Why do we have to be able to take charge of our emotions?

Because when you feel depressed, the emotion bursts and you lash out on other people.

What would you do if you were told by your boss to do something you don’t want to do or even something illegal?

Then if you do those things, what emotions would you feel?

Under those circumstances, the majority of people would feel humiliated and it would be a blow to their pride. Yet they are unable to express their anger and would be like a repressed coil-spring.

This repressed anger ends up erupting on the weak, not on those who are stronger.

If somebody tries to repress us, we need to have the ability to take charge of our emotions, enabling us to overcome them.

For this, we need to self-reflect and track down the roots of our emotions.

Your current state of mind is simply the accumulation from the past.

In other words, everyone can track down the roots of one’s entire mind: sense of humiliation, pride and loneliness, etc. Upon subtracting those roots, you can become the owner of your emotions.

When you confidently become the owner of emotions,

your job is now to take charge of the emotions as the owner of them.

However, when one fails to be the owner of one’s own emotions,

he ends up an imitator of the owner of the emotion, while hitting, criticizing and scolding others.

When you are unable to take charge of your emotions confidently, the harm is inflicted on those you care about most.

Do not be self-conscious no matter what circumstances or relationships you are in, and become the owner of your own emotions!

Source: https://www.facebook.com/theworldchangingstory/photos/pcb.853669634754399/853669198087776/?type=3&theater

When you work in a company, you hear stories from a lot of people.

I became to think that other people were better than me, and as I carried out tasks following the system, I felt like I was gradually disappearing.

Therefore, I started meditation to spend time for myself.

I did various types of meditation.

All kinds of meditation helped me. However, out of those, I liked self-reflection meditation most.

This was because it allowed me to think and get to know about who I am as a person.

I was able to examine the image of myself at work etc., and the life that I have lived.

Through this, I learnt that I had made a suffocating fence and trapped myself within it.

Self-reflection meditation gave me a chance to find ‘myself.’

I was able to find whatever that was deep inside of me, as well as ruminate about what I wanted.

I have realized who ‘myself’ is,’ and am currently living life according to it.

Question

You must come up with a fresh episode every week to continue broadcasting. Not only that, your program has been loved for long time. That means people have high expectations and you need to satisfy them. I’m curious how you can overcome such a big burden every week, and how you manage your stress? Can you please share your own stress management tips?

Answer

In the beginning, I used to exercise. But I have no time for exercise nowadays.

Some people tell me that my workload should be reduced since I now have more staff under me. But I became busier as more staff came to work. I was given the new task of managing people.

This is a kind of job in which we need to work together as a team, so it is important not to hurt each other’s feelings.

It wasn’t so easy giving good explanations about the need for doing a certain task and persuading them to do it.

Of course, I often got stress. But in the meantime, I came up with a new habit. I became forgetful. I easily forget things. This might be how I deal with my stress.

Especially after big issues hit me, people around me are more concerned and ask me, “Are you really okay?”

But they are not big deals to me.

I don’t need to consume my energy in things that have already happened.

What’s next on my agenda is quite obvious so I need to sort it out quickly and move on to the next.

As I experienced many of the big issues, they rather helped me to have peace of mind.

We do preparations for recordings. Often times, the actual products do not show how much we had to prepare for them. I say to my staff, “We did our best so it’s not our fault.”

Then, people working together become more helpful.

If we really did our best without regrets, we could accept the outcomes, no matter how those outcomes came out because that’s the most and best we could come up with.

An episode is aired, and then we prepare for the next one. If we found something to improve, we could work on that and move on to the next project.

I used the term ‘forgetful’ but I mean I try to quickly forget about what has already happened and that becomes a driving force to move on and move forward to the next job.

Source: Contents Korea, Speech by Director Kim Tae-Ho

Life is about taking the right direction, not speeding up.

One day, there was a mass ‘springbok’ death in Africa.

Springboks are animals that usually form in big flocks of hundreds and graze in the arid grassland in Africa. They are as speedy as 94km/h so cannot be easily hunted by savage beasts, even speedy ones like cheetahs.

But one day, the springboks died off in a mass death.

Scientists have studied their habits and behaviors to understand this phenomenon. They have found a surprising fact from the study.

