As I approach learning and writing, I’ve noticed the power of not only small minute blocks of study but also the power of a second, or even a nano-second. There is a split second, draw your katana decision. Will you 1) hate yourself for what you didn’t know? 2) throw out the fact because it isn’t interesting any more? or 3) breathe and smile into it and find something to love and have fun with? The point is not to ever feel bad, but to take advantage of the moments when you can make a decision to turn that moment into a learning, loving moment.
I’ve been dipping into this book by Masami Utsude about adding speed to your learning methods. He recommends learning English by watching and reading materials that you enjoy. Good advice for learning any language!
Part of the reason that I am so obsessed with the small is because I am doing a Japanese immersion program called Silverspoon. I get all kinds of study suggestions, funky Japanese links, and inspirational quotes in English and Japanese. A lot of these quotes emphasize doing rather than not doing. Today’s “sprints” had this banner over it: “Good Enough Now > Perfect Later.” It also included a link that led me to my youtube page, which is crowded with all sorts of Japanese content.
Khatzumoto, the not-so-evil genius behind Silverspoon, has gotten subatomic and created a study program called Neutrino. I haven’t really given it a spin but I love the smaller than an atom principle. It’s the power of the teeny tiny, the force of the small–drops wearing down mountains.
Lately, I haven’t had much time for writing. This post has been written in five minute chunks. Sentence by sentence. It’s better to push a little bit than let your dreams and ideas slip away.
According to Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…” Get small and in that subatomic moment lovingly choose your direction. Be a split second samurai.
Greet the morning with what you want to make happen–in your mind or your “practice.” Thirty minutes a day for your life. Photo source: unprofound.com.
Hello, I am back! I have been in the all-consuming depths of teaching and all the work and preparation that this entails. Additionally, I am in the final months of my Silverspoon Japanese immersion experience. Every morning, I wake up and get suggested “sprints” for Japanese immersion. Silverspoon usually includes scheduled “chillax” periods where I can do other non-Japanese related stuff while having Japanese in the background. It is usually in these 5-10 minute breaks that I play around with the blog and write. Lately, by the time it is time to have a “chillax” period, it is time for me to leave and go to work.
Lately the Silverspoon mornings are “packed.” Yesterday, I flipped through a Japanese book, did sentence and kanji flashcard repetitions, and made new flashcards from “Scuzzy” sentence packs that I chose fun sentences from. After a little more flashcard reps, shuffled through Japanese websites using Khatzumoto’s url shuffler. Fun stuff, but the time ran out and I had to leave the Writers Room and head to work. (There’s not a lot of time for writing these days, but in 74 days I will have my own schedule “back.” Right now I am creating a rich Japanese environment of websites, flashcards, and just plain old fun immersion experiences that will be there for me for a lifetime.)
My copy of Furuichi Yukio’s book on how to incorporate mornings into your life. For coolness factor he adds an English subtitle: “The early bird catches the fortune.”
This all reminds me of a Japanese podcast that asks listeners to “Power Your Morning.” I used to go my favorite coffee shop that opens up at 7 a.m. and then get to the Writer’s Room and only have 15 or 20 minutes to write, study, and do “me.” Now I am making my coffee in the Writer’s Room and getting an extra half hour every day to write, study Japanese, and play it forward.
It was a shock at first but I am enjoying the benefits of the morning and I think you can, too:
You start the day with a “win” towards your “goal.” If you can do it in the morning, it might slip into the rest of the day. If you are too “busy” then you will get your win in for the day.
The morning can be the most free from outside distractions.
There is an after-burn. The idea you are trying to work on in the morning might kick around for the rest of the day.
Your mind and body might get used to showing up on a daily basis and help you produce more constantly. Creating, learning become a habit.
When you “disappear” in the morning before most people are awake you don’t have to explain or justify yourself. You just go into your mad scientist lab and create your own Frankenself.
