From Individual Play to Teamwork

Now is the time for my breakthrough!!

I am Ryohei Takahashi.

Having turned 30, I want to challenge myself once again and enrich my life.

I have been posting about my job search until recently, but why did I decide to change jobs now?
In this post, I will write about how I came to think this way, while also introducing myself.

If you work hard, diligently, and sincerely, you will be rewarded.
This is a value system formed within me through past experiences and the influence of my parents.

It sounds good, but it is an ambiguous expression without any clear basis.

As an only child, I was raised with a lot of love from my parents.
I was shy, had strong likes and dislikes regarding things and food, and when I was in a group,
I had little presence and rarely spoke during my childhood.
There is a turning point that allowed even someone like me to gain confidence.

My parents were worried and, wishing for me to strengthen my mental state and survive in the world,
they enrolled me in a karate dojo. (Without any choice, almost forcibly.)
I still remember starting in a negative state of mind, feeling that it was painful, scary, and dangerous—the triple threat.

There were many classmates around me, and most of them were quite active and talkative.
I couldn't express myself well and felt uncomfortable,
but the experience of karate became a catalyst for changing myself.

It taught me the importance of effort and having confidence.
While my friends prioritized club activities, lessons, or occasional family trips and skipped practice, I attended every single session without fail. I had a knack for memorization, which helped me learn techniques relatively quickly. My instructor recognized this attitude, and although there were promotion exams, he gave me the chance to take them at least once a year, which was faster than others. My belt color kept advancing, and I was able to earn a junior black belt in elementary school and my first dan in junior high school.

Then, in my second year of high school, I was able to win the national championship in a sparring event.

In my studies, I was good at subjects that required memorizing answers,
such as kanji in Japanese, applying formulas to calculations in math, and geography and history in social studies. The study method of repeatedly going through workbooks and memorization drills to "learn the correct answers" was the easiest for me and yielded the highest scores.

In university, I majored in history, which was a field where I could delve deeply into one subject, so I feel it suited me well. I researched the era of Minamoto no Yoritomo, just before the Kamakura period, and wrote my graduation thesis by inferring things from historical documents.

I think I have always liked getting absorbed in one thing and digging deep into it.

A major turning point for me was attending a business school and a job-hunting support school during my university years. That experience made me want to become someone who could succeed as a working professional.

After entering the workforce, I was taught that "life is sales," which led me to aspire to a sales position. I experienced door-to-door sales for water servers and coffee makers at a company listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. I chose this because I thought it would be a strict environment where I could be trained. However, I couldn't sell anything at that company and effectively resigned after about eight months, having been deemed non-contributory.
That was when I painfully realized that "the standard for evaluation in the professional world is results."

The next company I joined involved aggressive phone sales, but it didn't last long. The first two years after becoming a working professional were a time when I was confronted with a reality that was the exact opposite of my enthusiasm, and my heart was broken.

At the company I joined at 24, I started corporate sales in the telecommunications industry. Through the maintenance of phone and internet services for small and medium-sized enterprises, I began to feel the reward of supporting the communication infrastructure for business activities. Also, by utilizing my experience from my first two companies, I applied my skills in business negotiations and cold calling to work persistently, eventually becoming the second-best performer in the branch and gaining experience in teaching junior staff through OJT. Just as things were getting on track, the company I was working for went bankrupt, and I experienced the risks of being a company employee. You have to change your approach depending on the person, and if you have 100 customers, there are 100 ways to approach them. I spent most of my 20s in the world of sales, and in a way, I crawled back from failures and setbacks, using them as fuel. Even so, when asked if I had grown significantly, I felt a sense of dissatisfaction, or rather, just before turning 30, I felt that I lacked stimulation.

Now, thanks to a certain encounter, I have started working as an event organizer, providing job-hunting advice, and sharing information through a blog. With the era of the 100-year life being discussed, and connections with people outside of my company,I began to think about what my way of life, contribution to society, and purpose in life are.I also realized that until now, my work had been entirely individual play, and I lacked the experience of engaging with multiple people to produce results. There are limits to what I can do on my own, and if something were to happen to me, I could lose both my income and my time.

It was out of a sense of crisis that if I didn't increase my human assets and enhance my contribution to society, I would be left behind by the speed of the world's rapid changes.

I am not already 30, but still 30. I think that from here on, it will be interesting, and because I am clumsy, if I can live a life that gives hope to many people and gains empathy by changing myself, that could become my purpose in life.

It has become a bit long, but that is the end of my self-introduction.

From the next post onwards, I will be sharing various information, including my past experiences, new experiences, and my sales experience in my 20s, as well as what I am doing. I hope to gain empathy from people in their early 20s to my own generation and provide something of value.

See you again!