Friday, January 3, 2020

"Positive thinkers" are "happy?" Not necessarily so!

La Mer the Classic at Shima Kanko Hotel was exquisite!








This red bean soup was amazing too! 


I love the "smell of cypress" of the Shima hotel Classic lobby ・・・



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Today we will learn from Ken Honda's mail magazine!

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 Year-end and beginning of year Present Q&A 

1)What can I do to earn more money? 

2)How to stop negative thinking? 

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<Question from readers>
Currently I'm importing accessories from overseas and selling them in Japan. I enjoy this job, but I want to earn more money, and become happy and financially free. If you, Ken, were an individual business owner like me, what would you do in order to earn more money? 

<Answer from Ken>

There are only two ways to  increase sales in business. 
Increase your prices or increase the number of customers 
It's either one of these or both. 
For example, if the accessories you are dealing with now are 3,000-5,000 yen. 
If you switch to handling mainly 300,000 to 500,000 accessories, your sales will increase 10 to 100 times. 

Or, say you sold 100 accessories a month that are 3,000 yen. If you could increase that to 1000 per month, your sales will increase 10 times. 
It's not that complicated, and you could increase sales online, or to sell into department stores etc and expand your sales channels. 

My mentor, Junki Yoshida (founder of Yoshida Sauce) first started from floor sales in supermarkets. He sold many sauces in a day, and increased purchase, and eventually had a special corner set up for him, and that expanded in more stores which increased his sales channel and grew from there. 
So I think its about how much you yourself want to expand what you are doing, or how serious you are about using all your talents to compete. 


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<Question from readers>
I always tend towards negative thinking. 
Whether its a mistake at work, I get down that
 "I'm such a loser that I make a mistake like this." 
I think、”My boss probably thinks I'm incompetent"
And think about my mistakes in the past, and get
even more stuck in negative thinking. Once I get 
stuck in this loop, its hard to get out, and there are 
times when I waste whole days dragging it around. 
Even when I think it's not necessary to get so
 discouraged, its hard to change my thought patterns.
 Please give me any advice you have about how to switch
 mental patterns or improve negative thinking. 


<Answer from Ken>

Both negative and positive thinking are like habits. 
And its not necessarily a matter of positive thinkers 
being happier either. Even positive thinkers, are filled 
anxiety they can't stop, or can't sit still to think calmly etc. 
They have their own set of troubles. 

So, about how to snap out of negative thinking, 
I would recommend thinking of and voicing 
the complete opposite thing, the moment you 
have a negative thought. 
The moment you maybe made at mistake at work
 and feel at your worst, even if its made up at first, 
try saying "Actually, this is the greatest!" 
When doing this, your thought process switches
and you think, because....and you start thinking of 
reasons why the mistake is the greatest thing that 
could have happened. 
Even if you have a big failure, try saying, 
"Tomorrow will be okay for sure!and try to stay 
and feel as relaxed as possible. If you do this, 
strangely you feel less anxious and tense, 
so it's harder to repeat the same mistake. I think 
its a good idea to create a habit of neutralizing things 
like this. 

Then you'll have more time in a neutral state, and at some point 
you'll realize that you were the one just thinking of things negatively. 
This is the same for positive thinking. If you neutralize things like this, 
they'll realize that they were just avoiding seeing the negative side. 
Seeing things either just positively or just negatively are both unnatural. 
So practice doing what I just talked about, and you'll learn how to maintain
a good and healthy balance. 
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