I wasn’t into the book a month ago, but I might give it a whirl again. I left the $2.00 Book off sticker. You don’t have to bust the bank to have a Samurai Mind.
This morning I am shaking it up. Silverspoon is saying I should be watching anime all day. I am watching “My Little Monster” but only for five minute stretches, while working in writing and a little exercise (also in five minute) stretches and then I have to go to work. I am designing the precious time that I have in the morning.
Design your morning. Power your morning. As Bob Marley says, “Wake up and live!”
The other day I was having dinner and watching An Pan Man with my two daughters, who we are raising bilingually. (An Pan Man is an anthropomorphized pastry hero who helps out his other pastry related characters in their struggles against their “nemesis” Vaikin-man. — Yeah, that’s all part of the charm of Japanese characters.) As I was watching my daughters watching the television, I was starting to get stressed out by the fact that I wasn’t understanding a lot of the Japanese. After all of these years, shouldn’t I understand what my daughters already understand? (Though I was making a big assumption that they understood everything.) “Shouldn’t I already be there?” I thought.
For a minute I channeled Steve Chandler, who has written, “Stay out of your future.” The past is done. The future hasn’t happened yet. The only moment that you can be in is the moment you are in now. The trick is to stay awake in that moment. It’s the only moment we have. When I remembered that, I decided to just listen to the cartoon calmly rather than listen to my self-talk about not being worthy or accomplished. If I could string more moments like that together, I would be a lot more fluent. (Check out what AJATT has to say on surfing the line between patience and impatience.) Each present moment helps create a little archipelago where life, idea, and skills can flourish.
Photo source: unprofound.com. Every step forward creates a little island of progress, skill, memory. Progress may seem geologic but every step you take changes the landscape.
In real-life I can be a hot mess, but on this blog I get to be the wise samurai man. Put this in your pipeline and surf it:
Stay present. Breathe.
When you aren’t “present” don’t beat yourself up. Are you going to waste a present moment by beating yourself up for not staying in the present?
Don’t flagellate yourself for not practicing, just practice. Be aware. Practice badly, but just practice. You will refine your practice when you stop beating yourself up.
Don’t try to create a whole continent of being present. Be pleased with your little islands of present moments until you’ve made your ever expanding Hawaii of skill, fun, and contribution.
Surf the present moments. Fall. Get up again. Look at the waves. Look at the sun. Every day is a new day. Hang ten. (Whatever that means.) 🙂
Sometimes you have to bookmark or tread water with your skill. If you can’t do all guitar all the time, do five minutes. Photo by sudyasheel. http://bit.ly/UChtLh
The other day I was minding my own business and paying attention to @ajatt’s twitter conversation when a rockin’ young ma twitterin’ man named @Mikeylovesrock asked, “Could someone create an @ajatt method for guitar fluency? :p I’d be much obliged.” I told him that maybe he is the man that everyone is waiting for. Khatzumoto didn’t know Japanese when he began his immersion experience. Now Khatzumoto has a cool blog helping people all over the world learn Japanese through fun and immersion.
Later on, I suggested some of my posts where I mention guitar. I also sent Mikeylovesrock a link to Rittor, a Japanese music publication company. I have a great book from them called (roughly), 100 Hints for Becoming Better in Guitar.
@mikeylovesrock graciously conceded that he would give it a shot when he finished learning Japanese. I let a few hours pass, thinking about the fact that even Khatzumoto began from nothing and I replied, “fair enough … but what is one thing you could do in guitar? keep strings tuned hold guitar five minutes/day.” Why wait?
The Importance of “Treading Water”
“Relax your mind and float down stream.” When you are treading water, a relaxed attitude will help you “float” better. Photo by Jim: http://bit.ly/S1Kvpd
Even if you have a big learning project underway, I think it is important to “tread water” in the other skills you want to develop. Why?
Your mind loves a challenge and progress is made in minutes of doing rather than not doing.
