Push yourself harder

This time, Mr. Inamori is talking about the theme of “Push yourself”. I can’t say that I have been pushing myself. However, when I think about what I can do for the staff who will work with me in the future, I feel I should push myself as hard as possible.

Why should we, business leaders, push ourselves? We spend some time thinking about this.

First of all, Mr. Inamori says ” Push yourself”.

Below are the words that Inamori shared with us.

If you encounter difficulties, don’t stay away from it. During your continuous struggle, with your strong desire to find a breakthrough, you would be able to have some hint to solve the issue.

As the word “fight-or-flight response” says, by dealing with difficulties with your sincerity, honesty and diligent efforts, people can demonstrate unexpected capability. We tend to avoid confronting those difficulties, however, by putting ourselves in a dead-end, we could exceed our limits and demonstrate amazing capabilities.

Inamori also continues as the reasons why we must push ourselves.

Let me elaborate them further.

１Get God’s help

Inamori demonstrated his episodes.

“While suffering and struggling, I pushed myself to the limit and continued the experiment day and night. Then, I pushed myself at the corner, a moment came to me. I found myself to be well-relaxed, and a hint for solving the problem came down in my mind, then I conducted the experiment by implementing the hint that I got, it worked out. Normally, those who were simply graduated from the local ordinary university and without sufficient academic background, would not be able to compose such a new ceramic material. Nevertheless, as I encouraged myself, “I must get the results anyway,” and kept pushing myself in a sort of “insane”situation while devoting myself to research, I believe that I spontaneously got God’s help. In the Kyocera Philosophy, there is an expression that –If you push yourself to the limit, you would have God’s help.- Of course, I eventually was able to inspire myself, but I can’t help thinking God watched me and helped me as I worked so hard. Therefore, I also told my employees, – You should work hard so that God keeps watching you and helps you stuck in the dead-end.- ”

２Improve the quality of your insights

When Inamori was starting his business, he got a chance to meet the professor who instructed him on his university research project. This was the episode that Inamori shared.

“Great ideas and inspirations only come out when you’re driven into research and push yourself hardest. Professor, you say that we need more relaxation and plenty of time to come up with good ideas, but I don’t believe those ideas are really “good” ones. I just feel those ideas are usually useless. Sorry to tell you Professor, but I think generally teachers involved in academic research rarely push themselves in themes that they are involved in until the level where they could die for them. I also believe that a researcher who has achieved such a wonderful result as receiving the Nobel Prize must have severely and harshly pushed himself. ”

Interestingly, those who have won the Kyoto Prize, which Inamori founded, seem to have won the Nobel Prize a few years later. After all,the Kyoto Prize committee has been assessing  whether or not the researcher has been doing this kind of effort: pushing himself to the dead-end.

３Do your best and leave the rest to Providence

“When I push myself and I feel no more efforts I can make, I would satisfy myself and confirm that I’ve done my best, so I could feel – waiting for my destiny-. In a recession, the companies around me go bankrupt and the orders for my company decrease. However, even in that situation, I am desperately devoting myself to my work. That allowed me to keep peaceful and calm. I’ve been doing my best until I confirm, ‘I’ve done my best. I’ll wait for my destiny. I’ve got to be prepared to accept all the results that come from my efforts.’ If you do it, you would never regret “I should have worked a little more in our crisis” when the company collapses. Only those who have been chasing themselves around the corner on their daily business practices could achieve that mental condition: I have nothing to do more, so let’s leave everything in God’s hand. ”

I think this is connected to living with full effort every day. Assuming that today is the last day of my life, I would like to make my best efforts so that I will never regret my work and relationships with the people around me.

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

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