The end of the semester is approaching. Everyone is exhausted. And we all are desperately waiting for thanksgiving break. The end of semester means endless assignments, papers, projects, and then final exams. You are so tired that you haven't done your assigned class readings for weeks and you are lagging behind with an enormous wave of due dates. Around this time, we are all overwhelmed. At least for me, I have so much stuff to do I don't know where to begin - which assignment to do first, how to get enough sleep, how to enjoy my social life, and basically how to manage all of these in the limited amount of time given to us. I just want to crawl into my bed and cry for days. I start contemplating life, looking into abyss. I just want to give up.
This feeling of helplessness is not just restricted to the end of semester. It comes back and haunts us in many different situations in our lives. When you are so overwhelmed that you just want to give up, when you cannot find any motivation to do anything, what are we supposed to do?
Here's a story of a man.
There was this man who worked at a beer company. His father, who owned a small-medium sized enterprise, left him the company and 40 billion dollars. Well, to be more specific, his father left him the company that was on the verge of bankruptcy, and 40 billion dollars that was the debt of the company. These were the last gift he received from his father, at the age of 36. This guy's name is Yuzawa Tsuyoshi. Without any time to digest all this, his father's employees started calling him the boss.
The bank notified him that his daily payment was 10,000 dollars, and that it would take him at least 80 years to pay back all the debt. Several times a day, he wanted to throw himself at the approaching train and kill himself. But, one day, he started saying to himself, "I know I won't be able to pay back all this debt until the day I die, but if I do, if I really do, I want to write a book about myself."
When 16 years passed from then, his dream came true - he wrote a book about his story. He managed to pay back all the debt 64 years earlier than the bank told him. He said in the book, "When I first got the debt, I was helpless. No matter how much I made a plan after plan after plan for the repayment, I still didn't know where to begin. Even at that very moment, my debt was growing exponentially every second. Without any plan, without any confidence, time just passed. Then, one day, I had an experience that struck me so hard that I felt numb. When I came back home from work, my wife was begging on her knees. My wife, who never showed me any frustration, was begging to the loaners. I always just shouted at her, "I have a plan! Just wait!" I couldn't stand my pathetic self like that. That was when I realized that I had to do something, anything, right now. And that was when I stopped making plans. Out of 33 franchise stores that were all almost bankrupt, I picked just one store, and promised myself that I would do anything to save this one store. Whether or not other stores were getting worse and worse, I did not care but focused on this one store. This approach worked out miraculously. I just managed to save one store and the other stores started getting better as the strategies that saved this one store spread. That way, the company's net income increased, and I was able to, slowly but surely, pay back my debt."
When we face such great problems, we try to deal with such problems with the plans that are as great. To make that perfect plan, we spend all our time contemplating, correcting, and modifying. Then, we become so exhausted and overwhelmed that we can't even initiate anything. If you are in one of those situations, how about choose just one issue at hand and focus on addressing that issue? It works. It helped Tsuyoshi pay back 40 billion dollar debt, that everyone said was impossible.
*I read this story from this Korean Facebook page I follow, and I figured it would be a great story to share with everyone who is struggling with whatever problems they are faced with.*
