[sample translations]jeon ok pyo, draw a big picture of your life eng

Sample Translations

Ok-pyo Jeon Draw a Big Picture of Your Life E ng l i s h

Book Information

Draw a Big Picture of Your Life (빅 픽처를 그려라) Ericyangagency Publishing corp. / 49 p.

For further information, please visit: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/772

This sample translation was produced with support from LTI Korea.

Please contact the LTI Korea Library for further information. library@klti.or.kr

Draw a Big Picture of Your Life Written by Jeon Ok-pyo

Prologue

What is your big picture?

The child who drew this picture was sent to a mental health clinic.

During art class in an elementary school, the teacher told the children to draw an animal they liked. The teacher, who was going around the desks, helping the children, discovered one student who was concentrating very hard on his drawing. Intrigued, the teacher went up to the child and took a closer look at the drawing. To her surprise, what she saw in his sketchbook was a drawing that did not look anything like a picture.

A white piece of paper was completely colored with a black crayon.

What did the child want to draw? Did he want to draw a crow flying in the dark night?

Or something like pitch dark underwater? And the child kept churning out the same black picture one after the other. The child kept at it non-stop. At this point, the teacher could but take away the crayon from the child. She had a meeting with the child’s parents, and sought counseling from a doctor.

And the child was sent to a mental health clinic. At the mental health clinic, the child continued to make black pictures, and the adults who were watching him became more and more worried.

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But a piece of puzzle was discovered by chance in the desk drawer of the child.

Realizing something all of a sudden, the adults put the child’s pictures together. Amazingly, the pictures were all connected. Quickly, everyone spread all the pictures on the floor of the gym and pieced them together to complete an enormous puzzle. The adults were astonished.

The picture that the child drew was a huge, black whale. The pitch-black pictures were not just black carbon papers but the back and the tail of a whale. The child had made a drawing of a whale that could not be contained in just a single piece of paper.

This was a Japanese public advertisement that I saw a long time ago on YouTube.

Mesmerized by this story, I told and showed it to everyone I met, not forgetting to add this line.

“It may be that you’re painting the darkest moment of your life. But if you believe that a bleak time is just a part of the bigger picture and do not stop trying, then you will someday complete a picture of a whale.”

I always took care to explain that the difficulties of the present is a completely necessary experience for one’s maturity and that it is a process one must go through, and the importance of one’s faith that this phase will be part of a beautiful black piece of the whale.

Better than any other example, this story vividly illustrates my “Big Picture” theory that I recently completed. This book is about the big picture; in other words, it is about the big picture of one’s life. A “Big Picture” signifies a comprehensive understanding of a problem or a situation. To put it another way, it would be “a complete picture.” When I was researching for the book I was working on, I found out that there was a novel with the title of Big Picture. Of course, this novel and my book are about a different subject but the French title of the book, The Man Who Wanted to Live His Own Life, came off as very meaningful to me. (The original title of the book is The Big Picture.) That is because my book is also about

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drawing one’s own Big Picture in order to live a life true to oneself.

Life’s big picture can appear too big just now and cannot be easily seen. Those who have only seen part, and not the whole picture, could criticize if not admonish you. As in the aforementioned story, like the adults who had no idea why the child was coloring the paper all black.

But if one pushes ahead with a certain sense of direction, then one will discover that it is an enormous picture of a whale that one is drawing. It is only in my mature years that I’ve come to a full realization that the Big Picture can only be achieved if you do not waver from that moment when you make your decision.

In my previous books, Winning Habits and A Verbal Form Person, I talked about the people who are winners, and the secret of a winning organization, while sharing the specific methods with the readers. At the same time, I’ve also often said it is important not to win against another person but to win against one’s self that existed in thepast. But I’ve learned through continual counseling and observation that there are very few people who have managed to acquire the winning habits to achieve success. People make a strong resolve after they listen to a lecture or read a book but like a shape-memory alloy, they revert to their original state when they go back to their familiar environment and temperature. There were also many people who have clung to the lawof the jungle whereby they would trample over other people to win the competition.

Why is it that there are some people who can create their own story out of a same story I told and share it with the world with great confidence and others who cannot do it? I found out that it was because of the inner whale, in short, because of a Big Picture. Of all the people I met who have succeeded and are happy with their life, they all

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had their unique big picture. Because they have never lost sight of their big picture in their mind, they did not become arrogant or lose hope. It did not matter what kind of work they did or what position they held. They had a clear sense of their personal big picture and were happy doing what they did, understanding the meaning of life and therefore enjoying it as well.

4 What on earth could the “Big Picture” be so as to call it the core of life?

That is what I am going to talk about from here on. It is a story of the huge whale that one can only see if one steps outside of the prevalent frame, called a single piece of paper, and the common denominator of the people who live life true to themselves, of which I’ve systematized after countless interviews and case studies that I did, starting with the questions of my own that I’ve asked myself for a long time. It does not have to be a whale because a big picture could be different for each person.

However, I’d like to tell my own story before I start. I’ve always harbored a big picture in life. No matter how difficult life was,the image of my mother always brought a joyous smile to my face. My mother was a woman of deep faith, and I myself attended church every Sunday from when I was in the fourth grade, making a habit of reflecting on my misdeeds. Then one day when I was in the middle school, my mother asked me, “What kind of a person do you want to be, son?”

I quickly replied that I wanted to be a rich man. My father was an impecunious civil servant and seeing how my mother had to go through hardship, I wanted to grow up to be a rich man so that I could provide a luxurious life for my mother. But my mother could not hide the disappointment on her face.

“One does not need that much money to live. But there are many worthy things that

one can’t buy with money in the world.”

I thought about it briefly, and then answered again, “I want to become a person who can have a good influence on many people.”

At that moment, my mother’s face it up with a happy smile.

“What do you think is a ‘good influence’?”

“A good influence is when I myself always carry out a good deed and help others to do the same.”

“That is correct. In order to become a person like that, you have to be an exemplar; and the components of being upright are a good conscience, morals, and faith. I have no doubt that you’ll become such a person, and therefore it is important to believe in yourself from the bottom of your heart and carry out your belief.

It was at that moment when I decided that I wanted to become a person who can exert a worthy influence on others that the big picture in my life was set. From then on, I have lived, harboring that big picture in my heart. What my mother had told me became the milestone of my life, that is, about how only faith could turn your big picture into reality. But my mother did not stay long with me. When I was a freshman in college, she died of a brain hemorrhage. I will go back to telling the story of how I made progress thanks to the big picture in due time but for now, I’d like to recount the stories of people who have found the secret to life.

Part 1

Life’s Big Picture

People who have looked beyond the frame

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For those people who have nothing they desire or no purpose in life, happy events will not occur to them. If a person has no goal or purpose in life, then not even luck can find him or her, and will therefore bypass her or him.

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Talmud

Harvard and Yale Project

In the cafeteria of the Jeongdok Public Library in Seoul, there is a huge picture. It is so big that the three entrances that extend on both sides appear cozy. It is a mega-sized picture that one would be hard pressed to see even in an art gallery.

I like places where there are big pictures like this one. Big pictures make people step back. It is only when you step back that you can see the entire picture properly. When people step back, it will call forth people to the space created by the distance between the picture and the crowd, and the people who have gathered there can commune, while looking at the same picture. That is why a big picture always gives rise to great energy. That is the power of a big picture, not like something one has stashed away in private possession, which makes people step back, view, and share with each other. Take a look and see if you are not too close to something that you want, irrespective of what it is. The more earnestly you want it, the further back you should stand in order to view it in its entirety.

What I discovered about the common characteristic of the people who live a truthful life is that they all behave as if they had stolen a glance at a picture that no one else had seen.

They were resolute, like they knew the answer, even under confusing circumstances, and

remained calm and consistent at a crucial point of inflection at a victory or defeat in life. But it was rare that they would give a precise answer to a question as to why they behaved in such manner. They did not act on it, with a prediction of the result. One indisputable fact is that they always listened to what their heart told them. I decided to call what they glimpsed, what they cannot explain but something that is engraved in their heart, that which allows them to be who they are, the “Big Picture.” I went ahead and chose it as the main topic of my research.

