Brief updates – 15 Nov 2010 Edition

Blog posts I recently enjoyed reading:
If you are interested in getting paid for what you love, check out Chris Guillebeau‘s post on “How to get paid for what you love“. He offers some unconventional advice on this topic.  If you like his article, subscribe to his newsletter as well.

Everett Bogue wrote a post on “How to create an A-list minimalism blog in less than 6-months“. You might have noticed that I’ve added a photo of me in the right hand side of this blog; I followed his advice, actually. And yes, I am following his advice #5.

I didn’t realize what Jonathan Fields was up to when he tweeted “Morning, friends. Who can I help today?”. But his post made it clear. I believe what Jonathan does is great and I will try it myself. By the way, although I haven’t seen all the videos introduced in this post, I will check out Jonathan’s “The 7 Keynote MBA: How to Save 2 Years and $100,000“.

I loved this post by Tara Hunt on “Love the one you’re with“. I met Tara when she came to Japan for a launch event for her book‘s Japanese version. Tara held a karaoke tweet-up with her readers, and I tell you, it was epic. Anyway, read her post and start loving the one you’re with. Please. The following passage by Tara is a gem:

My dream is for every single woman – young and old – to get to the point where we no longer compare ourselves to others and unreal media images, but we start loving who we are and treating ourselves like gold.”

NaNoWriMo:
I’m still alive. I wrote about 19000 words so far. I should have written about 25000 words by now, but it’s still manageable to catch up and to write 50000 words by 30 November.

Bilingual Webzine:
If you follow me on twitter or facebook, you might have seen my musing on a bilingual (Japanese&English) webzine project. I made a feedback form and you can read more about this project on this form page (English ver. / Japanese ver.). Check it out if you’re curious.

Photo: ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser

Showing your weaknesses… with confidence

I want to tell you something I know about confidence.

“Masa, you’re not good at seeking help from others,” my good friend once told me. She was spot on; it is indeed the case that I tend to avoid seeking help from others. I believe I did get better at it, but I was rather bad. The whole story is probably much more complicated and something even I don’t know completely, but one of the reasons behind it was simple: I used to think that asking for help was a weak behaviour and I didn’t want to show my weaknesses to others.

Some, like my past self, might think that showing no traits of weaknesses is the way to become confident. That is, in their way of thinking, one can be recognized as a confident person by looking strong and impressive. A confident person doesn’t ask for help!

But is that really the case?

These days I’m inclined to think that showing weaknesses is a confident behaviour, unless it’s overdone. On one hand, a good way to do it is 1) to acknowledge your weaknesses, 2) to be casual about them, and 3) to show them with honesty. On the other hand, a bad way is to do it with the intention of getting attention from others.

There might be various defintions of confidence, but one I have in mind comes from how the Japnese word for confidence (Jishin) is written in Chinese characters. If we translate the two characters used to write this Japanese word, the Japanese word for confidence literally means self trust. Believing in yourself – I like that.

Whether you like it or not, your weaknesses are part of you. Imagine they are like your little babies. I’m sure you can be nice to them and won’t hide them from the world.

I know it can be scary to show up as who you are, which inevitably includes your vulnerable side and your weaknesses that belong to it. But just show up anyway. These elements of you do belong to you; believe in them – in yourself no matter what. I’d say that will lead you to be more confident about who you are.

There are a few more things about confidence, but I’ll save them for another time…

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This post was inspired by the following talk given by Brené Brown at TEDxHuston. It’s a great talk and I highly recommend it. I have some other ideas for blog posts inspired by this talk as well. Stay tuned!

Photo: rolands.lakis

No more underestimation please!

In the last 26 years, I quit drawing, writing stories, playing the bass guitar and making music. There are more, I believe. Do I regret that I quit them? In a way, I do. But not so much, because I can always pick them up again. It’s not too late for me. The point I want to make here is that I didn’t believe I was good at any of them.

My friends are talented. In fact, I’m happy to believe, whether it’s a delusion or not, that everyone I know or you know is good at something. Some of them are making it, and I’m proud of them. Some of them are not quite making it, and I’m still proud of them. But, I hope they’ll realize that those who are not quite making it are good at what they love. They just haven’t realized their potential… yet.

