Doodle

 

Be generous to grow.
成長するために寛容になろう。

 

People often don’t say anything when you do the right things. But they do when you make a mistake — even a tiny one.

It often happens at a job performance review in a workplace. You wouldn’t get a credit for thousands of things you did right, but you would get a minus for a few things you didn’t do well. All of us don’t want to see that happen to us, but we also have to reflect on ourselves and see if we do the same thing to others.

To accept our own mistakes, misunderstanding or oversight is relatively easy. To accept these things of others is not always so easy. But we have to work really hard on it – because being generous to other people’s behavior is vital to live with the growth mindset.

 

 

Plant many seeds of ideas.
アイデアの種をまこう。

 

As many visionaries say, the way to have good ideas is to generate many ideas — especially bad ones.

Ideas are fleeting. If you didn’t catch them and jot them down, they would disappear quickly. But if you grab any of them, it starts growing up.

How come bad ideas are also important? Because bad ideas also develop and can be transformed into good — or great — ideas in the future.

You might think the idea you’ve just come up with is not good — or it may seem terrible at this moment. But jot it down anyway. World is changing. Twenty years ago, who thought disclosing our private life on the Internet could be the foundation of billion-dollar business like Facebook? You have no idea how your bad idea would look like in the future.

 

 

Get embarrassed.
恥ずかしい思いをしよう。

 

When I drew Doodle Card yesterday, one quote came up to my mind:

“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn

Trying to make everything perfect before launching something is as irrational as waiting for the perfect time to launch something. Perfectionists often get trapped into this situation and lose opportunities to create something new or innovative.

As long as you launch a business, launch it anyway with a simple business plan and prototype. Find your first customer – it’s much more important than creating a “perfect” business plan (if such thing really exists). Start small. Then catch up on details. Change your business plan when necessary. Or quit before you suffer a significant economic loss.

You will neither get embarrassed nor lose money if you don’t start a business. It is safe and fun if you only talk about your dream business. But — Is that daydreaming really what you want?

 

 

Go for the perfect time.
最高のタイミングを勝ち取ろう。

 

My worst mistake in my life is not to start my own business much earlier.

When I was a kid, I had a dream of running my business. This dream became much bigger when my father failed in his business and gave up on his entrepreneurial endeavor. I thought I was going to make my business successful and save my family — but it was just a dream. I didn’t take any practical action for decades since then.

Years later, I got trapped into slavery of a high-paying job. But I still believed that the perfect time to start my business would come, and didn’t take action at all — even a small one. I finally noticed that the perfect time I had waited for didn’t exist, only after I lost my physical and mental health.

The perfect time will never come even if we desperately wait for; It’s something we create ourselves by taking small steps toward it. Or probably, it doesn’t even matter whether there is the perfect time for you or not; just start moving toward your destination. You still might worry that you would regret later that it was NOT the perfect time — but it won’t happen unless you give up on what you started.

Don’t wait for the perfect time. Even if you are still young, you’ll soon turn 30, 40, 50, or 60. Stand up, take action, and create it yourself. Never give up. Never live the rest of your life with regret.

 

 

Accept what you are now.
今の自分を受け入れよう。

 

I often couldn’t sleep at night. I still can’t sleep well occasionally. In fact, it just happens this morning.

In the past, anger was the primary reason. Anger at someone else, or something that was out of my control – It will never be the reason anymore though. I learned how to let go of my anger.

Right now, fear sometimes makes me awake at night. I never say that I can always overcome fear very well – Bacause I’m still learning it.

Maybe I’m not strong enough to deal with any kind of fear at any time. But I am strong enough to accept what I am right now, learn something new, and keep moving forward.