The reason why a long-term plan is needed

The psychology departments of Harvard and Yale University carried out a joint psychology case project of “How much does a long-term plan in life help aperson achieve a dream and live a happy life?”

The results were astounding. Only three percent of the participants in the project said they believed they had achieved their dream, were happy at home and at work, and had saved up enough for a secure life in their old age. There were about ten percent of the middle class while sixty percent of the working class eked out a living with some debt; the extremely destitute group, who could not manage without someone’s help, took up about twenty-seven percent.

The researchers traced the participants’ past, around the time of their college graduation. They found out the top upper three percent and the top ten percent had a common characteristic; they all had a long-term life goal. Their purpose in life and the direction they wanted to take were clear. So then, what set apart the top upper class and the top class? The difference was that the top upper three percent had a life goal that they had documented whereas the middle class had a life goal but they kept it in their head only and did not bother

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to record it on paper. The sixty percent of the people with a little debt lived their lives with a short-term plan, which lasted anywhere from six months to a year, and the remaining twentyseven percent lived day to day without any plans.

What this project implies is very clear. The people who have achieved their dreams and live a happy life had a precise image of where they wanted to get to in the future; and they did not stop short of simply imagining it but actually documented it in a detailed way.

The researchers called it “long-term life plan” and it has in common with what I call the “Big Picture” of the people who want to live a true life. Of course, the joint project of Harvard and Yale Universities was criticized for substituting happiness with financial independence of their graduates, but as it is unrealistic to discuss happiness without any reference to monetary self-sufficiency in a capitalist system, one cannot deny it was a meaningful research result.

There is a lot of other circumstantial evidence that testifies to the importance of a “Big Picture.” But the most important point is that it is impossible to achieve a dream without having a dream.

Through a long and hard research, I was able to discover the common processes by which people go through in order to complete their Big Picture and ascertain their raison d’être. Although the order of the steps and the instances differed a little, the following are the three main processes through which people who had a Big Picture were able to complete their goal.

Three-steps to complete the Big Picture

One very hot and humid day, some technicians were sweating away on the railroad.

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They had to stop working momentarily when a train approached them. They heard a familiar voice from the train window.

“You’re David, aren’t you?”

Startled, David Anderson greeted the man, “Oh, Jim. Long time no see! Glad to see you.”

The two men gladly greeted each other and conversed for a while. The train left shortly after. The technicians who were working with David were taken aback that David was a friend with their boss, Jim Murphy. David explained to them that both Jim and he were hired at the same time, twenty-three years ago. Someone asked in a half-sincere and halfjocular manner how it was possible that David ended up working outside on a hot day and Jim became the president of the company. David replied, “Twenty-three years ago, I worked for the hourly pay of $1.75 whereas Jim worked for the future of the railroad company.”

David and Jim both started out as railroad engineers for the same company but twenty-three years later, one man became the CEO of the company and the other was still working on the railroad tracks. What decided their future was exactly as David had said, whether or not one worked for the money or had the big picture in mind, instead of money.

While David was focusing on making an earning to get by, Jim was thinking outside of the frame and getting closer to his Big Picture.

First step: Escaping from the Silo

Most people draw a very limited circle of “one’s profit, or at the most, the profit of the department that he is part of” and become encumbered by it. They become entrapped in a silo and are purblind so that their vision is obscured, which forever deprives them of the chance to see beyond their framework. The first thing that the people who live a true life do is

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to escape from this narrow framework. That is the first condition, and that is when one is ensured of a purview that extends beyond a framework.

Life is an accumulative result of the conditions and individual choices as well as a little luck that might be at work. But humans do not have the power to control inherent conditions and luck. There are coincidences that are more plausible in a TV drama and not a scenario that we can choose, such as one is born into a wealthy family, or an old man you happened to rescue turned out to be the CEO of the company where you are going to have a job interview.

One thing that we most definitely have control over is personal choice. In fact, the belief that our life can become dramatically different depending on what kind of choice we make is the only thing. People who have a Big Picture in their mind believe that life can be different. That is why they dismantle the small framework that confines them and free themselves from the sufficiently comfortable silo, which is ultimately insufficiently inadequate.

What kind of a choice am I making now in my life?

Is that choice connected to my future?

Furthermore, what am I living for?

If you have asked yourself these questions at least once in your life, then you are all prepared to escape from a narrow circle. Most people do not ask really important questions like “Why do I live?” and“What am I living for?” They are too caught up in living day to day.

They talk about meeting the deadline for the project, preparing for a meeting with their partners and business people, coming up with a new marketing strategy, and they therefore do not have the leisure to draw a Big Picture for themselves, which seems to be irrelevant to

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their life. Then when they are asked what is the purpose in their life, they are astounded, and pause to think for a minute before replying like David who lived his life to make $1.75 an hour. “I want to make a lot of money and become rich and be happy.” They then go back to living day to day.

It’s perfectly understandable. The world we live in at present is already challenging, having to deal with everyday situations. Hence, how could it be possible to visualize five, if not ten years from today when even tomorrow is unpredictable. The people who were happy when they bought a house just several years earlier have become what is now called a “house poor” that is how fast the world changes, and with a terrifying speed. In an age of such uncertainty, what kind of picture of the future can one possibly draw? Worse yet, is it even worthwhile to draw a picture of the future? This is the kind of thinking that people like David, who cannot think outside of the box, are obsessed with.

Aren’t we at the moment fidgeting over a blank piece of paper that the teacher has given out for an assignment? Aren’t we making a strenuous effort to draw a happy family, undeniably beautiful scenery, enviably pretty clothes, a house, and a car that the teacher has in mind for us instead of our unique Big Picture? Go outside of the box and come face to face with your inner Big Picture—therein lies the meaning of your life. The people who have discovered a true life for themselves began with that belief.

Second Step: Bear it just once more, even when you don’t think you can

The second common characteristic of the people who have found the way to live a true life is that all of them persevered at the moment when others would have given up, and thereby they succeeded in reaching the top. This was the part that gave the most headaches

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because I have met more people than I would have expected who wasted their life in a field where they had just reckless passion and no talent. That is why I must be very cautious when I talk about the second step. I am well aware that I could plant false hope by saying, “don’t give up and the door will open” to people who are futilely knocking on a door that is securely locked.

The Big Picture is about an encounter with your raison d’être. I will explain in more detail later, yet it is not about coming into possession of that which one would like to achieve, but to be faithful to one’s original purpose, and therefore get close to an existential goal. The people with a Big Picture will draw a most appropriate image of their talent and apply all their passion to their chosen field. Those who are meandering in a field that isn’t right for them are unable to use the talent that they are born with, thus they are bound to taste defeat in the competitive world; when this cycle is repeated, losing will become a habit and they might never get out of the vicious circle of this losing game. That is the reason why having a Big Picture in mind is more important than any other method of winning.

To engage in winning game, one has to start out by being in a terrain that is familiar.

By the same token, if one wants to attain great happiness, then one has to draw a Big Picture that has room for one’s talent and is in harmony with one’s raison d’être. Furthermore, in that chosen field, it is imperative that one does not give up and does their best until the end. The second step is a guideline for these people.

Forty percent of the Korean students at Harvard drop out

These days, it is not difficult to meet Korean students at prestigious universities like Harvard and Yale. But it is said that forty percent of the Korean students at these universities

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drop out. Moreover, one out of ten students at Harvard University who flunk out are of Korean lineage. What could possibly be the reason? The research carried out over a long period by the Harvard University Education Committee provided the following result. “These students lacked a long-term life goal.�

The goal of the Korean students was simply to enter college by scoring high on the college examination and studying hard. But once they became a college student, they have had to study in a way that was different from before; in the process, they could not overcome the difficulty and in the end, gave up on college education.