The next skill can become a motivator for continuing and progressing with the on-going learning project.
A little bit a day lays the groundwork for more each day and gets your mind thinking like a guitarist/pianist/speaker of French/coder etc.
Because it’s just plain old fun.
Tips for “Bookmarking” or Treading Water on a Future Skill
use your current learning to shore up future learning–i.e. play around with the guitar books written in Japanese
keep the instrument(s) of your future skilled out and “tuned”-take the guitar out of the case, keep it tuned, and just touch it for five minutes
have a place in your notebook for future goals, dreams, and skills in your notebook and find fun ways to keep reviewing them in your notebook…create ways to keep bumping into your desired skills
if you can’t do five minutes, do one minute. If you can’t do one minute, do one second. If you don’t physically pick up your skill, hold it in your mind. A friend of mine says he practices guitar scales and patterns in his mind when he is too busy being a dad. Guilt and self-hatred don’t count.
create an online flashcard deck for your future skill….even if you just put one card it in the deck it counts
The nice thing about giving advice to other people is that sometimes it spurs you to follow your own advice. 🙂 I blew the dust off my flashcard deck for guitar and landed on Jamplay.com lesson based on an AC/DC song called, “You Shook Me All Night Long.” For five minutes, the bright lights shone on me as I had my Angus moment. Of course, this was a four day weekend. Let’s see if we can sustain the five minutes during the stress of the school year. In the meantime, stay “tuned.” 🙂
First of all, a disclaimer. I have a sponsored link to Japanese Pod 101 on this website. The occasional link to this service, if you think it fits your needs, might one day help me to pay my web-hosting fees and buy more Japanese books fuel a mighty financial empire. Click JapanesePod101.com – Learn Japanese with Free Daily Podcasts 🙂 The other disclaimer is that I have no authority to judge whether this service will make me fluent or not. Otherwise, I would be writing to you in Japanese and getting ready to learn Spanish through Japanese materials. These techniques are just the way, I have played with to learn more Japanese everyday. It might help you think about any online learning materials or courses that you might be interested in picking up in the future.
Here’s the cheatsheet:
treat every lesson like a game and find something to challenge you–use your headphones for good!
play the money game
find the sweet spot–lessons at the level where you are challenged but still finding some comfort or review of material you already know
you can also go back to fundamental or basic lessons for review or go a few levels above you to just overwhelm your mind
use self-tracking tools–progress bars and other tools are great ways to keep track and also get the game factor going
find something to like about every online host or teacher
take it all a little bit at a time . . . . turtle power activate!
on the other hand, sometimes its good to add velocity to your game … go through the lesson and move on
don’t forget that the real game is the language/skill/game …. listen to real Japanese, listen and play real songs…what is great is when deliberate practice and real life reinforce each other
There are 1,000’s of lessons on Japanese Pod 101. I prefer music and immersion but sometimes it’s great to get a little grammar. At the free level, you can listen to the lesson or watch the video. The basic level includes the PDF, and the Premium level includes a line by line transcript with audio, sample sentences with audio for new vocabulary, and a host of other features. It’s not the end all and be all and may result in “lessonitis” but it can also be fun.
Treat every lesson like a game and find something to challenge you
As a busy teacher and dad of two, I don’t have a lot of discretionary time. I get my so-called exercise by walking to the writers room and school. In those 35-40 minutes of walking I often listen to Japanesepod101.com lessons on my iPhone. Most lessons are 15-20 minutes and include a short Japanese dialogue, vocabulary explanation, grammar explanation, and then a repeat of the dialogue. There are also line by line audio transcripts. With a quick click I can listen to small chunks of the dialogue. There are also sample sentences for the vocabulary and I repeat the sentences I hear out loud. (If you have headphones and a phone you can get away with looking like a weirdo. Maybe 🙂 When I am at a desk or cafe and not negotiating traffic (do be careful), I read the PDF and count the lesson as finished. If I am not in the mood to do a lesson, I don’t push it. I listen to fun Japanese podcast or music instead.
