Doodle

 

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.

 

 

Be courageous to be vulnerable.
矢面に立つ勇気を持とう。

 

“Do exactly as I told you!”

My ex-boss often yelled at our people like this. When they did things exactly as they were told and something wrong happened, the ex-boss said:

“So how would you fix this?”

We can’t behave like this if we live our own life and stand for what really matters to us. Our value, things we do, our words, our craft and people — these are our extension. And we are ultimately responsible for them, as well as the outcome from them.

Don’t run away. Don’t hide. Be in front of everything that matters to you.

 

 

Don’t try to be right, just be better.
正しくあろうとするのではなく、より良くなろう。

 

“Am I wrong? Am I wrong?”

My old friend has an anonymous account on Twitter, and sometimes posts a tweet like this. He seems in the middle of a midlife crisis. I don’t follow his account — I don’t want to see him struggling that way.

Because I was like him for a long time. Even before my middle age. When I asked myself, “Am I wrong?”, I wanted to believe I was right. Sometimes I was, but most of the time, I wasn’t. I guess the same applies to my old friend.

However, the answer to that ‘am I wrong’ question differs depending upon how we define ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. And the definition of these two words slightly (sometimes largely) differs from person to person.

So why asking such a question in the first place? Chances are, there will be someone who thinks we are wrong, even when we believe we are right.

Accept that you cannot be always right even though you work really hard to be. No matter how old you are, admit that you still have a room for growth, improvement and learning new things.

Don’t get hung up on what is right or wrong. Change question.

“Am I getting better than yesterday?”