If they had a Big Picture, would these students have dropped out of the university that they had such hard time matriculating at? Life is not as easy as one thinks; for example, like studying hard and getting good grades, maximizing your potential at work; in other words, nothing comes easy in life. It is only when one puts in more thought, sits at the desk longer, and prepares much more than others that one can barely attain what one sets out to.

But when one does what one likes, then one is much more inspired to do the work, even if it is difficult. Take a look at a child who is sitting in front of a computer monitor, playing the game he likes. His face will show a look of concentration that is completely different from when he is studying.

We all have the passion and the ability to do the work that we want to do. It’s just that we have not found the right thing for which we can invest all our passion and energy. The reason why we have not found the right thing for us is that we do not have a Big Picture in our mind. The student whose sole goal was to be admitted to Harvard University was deprived of his purpose in life once he achieved that goal. Of course, he could very well be quite proud and happy with his little picture of having been a student at Harvard University.

But the people who live their life truthfully to the end are different. It is only when they succeed in putting together the little pieces of achievements to complete a bigger picture of a

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whale that they are truly happy, having overcome loneliness and pain to share and contribute to a world where more people can be happy together.

Dismantling one’s inner wall

When a marathoner reaches the thirty to thirty-five kilometers mark of the run, his physical strength becomes depleted, sometimes severely, with all the stored glycogen in the body being consumed; he therefore feels extreme fatigue and encounters a seemingly insurmountable wall. He is then subjected to a heightened fear that he might drop dead, which sometimes leads to the psychological collapse of a runner, resulting in some giving up the race altogether. It is not an exaggeration to say that how a marathoner is able to resolve this condition determines the success or failure of the race. But amazingly enough, if a runner knows that such a physical and psychological obstacle exist, then it changes the attitude of the marathoner toward this problem. That is, it helps them overcome that pivotal phase in the run and they regain the energy to finish the rest of the race, without inflating the given situation while controlling the pace and focusing on their physical state.

Therein lies a hint for the second step for those people, who live a true life have experienced. They have each dismantled some kind of a wall in their chosen field. That is how they can discern if the obstacle in front of them is based on a psychological fear or a systematic problem that they can’t resolve on their own.It is only after having experienced the thrill of completing an arduous race that one acquires the new strength and courage to run in the next race.

I am drawing the back of a whale

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How long do you think can a child color his sketchbook black without having any idea of a huge whale? He will probably get bored very quickly and run away. On the other hand, a child who knows he is now drawing the smooth back and the tail of a whale will keep on coloring, while enjoying the activity. There is only one solution. First of all, it is important to have one’s own Big Picture in mind. You do not have to know what kind of a specific job you want to have right at this moment. A mentor? If you can’t find one, then be one to yourself. If you have a Big Picture, even at the age of eighty, if you have an idea of what kind of person you want to be, then you’ll find out naturally what it is that you have to do. Even if you didn’t know, you will be able to distinguish between what you shouldn’t be doing and where you shouldn't be, in accordance with your Big Picture.

If you have a Big Picture in your mind, then you’ll know what the senselessly all black picture will turn into and you will therefore be able to wait and bear all the hardship. If you carry out what you have to do one by one, then it’ll gradually become a habit and the habit will lead in the future to your dream; such a belief is the secret to the happiness of the top three percent of the people.

Third step: Become Number One even in a minor area

Two hobbits set out on a journey. On a mission to destroy the all-powerful ring, they left the peaceful and comfortable village of Shire and started on a long journey to the perilous mountain of fire. The strong human warrior, the elf who can use magic, and the expedition team from the northern land all joined them but the journey to the mountain of fire was excruciating. The most difficult part was to pave a new path where there was none. They would frequently get lost or circle around in the forest when they went into the woods,

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thinking it was the way. Each time, they thought how easy it would be if they could see the entire forest or if they had a map that guided them to the mountain of fire.

I took a motif from The Lord of the Rings and elaborated on it. But there was actually someone who put into practice the saying, “Don’t look at the trees but look at the forest.” It was the futurologist John Naisbitt, who is always mentioned along with Alvin Toffler, and was invited as a speaker to the restoration ceremony of the Panama Canal to the United States.

He in turn had a rare opportunity of flying over the Panama Canal in a helicopter. Naisbittwas well aware that countless laborers’ lives were sacrificed in the construction of the Panama Canal.

The budget for the Panama Canal at the time far exceeded the expected amount and many times the construction almost came to a halt because it took too long. But the leaders finally succeeded in seeing through this difficult task, by dedicating themselves to the project with the thought of the benefits that the people would reap from connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean by way of the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal that Naisbittsaw, far above the ground from the sky, was truly an amazing spectacle. He could not get over the overwhelming fact that men had built a canal that penetrated the jungle that was densely filled with large trees.

But then several days later, what he saw from the ground level of the Amazon jungle was completely different from what he had seen from the sky. First of all, he quickly lost his sense of direction amidst all the trees. When he turned his eyes toward the Panama Canal, he could only see the Canal and not the jungle. He was in the very place that he saw from the sky but everything looked very different from ground level. At that moment, he had an epiphany: that depending on from where and how one looked at things, itcould be seen totally different. In addition, the maxim, which he had taken for granted, struck him powerfully, that

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in order to view something in totality, one needs to see it from afar and above. If your are focusing only on a tree, then it is possible to reach the next tree but there is no way of finding out if you are heading in the direction you had originally set out on.

This incident marked a turning point for Naisbitt. He realized it was the mission of the futurologist, not too concentrate on countless articles and news that spill out everyday, but to draw a Big Picture with all the information.

The final stage, which people who are in pursuit of a true life commonly undergoes, is to attain a bird’s eye vision of the field that they are part of, as can be seen from the example of Naisbitt. Everyone goes through the same stage in the beginning: the first step is about leaving a comfortable setting like the Hobbit’s village, of one’s own volition; and the second step is persevering during an arduous journey toward the mountain of fire with one’s companions; and, lastly, accomplishing the mission of destroying the all-powerful ring on the summit of the mountain of fire.

But before reaching the final stage, most people get lost in the forest or waste their energy, doing the wrong thing. (Let us exclude those who cannot think outside of the box.)

Before they even complete their Big Picture, they consume all their energy and rationalize how dreams only come true in a dream, and compromise their lives with a little picture.

However, the people who live their own lives were really different. No matter how small a mountain it was, they always went up to the top to have a complete view of the forest.

Even if everyone else dismissed it as an insignificant hill, they climbed up and attained a full view before they set off on their journey. That is how they were able to hold on to a Big Picture called the Mountain of Fire.

The people with a Big Picture have actually begun by climbing small slopes and

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from these accrued valuable experience, and then they attained the chance of a lifetime, which is being able to see beyond the vast wall. Most people end their lives without an idea of life outside the wall. In fact, the majority are not even aware of this wall. Let us ask ourselves now. Have I ever been Number One, even in the smallest part of the field I am part of? For example, like a race or a competition, taking good notes, planning the company workshop, or organizing the documents? Do you, by any chance, have a delusion that life is just one lucky shot, without making the slightest effort to do something competently, and deriding little achievements?

How to complete one’s personal map

John D.Rockefeller, who was a great enterpriser and the wealthiest man in the world, summed up the secret to accruing great wealth simply this way: set your goal high. It may sound obvious but it is not something that everyone can do. Instead of going to college after finishing high school, Rockefeller decided to go into business. Of course, he was not sure what he should do in the beginning. He had no money and no professional skill and therefore, he did not have much choice. But he did not opt for anything that he could just make money from, such as manual labor. Instead, he chose to “observe.� In search of something that would serve as a basis of his great enterprise, he spent several weeks, looking for it in the city. The time he spent searching was by no means a waste of time; because he had the underlying goal of wanting to run a big business some day.

In the early twentieth century when Rockefeller lived, the railroad and the bank were the biggest companies in America. It is obvious that he checked out only the railroad companies, banks, and other big stores and did not bother to look at smaller places. He needed to find out what types of trade prospered in the business world. He spent six hours

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daily, looking for a job. In his memoir, this is how he recalled that period: “I worked everyday. My work involved looking for the right job and I put all my energy into it.”