Play the money game
There are all kinds of pricing structures on Japanesepod101.com and there are sales and discounts throughout the year. But I like to think in terms of, “I’m going to get $1,000 worth of value out of this $____ investment. This is true with any online learning service. I’m old enough to remember when Space Invaders moved into the pinball arcade. Part of the fun was seeing how long you could make your quarters last.
Find the sweet spot
Play around with levels and hover between being completely lost and easy mastery. These days I alternate between upper intermediate, lower intermediate, and beginner lessons (they also have absolute beginner lessons). They also have some video lessons on animals that I’ve found fun to throw into the mix. The advantage of Japanesepod101.com is that they love grammar and love explaining it. With the higher level lessons I just listen through to get exposure to the grammar points but I don’t try to memorize the grammar points. The lower level lessons help me solidify some grammar points that I have already been exposed through flashcards, immersion, etc.
Hit the Bars: use self-tracking tools–progress bars and other tools are great ways to keep track and also get the game factor going
I do go for long periods without studying Japanesepod101, because I am busy or doing more interesting stuff in Japanese. When I get back into it,progress bars are a low-tech game to keep you moving forward.
Sometimes it’s fun to just see a little bar moving forward, piling it up like monopoly money. Yes, it’s a game but so is professional basketball. Touchdown! Japanese Pod 101 has progress bars that fill up as you finish lessons within each level and season.
Slow Down and Hurry Up!
There is no need to force feed yourself lessons in order to be virtuous or feel accomplished. On the other hand, I sometimes like to speed up and get through a lesson, get a little exposure to the grammar and move the heck on. What’s nice about Japanese Pod 101 is that as you go up in levels, the grammar and cultural points are explained using more and more Japanese.
Don’t forget that the real game is the language/skill/game
As I watched my daughters learn to speak, I noticed that they didn’t take any online or traditional course work. Shame on them! 🙂 They listened to us singing and speaking to them, watched cartoons, sang songs, repeated what we said or just “babbled” in language practice. Now my oldest daughter has to explain to me what she is saying in Japanese. This is ajatt (Language is Like A Video Game) and antimoon stuff. The pixie dust and nitty gritty of real life. Keep it real, よ!
One of my lockers where I cage my books and laptop. Reading closely and savoring each word still has its place, but adding a little velocity to your learning game through speed reading or pre-reading is a way to shake things up. Do you have any books on your shelf that you think you should read but haven’t. A quick read might give you the lay of the land to read it or get the best part out. Feel free to eat the best part of the tuna!
Summer, for me, is grinding to a halt as I prepare to teach. I will still be posting but maybe not at my summer rate. Please check old posts, add comments, and contribute to the conversation. For today, I thought I would scour through 情報が10倍になるNLP速読術 BY Naoya Matsushima. (soy sauce translation: Get Ten Times More Information Through the NLP Speed Reading Method) for ideas that I like and that maybe you would find useful.
This is my filing cabinet of books and reference material at the Writers Room. I have books in all stages of reading completion in various safe houses all over New York. I would get a lot out of quick skimming the ones I have barely touched. Just getting the lay of the land and reading key sections would be better than letting the books yellow all by their lonesomes.
For those of you studying Japanese, you get the added bonus of some sample sentences to throw into your arsenal. (Watch out, though, these are my translations so check with a native speakers. Please feel free to tweak and comment. Buy or borrow the book and speed read it if you are interested.) Other readers, have fun, and let us know if you have any feedback on Matsushima’s suggestions.
Change your mental programming about your learning abilities. (in the next chapter) 学習効率葉「脳のプログラム」次第で変わる
You can always speed read, regardless of where you are and how much time you feel you have. 場所や時間を気にせず、速読ができる!
