep living in our heart.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

 

Work hard, think harder.
頑張って働き、より頑張って考えよう。

 

Mediocre leaders only let us do the work. They don’t even understand why we do the work. “Hey, our big boss wants us to do this right now!”

Good leaders explain why we do the work so that we can understand where to go.

Great leaders let us think why we do the work, then reconcile it with something much bigger. They help us see things in a big picture while doing the work in front of us. They know we work better when we think harder.

 

 

Accept your fear.
恐れを受け入れよう。

 

A lack of confidence bothered me. And it still does.

It comes from my biggest fear — fear of being rejected or ignored. A long time ago I acknowledged this fear, which was generated by my childhood experience, but it still remains. Even worse, it often works as if it were my belief — I often try to validate this fear by looking for the reasons people could reject or ignore me.

I’m not good enough. Not attractive enough. Not disciplined enough. My English sounds weird. I can figure out hundreds of reasons instantaneously.

Having this fear in my mind, I often didn’t believe positive feedback from others. It just created cognitive dissonance in my mind and made me do bizarre things — so that people can reject or ignore me.

Nothing seemed helpful: self-help books or gurus, hustle, or money — either having it a lot or losing it a lot. But I finally understood that I was able to live with this fear only by having more interaction with people, not by something else.

Even if I am faithfully devoted to other people, ready to support them, and actually provide whatever they need, not a few people will reject or ignore me. But that’s fine — that’s their problem, not mine. I just stop putting other’s problem on my shoulder, and it helps me face my fear and see it as is.

I still have the fear. But I can deal with it much better now.

 

 

 

Go beyond competition.
競争を超越しよう。

 

Working hard can be the laziest form of competition.

If you would just keep working hard, you would become dispensable sooner or later — because there is always someone who works harder (and at a price cheaper) than you.

Don’t get me wrong — working hard is essential to make you good. Or to gain a mastery of something. But it’s just one piece of the puzzle.

Another piece is to do things differently. But, as you can easily imagine, just doing things differently can lead you to be a weirdo.

It isn’t until you work hard and start doing something differently that you see the next level of competition. Well, it’s no longer a competition — It’s an endless battle with yourself to become and stay unique. And most importantly, your uniqueness is not for your own sake; it’s for the world around you.

Let us polish our uniqueness, and use it to make this world a better place for all life.