Enhance independence through selective reaction

Many factors contribute to improving, growing, and leading a happy life. One of the most important is to become independent. I stressed the importance of this at a welcoming ceremony for new graduates, which is a once in a lifetime opportunity to start one's life as an adult. Should one be merely an observer of life and circle around a whirlwind that others create? Or should you create your own whirlwind as an independent operator by accepting responsibilities and taking the initiative? When thinking seriously about one's purpose in life, you will have one of these two choices. This is a simple world in which we have to constantly deal with these choices, regardless of profession, whether it be as an administrator or accountant and regardless of the size of one's responsibilities. I personally dislike the former way of living, where one depends on others like lining up behind somebody else's life, even if it is your own life we are talking about. In short, abandoning your life responsibilities even though it is your life at stake betrays the dignity given to humans. It is almost criminal. If you spend such a selfish and lazy life, you will diminish your existence and will face a terrible life in 30 years, since such a life goes against human dignity. Furthermore, even people on the same starting line will make contributions that differ 10-fold in three years and 100-fold in 10 years from those who voluntarily create their own whirlwinds. Living passively is not the way for Sun Frontier employees. It is important to voluntarily do work requested with a constantly positive attitude and no negative emotions. Work with everything you've got and plan to improve work for everybody. It is important to reflect your own ideas in work based on your motivation and responsibility. The cause of the Company's rapid growth is that each employee joyfully takes responsibility, creates a whirlwind, and completes difficult difficulties. Our people make this experience useful for personal growth and thereby lead the growth of Sun Frontier. They do this for the happiness of fellow employees. Zealously taking responsibility is only for the happiness of all employees. Also note that another important factor is toward you aim happiness. If the target is solely yourself, you will only have a narrow, shallow, and small life. But if you raise the happiness bar to encompass a crowd, such as fellow employees, society, or even the world, you will see more higher and have naturally deeper ideas. You will attract more supporters for your ideas. The likelihood of making everybody's lives grander will also be higher. It is important to properly target happiness.

