Author: Satoru Hirose

 

Observe the context around you.
周りの状況を観察しよう。

 

In business, people just don’t always talk about the facts. They often talk about part of them in an indirect way.

If your boss says to you, “Can you please show me your presentation before submitting it to our big boss? I think I can help you on that”, you might expect your boss to make your presentation much better. And that might be true in a sense. But in many cases, your boss is also keen to check if you don’t screw up and wants to make himself or herself look good from your big boss.

You shouldn’t take it personal, like “Oh my boss doesn’t trust me”. Because your boss is not lying. It’s about the context your boss is in. Or the context your boss wants to live with.

You are just part of their context. Observe and understand what it is. Then figure out how you work on it.

It doesn’t mean that you need to sacrifice yourself. Just enjoy the situation. Try an improvisation when you can. See closely how other people act around you. It gives you a lot of insights to better understand why people say what they are saying and why people do what they are doing.

In business, you always need to play a certain role. Enjoy the play and utilize the experience to make you a better person.

 

 

Never be lazy in what matters to you.
自分にとって大事なことには手を抜かない。

 

“Why don’t you speak more in English?”

About 10 years ago, my American colleague asked me while we were drinking beer at the bar in Kuala Lumpur. “I don’t like speaking in front of people”, I said.

That was not true. I lied to him. I just didn’t want to make any mistakes when I speak English — my second language. That feeling paralyzed me and prevented me from speaking English at that time.

I still feel scared when I speak or write English because of the fear of making mistakes. Even now. Because there are people who judge someone by the accuracy in using English (or whatever) language.

And I hate mistakes although I almost always make some kind of mistakes. When someone kindly points out my mistakes, I always feel ashamed and inferior after thanking for their kindness.

Is it a perfectionism? Probably.

The good thing is though, it forces me to learn English as if I were six years old. I just want to be better. Much much better. I can never get lazy.

 

 

Get out of a small world.
小さい世界から出よう。

 

When I was a kid living in a rural area, my dream was to live in a big city. So I decided to go to college in a metropolitan area.

After I lived in a big city for years, living abroad became my next dream. I didn’t know how at that time, but a few years later, I happened to have an opportunity to work in the United States.

I traveled around the world. There are still zillions of places I haven’t visited yet, but now there are people who work on taking human beings to Mars. It would be great if I could go and live there someday.

It is easy to imagine or talk about something big. When we actually see or touch it, we’ll see it’s completely a different story.

Go outside of where you are now. Create an opportunity by yourself if no one gives it to you. See how the outer world is. It can be an experience that changes your view forever.

 

 

Your creativity is about to explode when you get stuck.
行き詰まったときは、創造力が吹き出す寸前。

 

“I am not good enough”, I kept saying to myself.

But I didn’t want to just give up. Before giving up, I wanted to do something I didn’t even imagine. So I generated many ideas — most of them were very stupid — and put some of them into action. Then the world around me began to change.

For me, this is almost always the way to overcome my recurring self-doubt.

Even when we feel we are not good enough, our creativity is still inside us. When we do something different, our creativity grows within us. And when we keep struggling even after we feel we can’t get over, we find a clue that makes our creativity explode.

Don’t give up. Do something that is quite different from what you usually do. When you feel stuck, you are about to reach to the next level.

 

 

Keep showing up.
姿を現しつづけよう。

 

I admire Ichiro.

In MLB, Ichiro didn’t hit 6,600+ times at the batter’s box. His batting average has been over 0.300.

Quite often, people see this fact like, “Well, even Ichiro doesn’t hit 7 out of 10 times, so it’s usual that things don’t always go well for us.”

That might be true. But what makes Ichiro unusual is — he keeps playing no matter what happens. He always makes him ready to show up. Even when he didn’t hit at all or he was not in starting lineup in the previous game.

We are not Ichiro, but we can live like Ichiro. Even if things don’t go well in our life or work, we’ve got to be ready to show up again.

Especially when we fail. Learn from it, then forget it.

Be ready. Focus on next.