Cancel the ‘Negative Mode’ that gets in the way of you learning rate! 学習効率を悪くする『ネガティブ−モード」を解除する
Happy feelings change your studying results. 『楽しいという」が学習結果を変える。
Your heart (mind) and body are closely connected. 心と体は密接につながている。(Be nice to both of them. Just sayin’)
Do deep breathing exercises to increase your results. 効果的な呼吸法を身につける。
Set a clear goal for why you are reading a book. 本を読む目的を明確にする
Feel free to take the best, meaty part of the tuna. (Feel free to take the best of what you read). マグロはトロだけ食えばいい
Throw out the information you don’t need. 「いらない情報」を徹底して捨てる
Just changing your image about your learning environment can increase your results. 学習環境のイメージを変えるだけ成果が上がる (he also suggests this is a great idea for your workplace…)
Feel free to arrange all the reading methods like you want.
If you are in school or not this fall, have a great “semester.” Enjoy your samurai mind and stay in charge. Charge!
Well, I finally finished reading,情報が10倍になるNLP速読術 BY Naoya Matsushima. (soy sauce translation: Get Ten Times More Information Through the NLP Speed Reading Method.) Since the book is about speed reading, I had to read it fast. I probably only understood about 40% of its real essence, but the book seemed to offer a mix of novel and common sense advice for
These days I’m always ready to read. As a busy dad and teacher, I don’t have a lot of discretionary time, but if I keep my “man bag” ready with good stuff I can read. I’m trying to learn Japanese. Here are the NLP speed reading book and Japion a free weekly newspaper for the Japanese community in New York.
reading more effectively. Here are some of the key points I remember:
when you prepare to read, get yourself into a good state–imagining a pleasant memory totally unrelated to reading
check and fix your breathing, posture, and mental state before and while you read–Matsushima offers some NLP exercises but I didn’t understand the finer points of how to do that
really pre-read a book and do it with gusto–look at the front and back cover, preface, conclusion, and the table of contents
ask you look at the front and back matter, really think to yourself, “What do I want to get out of this?”
practice relaxedly scanning each page—begin this with books you really want to read
be ready to switch techniques at any point
If you are already a reader, most of these techniques are not big news too you, but it was nice for me to be reminded of how I could be a better reader. I turned reading this book into a game. I read the table of contents really thoroughly but briskly and enjoyed the promises of the book. When I got bored, I practiced just scanning the lines and looking at the sentences as a picture, not really stopping to decipher so much. I tried to see how many pages I could read while taking the subway from West 4th street to West 23rd street. (short ride). When the book got boring or frustrating, I switched to other books or did something completely different. If I didn’t know the kanji or vocabulary, I just tried to think, “nice to meet you maybe I’ll see you and understand you again.”
Sometimes you just have to add a little velocity to the learning games. There’s a time and place for more in-depth study but moving quickly seems to do a few powerful things:
gives you quick in context exposure to new ideas and vocabulary
short-circuits some of the negative self-talk that can frustrate you when you read–you are just reading so fast you don’t have time to call yourself an idiot 🙂 (lies, lies, lies)
gives you a quick road-map for knowledge in a field
I also have been carrying around a copy of the Beck Music Guide, a music guide to the music of a fictional rock band manga. On the back is some sheet music from Jamplay. They had a great lesson on visualizing before you play so I thought it would be great to carry sheet music around with me as well. Trying to stay like a rolling stone. “Gotta keep on movin’.”
I really liked Khatzumoto’s article, “Reading is Skimming.” He has a wonderful way of explaining the power of skimming in your life:
There is only one book: the world book.And all books are volumes of this one book. And all pages are pages of this world book.Now, there are billions of pages in this book. And you’re never going to read them all. Not. Ever…..Don’t save the best for last. Take the fun right now. Be a pro-active fun-seeker. If you don’t have fun now, today will be the beginning of the end as far as Japanese is concerned, believe you me.
I think this is true for whatever you really want to learn. Give it a try, have fun, flip through pages, and open up the book of your life.