What about me? From someone else’s point of view, I might look talented. I might look good at something. But it’s possible that I don’t believe that I am good at it… as I didn’t regarding the things I mentioned in the beginning of this post.

It’s a message to you as well as to myself – you are probably underestimating yourself. If you truly see your potential, you’ll be surprised.

No more underestimation please!

Photo: oedipusphinx ― ― ― ― theJWDban

Immersion + confidence + love = ?

I want to create a masterpiece of art and my life is my art. Passion for life is what keeps me going in this endeavor. So, naturally, I’m interested in the idea of passion as well as passionate people.

I believe most of us are passionate about something, even if we don’t proclaim our passion to the world or aren’t actually aware of it. I don’t believe passion is an outdated notion; I believe it’s still alive.

I’ve started learning Argentine Tango since this April and I continue practicing to this day. I’m still new to tango as a style of dance and as a genre of music, but I do know that I enjoy listening to tango tunes. Recently, I came across this video of Loca by Juan D’Arienzo, who is conducting a band in the video.

When I see this video, the word ‘passion’ comes to my mind immediately. The way Maestro D’Arienzo leads the band expresses his passion for the music. He seems to be fully engaged with the music and I can see no doubt or hesitation in him. Also, I bet he loves what he does. His intensity is adding spices to his performance, too. Immersion + confidence + love + intensity. I don’t think it’s a definite recipe, but I do believe it’s a rough guide to passion.

Are you aware of your passion? If so, what are you passionate about? Do you proclaim it to the world? If you haven’t, do it by all means! Let the world know what you are passionate about. You can start from here by letting me know about your passion below!

Photo: Kreig-Hammer

6 things I have learnt from NaNoWriMo so far

I’m participating in NaNoWriMo. There are six things I learnt from NaNoWriMo so far, and I want to share them with you.

1. There’s no reason why I should spend time and energy on kicking out my inner critic. While it would be great if he could leave me alone forever, I bet it won’t happen. Rather than spending time and energy on getting rid of him, I’d focus on what I need to do: writing.

2. If you don’t know what your aim is, you can be driven by your inner critic. So, make it clear to yourself what your aim is. For me, it’s simply to write 50000 words of something. Yes. Something. In fact, it’s more like a playground for myself rather than a novel for someone else to read, really.

3. My inner critic tells me that what I’ve written so far doesn’t make much sense, but that’s fine. I’ll keep writing anyway. I’m happy to let my storyteller of this novel be imperfect. We make mistakes and forget things sometimes when we tell stories; why should we expect our storytellers to be perfect?

4. By “focusing on writing”, I mean what it means. I will do no editing when I write or during November. So, it’s pretty much as though I’m splashing words inside me onto a digital scroll of paper so I can have fun spotting something actually nice and pretty on it.

5. Discipline is important. I have been writing everyday, but I need to have a better discipline. For example, I’m writing this blog post on a text editor, and I’ve got 8 tabs open on Firefox; they are completely unnecessary and irrelevant to this post. I tend to do that when writing for NaNoWriMo as well. If I had a better discipline and focus, I would be able to focus more on writing.

6. It’s fun to spend my time on writing. I used to think of stories and wrote poems when I was much younger. I spent the last 8 years on academic writing, including my honours thesis and master’s thesis. Writing these (philosophy) theses helped me sharpen my writing skills in English, but I hardly wrote for fun. I came to love writing through this blog as well as NaNoWriMo.

At the time of writing this post, I wrote 6009 words. I’m slightly behind, but I’ll try my best.

If you are part of NaNoWriMo, how are you going with your project? I’m sure you have something you learnt no matter whether you are a first timer like me or an expert. What did you learn so far? I’m curious about your experiences!

Hans Comijn on becoming an attractive man

“Becoming an attractive man” is one of the topics I’ve been strongly interested in for the past few years. There are a few men I admire as a role model, and Hans Comijn is one of such rare men. Hans co-founded the Ars Amorata Online program with Zan Perrion and he led a number of men so they could get on the right path.  My friend from the Ars Amorata Online program, Paul Letendre did a series of interviews with Hans, and I highly recommend it, whether you are a man or a woman. In any case, if you happen to be a man who seeks more excellence in life, you must listen to it. If you liked Hans’ talk, share it with others, too. Also, Paul has written some excellent articles on his website Enrich Your Love Life – check them out!

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Photo: Ana_Cotta