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“Do you praise yourself? “

Today’s story teller is an author, Kazuo Takatou. His story is about “praise of oneself”.

“I am not good at praise of myself. No, I can’t. Simply, I have no confidence in myself.”

Since he can’t praise himself, he envies people with complete self-confidence.

One day, he asked Inada Nada, an author and a psychiatrist particularly in the treatment of alcoholism, “How can I have confidence in myself?”

He thought Nada would be perfect person to talk with over his problem.

Nada told him that life is mostly adverse wind; sometimes your ship runs aground; therefore, going ahead is all you can do.

Meanwhile, Takatou talked about the word that a female marathon runner said after she won a medal.

He was very impressed by the word.

“I want to praise myself.”

It was not just impressive but astonishing to him.

More amazingly, when he talked about it at a bar, a woman told him “I praise myself too.”

But a male customer told him “I don’t praise myself.”

He found that many of the people who can’t praise themselves are men.

But why?

According to Takatou’s thought, men have more tendency than women to depend heavily on an organization, and strongly think that they don’t evaluate themselves but bosses do.

After all, it might be ok to just keep working without being perplexed by others’ voices because the one assess you is another person.

The NIKKEI Oct/7/2009  by Kazuo Takatou (author)

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