Dare to dream

I have been reading a manga recently (manga is japanese comic). The story talks about two youngsters and classmates who has dream to be mangaka (comic author). So at the age of 14, both of them plunged themselves into the world of manga, only to realize that it is very very competitive business. In the manga world, one have to be very good to not be turned down, even the manga author get accepted, their manga will be canceled after one chapters if it’s not popular enough (Determined by sales of course). An author that got turned down will need to restart their work  – think of new idea, draw sketch, review by publisher and get approval, etc. The whole process might take half year and it is not guaranteed. The two talented youngsters encountered all kind of hardships in pursuing their dream; rejection, work being canceled, not being able to draw what they want, setbacks, etc. They face failures more times than anyone else in their age yet they didn’t give up and keep coming up with greater creations each and every time.

Even though this is just an entertaining fiction story, i believe there is really this kind of people and in fact i think the author is telling his own story through his manga. Many times, manga can be entertainment or most of them are plain childish, but a lot of mangas are actually educational, in this case, it’s telling the reader values in life and career.

1. Dare to dream and have gut to realize the dream – no matter how far fetch is your dream, as long as you are not planning to be spider man, it is possible (Maybe it is also possible to become spider man if you invent the suction cup small and powerful enough to hold you and don’t forget about the mini web dispenser at your wrists). You have higher odd to achieve your dream than winning a multi-millions lottery as long as you have gut to execute it.

2. Be creative and innovative – when your idea fails, you need to come up with more new ideas or innovate the old idea into a new one.  Anticipate to fail many times and be ready to be even more creative and innovative after each recovery and set back.

3. Create your own rule – The two young mangakas later realized that it is extremely difficult to compete in the existing comic genres. More over neither one of them is good in mainstream story (fighting, battle, love story, etc), so they decided not to compete in existing genres anymore, hence they come up with a manga story that can’t fit into any of the genre. It become a success. There are a lot of time we focus too much on the existing competitions and failed to uncover the golden opportunity, some times in order to compete, we have to avoid competition by creating our own niche. The most successful real life example is Apple IPhone being a whole new kind of  smart phone.

4. Start pursuing the dream as young as possible – regardless of anything, time is utmost important. If you want to do anything, you have to start to do it as young as possible. If we are young, we don’t need worry about failure because time is on our side, failure is the least of a problem, as long as we can stand up again. Furthermore, we have least commitment at young age compare to middle age, after married and having kids.

5. Be persistent – no great dream is achieved without hardship. A few failures is not end of the world, more importantly we are able to recover and stand up and fight again.

6. Good allies is important to succeed – we don’t live in this world alone and we can’t do all the works by ourselves. There are a lot of time we need other people talents and time in order to manage and success. When starting a business, many times we borrow money, from relatives, parents, siblings, friends, bank, etc. When running a business, we employ staffs and workers so we have more time to plan and manage the business

7. Be humorous – even there are times we feel pain and stressful, don’t forget to have a sense of humor. A sense of humor can relax those around us and it also allow us to see things in different perspective. A good joke can revitalize our fatigue mind and allow it to think freshly.

Well, what more can i say? even reading a manga there are so many things to learn. I’m sure many of us want to do something that will make ourselves proud in future, the most important thing is to take the first step, keep going and let the rest of the story unfold.