Springboks are naturally born with great appetites. But since they usually graze in flocks, they face competition. The ones at the back speed up to get ahead of the ones in the front to eat more grass. Then, those in the front speed up even more not to get taken over. In this way, hundreds of Springboks lost their purpose and desperately ran and ran until they fell into a river or fell off a cliff. That’s how they ended up dying in a mass death.

The ‘Springbok Phenomenon’ refers to people who are busily following others blindly, not aware of the direction in their lives.

When you live chasing the lifestyles of others, you sometimes forget your own purpose and direction in life.

Sometimes, your life might seem to go more slowly than others’ or might not be as good as theirs. But you never need to be impatient. You never need to waste your time making meaningless comparisons and feeling bad about them.

Look at nature. There are millions of beautiful flowers. The blooming periods differ from one another but their beauty never changes.

Keep this in mind:

Life is not a matter of speeding up to the destination, but taking the right direction.

1. Meditation is not instant gratification

A single meditation session may uplift your mood and bring your mind at ease.
However, if you do not remove the roots of that mind, the effects will only be temporary.
It is when you meditate step by step that the root cause of the mind will disappear.
You will then be able to live with a true mind, which is the fundamental purpose of meditation itself.

2. Meditation Requires effort and patience

The life you have lived so far is incomparably longer than the duration you get to reflect on while meditating. This means that when looking on at your life, often it will require much patience and effort. The effects of meditation are directly related to how much time and passion you invest doing it.

3. Do not follow that somebody, follow the method.

When you are solving difficult mathematics, it isn’t the help of others that allows you to solve the problem, it is the formula. The meditation method may be a simple formula but the effects and changes people undergo are different for everyone. The meditation process I undergo is unique fir each person so don’t compare yourself to someone else.

4.Be honest with yourself.

There are people who cannot be honest with themselves when they meditate.
Be truthful to your current state and the process of change will occur.
If you are having difficulty in knowing yourself, it may be helpful to consult with a Helper the meditation center.
Helpers are meditation experts who have spent numerous hours meditating and consulting with many people.
When you honestly express what you feel in your mind, it is easier to meditate and you will be able to find and empty out more minds.

5. Meditate anywhere, anytime

Meditation can be done anywhere and can be easily incorporated into your daily life.
On your way to work, when you’re getting ready for your day, during lunch, on your promenade, in front of the stop light, at the grocery store, there is no place where you can’t meditate. When you meditate to clean out your mind, you can see what minds still reside within you and you can better understand how you are spending your time by reflecting back. It is through this process that you can change and develop.

Question

I was recently promoted at my office. They hired this new guy to fill in my previous position but he is the worst when it comes to the job. He forgets all the time and his documents are riddled with mistakes. I have cautioned him several times already but his lack of improvement made me sternly discipline the guy. It came to the point where I told my department manager that if he continued, I couldn’t work here any-more. However, recently through a colleague I’ve learned that this new guy is the nephew of someone from the office. To make matters worse, it isn’t just anybody from the office but he is the nephew of my department’s director. Now that I know his “position”, I feel uneasy and nervous for some reason.
Any advice?

Answer

That’s quite the situation you’ve got there. Perhaps by this point your director already knows of this situation. I can see that you may run into some trouble when it comes to reporting your future projects to the director. For this matter, you need two things: Action and Reflection.
More specifically:
1. On a notebook or a piece of paper, write down the top 3 mistakes your new co-worker commonly repeats. It could be too many typos, using the wrong forms in reports, or failing to proof read data. From now on never scold or criticize your new co-worker for these three things you wrote down.

2. Instead of scolding, teach him.
If it takes 10 times to learn then 10, if a 100 then a 100 times, teach him. Teaching new workers is the responsibility of the experienced workers. If you take it step by step, certainly you will find improvements on his side.

3. Try to find the reason why your co-worker is inadequate at his job.
By definition novice workers are not experts at their jobs. It may be necessary for the new workers to receive step by step instructions. Perhaps you are too busy to find the time to properly train him.

4. Try to find the tasks your co-worker is good at.
Doesn’t matter how small it may be. If you start finding his merits, your mind about him will start to change as well.

