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Sunday, October 27, 2013

The Tree Was Called Useless

Once upon a time in China, there was a huge tree in a rich family's back yard. In spring and summer, the tree opens branches with full green leaves. The trunk was like dragon body, thick and strong. The people in nearby village were wondering how many houses could be built with the tree. Furniture people hoped to use the tree to build furniture. They helped each other to somehow cut down the tree to get wooden materials from the tree to be used for building houses and furniture.

No matter what kind of axes or saws they use, no matter how many powerful people try to cut it, all of their effort ended in vain. The tree was too hard to cut. They gave up to cut it down. They said the tree is huge, but not be used for anything. They called it useless.

One hot summer day, an ancient philosopher, called Zhuang Zhou found the tree. It was hot and Zhuang Zhou was tired from long walking. He lied down on the foot of the tree and took a nap. The shade of the tree was perfect to protect him from strong sun light in summer. In the shade, a gentle breeze was very comfortable. He slept for a couple of hours and felt refreshed. After he left, the villagers realized the real use of the tree. Nobody call it "useless" any more.

This story tells us the value of things can be changed depending on how you view it, how you use it. Huge useless tree to build a house was perfect for providing shade to take a nap

This story is originally from Zhuang Zi, who is regarded to be one of founders of Taoism. Usually Taoism is regarded as Anarchism or the principle of living only for the pleasure of the moment. Later Taoism's mysterious stories gave a birth to Shen Xian, who eat and drink just mist, travel on clouds, knows everything in the world including future, and lives forever. Even today Taoism is known as mysticism with the above mentioned Shen Xian who conduct mysterious magic such as talking with dead people or cure seriously sick people.

It reminds us Western Witchcraft, since they use supernatural power like witches or wizards. But taking another look at the philosophy like the above story of big tree, the basic principle of Taoism teaches people to take a different view in lives occurrences. As big tree, which could not be used for building a house or furniture, was perfect shade for taking a nap. In this way, saddest or most painful incidence may be great step for future.

Actually, it includes the story of a villager, who broke his leg in riding his own horse, survived next war, because he could not fight with his leg broken.

Read this Article in EzineArticles.com:

http://EzineArticles.com/4319795

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Sunday, October 20, 2013

Emotional IQ and Its Importance

Zhen International is a company formed 10 years ago. It is becoming 11 years old in year 2013. It could not last this long without help from people. I am very grateful on all the help rendered for me. Before I formed this company, earlier in my carrier stage, I worked for a Japanese electronics company for 20 years. Becoming an assistant manager in 1988, I started to study how to be a good manager. It included emotional control for better performance and better management.

Later, company recommended me to develop own scheme to control myself and teach our team member. My team used to hear I say:
"Do not show it when you are angry. Use your anger to get what you need to achieve in business. Control your emotions so that they do not harm your business or life. Use them to benefit yourself instead."

This concept used to give me confidence and comfort in the way I could control my emotions to the extent that my emotion did not damage any of my business or relationship. I was comfortable to ask my team members same.

It was end of the year 2000 when I faced a decision if I should quit the company and start my own or stay. I made a decision to quit and tried to start my own business. It was my own decision and I believed that I am emotionally stable.

Then, in my effort of starting up my own company, which was supposed to be full of fun, I found myself out of control of my own emotions. Resentment, remorse, instability, confusion, and depression constantly attacked me. My emotion went out of control in a very sensitive and critical moment. The worst is that all these negative emotions hit me same time and I did not know what to do. I had never went to a hospital, but I might have some psychological problem called panic attack. Luckily my wife helped me and I could gradually regain my emotional stability. From this experience taught me a precious lesson how difficult to control our emotions.

It was near end of last year when my wife and I were looking for information on IQ level of dogs on Internet, we happened to find the word "Emotional IQ". We were interested and did further research on the definition.

According to the information in Internet, Emotional IQ and Emotional Intelligence are almost same meaning and definition. Emotional IQ is the ability, capacity, skill or, a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of ourselves, of others, and of groups.

I have been aware there are several therapies, which is not known in outside of US, such as emotional control or anger management. But, I was not aware that there is a study trying to measure ability of controlling emotions until last year.

If you acquire an ability to perceive and control your emotion and others, you can have better control over your life, business. Most importantly, if you are confident and comfortable controlling your own emotion under no matter what kind of panicky situation, you can be more relaxed all the time. You can be very much peaceful in your mind in your life. That is why I believe learning and knowing on Emotional IQ is very important for all of us.

Read this Article in EzineArticles.com:

http://EzineArticles.com/4332938

Feel free to contact me:

shaw@zhenintl.ws

Shaw Funami

Fill the Missing Link

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Are the Japanese Stubborn?