If you are at the moment an unemployed youth, who’s lost, then it might help to reflect on what Rockefeller said. It isn’t like you don’t have work to do now because looking for a job is something that you should most definitely invest your time and energy in. On September 26, 1855, Rockefeller got hired at a merchandise shipping company. You can tell how important this date was to Rockefeller for he designated this day as an “Employment Day” and treated it like a birthday. With the money he earned in the next years, he made a joint investment in a Cleveland oil company. This was at a time when the value of oil was not known yet. From that point on, Rockefeller’s Big Picture began to reveal its concrete shape.

Everyone knows about how Rockefeller went on a roll and got the title of “King of Oil” and accrued great wealth in America. All this was possible; thanks to his Big Picture he had in mind for his life.

Small efforts without a goal are meaningless

Many people think that small efforts lead to a big result. But this is not true. It is only when we have a big dream that we can carry out little steps. The series of small efforts are simply a composite of effort and is not necessarily related to a big result. One has to have a Big Picture in mind first, and then the next step is to accrue small experiences of success.

These days, everyone is busy trying to build up one’s credentials. Those looking for employment in Korea, as well as those who are already employed, take up English as a basic requirement, not to mention, additionally studying Chinese or Japanese languages and so as not to miss out on an opportunity for promotion, they enroll in graduate schools to acquire all

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kinds of certificates. Learning is useful, but learning anything without a purpose is just a waste of energy. What is the point of studying Chinese if you have no interest in doing business having to do with China, or any plan of traveling to China? What is the use of theChineselanguage for a company that requires you to speak English?

Everyone has limited time and energy. It is not a bad idea to learn something but it is not too late to wait until you have acquired the expertise in the field you are in. It would be like aspiring to climb the Himalayan Mountains in the Annapurna region when you already find it difficult to go up a small mountain nearby your house.

I am not saying that one should not look beyond one’s occupation. I am saying it is important to prioritize the things one wants to do in relation to one’s Big Picture. What does not have any relation to the Big Picture is but killing time and does not help one in becoming an expert.

A big-minded person

Everyone wants big success and to be a better person than others. But in order to do that, you need to have a great mind, like Rockefeller. He was a big-minded person. He envisioned the specific direction he wanted his life to take, and believed in himself that he would someday be in charge of a big enterprise; he therefore was able to draw a map of his future by looking around at other big businesses at that time. A person who starts out with a map is on a different level than those who are simply working to earn a salary.

Because Rockefeller believed he would become successful in the banking business, he had a different attitude toward money and also when he was gaining knowledge about banking. When he was dealing with people, he was able to act differently, knowing that he would one day be managing them. The person who has not lost his direction in life will walk

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on a different path than the person who has no sense of direction. Although it may look incomprehensible, when all the pieces are put together, the outcome will be an unexpectedly enormous and remarkable result.

I always tell this story when I want to explain about a big-minded person.

There was once a fisherman who lived in a rural village. Everyday, he caught a fish in the river. He usually caught a 20-centimeter trout but one day, he caught one that was over 30 centimeters long. Instead of being happy, he released it into the river with a grudging look.

A passerby happened to see what he did and asked him, “Why do you keep only the small trout and let go of the bigger ones?”

Then the fisherman replied, “With the pot I have, I can’t cook a trout that’s 30 centimeters.”

What a foolish person! All he had to do was buy a bigger pot, which would’ve resolved the problem, but he kept fishing for small trout.

Here, the trout symbolizes what we want. The pot represents the size of our mind that can contain our desire. But most of us determine the size of this pot according to other people’s standard. We watch what others do and measure our potential. We think, if others cannot do it, then I can’t do it, either. Be it getting a job or taking an exam. We think since we graduated from a second-rate university and do not speak excellent English, that we cannot get a foreign job. Since we did not major in business management, we presuppose that we are not capable of doing marketing in a company. But who has come up with that idea? Could it be us who have confined our potential in a narrow framework?

It is only people who seek more, who can have more. Only those who know it is possible to ask more of themselves can make the effort. That is how they can work toward their Big Picture.

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Ways to complete one’s map of life

Jeong Jae-seung, a KAIST Professor who is famous for being able to explain science in an easy and fun way, said the following.

“In school, they give students a map and then show how to read the map and teach methods as to how to get to the destination quickly. But what the students really need to learn is how to come up with their own map. Meeting diverse people and having diverse experience is the way to complete your own map; that’s what life is about.”

His advice is not to accept everything that is taught in school without asking questions about one’s future. Professor Jeong Jae-seung is a promising neuroscientist. But in order to share his scholarship with more people, he has taken a more popular approach. Since a few years ago, he has taught a course on “Introduction to Love” at KAIST. The course was a scientific exploration of how our brain reacts when we are in love. This kind of a course attracts people who are not knowledgeable about science. He also offered a writing class for science and engineering students. The students who have taken his writing class will be able to explain their special fields in a much easier to understand way when they work as a science reporter or writer in the future. His occupation is scientist but his Big Picture is to make science more accessible to many people.

Irrespective of what you do now, apply your own abstract values to draw a Big Picture. Whether or not you are an accountant, personnel expert, Korean teacher in high school, or anything else you do, you can come up with your Big Picture. For that Big Picture, think deeply about what you want to draw on a piece of paper. When all the pieces of paper are put together, life will present you with a fabulous and remarkable picture.

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Chapter 2 What is a Big Picture?

(Asked what type of person he wanted to be remembered as) “I wish to be remembered as someone who helped many people reach their goals.”

Peter Drucker, American management scholar

Big Picture, A driving force that determines one’s direction in life

It is early 2013, and it is not quite six o’clock in the morning yet; the members of the group Mirae Strategy Team all gathered at Seocho Company Building of Samsung Electronics. The president and vice-president of Samsung Electronics, who had just returned from participating in the CES 2013 that took place in Las Vegas, U.S., were there also. Even before they could get over their jetlag, the meeting for a business report was called.

Instead of celebrating the phenomenal business record of Samsung Electronics from the year before, the CEO Lee Geun-hui emphasized the crisis Samsung faced in his New Year speech.

“China has developed into an economic superpower and the Japanese technology is still very strong. If it continues like this, all the businesses of Samsung might collapse in ten years.”

The sense of crisis became greater after the CES. At the Expo where the technology and trend of all the global electronic industries were showcased, the promotional campaign of

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the Japanese and Chinese companies surpassed one’s expectation. Sony, known to be in a crisis, presented their next generation items with outstanding specifications, with Panasonic and Sharp also introducing new technology. The Chinese showed an astounding speed in their pursuit as well. From being a country of imitation, China was now competing with their own technology; cheap prices and inferior specifications had long ago vanished.

The CEO, Lee Geun-hui’s speech changes each time but Samsung is looking for something that will keep the company at the vanguard. Come to think of it, all the major conglomerates like Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and SK have a “Strategy for the Future” department. Their names might vary but they all do the same thing. They are looking for the next new thing of the future that will drive their company forward.

Do you, too, have your own strategy for future?

Before worrying about your company’s next decade, are you seriously thinking about your own future, ten years from now?

At Winning Business Research Institute, I have a lot of experience consulting with companies and private businesses, as well as counseling college students and company employees. Offering solutions to those who wanted to accomplish more at work, those who were having problems with their boss or co-workers, or those who were worried about what to do with their lives, I discovered that all these issues could be commonly grouped into one subject.

Do I have a Big Picture of my life?

Is my current problem related to the Big Picture?

Everyone has a direction in life that he wants to take. A Big Picture is drawing the

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complete picture of what you are doing at present while looking in the direction of where you want to be in the future.

What is a Big Picture?

A Big Picture is a picture that is big. It is something that enables one to look deep into oneself and to have a broader view of life, and to better cooperate with more people.

Through research, I was able to define it as “looking further, longer, and broader in life” in a more specific way.

Big Picture

1. Answer to “Why do I exist?” It is in order to live life in accordance with the purpose of life one that was born with.

