A Very Special Presentation

Monday, we had a very special guest speaker...Mr. Kitashiro. What a man he is.

Okay so I have to be honest. When I first saw him, I thought 'oh well he looks like another one of those narrow-minded business men.' In retrospect, I think this was partially for his tight up salary-man-like- outfit and also for the soft voice he had when he spoke. For Hibiya gakucho, she had much more energy and liveliness so those were huge differences for me. However, there is no denying that there was something about mr. Kitashiro that makes you sense his presence, a kind of aura only few people have. 

Anyways, as the presentation went on, I realized that this man was definitely not 'some guy in a suit.' I know IBM and I know that their business wasn't going as well as it once did. However, his innovative idea to change directions had turned the company around completely. Him becoming CEO of Asia after that actually gives me a sense of hope because in Japan, I always thought that age and experience mattered, not talent. However, for mr. Kitashiro he wasn't chosen because he had been there longest. It was because he had actually proved a point. 

Another point that was interesting was his positive vibe. It was something rare and I think if it weren't for that, mr. Kitashiro would not have had the space in himself to even be creative. 

I always thought in order to succeed, you had to give up your life completely and I do think Mr. Kitashiro had to sacrifice a lot of time with his family for his job. However, he had always kept a balance following ATM( Akaruku, Tanoshiku, Mae?forgot that one.lol) 

One thing that bothers me though is that this all isn't adaptable to women the same way. I mean, if we are going to have a family and have kids, we have no choice but to keep away from our jobs for a certain amount of time. That obviously gives us a late start for promotions. I mean look at Germany's Merkel or Australia's former prime minister Gillard. They are both woman leaders but don't have children....

Gah, it just makes me feel reallyREALLY pessimistic. 

The Most Relatable Leader Ever

  Today we had a presentation by a very special person, Professor Hibiya Junko. Her presentation was honestly one of the most motivating ones i've had since i came to icu.
this april, when i entered icu, i had so much determination. i had an idea of what i wanted to do with my life and knew what i had to do to get there...but in the past six months, I've taken so many classes from different studies. initially, i just took those classes because just like a lot of other icu students, i thought, 'if im in icu, mind as well take as many different classes as i can.' However, unexpectedly, taking those classes confused me of what i wanted to do with my life, and now, i constantly feel like i am stuck in a box made out of blank papers thinking about my future.

http://50-gs.blogspot.jp/2012/07/g-shock-33-basic-white-in-high-key.html

anyways, lately I've been panicking about what i want to do with my life and who i want to be. but today, listening to professor hibiya's presentation eased me off a bit. we don't have to make a decision right this moment. i mean we're young. we're still in college. we should be experimenting and we definitely should be confused about our future. professor hibiya has made me realize that no matter what we do with our lives today, we should just be ready for our callings that will hopefully come to us in the future. honestly the word 'calling' sounds a bit too religious for me but i get the gist. we need to be open for that moment we will be in someone's need or when we finally make use of ourselves.
till then, im gonna keep it YOLO. You seriously only live once. i dont want to live my once in a life time college life worrying about my future. rather, i would like to think about today and live in this moment. work hard, make mistakes and enjoy it.

even though we might feel restricted at times, i'm glad that i go to a university of tomorrow that lets me do that. well no, im glad that i go to a university that has such a leader who inspires me to look at tomorrow in such a positive and motivational way:D and also, her being a woman, widens up my possibilities as well. i hope i can tear down the walls of normality and tradition and someday become a leader like her.

this all reminds me of a song...
living in the moment by jason mraz

Shackleton: Lighten Up!

'Effective leaders find ways of building celebration into the culture of their organizations.'

