Doodle Card

 

You’re here to make a difference.
あなたは変化をもたらすためにいる。

 

What makes a difference in our life?

I don’t have all the answers because I am not a self-help guru. What I can say from my experience is that, one of the ways to make a difference is to do something easy to do but not easy to finish strong.

Here are some examples:

• Jogging is easy to do. It also makes us feel great. But jogging 42.195 kilometers (26.219 miles) — that is, running a full marathon — is difficult to finish strong.
• Learning something new is easy. It’s also fun. But it’s not easy to keep learning something new for 365 days in a row every year.
• Showing gratitude is easy. It also makes us happy. But doing so under any circumstances — even when we are extremely unhappy — is not easy.

In our life, there are always many things that seem difficult, but if we carefully observe and deconstruct them, they can be separated into a series of easy things.

The key is to keep doing something easy, no matter what happens to us. Determination, dedication, perseverance, call it what you will, are the process of doing easy things relentlessly without getting tired of doing them.

 

 

Protect your integrity even if it means death.
死んでも良心を守ろう。

 

Integrity is more important than money. And anything else.

More than ten years ago, when I worked for a company as a Controller, the president of the company questioned my work ethic with no reason nor evidence. He began to wonder whether I was stealing company’s money, treated me like a criminal, and told others to involve in daily operations. It was just his personal doubt; I NEVER committed any criminal wrongdoing. The president might have been gripped by paranoia, but I had no reason to forgive him: I quit the company, letting go of a high salary at the company.

We just can’t work with people who are skeptical about our integrity with no good reason. It’s their problem, not ours — but there is simply no way to accept that.

No matter what happens, we must not have doubt about someone’s integrity with no reason. But higher management of a company sometimes prefer doing this — because it is one of the easiest (and meanest) way to display their authority. As the old saying goes, there is no smoke without fire — but in this case, it is the higher management who feeds the flame, not someone who is in question.

Don’t cross the line, even when everybody does.

 

 

Create your niche.
自分の適所を創り出そう。

 

An illusion won’t help us at all unless we know how to transform it into something useful.

Sometimes I see businesspeople who want to create something completely new. “I want to build a business that no one ever did.” While I admire their guts, I always ask them: “Well, what is that?” They would say, “I’m thinking about it.”

It’s extremely hard, if not possible, to find something no one ever did. Because we do not know everyone, as well as what they do, on this planet. And in fact “something completely new” is an illusion.

If we deconstruct any existing businesses, we notice one thing: Nothing is completely new. Every business has some similarities with other businesses.

Needless to say, just being similar would not help us build a business. If your business were like a miniature version of something else, you would be crashed by competition. You wouldn’t have enough resource to build something better than anything else, especially at the very beginning.

We need to have a difference along with similarity. Combining several factors of two different businesses is one way to make a difference. What we combined would be somewhat similar with each business, but overall, it’s a different business. There are thousands of examples of successful businesses built this way.

Stop trying to create something completely new. Instead, try to create a new combination that no one ever found. The same applies to personal development. Change your illusion into your asset.

 

 

Listen to your body.
身体の声に耳を傾けよう。

 

I got cold yesterday. I don’t know why it happened, but something may not be working well in my immune system. I trust that signal and am taking a rest.

Our immune system is the greatest auto-pilot system. It takes care of everything while we don’t even know what is going on inside our body. It is one of the few things we can fully rely on in our entire life.

But we sometimes break down the system – by listening to what our brain says, not what our body indicates us.

Too busy. I have to go to work. I have many things to do. These self-talks force us not to take a rest even when our body tells us that something is wrong. And we get sick – sometimes get a fatal disease. That’s the consequence of ignoring the sign from our body.

Medication won’t help. It just paralyzes our body and enhances the destructive self-talks.

Of course we need to go to the doctor if we get really sick. But we can prevent it from happening by observing our body. It doesn’t speak, but shows us a lot.

 

 

We’re all human beings, not numbers.
私たちは人間であって、数字じゃない。

 

If you just want to increase your followers on Instagram, you should not follow my account.

On social media, there have been many weird tactics. “Follow-Unfollow” is one of them: Follow an account, and if the account doesn’t follow you back shortly — say within a few days — unfollow the account. And repeat this until you get enough number of followers.

I know many social media marketers or consultants suggest this labor-intensive tactic. And I’ve seen many social media accounts — including the ones on Instagram — use the tactic. What they are missing is that, however, a social media account is not a thing; it’s a human being. Not everyone impulsively follows them back. While some do, many of us deliberately decide not to follow them, especially if their posts look like the same as others.

People look for inspiration, not visual stimuli. If we accept and respect that, we won’t need any of cheap social media tactics anymore — because we see people as a human being like each one of us, not a thing like “a number of accounts.”

In my humble opinion, no one has to follow my social media accounts. But, in case someone happens to follow me, I am trying to make my posts as inspirational as possible — even if my efforts don’t always pay off and the outcome is often well below average.