2. Answer to “What is the fundamental nature of this work?” A definite reason to carry out the work in progress.

3. It is not a series of goals one has to reach in different phases of one’s life but a comprehensive link that connects the irregularities in one’s life. The original idea that explains the traces of a path that a company or an individual has taken.

Small Picture

1. Trivial purposes one comes up with moment to moment 2. Betraying one’s raison d’être to fulfill one’s materialistic desire 3. Being an instrument of someone else’s Big Picture instead of one’s own

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The Big Picture consists of four components. It is structured with the spellings of BIG and P of the Picture. Just keep in mind the “BIG-P” when you are working on your Big Picture.

B – Big Picture. Complete image I -

Individual Picture. One’s personal picture to realize the Big Picture

G – Group Picture. A group picture to realize the Big Picture P - Piece Picture. Small actions to realize the Big Picture

B – Big Picture

The Big Picture is about coming up with a reason to do the work; in other words, no matter what kind of work you are doing, pursue it with a complete picture in mind. The question you have to ask yourself at this point is “What is my direction?” You have to ask whether or not you are heading in the right direction. The Big Picture is not about the concept of time but the concept of space. Let’s say, there is a person who is trying to raise his TOEIC score for a better job qualification. What would be the direction that his Big Picture wants to take? Is it to get hired at a reputable company? Or is it for the purpose of better communication with foreigners? The Big Picture helps one to pick out the right path among many which may confuse one. For those people who are worried that they have to find a job at a certain time in their lives and think if they don’t get promoted at a certain point in their career, then they are failure in life, the Big Picture will point at a true path in life.

The Big Picture is not about an obsessive idea that if one has to reach a certain point

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at a certain time in life, and if it doesn’t happen, then it makes you a loser. Instead, it is a guidepost to direct one to the things one has to bring to fruition in one’s life, or in the history of the company.

Accordingly, what one has to keep in mind when one wants to draw a BigPicture is an “abstract value.” A definite reason is prerequisite for one to do the work and to be motivated. For the same reason, all the businesses have their own raison d’être, in other words, a Big Picture. How did the Facebook get created? And Apple and Microsoft? Why does a company called Nongshim exist in the world? In order to sell spicy ramen and dry snacks? No. The agenda of Nongshim is the consumer’s health. In the Big Picture of Nongshim, the company wants to manufacture healthful food to help consumers be happy and healthy. What is the Big Picture of Hyundai and Kia Motors? It isn’t simply to sell more Sonatas and the K series. The Big Picture of Hyundai and Kia Motors is to develop better technology and contribute to humanity.

In short, the Big Picture is a search for the true reason of our existence. Our raison d’être is not to improve one’s English, or study the Chinese language for better credentials in order to get a higher-paying job. Surely, the reason for your being born in Korea is not simply to own a house in Seoul and earn an annual salary of 100,000,000 won. The power of “B” is to prevent your life from becoming a mere instrument of something.

I – Individual Picture

“I” is about coming up with a personal picture. Once you have decided on the right direction, it is then important to think of the pictures you could make at this very moment.

You have to ask yourself the question: “What things do I need to think about for my Big Picture?”

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In the personal picture, “now” is included. You must decide what you are going to do now to complete your Big Picture. If you don’t have a definite idea of what you want to do in your forties, as a twenty-year-old, if you are in your thirties, then in your fifties, or if you are in your forties, then in your sixties, you must go into a room of your own and think about it.

And even if it isn’t about thirty or forty years later, you must come out of the room with a picture of yourself by at least ten or twenty years later.

Nobody in the world can show you the way you must take or draw a Big Picture for you instead. If you are wasting your precious time, going after an immediate profit then you will be paying a very high price for it someday.

If you allow yourself to be swept off by a wave that comes your way, instead of being firmly anchored, then you might find yourself in a place you do not want to be. And you might be regretting in the far future how that isn’t the place where you wanted to be. If you do not want to find yourself, crying how it isn’t the way you wanted to live your life, then you must be proactive and draw a picture of the life you want to live.

Please do not hold off drawing your Big Picture until after you finish reading this book. Put the book down briefly and quietly start drawing your own Big Picture. I have, for you, a picture of the whale on the last page of this book. Take a moment and turn the pages to find the black whale, and imagine your own Big Picture. Think of a number of ways in which you want to live your life. After you finish reading, you’ll be able to choose the one you truly want.

For any given field, the process of reaching the top is similar. Whether or not you are running a small neighborhood café, the process of reaching the top is similar. Whatever you

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are running it takes effort. Many young people waver between “the thing they want to do” and“the thing they think they must do”. Each time, I tell them resolutely that they should do what they have to do first in order to do what they want to do. Then they argue, if they give up on what they want to do, then it is a betrayal of their Big Picture. But that is nothing but an excuse to avoid difficulty. If they had common sense, a moment of reflection will elucidate 29

them.

Let’s say, your Big Picture is to connect everyone in the world through travel. For your Big Picture, you will have to travel a lot, and to come up with the travel expenses, you have to start making money. You should also learn English or another foreign language if you want to better communicate with the natives you meet. Traveling itself is fun but making money might not be all that enjoyable. But in order to be able to travel, which is what you want to do, you will have to put in your time, working in a café or as a manual laborer at a construction site. Those who have completed what they have to do are much happier and can enjoy more of what they want to do. That is because they know how much effort they had to put in for that.

Drawing a personal picture is about figuring out what one has to do at this moment for your Big Picture.

G – Group Picture

J, who liked to draw, was a director of a company’s culture department at a leading conglomerate in Korea. Having majored in engineering, he initially worked in the research department but after realizing how much he enjoyed talking with people and his interest in culture, he requested for a transfer to the culture department in his company. When he became past forty, he suddenly decided he wanted to take up drawing. He didn’t have time to

take a separate course; instead he came to work an hour early and practiced drawing.

Everything around him was his model. A wallet, pen, children’s toy, the driver of the bus he commuted on, and the potted plant in his office — he drew everything he saw around him.

After a yearlong passionate pursuit of his hobby, he wanted to share the joy of his activity with others. After all, he was in the company’s culture department.

He submitted a proposal for a drawing club within his company and accepted applicants. Contrary to his expectation, a lot of people applied. Enough to fill a meeting room, and many people got drawing lessons from him after work. You couldn’t even call it a lesson.

All he did was set up a table with sketchbooks, colored pencils, and watercolor and told everyone to draw to their heart’s content. His co-workers were thrilled with these things.

From then on, there was laughter from the meeting room everyday after work.

J posted the pictures daily on a SNS (Social Networking Service) and shared it with many people. Then one day, he received a call from a publisher, suggesting publication of his book. He compiled all the drawings he had done up to then as well as his know-how on drawing and had it published. This is the story of Jeong Jin-ho, manager of the culture department at SK Communications.

This is a vivid case of how an Individual picture (I) intersects the Group picture(G).

Jeong Jin-ho did not stop short of drawing pictures on a personal level. By way of connecting with his co-workers at his company who also enjoyed drawing, he was able to become a stronger force and thereby able to move forward with his drawing. It is important not to alienate oneself, thinking that is the way to realizing one’s Big Picture. It is only when you open yourself up and communicate with many people that your way finds its true value.

Those who have completed their individual picture must not forget to expand it to a group picture, as a collectively shared value.

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P – Piece Picture

All the great things in the world started off with a little thing. No matter how difficult a task, it was begun with an easy doable step. The huge picture hanging on the wall of the Jeongdok Public Library in Seoul started with a single brushstroke, and the first thing a genius mathematician did was learn the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Once the direction is set and I know what I have to do, and also with a connection to society. What to do next? You have to break into pieces. To complete the Big Picture, one has to break it up into smaller fragments. This is what’s called an action plan, in other words, a “piece picture” to bring one’s dream into fruition. No matter how enormous it looks, once it’s broken down into to pieces, it is possible to carry it out, one by one.

For example, if studying English is a goal, then set a goal of memorizing X number of vocabulary words everyday. If starting a new business is on your agenda, then think of business ideas, how you are going to conduct market research, and when and how you are going to carry out a team discussion. This is how one can chop a large chunk called the Big Picture into smaller pieces.

