Advice

Because you are students a big part of your life is listening to other people. You have teachers. You have parents. You have grandparents. You have uncles. You have aunts. You have coaches. You have upper-classmates, your “sempai”. You have a lot of people talking to you all the time. You will probably get a lot of advice from these people. Your mother, your father, your grandparents, your teachers, your friends, your neighbors, and anyone older than you will tell you all the things you should do. They have a lot of advice. Maybe too much advice.

You are a student here at Otemae and you have many things you can do in the future. You can do so many different kinds of jobs in the future. You can have so many different kinds of careers. Which one is the best for you? What school should you go to in the future? What should you study the most? What do you need to do so you will be successful?

Who should you listen to? Who has the best advice for your life?

Maybe the most important thing to remember is that you will get a lot of advice from people around you, but you must live with the choices you make. Only you live your life. Only you will have the result of choices you make. It is good to listen to good advice, and of course you must listen to your parents and family, but you must live your life and think about your own future.

Sometimes it can be good to go out and ask people for the best advice they got from a parent, or a teacher. Sometimes the good advice someone heard from a friend or parent can be good for you and me too.

Many people who have successful careers, or who are leaders in the world have some very similar ideas to each other. I will share their advice with you today.

Deepak Chopra talks a lot about how to have a balanced and healthy brain. He says that we need balance to work hard, sleep proper, keep healthy bodies, and to have time to connect face-to-face with people around us. You need to take care of yourself. Sounds like good advice.

John Donahoe, who is the president of eBay, talks a lot about how it is easy to walk away from hard times, but the best things in life are from not walking away but working hard and fighting for something you want. Sounds like good advice.

Judith Rodin, who is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation in America talks a lot about how we need to work hard and grow, not to make other people happy, but to do it for ourselves. We should not work hard so that other people agree with us, but we should work hard so that we can become a full person and be good for other people. Sounds like good advice too.

These are only three examples, but there is something that is very important to what they all say. The message is that we should not worry about what other people want us to be. We should not be afraid of others, or our own feelings. We should not listen too much to what other people say. Most answers are inside you. Your own heart knows what you can do with your life.

I hope that during this spring vacation time you can have some time to think about who you are and what you want to do with your life. It is a great gift you have. Who do you want to become? The answers are in your own heart and mind.