All I need to know is how much is enough. —James Heisig’s translation of saying on a small stone basin at Ryonji, a Zen temple
Buddhist poet Saigyo tried to live “one inch above the ground.” . . .not with one’s feet planted firmly in the everyday, not walking on the clouds, but floating a thumb’s length above the ground. –Heisig, Dialogues at One Inch Above the Ground
Stop being a jerk to yourself. You did your best given what you knew at the time. Now do your best now. —from a Silverspoon email.
Remember, in order to actually get better at guitar you need to actually take the guitar out of its bag. —Dan Emery, head of NYC School of Guitar in a postcard to all the students
I decided to shut up and show the samurai up with guitar. I picked this book to begin with because it will reinforce my Japanese. Of course, it has a mangalike character on front. If you are interested, here is the closest version I could find on Amazon Japan. Two birds. No killing. Just a rolling stone gathering no moss.
In my last post, I focused on Heisig and how he examined his systems and perfected them. Heisig optimized his learning and the learning of many more through his system for learning kanji. I also suggested that it’s great to examine your methods, find your weaknesses and reassess. I still believe that is true, but I also believe you also just have to show the Samurai up! If you can’t think of the “right” thing to do, do something! In short:
if you can’t think of the most fun or targeted learning activity, do the “boring” one until you are inspired
inspiration sometimes comes through “work”–sometimes it doesn’t
keep your brain myelinated …keep the mental and physical conversation of the skill going
still, don’t forget the fun–what’s really great is when some fun activity or experience reinforces the work and seals the deal on what you have learned
stay “one inch above the ground”…grounded in the practice of what you are trying to learn and also dreaming and enjoying it . . . watch experts and children who still enjoy learning and model them
I need to practice what I preach. 🙂 Lately, I decided to start playing guitar again. I have no dearth of materials, in Japanese and English. I was getting my underwear all in knots thinking of which set of materials to use: a Japanese guide, Jamplay.com, or the many English DVD’s and books that are hidden in different corners of my apartment.
Did anyone notice how good Japanese graphic arts can be? In addition to these homey little characters (this one is showing you how to hold a guitar correctly) there are also very precise and sharp schematic drawings about how to hold the pick and hit the strings.
I finally to stop fretting (guitar joke!) about all the materials and just get started. I had an old flashcard deck devoted to guitar playing and started with some scales. Then I decided to open up one of the many guitar books I have and just go through it. It includes a DVD and I fired up an old Dell that I now use as a spare DVD player. The first few lessons are really simple, and explain how to hit the strings with your pick. The first few video lessons show how to hit one string with different rhythms. It’s kind of boring but hitting the strings and doing it rhythmically correct is fundamental to a lot of guitar playing. Hey, someone should write a book called Zen Guitar! (It’s an actual book!)
This is a reference manga for the manga series, “Beck.” The manga is about a 90 lb. weakling who joins a rock band. (I didn’t end up following the manga or the anime.) The music guide gives background to all the characters and all the real-life music influences that run throughout the manga. If I read this, not only will I know more Japanese, I will also know more about rock and roll music history. Amazon Japan Link.
After doing scales for a few days, I thought about perusing the lessons at jamplay.com and found a new series on the guitar playing of Eric Clapton. I went through a beginning lesson that covered the style of the Yardbirds doing a song called “Boom Boom.” I listened to this song and the many versions of the original by the blues-man John Lee Hooker. It’s so much fun to watch what the masters can do with their guitar. (of course you never hear what they sounded like when they were sucky beginners)
The Beck Music Guide is fun and encyclopedic. For example, one character is really influenced by the blues, so here you see the character and then all the real-life albums that “influenced” his playing. It’s great to see the cover art of all these great blues albums from Bo Diddly, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, etc all in one place.
