Focus on success or growth(process)?

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a great day.

I have been working on my book to get published and it has been an interesting journey.

First, I had to translate from Japanese to English with help by my lovely sister, Ghieg. That was not hard at all, it was fun!! After that, I hired two editors and then Ghieg and I went over each of the editors jobs to create the best version of my book.

Second, I hired Corey who formats a book for eBook and paper book. This was an easy process, but I kept finding things that I felt I needed to rewrite…… Larry suggested me to stop reading because I was driving myself crazy! He was right!!!

Corey was also a proofreader so I asked him to do so. I cared about my book a lot because it is my story so I wanted it to be perfect, but I was putting myself so much pressure…..

Also I hired my wonderful friend, Eiko to design a book cover. Oh, my!! She did wonderful job!!!

It has been fun and stressful for sure, but more stressful…… Today I was running on a treadmill and I had a AHA moment. I remember the quote by Keisuke Honda, Japanese soccer player. “Focus on your growth, Don’t focus on your success.” – He said that growth stays with you forever, but success can be taken away at any moment. It is so true.

I always try to focus on the growth, because it creates who I am and there are so many great lessons on the process of success. I feel that if I get caught by success only, I would lose who I am…..or I wouldn’t feel the satisfaction of achievement.

I reminded myself why I wanted to write and translate my book and refocused on my recent journey…. For sure, my English writing got better and I am proving to myself that I can do anything even though I have an accent! When I felt that my stress went away, I felt a joy for doing this book thing.

I focus on growth so I can enjoy my success!!

Advertisement

The Importance of accepting negative feelings

Happy Saturday to you all. 

This is my first blog in English! 

A couple of months ago, I felt strongly about the importance of having and accepting the negative feelings. Last few years I have felt that it became a trend to think positively and have a positive mind. I completely agree with the importance of positive thinking and having positive energy. I try to live with them everyday, but I sometime have moments or a day that I have a hard time to feel positive because I am tired. I used to push through those days and tried to think positive and ignore my negative feelings……. IT WAS TOO MUCH. I didn’t like that I was not being honest with myself and I felt it was unhealthy. 

If I didn’t feel good at the moment or the day, I decided to be honest with myself. I just let myself be. Of course, at work  I would not show that, but at home, in my car, I was just being honest with my feelings. I felt that was healthier.

I was speaking to my friend in Japan on line last month and I brought this topic up. She completely agreed with me and we spoke about the importance of having the balance of positive and negative, instead of trying to be only positive.

If we don’t know the negative feelings, we CAN NOT appreciate the positive one. So we felt it was ok to have a day or two to feel low and come back positive the next day. We also talked about that it is healthy to be honest with our feelings.

We all try to be better everyday and live positively. 

But it is ok to be sad or down sometimes and take a break from trying. Sometimes, I have an hour to be sad and lazy. And I refresh myself. Sometimes it might be longer. The key is to not continue having those same feelings and change the channel. Instead of trying to be positive all the time, this skill might be healthier to have??

The negative feelings aren’t bad. It is good to have because it is proof that we have feelings!