Author: Satoru Hirose

 

Movement creates motivation.
動くことがやる気を生み出す。

 

“How do you motivate yourself to create something every day?” Someone asked me. Currently I don’t do anything special – because it’s a habit.

You don’t have to motivate yourself to wash your face, brush your teeth or take a shower (or a bath). Well, some people might have to be pushed to do so — but we usually do these things almost ‘on autopilot.’ This is the power of habit. While bad habits can kill you, good habits can take you far higher than you might expect.

When we feel stuck, it is almost always better to just do things than to try to find or foster motivation. The origin of the word ‘motivation’ is ‘to move’. Just keep moving forward — it will give us motivation and eventually create a habit that can make a huge difference in our life and business.

 

 

Create an obstacle and conquer it.
障害物を自ら創り、それを克服しよう。

 

I go for a run every day. Even on a rainy day. Running in the rain is a bit uncomfortable, but not as bad as you might imagine.

For runners, rain is one of the easiest obstacles to deal with. Blisters, leg cramps, pain of joints or knees — these obstacles are difficult to handle, but sometimes unavoidable. So runners have to cope with them no matter what.

Creating a small obstacle by ourselves and overcoming the obstacle — it makes us mentally strong. It forces us to think thoroughly to find out what we can do under given conditions, and makes us realize that we are always resourceful. And we gain confidence from the experience.

There are times that we have a huge obstacle in our life and business. It is unavoidable. But if we keep doing the “small obstacle workout” day by day, we can face such a huge obstacle with calm — knowing that there is a way to deal with it. That we can make the way even when there seems to be nothing.

Seek and work on a small obstacle. Create one if there is nothing. That becomes an opportunity.

 

 

Pause and reflect.
一旦止まって、よく考えよう。

 

For us, it’s quite easy to lose track of what’s important to us — especially when we live up to someone’s expectations.

This is our life. So as not to lose our direction in life, we sometimes have to pause for a while and ask questions to ourselves to find where we are:

• Do I have goals? What do I really accomplish in the next two weeks, three months and one year?
• Do I enjoy what I do every day? If not, why? How can I make these actions meaningful to my life?
• Am I certainly moving toward the goals? What distracts me most often? How can I get rid of these distractions?
• Am I doing what I ought to do to accomplish what I want to accomplish, or just doing what I want to do or what I am told to do?
• What are my next steps? Can I divide the next task into small pieces? What is the ‘baby-step’ – the easiest task I can complete within 15 minutes?

By asking these simple questions every now and then will help you (re)gain momentum, even when you feel stuck. It’s okay to get lost sometimes as far as we know how to get back from there.

Grab a pen and a piece of paper. Or your notebook. Write down your own questions and your thoughts. Your brand-new life starts here.

 

 

Be the person you want to keep company with.
自分が一緒にいたくなる人になろう。

 

Arrogance is one of the personalities we can never hide.

I was arrogant. Extremely arrogant. I was a sort of “me-me-me” personality and rarely listened to others. I was not aware of that because I was with the people who were as arrogant as I was. No matter what I thought, I was arrogant enough to make people go nuts. And after delusional short-term success, I failed miserably in many aspects of my life.

While overcoming the failure I created by myself, I learned to be ‘weaker’ than before. It doesn’t mean that I am literally weaker; I intentionally focus on listening to others first and try to ruminate on what they say, before I say something firm. This is what arrogant people would never do, and this way I can identify the person who is arrogant like I was before, and gradually stay away from them.

I am sick and tired of dealing with arrogant people. It’s because not only do I dislike arrogance now but I was fatally hurt by my own arrogance in the past.

I’m doing whatever I can do to let my arrogance go. It helps me become the person I want to be with. And this is also the best way to detect and stay away from arrogance of others.