But all of this happened because I decided to show the samurai up! Use a timer if you need to do but do something daily instead of fretting about the methods. Stay grounded but not at the point where you are digging your own rut. Get inspired by the masters but not to the point where it looks impossible and you stop practicing. Work. Have fun. Stay “one inch above the ground.”
I use kanji.koohii.com to share and use mnemonic stories to remember how to read, write, and understand the kanji. It’s great to work with others across the world but in the end you also have to make your learning your own. I am wandering beyond the standard kanji. Learning a lot of botanical kanji lately, like this kanji for “stamen.”
Samurai Mind Online is dedicated to helping people take on whatever they want to learn whether they think it’s impossible or not. Last night I almost gave myself a concussion when I realized that I hadn’t taken the opportunity to share an interview that I did with James W. Heisig in 2006. As you’ll see in the interview (it’s way longer than my typical post), Heisig came up with a system for how to remember kanji, the Chinese based system that is a key system of writing in Japan. But regardless of whether you are reading this blog because you are interested in learning Japanese, I think there are a few take aways from this interview that any one wanting to learn anything in their life could take away from this story:
be bold and don’t be afraid to follow your own path
always be on the look out for smart short cuts or opportunities for deliberate practice. Khatzumoto has some key questions in his article, “Practice Time, Game Time” that I think can apply to any field: What don’t I know well? What doesn’t work? What needs fixing? What can be improved? (Talent is Overrated is a great book to think about this whole idea of deliberate practice.) Heisig realized that understanding kanji would really propel his Japanese fluency and invented a whole system around it.
don’t depend on others to tell you what is impossible or not
have fun. Happy feelings bring happy learnings. Heisig hightailed it from the language school as soon as he could and went to the mountains of Nagano and said he learned a lot of Japanese by playing with children and reading comic books.
Give yourself the edge. Be bold and independent but also look at all the resources that are available and be persistent about evaluating them. And above all have fun and enjoy the journey.
Another great tool is anki.ichi.net, which allows you to create flashcards for anything that you are learning. As you pass and fail cards, they come up in a spaced repetition system, so you are mostly reviewing things at the edge of forgetting and remembering. SRS systems are a great way to give yourself an edge.
This interview originally appeared in kanjiclinic.com, a great resource for learning more about kanji.
“Adventures in Kanji-Land: James W. Heisig and the Birth of Remembering the Kanji”
Based on an Interview with James W. Heisig
By Juan W. Rivera
Free download of the first 125 pages of Remembering the Kanji I.
Every now and then, someone confronts their own personal challenge, systematically overcomes it, and then shares that system with the world. This not only opens up their world, but also opens up the world for generations of people to come. James W. Heisig, author of the sometimes controversial book Remembering the Kanji I: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters, is definitely one of those people. Many people refer to his approach to learning to write the complex Japanese characters as “revolutionary,” making Japanese and kanji study accessible to their lives and opening up a whole world of learning and possibilities for them. I conducted a telephone interview with Prof. Heisig from his office at the Nanzan University Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan.
Heisig’s kanji journey began while he was living in a commune of poets and artists identified as the “spiritual” side of the Sandanista revolution that would soon overthrow the Somoza government. Because of his familiarity with research centers, he was invited by Nanzan University to consult on the establishment of an academic institute devoted to dialogue among religions and philosophies East and West. Shortly after the consultation he was invited back to assist in the project, on condition that he would remain for five years and first attain fluency in spoken and written Japanese at an academic level.Continue reading »
Be absolutely determined to enjoy what you do. –Ben Hogan
You don’t have to “feel”happy to put your mind in happy places.
Focusing on happiness is a decision.
It’s possible that happiness is a habit of turning your mind to positive places. There is also a key role for tears. Sometimes you need to wring out a wet towel before putting it in the dryer.
The happiness decision may help you learn more. Earn more?
Learning more may help your happiness. It’s an unvicious cycle.