How can you be independent? How can you be a person who creates a better whirlwind? Since our corporate culture is about these questions, I think you have already thought quite a bit about the answer. It is not so difficult to independent. It is naturally possible for anyone to become independent if concentrating one's consciousness onto one point and drawing on a little effort and courage. I would like you to grasp what I write below by taking a load off your shoulders. Rest easy since Sun Frontier has a climate in which all employees mutually understand, support, and praise independent people.
All people react to stimulation. But we have the freedom to choose between stimulations and reactions. That is the issue. People who cannot be independent are mostly reactive. They immediately always have the same sensuous reactions. Such people instinctively find things disliking, troublesome, and want to escape. At other times, they have advanced emotions, thinking that they must do well or have some self-protection emotion. Or they react by pretending to knowing, making excuses for difficulties, and finding more plausible excuses based on their experiences or prejudices. These people never think that there is a key to living a better life between stimulation and reaction. That shows in their words and actions. Such people do not react selectively, as their thinking is shallow. There are some older people like that. In most cases, they cannot foster others. Everyone gets stimulation from the outside world. Those who grow independently filter stimulations through reasoning or righteousness, care, will, creativity, awareness and self-responsibility before they react. If one does that, reactions represented by one's words or behavior change through filtered stimulation into righteousness, care, and self-responsiveness. A crucial point exists between stimulation and reaction. Independent people think deeply and in less than a second. The first point in becoming an independent person is to think the right reactive words or have the right reactive behavior by focusing between stimulation and reaction. If you do that, people you deal with feel that your words or behavior have grasped the purpose, and their expectations on you and your charm will increase. That drives and steers how you act. You create people who do what they say by starting from reactions to stimulations.
Some people who I tell off or point out make mistakes on this point. For example, a person coming into my office to seek approval for something may think about his or her story but not fully understand the project's essence or risks. Usually, when such a person comes into my office, I can see that on his or her face. When I ask a question, such a person is often stuck for words or blames outsiders. On the other hand, some people reactively push decisions on me, pointing out risks or massive expenses without any grounds, habitually using irresponsible words like "I think so" or "I've heard it is so." The pattern for most of these is to leave my office utterly depressed. They are in the above case, using weak-willed words and thoughtless ideas as they do not pursue the grounds for work and do not have any philosophy in work. These sorts of people must be doing the same to our customers. They respond to requests with arguments. Customers will walk away from such people thinking that there is no point talking to them. Such employees lose credibility.
Inconvenient questions, or stimulation, in sales places are gold if one conscientiously resolves the questions or change the customer's understanding or viewpoint. However, there is no meaning or benefit if a salesperson tries to argue from the basis of an unchanging opinion, which typical of a reactive person. When considering freedom of choice, a salesperson should listen carefully to customer opinions and think about intentions and righteousness. It is because customer opinions and request indicate shortcuts to decisions. At the same time, customers favor the sincerity of a salesperson trying to listen. Being graceful, apologizing for not knowing something, or showing repentance are bases for building trust. Non-selective reactions include likes and dislikes based on emotions or feelings, and instinctive likes and dislikes and reactions without any particular reason, like "somewhat." They also include reactions influenced by current situations or environments, circumstances, or conditioning.
When one abandons life responsibilities, one becomes reactive. Reactive people are greatly influenced by the people around them and the environment. We often see people who are happy when others are nice to them and who are otherwise grumpy and depressed. Reactive people lack spiritual backbone. The words and actions of others influence them. At the same time, as written in the Weekly Leadership Report, you will find that many sales representatives at other companies are active when it is sunny and feeling good about themselves as they go out. On the other hands, they may feel poor on rainy days and stay inside their offices. Independent people like the ones in the Company have their own weather, as a leader says that it is best to visit customers on rainy days. For us, actual weather conditions are absolutely irrelevant. It could be rainy or scorching hot. But we don't care. Our thinking and actions stem from our own values. As long as we maintain them we will constantly aim for more responsibility and higher quality work. As this example shows, we can make it a strength to analyze people's psychology and create encounters, making customers feel that one of our salesperson came all the way in this terrible weather. We can create the impression that our salesperson and the Company differ from others. Independence depends on experience and good inborn marketing sense. You cannot achieve this unless you care to speak understandably as a leader and with the ability to think deeply.
This selective reactivity also applies to myself. I have more than 160 employees and have monthly expenses exceeding ¥600 million. The amount is only expanding. As president, I am responsible for making the Company grow, not just for employees, but also to satisfy shareholders and society. In addition, I have a mission to create happiness by guaranteeing the livelihoods of our interminably growing number of employees and their families. My first priority is the happiness of fellow workers. For them, I work to service customers so I can be 10 times more useful. I have to develop a business that matches social needs to be useful to customers. The goal in meeting social needs is to value the environment in doing business, which is an enormous issue. We do not just live. Others keep us alive. I firmly believe that the future of our business will be bright because of a chain reaction of the right values in line with the principle of universe that each one of us in the Company transmits. Under such circumstances, I, too, sometimes make the wrong decisions in selective reactions vague without grounds or firm beliefs, reflecting habits from tiredness or overwork, or from sometimes failing to see the crucial points of stimulation because of emotions. A company's president is the last resort and the final decision-maker who is not allowed to go too far. Even though a president means to listen very carefully and concentrate, if the president's awareness of his or her situation becomes dilute, the company will immediately face bankruptcy. I must ask the directors to refine their philosophies as if they are presidents and final decision makers, making the right decisions from a four-dimensional viewpoint. After the directors, general managers are responsible for leading many employees in the work place, followed by deputy mangers, section chiefs, sub-section chiefs, branch managers, and team leaders. Everything begins with the work attitudes of every employee. They should independently assume responsibility for something more than somebody else's sake. Such a work attitude is complete through business units. We repeat the process and expand the correct services for others.
The most basic characteristic of independent people is that they act based on their values. Correct values have an important role. New graduates just joining the Company and other young people may be finding it hard to establish their own values. Recently, we held training sessions that look into spiritual backbone. Many people realize that it is only natural to consider themselves rather dull with their current spiritual backbone. They might also think that their current spiritual backbone would not enable them to attain their dreams. Or they might find their real selves and decision-making standards, thinking circuits, and values. What is so wonderful in them is that they then feel that they review themselves and are committed to reforming themselves sincerely when in their early 20s. Independent people are the fruit of speaking by differentiating between stimulation and reaction. It is alright to correct oneself by constantly reviewing oneself every day or at once. Let's be independent people with reactive words for getting responsibility ourselves.

As a reference, the most accurate depiction of myself today would be seen between a stimulation and a reaction in an experience of being swindled at the age of 26. I feel that a characteristic that makes me think that all responsibility for an event surrounding myself belongs to me, and without thinking ill of others. This has improved my personality and life. Some people wrote about this in new graduate training reports. So, I introduced my experience once again at the end. This is my experience at that time.
I was conned into doing a futures transaction, which started with a desire to know more about the wide world. I lost more than 1 million yen in saving through that swindle. When I realized I was swindled, I thought I was lucky to have such an experience at that age. I was so grateful. Of course, I felt exasperation and resentment as well. But more than that I was very thankful to find out how small I was and how large the world is, as I was bigheaded in my own small world and free, wild, and arrogant. This incident woke me up, and I changed my job to be a first-class architect, which was my dream from my student days.

This is an after-story. I was once again deceived at an architectural office that allowed me to join. I dreamed about learning architectural design. While there were few first-class architects in the office, they were just nominal and the office did not do any designing. But there is nothing unnecessary in such an encounter. I had my own situation that I could not leave the office since I had no money. So I worked hard without making any complaints and that became my turning point for encountering the realty business, which is now my vocation. Therefore, I keenly feel that one's life will change dramatically depending on how one reacts. It is entirely up to yourself to have good habits to see everything positive, whatever the stimulation is, try you're very best, and always live honestly, at least for yourself.