Having money, or ability, or a bit of free time — taking something on does not need a reason.

Here is what I think a challenging spirit is.

What matters in a challenging spirit, as I see it

Two things:

  • The courage to take one step towards something you do not yet have in you, and give it a try.
  • Coming to like what you are doing, and holding a clear goal.

I have decided on an enormous challenge and staked my life on it — but it is not as though a challenging spirit was in me from the start.

I was born with a malformation of the internal organs, without dreams or hopes; once I was working, a manager told me I was unfit for society. Never mind challenges, I was frightened of stepping into anything new.

But precisely because I had so little life experience, everything counted as new and I was curious about all of it. Perhaps clearing those things one by one was my challenge.

Lighting a small passion in an ordinary life

Last year, for the first time in my life, I went skydiving.

A friend said “skydiving will change your life”, and I took them up on it. Life changing is not about doing a particular thing; I think trying something you have never experienced is what puts even a little stimulus into an ordinary life.

Anyone can get through the days quietly by repeating familiar work in familiar surroundings, and there is an ease in that — which is exactly when it is worth deliberately stopping and changing direction.

If you managed that one step of stopping, then everything depends on whether you can find the courage to change direction and take a step. Do it and what you can see will change.

People who light fires, people who will not burn

I have travelled the country as a communication instructor. Looking back, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, over 200 talks — wanting to light a fire in the people inside companies, not with knowledge but out of my own experience. I have passed that flame to owners and to staff.

So my talks are about growing people together: noticing through all five senses, feeling it yourself, and acting on it.

What business owners say they want from their staff, more than anything, is passion. As for passion, people divide into five kinds.

Five ways of burning

  1. The self-igniting kind, who drive their own hearts without anyone saying a word.
  2. The combustible kind, who do not burn on their own but will if someone lights them.
  3. The non-combustible kind, who do not burn on their own and do not burn even when lit.
  4. The extinguishing kind, who go round putting out fires that have only just caught.
  5. The igniting kind, who can strike a match and light the flame of passion in a combustible heart.

Company or not, in any set of relationships it matters to have the self-igniting kind and the igniting kind near you.

The ability to praise people, recognise them and lift their motivation, and the ability to carry others along with you, can light a fire in somebody’s heart.

I am partway through a challenge myself, and seeing it through needs a passion that burns on its own first. One person, then two, then a gathering of self-igniting people and the possibilities of a future — and I will keep driving, hoping from the heart that this feeling reaches somebody out there.