 In my high school, there was one teacher in particular who was popular amongst every student. This was especially abnormal at my school because it was the norm for students to hate every single teacher, or even if some students liked one teacher, it didn't necessarily mean that everybody did. Anyways, aside from the fact that that teacher was actually pretty good at teaching, he always had parties after  midterms or for occasions such as Christmas. He would bring in cakes he bought at Costco with a stack of American snacks he knew we loved. After this became a somewhat culture for his classes, us students were actually motivated to work harder because we knew what awaited us in the end. Strangely enough, they showed in our test results as well. Out of six classes that took the same test, he taught two of them and alwaysalways, those two classes were the ones that had the highest average scores. The attitudes of the students were different as well. Another thing that was the norm in my high school was sleeping during class. During this teacher's classes, almost(lol) no one was sleeping. Instead, we would shout out answers, ask questions and actually participate in class. I don't know if it was in this teacher's intentions or not but it honestly did work. As much as motivating us to study harder, I personally also nurtured a sense of belonging in his class. I think it's usual for students to hang out only in their cliques but when you have parties, it makes it easier to mingle with people you usually don't talk to. Then ultimately there is a sense of unity in the whole class.

This isn't the end though...

I had this teacher for two years and towards the end, the students including myself started expecting him to have parties which made everything a bit tricky. Our high motivations started decaying and our spirits during class soon were no where to be found.

'Normality' is really a terrifying thing...I think it's a sense of balance that is needed in this case.

it's HOW you deal with it...

i have one friend who's always smiley and constantly remains happy. ask her yourself, 'do you have any worries at the moment?' and she'll give you the best answer ever. 'no. the thing is, i dont like worrying. its so tiring you know.' in case you havent guessed already, its megumi kii. haha but its not like she hasnt been through hardships in life. i mean i'm her friend and i know what she goes through but never have i seen her talk badly about a situation or a person. 

i think life depends not on the weight of the matter but HOW you deal with it. 

Say you have a conflict with someone. Whether you're a leader or not, you actually have the choice to choose whether to hate that someone and exclude him/her from the team or to actually accept that person for what he/she is without any hard feelings. some people might call this 'optimism' but i'd like to call this a way of life. 

i've never ever thought that it was possible for someone to live without any worries in life but megu showed me that it was. and when you've got someone like megu who's always positive about life, you find yourself starting to smile as well. it's extremely infectious. 

whoa, i think i just wrote a post dedicated to her.lolol

A World Without Any Leaders...(exploring my random thoughts)

With all of this talk on leadership and what not, I began to wonder whether if it were possible for the world to function without any leaders.

Okay so first of all, why do we even need leaders? Do we need them because we need somebody in charge, to lead the way, to make matters flow smoothly? or is it because we're all secretly insecure and we want somebody who will take the blame when matters go wrong?haha
Isn't it weird when you think about it...I mean when there's a group of people working towards something and they succeed, they talk about teamwork and such but when they fail, a huge amount of the blame is put on the one leader. i mean look at Obama. He carries all of America's failure. When there's a protest somewhere in the states, it is Obama's face that is put on the front cover.
it is as if the leader uses the members while the members use the leader as well. it is actually difficult to determine who really has the authority in this situation.

now, lets imagine a society without any leaders, something close to collectivism maybe. everybody has a voice, an equal amount of power...to me that all sounds absolutely chaotic. but in my theory, we live in a country that is close to that perhaps. of course, japan does have leaders but leaders here are considered to be more apart of the group instead of someone who's leading it. now what is all of that leading up to? ....excessively long meetings, indecisive workers and leaders who only have a name...

I still don't know what leadership is...I mean, we need it but still at the same time, the definition, the stereotype and the symbolic meanings of a leader are way too strong for it to function the ideal way. buttt, then again that just might be one of the down parts of being a leader...