5. Build a relationship
It will be easy to build a relationship if you follow the steps above. Working at an office is not just about logic but it’s about teamwork, and teamwork is formed upon mutual respect and valuing relationships amongst people. If you make your new co-worker a good worker and a good member, then you will automatically have successful teamwork.

6. Last tip
When your team is in a corner, utilize your new co-worker to your advantage. It will definitely bring you good results.

Question

I’m working in a field where I have to meet with lots of people and it doesn’t really suit my personality.
Sometimes even making eye-contact can be too much for me. I get very self-conscious about making a mistake in front of my clients. So much so that now I get anxious and afraid to even meet people.
Is there a way to get rid of these symptoms?

Answer

Social phobia (Social Anxiety) is known for the fear, anxiety, nervousness and avoidance behavior to certain social situations it causes in people. Talking to strangers, giving a speech in front of an audience and other various social settings tend to trigger this phobia.
Social anxiety, or social phobia, is known to be one of the most prominent psychological disorders in the U.S. and many other developing and developed nations across the world. Some people suffering from this condition find themselves unable to perform in front of an audience and sometimes even find themselves not able to write down words in fear of others reading it.

Social phobia doesn’t disappear easily.
It is not a simple matter of personality or being shy. There is a part of your brain controlling the emotions and specifically the part in charge of the feeling of anxiety. Social phobia is known to trigger this part of your brain. The reason why social phobia is currently more prevalent is because society has reached the highest population densities in history and people meet more people than ever before. In the past, it would have even been hard for one person to meet 1000 people in the course of one’s lifetime. However, now we meet numerous people from workplaces, schools, neighborhoods and even overseas.

Social phobia’s symptoms come as conditioned reflexes.
The symptoms arise not only from the condition of meeting someone but even from the thought of meeting them.

To overcome social phobia, you must start by breaking down the minds you have.
Of course medication therapy and behavioral therapies are available but most of the time they are known to yield temporary results.

Then, first you must acknowledge in your mind that ‘meeting people is okay.’
To overcome with the mind, you must find the cause of why you are reluctant to meet people by looking back at yourself. Once you do, you will find your current self to be just an accumulation of your past selves.
Social phobia is likely to appear by an accumulation of your past self that left a trace in your mind to cause the current anxiety disorder.

Take a moment to carefully look back on the life you have lived, and if you can get rid of that cause through Subtraction Meditation then you can definitely overcome social phobia itself.

Question:

I feel like everyone around me is performing well except me.
Some of my co-workers are quickly advancing up the ladder and are handling more responsibilities. However for me, I just seem to wander from one department to another without really accomplishing much. Now I just find myself measuring myself against my colleagues and I’m having doubts about my position, my career and I feel as if I’m a joke compared to them.

Answer:

There are a lot of great people in this world, but even they worry about their flaws and work hard to improve. There are even cases where celebrities, known for their good looks, think very poorly of their own appearances.

The increased responsibilities and higher authority may be a testament to your coworkers’ capabilities but it may actually be a burden to them. Without the adequate preparations and practice, those advances can be of more harm than good.

Once you are prepared, opportunity will find you.
Thoroughly examine yourself to see if you actually want to get your own chance to move up and what your next steps will be once the opportunity arises.

Especially, look back and see if there were any opportunities that came your way and see how you dealt with them. See if you let the opportunities easily slip away, if you actually valued the opportunities, or if you took charge of the chance or not. Also see what attitude you took upon yourself after you lost the opportunity.

If you cannot take charge of the opportunity, the chances that come to you have no meaning.
Even if it’s just that one chance, no matter how small the opportunity, if you cherish it, then it will find you.
You must prepare yourself and become a person that people can come to for help, as that is opportunity.

Importantly, you have a great advantage under your belt. You have experienced working in numerous departments. Depending on the division of the company, they each have their own mindsets and interests. The fact that you have worked at different positions means that you have an understanding of how things run on various levels with varying perspectives. Companies operate on cooperation. Therefore, coming up with a better consensus from diverse perspectives is a valuable asset for career advancement.
You cannot advance to a managerial position without the ability to see these various angles.

If you improve the utilization of your current skill set and improve upon the shortcomings of your past, then opportunities will find you and you will be able to fully take charge of them.

Good luck!