Author: Satoru Hirose

 

Be your own compass.
自分自身の羅針盤になろう。

 

You are the only person who can be consistent with your true self.

Don’t expect others to be consistent for your sake. Many people — including your teacher, your family, your close friends, authorities, famous writers or successful entrepreneurs — are sometimes inconsistent with their words. It doesn’t mean that they are careless or frivolous; it just shows how hard it is for all of us to be consistent with ourselves.

Take time to reflect on who you are. Think about your important belief. Find out why you do (or don’t) a certain thing. Keep a log of your actions and their outcome. Every one or two weeks, go over previous logs to see what went well or wrong.

We can be inconsistent with our previous self when we make progress. That’s okay — it’s a good change. But you have to be sure that you are making progress. If not, you are going nowhere.

 

 

Apply your worry wisely.
懸念を賢く扱おう。

 

Do you want to ride a bike without brakes?

Learning how to use brakes is vital when we drive a car or ride a bike. They control the speed and stop the car or bike when necessary. We definitely need brakes to avoid an accident — but if we use brakes in a wrong way, it can also lead to a disaster. What would happen if we brake hard while driving a car at a high speed?

Our worry often works like brakes. We can’t completely eliminate our worry from our mind — it is part of the function of our brain. We just have to use it wisely. It can save our lives — if you work too hard and can’t sleep well every day, you definitely need to worry about your physical and mental health.

But our worry also can stagnate our life. If you worry too much about making mistakes, you can’t make any progress. We wouldn’t go anywhere if we always put brakes on our moves.

Use our worry to protect our lives, not to prevent us from moving forward.

 

 

Get disciplined.
自制心を鍛えよう。

 

I’m a weight training enthusiast. But very mediocre one.

I did weight training only occasionally in my twenties and thirties. It wasn’t until my body was getting really ugly in my forties that I started to work on weight training — a bit seriously. I’ve been doing the training for two years, but am still on the way to transforming my body. One of my buddies at the gym once told me that, if I couldn’t bench the same weight as my body, I was a mediocre weightlifter. It was probably the only time in my life when I felt it was okay to be mediocre for the rest of my life.

Although I go to the gym only twice a week now and am still unable to lift a heavy weight, working on a weight training helps me get disciplined even during a rough time. I can also get an immediate feedback by exact figures — such as the weight I’m lifting, number of repetitions and sets — and easily see my progress (or regress). It helps me keep motivated, and that’s why I keep going to the gym.

I know that a weight training is not suitable for everyone. There are many other things that help you get disciplined in a similar way — and it doesn’t have to be a hard one. Going for a walk for 10 minutes every day, writing or drawing for 15 minutes every day, reading a book for 10 minutes every day — anything goes if you like to do it.

One small habit can get you disciplined. This discipline spreads from one field to another, and eventually becomes a solid foundation of your future life and business.

 

 

Make your brain bolder.
アタマをもっと大胆にしよう。

 

Our brain will never be empty. It always creates thoughts and ideas — we just aren’t aware of them, or avoid seeing them as is.

When you think you have no idea, you can generate the craziest idea. Why do we sometimes think we have no idea? It is because our belief or fear prevents crazier ideas — the ideas that seems inappropriate or silly in any way — from being recognized. We are unconsciously killing these ideas before they pop up in our conscious mind.

All we need to do to have our belief and fear shut up for a while. Do this exercise — Pick a piece of paper, and for the next 3 minutes, write down anything in your mind without evaluating anything. You may find many bizarre thoughts and ideas on the paper, but that’s fine. After briefly looking at what you’ve just written, shred the paper. Or burn it. The point is, you never show it to others — even your closest friend or significant other. By repeating this exercise, your brain will learn the way to be bold when necessary. And it helps you generate ideas when other people are paralyzed by their own belief or fear.

 

 

Leaders fill a gap.
リーダーはギャップを埋める。

 

It’s not always easy to explain what we know.

When I was employed, I saw many people (including my ex-bosses) yelling at other people, like “How come you don’t understand what I told you several times! You disappointed me!” In Japan, this kind of intimidation in workplace happens quite often.

One of other examples is the grammar of our own native language. We see what is right or wrong, but it’s not always easy to tell someone — for example, foreigners who learn our native language — why it is right or wrong.

Why is it so difficult? That’s mostly because of two reasons:

1. We don’t have enough knowledge to describe what it is
2. We don’t know why other people don’t (or can’t) understand what we know

The first reason is not rare. We often don’t know what we think we know. People often say, “Oh, that’s a common sense” — but, what is a common sense? Why is that a common sense? Why do we need to follow the common sense? If we can’t answer these questions, we don’t know enough to describe what it is.

And we almost always struggle with the second reason. We need to know what other people know (and don’t know) in order to explain the things they don’t know. Someone may say, “Oh these people are too stupid to understand this” — but in most cases, that’s not true. What actually happens here is that, the person who ought to explain is too immature (if not stupid) to gain insight into others and figure out the better way to have them understand.

All leaders need to have the ability to explain in a way that other people understand. The first step is to stop blaming others for not understanding what we explained. See ourselves and reflect. When it comes to communication, there is always something we can improve.