When you think it’s time to give up, the real work begins.

In late August, we got the news that Mr.Inamori passed away. It was shocking to us, and we have been feeling how important what he taught us is and how great he was. We sincerely pray for him to rest in peace.

With the above title, Inamori stressed, in Kyocera philosophy, how important it is to strive ourselves. The quoted phrases are what Inamori said.

“ Some people say that talent and abilities are key for success. However, I believe enthusiasm, passion, and even determination allow us to achieve our goals. Like a soft-shelled turtle who never releases the prey, we should keep tackling the target once we’ve aimed. The real work begins when you say it’s time to give up. If you have a strong enthusiasm or passion, you can keep thinking about the target eight days a week. As a result, the desire penetrates into your subconscious mind, and this would lead you to commit yourself to take proactive approaches to achieve your goals. To accomplish great works, you should always maintain your strong enthusiasm, passion, and perseverance.”

Mr. Inamori says that below two fundamental mindsets allow us to conduct this business practice; never give up.

I will explain each one.

1 Always keeping a buffer

Inamori said as follows.

‘` Now, I showed you guys a motto; The beginning of work is when you think it’s time to give up.’ In general, “the time to give up” is the actual moment you must give up. For example, in Sumo wrestling, it is the moment when your foot is about to encroach on the ringside. Even though you want to fight more with your opponent, you physically can’t do that. However, Kyocera, which had always financially kept some buffers in our budget, had been able to continue more R&D activities until our experiment gave good results. This motto requires us to keep some buffers in terms of financial, mental, and environmental conditions.”

→ What Inamori mentioned can also be explained from the analysis of how the subconscious mind works.

From the very beginning, some people unconsciously get overwhelmed with the following ideas.
For me, this had been a huge work excessing my capacity,
After all, as I imagined, I overestimated myself, I can’t achieve the goal.
My past experiences have taught me that I should not push myself to challenge as I was supposed to fail.

Those feelings have been embedded into our subconscious minds. Once we’ve got overwhelmed, we unintentionally avoid taking preventive actions for future issues or troubles, even though we could easily anticipate the worst case scenarios.

This shows, eventually, how important the subconscious mind is in business administration. Mr. Inamori said that he had been talking below the motto to his staff with all his soul and energies.

What Inamori had done to Kyocera staff was the energy transmission from Inamori to them.
The staff who were injected with this energy had gradually changed their subconscious mind. Negative default settings could be turned into positive ones. Therefore, those who were not able to take preventive measures had been influenced by Inamori. Those losers had turned into proactive workers simply because Inamori changed their subliminal mindset.

2 Getting prepared and determination

Mr. Inamori talked about the time when Kyocera was founded.

“At the time, my colleagues said to me, ‘If the company is not doing well, let’s have Mr. Inamori continue his research, even if we must do other hard jobs, we should generate the funds for his R&D. We must launch the technologies that Inamori has been developing to the world. We should keep our endeavor until the world values Inamori’s technology!’ In other words, the Kyocera started in a state of ‘the time to give up.’ Sometimes I find poor leaders of small enterprises. When their businesses look unsuccessful, they say ‘ We got stuck, there is no way to survive !’ ” and wound their businesses down. When I listen to their stories, I have always been wondering: ‘If there are no cars for your operation, you can find bicycles. Why don’t you ride a bicycle to get a new order? If you have no money, you can find and fix broken bicycles around your house. Even though you went bankrupt, your creditor could never take your life. With your body, unless you lose your fighting spirit, you could take a lot of approaches to keep your business running. Once you’ve determined to work, you will be able to find the way out.’ It’s always you who sets up your own limit…”

→　This is the matter of preparation and determination.
Our subconscious mind lying deep inside of us most likely determines our own limits.
We may be obsessed with negative feelings as follows:
Any more failures are embarrassing.
I can’t live with unbearable anxiety and the fear of losing something important.
I am afraid that the people around me will leave me alone.

These negative emotions ultimately humper our challenges.
By facing firmly above anxieties and fears, you can prevent those negative emotions from dropping into your subconscious minds. Facing those emotions means to objectively analyze where those emotions come from and figure out how to live with them. I think that the leader himself needs to take care of his own negative emotions. On the other hand, we should realize that what happens to us has always been intertwined with the other events which we will experience later in our lives. Unpleasant events sometimes eventually bring us unexpected and good results.

To sum it up, keeping buffers in business administration and in our mentality is the key to continuing our efforts without giving up. For that reason, I thought it is important for leaders to always take care of their own subconscious mindset.

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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