Moreover, it is very important to remember to express everything as a “verb” when one is creating the picture pieces. For example, rather than just saying, memorize English vocabulary words, do this: learn ten vocabulary words by heart every Wednesday and keep track of your mistakes; also, instead of making an abstract resolve to go on a diet, make a plan to do thirty sit-ups everyday. In short, it is only when you have specific and concrete plans, that you can realize your Big Picture. It is from this process that you can complete your own picture of a whale.

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To Connect the Dots of Your Dream

Steven Jobs, who is now dead, talked about the importance of “connecting the dots” in his speech at the graduation ceremony at Stanford University in 2005. The graduates, with much anticipation, waited to hear the speech by the living legend of Apple. At the time Apple was more than just a global enterprise and had become almost a religion to its fanatical fans.

Jobs started his speech by saying that there were countless dots, which were turning points before Apple became known to be what it is today, and that he was going to talk about just three of them. He went on to explain how each of these dots connected to a complete a vast picture.

The first dot was the moment he decided to drop out of college. After seeing how a great deal of money of his adopted parents was going into his college tuition, Jobs decided to withdraw from college. From then on, he began to audit courses that interested him greatly.

The course that left a big impression on him was the typeface or font class. What he learned about the principles of typeface with great enthusiasm was incorporated into the Apple Macintosh ten years later. Through this episode, Jobs emphasized his belief that the present is linked to the future, that the tiny dot will connect with another dot in the future for a great picture.

My heart began to thump at this point of watching the video. His conviction that one must believe in and listen to the beat of one’s heart was naturally related to the Big Picture Theory that I’d been working on. Of course, he did not foresee that ten years later there would be a use for the typeface course he audited, but Jobs listened to his intuition — the belief that the dot of the present and the dot of the future will connect to complete a picture is something that has a thread of connection to one’s faith that the piece of paper with all black will become the smooth back of a whale. It was also a testimony and a promise that only faith

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will make the realization of a Big Picture possible. Jobs’ message was about the importance of being completely self-reliant on one’s work and at the same time, never to lose sight of your faith in yourself.

The second and third dots in Jobs’s life were his getting fired and being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. These two dots also got connected with the dots of the future that Jobs had not expected and contributed to completing a great picture called Steven Jobs.

On that day, the graduates, who were getting ready to take a plunge into an open sea called society, were mesmerized by Jobs’s speech and gave him a standing ovation.

The Inflection Points of My Life

I have too undergone diverse inflection points in my life. Starting out as an ordinary worker of a company, I have reached the position of a CEO, not to mention becoming a professor and running my own management research institute. Although it may appear inconsistent, these dots are strongly connected to my mind’s eye. Frankly speaking, between these dots are hours of despair and suffering. I have drifted much, wondering where on earth I belonged. Amidst these constant trial and errors, I was able to hang on because I always had a Big Picture that I could look to. It didn't matter where I was, be it a small or big place as long as I am able to have a good influence on others and if people can become successful with my help -- such was my conviction that helped me persevere the most difficult moments in my life.”

First Dot: I resign my post as a secretary to a National Assemblyman

Looking back, my childhood was a battle with poverty. There were hardly one day

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when I had all three meals and many at time I’ve had to eat only a yam or potato for one of those meals. Since my father was a civil servant, it seems kind of strange, in retrospect. Our neighbors did not have the full story of our family’s condition. Free lunch was given out to the children of poor families but since my father was a government employee, I naturally was exempted. My father, who liked alcohol, was always out drinking with his friends, and therefore did not take care of his family very well. But it is fortunate for me that I at least was able to go to college during a time when getting a job right out of high school was a big deal for most people since there were many of my friends who had to give up college on account of the poverty of their family.

The first job I had after graduating from college was a secretary to a National Assemblyman. I had believed that as a secretary of a National Assemblyman, I could dedicate myself to the residents of my region and therefore the job was appropriate for me to fulfill my Big Picture. I also got paid more than my college friends who got hired by a regular company and offered better working hours and conditions, thus making the job very appealing. But the more I became accustomed to the work, all I could think of was “machinations.” Most of the people around me viewed politics as a genie’s lamp. There were people who asked to have their children hired by a conglomerate, and those who blindly requested that they win their lawsuit; there were only people who wished to trample over others to get what they wanted.

With the expectation that a National Assemblyman could rise above the law to resolve all problems, these people visited the office to cast their precious vote. I was hearing a warning beep in my heart that I was veering far away from my Big Picture. When the sound of the alarm reached the maximum point, I could no longer find a reason to stay. In hindsight, all the priceless experience I went through in the political arena served as a turning point in my visualizing my new Big Picture.

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Second Dot: I work for Samsung

It was during a time when everyone was poor and meeting the basic needs in life was the biggest goal. Everyone was envious of you if you worked for a big conglomerate. As an employee of Samsung, with this new start, people praised me for being a good worker, and I felt as though I was living a life in which I was exerting a positive influence on other people.

I decided to think of my work as a lifetime job and made a resolve to work extra hard. My work was difficult but interesting and rewarding. Together with the clients and our partner businesses, we solved problems and I felt great excitement at the expansion and growth of our team and our business as a result of my influence. In the midst of fierce competition of the struggle to get ahead and for impeccable achievements, I became an executive. But then, I found myself gradually becoming arrogant with all the great results I was achieving. For a person who had always been humble and learned from other people around me, I was becoming narrow-minded and conceited. I was viewing everything from the perspective of how much there was to be gained for me and could no longer trust people. At night, I felt tormented with the thought of veering away from the life I had wanted to live. I could not be free from the result-oriented competiveness of being an executive, working for a conglomerate. “Is there another way in which I could follow my life’s guidepost without being a conglomerate executive?� The Big Picture of my becoming a person who can exert positive influence, which I had promised my mother, would not leave my mind. I continued to mull it over. Making a decision always involves deep thinking. In the process of weighing between the comfort and security derived from being an executive at a leading conglomerate and the excitement of a new challenge, I went through intense soul-searching before I made up my

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mind to leave a corporation where I had worked for thirty years. While I was thinking it over and over, I realized I was much too close to it for an objective view. That is when I began to step back a little. I was finally able to see the Big Picture and I decided to follow the way of my heart.

36 Third Dot: Quitting Samsung and Becoming a CEO

As time passed, I was smiling externally but withering inside. How was I going to support all the employees? Before I can think of exerting a positive influence on them, the first thing I had to do was take care of their means of livelihood. With that in mind, I gathered all my strength and poured all my efforts into that endeavor but there was a limit to making profit in a short amount of time.

Having to find a “blue ocean” in which I could reap a profit quickly; after much thought I decided to go into the publishing business. Since I needed initial investment money of several hundred million won, I put in a request to the planning department. But most board members were opposed to it. They argued that over half of the publishing companies in Korea were running a deficit and except for a few major publishing houses, it was nearly impossible to run a profitable enterprise.. Publishing business was indeed a “red ocean.” This is how our assessment of reality differed completely, although we were looking at the same thing. In this case, it is a question of faith and ultimately my faith was greater. After persuading each of the board members by saying how I was aware it would be costly yet with the conviction that I could turn the company into a profitable enterprise by hiring the best workers, I was able to start publishing as our new business endeavor.

But my prediction that publishing business would quickly turn a profit was off the mark. Like pouring water into a broken jar, we had to keep investing but profits were few and far between. I had promised to give thirty percent of the profit to the new people I hired but as we were running a deficit, I found myself in a predicament. As the publishing industry was experiencing great difficulty, even a mega bestseller from a foreign country did not sell much.

Even after bringing in the cream of the crop of editors in Korea, the publishing business was still not doing too well, which put me in a hopeless situation.

But then I found the solution elsewhere. As it turned out, the book, Winning Habits, which I wrote, became a best seller. With the company in the worst possible state, I had written the book with a rope around my neck, so to speak, and the employees were determined to make it the best possible book, not so much because it was their boss’s book.