Conflict

 When we think back on our high school years, I think we realize that especially for the people who've been in clubs, we have been in conflicts on quite a lot of occasions. I guess conflicts are inevitable when you're in a group of people with different opinions.
When I was in the tennis club, we had disputes almost every 2 weeks. It was always about how one of the members had different priorities against the tennis club or sometimes about having trust issues with another. Instead of going behind the member's back, we would always hold a meeting and tell that person what the problem was directly. This was definitely not a Japanese way to deal with a conflict but it was faster to get everything settled to where they were and also, even after the dispute, the trust would remain because we knew everything the others were thinking. The problem with the way Japanese people deal with conflict I think is that they always do it secretively. I mean they never confront the issue, they just make a tense environment and hope the person will get the message. I can recall the time my friends started ignoring this other friend. I mean, whenever she would go up to them and give a friendly hi, they would ignore her and continue on talking...this may sound so junior high but this actually happens in corporations as well. It's childish but to some people that's the only way they can deal with the issue. however, this is obviously not confronting the issue. it's escaping it, ignoring it. What I've learned from my eighteen years of life, is that that is never ever a clever way to deal with conflict. It just makes everything worse and also messes up the trust tie in the group for quite a long time.

Shackleton was clever enough to realize that all of his team members were needed and with the loss of one member's support, he would lose the whole trust in the group. It's like one of those situations where if you lose one of the pieces, the whole would go down with it.
Every member has a strength and a weakness. What kind of leader would you be if you couldnt accept a man for both qualities?

How to create 'normality'

What is normality? What is ordinary? 

During this different class I take, the other day we discussed how some daily life events that may seem 'normal' at first are actually questioning and odd. 

One of the girls in my group was from somewhere far from tokyo(i forgot which prefecture it was) and said it was weird to see people in the morning try to get on a crowded train, like literally squeeze themselves in there when another same train is going to arrive in 3 minutes. 

I actually had never given this any thought till she pointed it out but from a person who's lived around the Kanto-area for over 10 years, I guess one of the reasons is because we just see crowded trains so much and we know how wide the capacity is in these trains that we never even think to not get on THAT ONE TRAIN. it's like we can only think to get on that train, kind of like waiting 3 minutes for the next train isnt even an option. 

The one thing i thought was weird or 'against the norm' was whenever there is some kind of accident in tourist locations, the media alwaysalways says 'there are no signs of japanese tourists related to the incident.' I guess since it's a japanese news production, that is necessary information but still they make it seem like everything is okay just because japanese tourists were not involved when there actually are people who were injured. BUTTT, I guess i had never given this some thought before because we had always been living in a country where everything revolved around japanese citizens and a country where it is ' normal' for the government to do something when a citizen is in trouble.

This got me thinking. The way we were brought up, creates 'normality' in ourselves subconsciously. Our daily lives are our daily lives so they become so normal and ordinary to us that we never think to doubt them. So if there are 7 billion people in the world right now, that makes 7 billion different types of 'normality' which were created throughout their lives. Isn't that amazing and terrifying at the same time? I guess as long as there are people, we're all going to have to judge people based on the information we have. However, we all need to understand that 'our normal' isnt necessarily the same as 'his normal.' Acceptance is definitely the first step.

Leading at the Edge #3

 Have you ever had a friend come up to you crying and looking at you like it's the end of the world but when you actually listen to their stories, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal? Well to me, optimism is when I play both of those roles in my mind. One half of me is the person with the problem and the other half is the outsider who looks at the situation objectively. By looking at the situation through a different perspective,  it can really change the outlook you have on the matter. Honestly, if I weren't an optimistic person, I probably wouldn't have survived high school and its glorious madness. haha

This is probably one of the reasons i love Charlie Chaplin's films. He took on sensitive topics like racism, war, materialism and actually made fun of them. Personally, I think that was a very courageous thing to do since the majority of the people of the time thought it was a topic we should rather not take on. When you watch his films, you realize how simple life is and how the world doesnt have to be as complex as it seems. 

Of course, realistically speaking, life isnt that simple and you gotta confront the problems some time but still, optimism lets you look at the situation through a fresh pair of eyes that can ultimately change your stance 180°.

Besides, if the whole group is feeling doomed, who else is going to look at the bright side? 

You never know what solution you can find there.