Recently the news about the Japanese car recall have drawn my attention. How have things gone wrong in these cases? Japanese car manufactures must have many international staff as well as American management. While they continues to be the leading car manufacturers in the world, their approach to this incident was so typical Japanese. And it caused misunderstandings and confusion in American users. This recall itself might not have been so bad if their highest management decided to appear in public earlier and open all of the information they have on the possible technical problems.

This is an article to show what is the typical Japanese decision-making process and the how different it is from an American one. The intention of this article is to point out the difference, not to evaluate or criticize.

In many cases of my involvement of international business, a Japanese company had been in this critical situation, even it was clear that Japanese made a mistake, they could not change their attitude and decision. Thus it resulted in either losing a huge business opportunity or it would make their counterpart so angry that they would not be able to further pursue the business relationship they had originally intended on.

Instead, American companies seem to be more flexible in accepting their mistake and change their decision or business strategy, saving their own business opportunity and, most importantly, the relationship.

If we can accept our own mistakes, the actions we need to take are relatively simple. We accept we made a mistake, apologize, and propose a correction. American organizations are good at doing this sort of correction. This flexibility may come from a religious principle of forgiveness. People make mistakes. Once a mistake is made, being flexible is much better than to stick to the mistake and stubbornly lose everything.

Now on the other hand, the Japanese approach is based on the "save face" or "lose face" concept. Japanese people tend to hate someone who cannot consistently keep their promises. They regard it is losing face. So they try not to accept mistakes so that they do not have to break their promises and lose face. Even if they know they made a mistake, they do not want to accept it because they will lose face by accepting it.

And they try to hide it. Then they try to modify it in a way publicly unknown to save face. This makes the entire process of correction very complicated. In many cases the business decision priority would be shifted from saving business to saving face by hiding the fact that they made a mistake. The end result could be devastating. It is a simple fact that they are not so good at saying "Oops, we made a mistake. Sorry."

In answering my own question, I have to admit the Japanese are stubborn and not good at apologizing, when it comes to accept their mistakes.

Read this Article in EzineArticles.com:

http://EzineArticles.com/4276843

Feel free to contact me:

shaw@zhenintl.ws

Shaw Funami

Fill the Missing Link

Sunday, October 6, 2013

My First Trip to China

It was summer 2000 when I visited China for the first time in my life. It was almost funny that I have not visited China until then, because I have almost grown up with Chinese History Books. So the feeling of mine was like filling my own missing link.

It was when I was age 5, even before elementary school when my grand mother gave me this cartoon book called "Sai-Yu-Ki" - Travel to West-. That was the cartoon book about adventurous trip of a Chinese priest to Afghanistan and India to obtain Buddhism Book to China. In this book, of course more than half fiction, other than this priest existed in Chinese History and he traveled to India to get Buddhism book to localize Buddhism to China.

In the story, this priest accompanies three monsters guards, Monkey Monster, Pig Monster, and Sand Monster assigned by Buddha. They all have special fighting powers and skills. This was the story of Monkey Monster exercising his miraculous fighting power and skills, fighting against all odds and evil monsters to protect his master priest to safely bring Indian Buddhism Books to China.

This Monkey Monster grows in protecting his master priest, learning from his master, and practicing Buddhism. Going through all the fighting and adventure helping the priest's safety, he brings himself closer and closer to Buddhism principle and finally became Monkey God, as one of Buddha's protective guards, after he finished his mission to send his master priest to India.

In addition to this "Monkey God" story, there were a lot of Chinese Historical Books in junior and senior high school days, such as "3 Countries History" whereas 3 countries kings fight for unified China, "Sui-Fu" -Story of Private Organization fight against old and corrupted government-, so on and so forth. In this way, in addition to the fact that China is my wife's home country, I did not feel China to be foreign country for long time.

In that trip to China, my wife took me to Beijing, Great Walls, Anshan, Sheng Yung. I visited China several times since then. But, I have not visited there for more than 3 years now. My wife and I are planning to go to China coming summer. I am looking forward to it. I am looking forward to see my wife's family and friends.

While my wife's favorite city is Shanghai, my favorite is Beijing. Beijing is old castle city. Its history goes all the way back 3000 years ago, when it was originally called Yan Jing. It is not just history, the food there is excellent and reasonably priced. It was my 3rd trip while waiting for our table is ready in world famous Peking duck restaurant, my Chinese friend offered me and almost forced me to eat Scorpion fry. It was weird, but it was not as bad as first felt. It tasted like shrimp.

In there, I can feel exactly how Japanese people before World War II felt so eager to get out of Japan to go and live in China. China has dynamism that Japan does not have. The country is definitely one of my favorites.

Read this Article in EzineArticles.com:

http://EzineArticles.com/4325972

Feel free to contact me:

shaw@zhenintl.ws

Shaw Funami

Fill the Missing Link

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