Looking back, because Winning Habits was written based on my experience at Samsung, it was no coincidence that I founded a publishing house that published the book. It was truly having the dots of my dream getting connected, like Steven Jobs had talked about. It all became possible for me to become a CEO of a publishing company, not to mention becoming a bestselling author, because I had diligently and faithfully envisioned the dots of my dream.

After my book exerted a great influence on the company business, other books began to sell more and the finances of our company went from being in the red to the black. With continued innovation and reform that resulted in great achievements, the company grewrapidly.

When my book became a bestseller, I was bombarded with invitations to give lectures. I could not turn them down because book sales escalated with each lecture. I was spending more time outside of the company and I decided I could no longer devote all my time to running the company. It was time for my Big Picture to lead me to another dot.

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Fourth Dot: Getting hired as a Business Professor at Soongshil University

A CEO is a person who is responsible for a company. When the person who makes the final decision about employees, products, marketing, and other various issues is out of office too long, then there is bound to be a hole in the management. The company was on a roll but I began to question whether or not I should remain in my present position or seek a new challenge. I had given lectures from time to time in the past but the nature of my lecture changed after the book came out. At the end of the lecture, when I was answering each and every question that people asked, I felt greatly rewarded with a kind of learning and joy of communicating directly with people.

Finally after deciding to leave all that I had in the business world, and after stepping down from the CEO position, I turned to Academia. After talking with many young people who came to my lecture, I was convinced that my experience could be of great help to them. I started my new life as a professor of business management at Soongshil University. Of course, it wasn’t easy. One of the requirements was to publish a thesis in English and go through a difficult process of getting approved by the committee, and I failed to get myself hired after the first semester. But I did not give up and tried again and I was able to become a professor.

It was a great feeling to walk on a campus again. Talking with young people about their dreams made it feel like their dream was my dream. It was truly rewarding to watch them change everyday with my teachings. But my Big Picture would not allow me to stay in the same place. It led me to a bigger world.

Fifth Dot: Starting a Business Management Research Institute and Becoming a

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Protestant minister

When I was teaching at college, I still received many requests for lectures and consulting from different organizations and companies. After thinking about ways in which I could provide help to companies and young people, I resigned my professorship and started a Business Management Research Institute.

I could now concentrate on research, consulting,

lectures, and mentoring.

Continually researching case studies while running a research institute, I shared the results through lectures and books. Consulting for medium-sized enterprises, I made proposals as to how they can run their companies as “hidden champions.” For high school and college students, who continued to seek my counseling, I coached them on how they can discover their own personal vision. It was a very valuable time in which I was able to ascertain how I could help many people through communicating in our dialogue.

Recently, I’ve acquired another mission, besides managing a business management research institute. I’ve begun doing Christian ministry work. Ever since I was little, I went to a Protestant church and strengthened my faith. After studying business management in graduate school, I also studied theology. At present, I work at the research institute during the week and on the weekends, I help people, who are lost in despair, recover their vision.

When I look back on my life so far, there were many ups and downs as well as turning points. Be it voluntary or involuntary, I’ve switched jobs and my positions have also changed. Each time, I took on a new post I’ve experienced joy and disappointment.

Economic prosperity came with a barren inner life and inner abundance led to economic impoverishment. But what brought me true abundance was always there in my heart, which was the big direction in my life, the Big Picture.

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It was thanks to the Big Picture that I was able to safely overcome the turning points in my life. If viewed in light of “positive influence,” then every footstep in my life makes sense. Starting out as an assistant of a National Assemblyman and then being a corporate executive, teaching in the university and then running a research institute, and finally becoming a minister were not all in vain. I realized that all of these were the dots of my dream in order to complete my true picture.

If I did not have my Big Picture, I would have settled with being a corporate executive or a university professor. Of course, there are people who are in such positions, who fulfill their responsibilities and carry out their mission. They are deserving of our respect and admiration. But as for me, even if people pointed their fingers at me, calling me strange, I could not dismiss my inner voice, which dictated that I exert a positive influence on many people. I did not want to live according to other people’s criteria of success and listen to their drumming. Some people might regard me as someone who can’t stick out to one thing and jumps from one job to another. But just as all jobs are sacred, so are all lives. If I am satisfied with the life I’ve lived and am happy now, then that is all that matters. We don’t live our lives to show off to others.

I am a person who is in constant search for something new. My Big Picture is going to be filled with something new. Just like everyone else’s Big Picture suits him or her, mine will also be one that is custom-made for my life.

The marching drumbeat still echoes in my heart. Hearing the drumbeat that resonates, I will continue marching onward to my Big Picture. From now on, I am going to lend my ear to the faint but definite beats of the young people’s dreams and see how I can help them.

The Guiding Principles of a Dream

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We’ve all lived our lives, saying or listening to “Do your best.” But before we set out to do our best, there is something that we must think about first. That is, “for what?” For what, do we have to do our best; for what, do we have to make sure this project is successful.

Unless we ask this fundamental question, we will have no place to turn to when we get tired or lose sight of our purpose in life. The suicide rate of South Korean is now Number One among the OECD nations with 33.8 people per one hundred thousand people. There could be several causes but in my opinion, I think it is because people lack centeredness in their heart.

If you don’t have any purpose in life, then you can’t understand why you have to live.

No matter how trivial a task, if the reason why you have to do it is definite, then one can find the way to a bigger direction. It is only after you have a view of the larger life, that you can acquire an extraordinary skill of looking at the parts. You will be amazed at the details of a Google map when you look for the place where you live, such as starting from your house to your neighborhood, to the divisions of the Han River into north and south, and so forth. It is when you have accessed the Big Picture that you are able to truly see where you are. Now is a time when “where” is more important than “how.” Simply knowing what to do has no competitive edge. Instead of “how,” it is more important to figure out your position in the complete picture and be able to access crucial information at will.

It is only after “where” become definite that one can go to the stage of “how.” In order to draw a Big Picture, one has to know its principles very well. For a dream that is not someone else’s but your very own, you must constantly check where you are at. And you always need to ask yourself the fundamental question, “why?” By diligently responding to the principles of your dream, your Big Picture becomes a concrete reality.

If you haven’t yet found the meaning of life, then ask yourself this question: “What am I living for?” And ask who is the real owner of the dream. Perhaps you are living a life that your parents had dreamt of. Question whether or not you are measuring success, not by

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your own definition of a dream, but by the social conventions and you are therefore living the life of a puppet. Once you find the true owner of the dream, then you will finally know, where, what, and how you can go about achieving your dream now.

The Six Principles of a Dream 42 Why (for What): What are you living for?

Who: Who is the owner of the dream?

When: When are you going to do it?

Where: Where are you going to do it?

What: What are you going to do with it?

How: How are you going to do it?

Many people live their lives very diligently. But most people are unable to answer confidently for what reason their life is so busy. That is because they have lived their lives, encumbered by how one should live life. In the Big Picture, an abstract value must be part of it, such as “for what?� Instead of simply wanting to become rich, one must bestow meaning to being rich by doing things like donating a large amount of money so that underprivileged students can study; and instead of just being a marketer, plan on becoming one that fulfills the satisfaction of the customers. This is the true way of rendering purpose to your work and finding meaning in your life.

People Creating the Dot v People Connecting the dot

Most people designate a single dot as their goal in lifein which one tries to achieve a

certain feat, like, “I am going to become a physician,” or “I am going to pass the Bar for attorneys”; but this is quite different from making the same effort with a Big Picture in mind.

The Big Picture is a vast picture in which the dots of a dream are connected. There are three main differences between a Big Picture and a simple goal in life.

Firstly, a Big Picture marches toward greatness. Here, the “greatness” does not simply signify a materialistic gain but also spiritual achievement. Only those with a Big Picture can march toward greatness. That is because people cannot reach a place they have not imagined. A person, who has dreamt of becoming a “CEO who will be the head of a company where many people will be happy working for,” may or may not actually become a CEO of such a company. On the other hand, a person who has never had a thought like that will never become such a CEO. Humanity has up until now never achieved what it hasn’t imagined.

