Doodle Card

 

Build a foundation for further growth.
さらなる成長の土台を築こう。

 

Your professional skills don’t always help you in your life.

They won’t help you when you get sick. They won’t help you if you are emotionally unstable. They won’t help you recover from mental illness. They won’t give you a spiritual wealth. Unless you are a doctor, therapist, psychiatrist or monk.

While we need to develop our professional skills to deliver value to the world around us, we also need to develop ourselves. We need to improve ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually — every single day. These are the foundation for our future growth. The bigger and stronger the foundation becomes, the higher our professional skills can be.

In our life, there is a time to focus on acquiring necessary skills to meet expectations of others — as well as ours. But, especially during a tough time, there is also a time to devote ourselves to recognizing our true self and becoming a better person. This is not a step back; it is an unavoidable step to grow further and unleash our true potential.

Digging deep into ourselves is not always fun. It’s very unpleasant at times. But it’s worthwhile — let us play the long game.

 

 

Get motivated, fly higher.
やる気を出して、より高く飛ぼう。

 

Motivation is not given. It is the force we create ourselves.

We need inspiration to create motivation. Inspiration is fuel — we need to expose ourselves to the people, place, and information that are full of inspiration.

Then we need to take action. Taking action is like igniting the gas. We need to keep doing it to produce enough lifting power — that is, motivation.

If we don’t get inspired enough or our action is not enough, our motivation weakens. If you don’t feel like you are motivated enough, ask yourself two questions:

• Do I get inspired enough?
• Do I keep taking action, even a small one?

Avoid people and things that don’t inspire you. These are impurities in the fuel, and will destroy your motivation engine in the long run.

Always seek inspiration and keep refueling, even when you already fly high. Unlike a real airplane, there is no risk of midair collision.

And don’t even try to take massive action at the very beginning. Start small, and keep doing until you get enough momentum. Keep doing it even when you have enough lifting power. Fly higher. Massive action is not a single action; it’s a long sequence of small actions.

 

 

What’s your idea?
あなたのアイデアは何？

 

Does your idea solve a problem?

Quantity of ideas does matter when we practice generating ideas. But, when we apply the ideas to the real world, quality of ideas does matter.

Not a few people miss the point. Some people tend to focus on the uniqueness or originality of the idea rather than its effectiveness. Some people focus only on the effectiveness. Only the small number of people are good at generating and incubating ideas from both points of view: uniqueness and effectiveness.

Any ideas can be improved. Even the ones that are not unique or original. Even the ones that would not solve a problem at this moment. We just need to identify which one is missing — uniqueness and effectiveness — and work on that. If your ideas miss both, give yourself another try.

 

 

Choose to be smarter.
より賢くなることを選ぼう。

 

Ask yourself: am I becoming cleverer or dumber now?

In a nutshell, we have only two outcomes from what we do every moment: we become smart or foolish. It doesn’t matter what we do — why we do it and how we see it do matter.

For example, reading a book itself does not bring anything to us. We need purpose — it isn’t until you actually apply something written in the book to your life or business that reading the book has its real meaning. We also should not read a book just because someone told us to read the book. If we see it as an opportunity (“get to”) instead of an obligation (“have-to”), reading the book gives us a completely different experience.

Doing nothing can make us smarter if we are fully engaged. Our brain and body definitely need to take a rest, which will lead to better output in the future.

Always assess what the thing you do now will lead you to. Choose consciously what you do every moment. Anything can make you smarter if you choose to.

 

 

Build your own road.
自分だけの道程を築こう。

 

People would say, “Life is a long and winding road.” But who knows?

We just don’t know how our life is going to be. There is no GPS for our life; if there were, it was made by someone else trying to navigate you to where they want you to go. Banking, insurance, recruitment, books and information products — we can see many examples of such manipulation on TV commercials or web advertisements.

Our life is all about building a road for our own sake. Other people might think of the road as their ideal, but we better not force them to follow — it’s their choice, and they are also on the way to build their own road. They can (and most of the time, will) take a different path at some point along the way.

Don’t blindly follow the road someone built, or the ones that any social norms told you to follow. You are the only person who know where you want to go.