I’m back in New York and writing out of the Writer’s Room. It has a lot more sunlight than the cave-like atmosphere of a manga cafe. My laptop, copies of the books in the post and two of my samurai notebooks. Samurai notebooks are more fun to review when you fill it with fun, personally thought provoking and inspiring material. What is in your notebook is a happiness decision.
For a few weeks now I’ve been walking around with two Japanese books in my “man-bag” and realizing that there is a strong connection between the two books but not quite being able to put my finger on it. Today I finally realized what was the connection. Happiness is a decision and it can help you transform everything that you do, especially with learning and transforming your life.
My dose of soy sauce translation of the two book titles are: Only Do Good Things with Your Brain by Ken Mogi (脳にいいことだけをやりなさい!)and Speed up Your Information Rate by 10 Times with the NLP Speed Reading Method by Naoya Matsushima (情報量が10倍になるNLP速読術). (Keep in mind that I am in day 457 of a 595 Japanese immersion experience. Some day I will throw more English resources at you.)
Only Do Good Things with Your Brain by Ken Mogi (脳にいいことだけをやりなさい! )
Ken Mogi is a Japanese brain scientist and prolific writer and talk show host. This book is slightly more technical, so I find it hard to keep really give the full meaning of it to you. (I am also only in the middle of the book. Yeah, I break the rules but at least I tell you!) But it is pretty clear from on of the first drawings that Mogi believes that happiness is, in part, a decision. Part of the reason I picked the book is because it has pictures (all is fair in love and reading!). The first picture shows a happy person with the happiness lgauge on full blast. The illustration below that is an unhappy person (fumes emanating all around him) with the happiness full gauge on low. The final illustration on the bottom shows a person changing a control gauge (like an old fashioned volume control) from bottom to high. The phrase at the bottom reads: 脳の中にある「幸せど度」いつでも変えられる or “You Can Always Change the Degrees of Happiness in Your Brain.”
How do you do this? The second illustration tells you how. It hows a person who has built a happiness house:
The foundation is “elimination of negative thinking.”
The supporting pillars are: positive thinking, love and gratitude, the body’s energy (breath, position, etc), and “grabbing big power” (?) 「大いなる力」とのつながり。
The roof is goals for living.
There is a nice yard around the house and that is labelled, relationships with people.
All of these things interact and Mogi spends the rest of the book describing certain techniques for developing happiness. Just looking at the picture makes me happy.
Speed up Your Information Rate by 10 Times with the NLP Speed Reading Method by Naoya Matsushima (情報量が10倍になるNLP速読術)
Matsushima’s book is a guide to help busy, overwhelmed or under-motivated readers increase their reading speed and increasing their information retention. Matsushima, being an NLP guy, emphasizes the importance of getting in the right state of mind for reading and argues that one of the reasons people have problems with reading is all the negative associations they have with reading. He offers several exercises for using breathing and body posture for changing your state of mind before reading.
But what is most interesting to me is that he asks readers to pick a happy moment and think about and feel it with all the senses before commencing with reading. Happiness is an active decision that can help you learn more and experience joy through learning, if I follow Matsushima’s book correctly.
This happiness decision might be worthwhile in other areas. In 100 Ways to Create Wealth, the authors explain that you should always “move to the part of the work that you love.” This is a happiness decision that can result in improved efficiency, service, and even the ability to more easily transition to work that you love.
If you make the happiness decision then maybe you can experience more creativity in your life. Self-loathing and criticism aren’t going to help you. I finally got around to getting out my Japanese guitar books. Learning through love. Trying to make the happy decisions. Many birds, no stone. Online Guitar Lessons
I will warn you that the day I made the connection with all of this happiness stuff, I was grouchier than the Grouch. I also believe there is a role for crying and other forms of expressing other emotions. Sometimes you need to wring out a soaked towel before you put it in the dryer.
But it’s nice to be able to make more decisions to move towards happiness. Heck, it might even get addictive and help to you to transform the world.