Secondly, one has to be strong before an obstacle and maintain composure. Suffering and adversity can enter our lives. Those who are marching toward a Big Picture do not view failure and tribulation as something that they could never overcome in their lives. Because they view life from a long run perspective, they do not get attached to it. They know very well that the pain of the present is only one of the many experiences that they will have to go through in life. However, for people who lack a Big Picture, every difficult experience becomes a major event in their lives. A mistake of the moment or failure hit them very hard and painfully. Because they think of a single dot as all there is in their life, they become despairing very easily. In contrast, people with a Big Picture do not give up quickly. They do not doubt that in time they’ll overcome the present hardship and that life will flow in the direction they desire.

Thirdly, the reward is greater when it is connected to society. A Big Picture is something that you draw by yourself but it is something that cannot be completed only by

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yourself. In order to bring even a small project into fruition at a company, you have to communicate and persuade the appropriate departments. In the process, your guideline of life comes in contact with that of others and gets further connected with more people, thereby serving a social purpose. Whether or not you will be happy with personal comfort and security or you will want to continually seek the joy of life in something will vary depending on your Big Picture. It is through a Big Picture that we connect with others and live a worthwhile life in which we can exert good influence on each other.

Five driving forces to realize one’s Big Picture

DuPont, the oldest chemical company in the world, has a tradition of burying a time capsule on the anniversary day of the founding of the company. On DuPont’s two-hundredth anniversary in 2000, they unearthed the time capsule that they buried on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. In it, there were all kinds of company records, important items, and a handwritten note.

In the note, “Who is going to open this capsule fifty years later?” was written, and amazingly enough the employee who had written the note was still with the company. The person, who was in his twenties at the time, was now a white-haired executive director of the company. Looking at the note, the CEO said, “The act of burying a time capsule represents a philosophical purpose of keeping the company intact until the capsule is dug up. I pray that someone will be unearthing the time capsule we’re burying today at the three-hundredth anniversary of DuPont.”

The reason why DuPont can dream about 200 and 300 years later is that members of the company have made ceaseless efforts for its growth. In 1998, the CEO of DuPont called a

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meeting of all the fifty board members and carried out strategic planning. Their goal was to come up with a vision for the next hundred years. While Korea and other Asian countries were at an impasse during a crisis about foreign currency, DuPont was looking forward to another century in the future. Some goals from that meeting were to expand their business from a chemical-oriented enterprise to an overall technology-related business and to further extend their domain not only in America, but also into China, India, Russia, and Eastern Europe, while consistently escalating their production. Once they have decided on the direction of the change the company wanted to take, they restructured their entire business infrastructure. In line with the new direction, they went through with the restructuring of the sales and purchases of the enterprises.

DuPont is a multi-national enterprise. It was by no means easy to persuade the stockholders around the world to agree to the discontinuation of a business of which they had invested in for several decades. But everyone felt a sense of crisis in that if they did not change, then they would not survive. Through merger and acquisition (M&A), DuPont was able to transform forty percent of their business and achieved a huge success in the end.

Perhaps it is DuPont’s dream to be a corporation that will last a millennium. DuPont is at the moment still trying their best to find the drive to make their company last forever. A constantly growing company that contributes to humanity with cutting-edge technology must be the Big Picture DuPont has in mind. It was because they had this Big Picture that they were able to go with the flow of the times and undergo a major transformation.

Five Types of Strength with which to draw a Big Picture

A Big Picture is not something that can be had immediately, even if one wants it, nor can it be attained after a day or two of intense concentration. A Big Picture is the vision of

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one’s life that can be obtained through a repetition of actions over a long period of time. A Big Picture is not something that the cosmic energy will help one to achieve if one simply dreams. To get closer to one’s Big Picture, one needs to take concrete steps. Let us look into the five forces that turn the abstract Big Picture in our mind into concrete reality.

Five types of strength that turn a Big Picture into Reality

Perspective: strength to look deep into oneself Goal: strength to envision the biggest dream Care: strength to control the gap between reality and dream Creativity: strength to expand one’s thought Dialogue: strength to cooperate with many people

The first is a “perspective.” You have to know what kind of person you are and therefore you must be able to delve into yourself. It is important to have a true insight about your special characteristics, positive and negative aspects, parts that you do not want to show others, and parts that you wish others would recognize. Such a process can be more enjoyable than you think or conversely, it could be painful and devastating. All of us encounter a soulsearching period in life and question who we are. The sooner we go through this phase, the better it will be, because we can cut short the time of drifting and get on to what we truly want.

The second is a “goal.” In order to draw a Big Picture, you need the strength to have a big dream. What does a big world, which I dream of at this moment, look like? What do I want to become ultimately? What are things I want to achieve on my life’s bucketlist? What is the ultimate purpose of this project that I want to accomplish? You need to think about

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these questions again and again.

The third is “care.” It is about the strength to control the discrepancy between reality and your dream. We now live in an age when people live to be hundred years old. How much time have you got remaining before you reach the age of one hundred? 70 years? 80 years?

Because there is continual progress in medicine and science, you could be much healthier than the present-day old people when you are hundred years old. If you are thirty years old now, you have not even lived half of your life and have 70 years of your life remaining. What kind of effort are you going to make to get what you want in the remainder of your life? To be healthy and happy when you are one hundred years old, you must take extra care of yourself.

The fourth is “creativity.” It is about expanding the parameter of your thought. Life is a constant series of problems. Everyone is quick to recognize the problems, and therefore has no problem complaining about them. When one is stuck in the process of some particular work, then the person will immediately start criticizing. He will blame the other person for his being unable to resolve the problem and groan how there are too many problems but most people will stop short of ranting and raving about the situation. However, there are people who go a step further in acknowledging the problem and ponder about how to go about solving it. Of course, it is not an easy task because a problem requires a person to get out of his old mode of thinking and take a new approach. But the creative strength that is necessary in such a situation arises from a trivial place. For example, taking care of a problem by the marketing team, which is not on good terms with the accounting team, by way of a change in the process, everyone becomes more diligent and productive in the morning to raise the sales by ten percent—this is the kind of creative approach that you need to take in life. The creative strength we need is insofar as we can solve the problem. In the process of taking care of the problem, you can get closer to your Big Picture.

The fifth is “dialogue.” That is because it is important to cooperate with more people

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in your life. One cannot live life alone in this world. We have to co-exist with countless strangers. That the world will go around without me and that there is virtually nothing that you cannot do by yourself, yet there is hardly anything that one can do well alone. When you take on a broader perspective, the world is interconnected. It is in this interrelationship that one can achieve one’s goal. We must not forget how we are all socially connected and actively communicate with each other in order to bridge our reality to the Big Picture.

An architect will draw a simple parti that contains his core idea of the building he is going to design. In the process, the architect will revise and refine the concept of his building with flexibility. From primary school to college, we are in the process of working on a parti, so to speak, and not the Big Picture. It would be great if one already had a Big Picture then, but it is not a problem not to have one yet. A school is where one acts in accordance with the already-structured program. Every semester, one has to take a mid-term and final exam, and during the interim, there will be evaluations and a national exam. There are also a picnic and an overnight trip in the program. And after a year, one is bumped up a grade.

But from the moment you graduate from your final school, a program is no longer provided to you. Your work place is the same. It is now an age when no one has job security, and instead temporary jobs are common, not to mention how jobs are disappearing because of the advancement of technology. An individual is solely responsible for his life. A train called life is continuously racing on the rail and those who have not learned the way of operating the train will only lament and regret as time passes.

If you do not want to get off at an unfamiliar station one day far in the future, then it is important that you at least have a rough draft of a Big Picture while you are still in school.

Youth is too precious just to waste it away.

I am not saying that a Big Picture is a panacea for all problems. But for the sake of our family who celebrated our birth with joy and our friends who will grieve our death with

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condolences, I want to recommend a beautiful picture of life that will bring a smile to one’s face, just thinking about it. I want to say, how this picture will help one vow to become a more sincere and better person at each crisis that one will encounter in life.

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