Our frame of mind has an extremely important impact on our ability to walk the long and difficult road of running a business and face the many challenges it invariably brings at every step of the way. While there are many potential sources of mental strength and resilience, the Japanese concept of kansha is a powerful virtue that can be used deepen our understanding of work, build stronger relatioships with co-workers and clients and convert challenges into opportunities for personal and professional growth.

The Importance of Energy in Business

There is an incredibly large number of businesses, business models and ways to run a business. While there is often healthy disagreement about what the key elements of business success are, there can be no doubt that one of the most important factors in running a business is simply the raw mental energy and strength required to meet many types of obstacles, repeatedly face setbacks and keep moving forward for often a very long period of time.

For anyone who is interested in successfully running a company, the practical question is how can one find the mental strength to face endless obstacles, particularly when a company may have very limited resources and company management and employees may be facing many types of pressure inside as well as outside the workplace.

While there are many different sources of mental strength, one that is particularly powerful is the sense and practice of what has been called “the parent of all virtues” – gratitude.

Kansha

During the years I lived in Japan one thing I was struck by was the concept of kansha (感謝) which is based on Chinese characters that literally mean to “feel thanks.”

As I saw it practiced in Japan, kansha is a concept that goes far beyond simply saying thank you without meaning it but rather involves cultivating a deep sense of gratitude and expressing that gratitude with heartfelt actions as well as words.

The concept of kansha runs very deep in Japanese culture and you can see its impact in almost every activity, including appreciation of one’s ancestors, one’s employer, one’s teachers and even of the food that one eats. Before eating in Japan people traditionally say “itadakimasu” a humble way of saying “I will receive.” This humble reception of what life has provided has far-reaching implications on how life is perceived.

A deep sense of kansha often has a significant impact on how people act. This thankfulness often produces a sense of obligation to do one’s very best, great curiousity about the things one feels thankful for and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to see positive elements of things that very easily could be viewed as negative. Through kansha, the scope of what is viewed as a gift in one’s life expands considerably.

Business Applications of Kansha

Kansha has many potential applications in business to help face the inevitably challenging moments involved in working.

● Thankfulness for A Firm’s Founders and History. While some people work for start-up firms or start companies themselves, most people work for companies that have been in existence for many years or even decades.

From the perspective of kansha, if it were not for the hard work and sacrifices of the people who founded a firm, built it over long periods of time and took major risks, one’s current job and the benefits it provides in many cases would not exist.

One way to express gratitude for this is by taking the time to learn about the people who founded a firm, the challenges that they faced to build a successful business and how they overcame those challenges.

In addition to becoming more familiar with a firm’s history, an understanding of the firm’s past can be used to create a narrative that can further strengthen relationships with clients in the present. A firm’s past is an important part of what it is today.

●Thankfulness for Firm Workers. Another important opportunity to express thankfulness is with respect to other firm workers. Any business is the result of the work of every person in the company regardless of what the role is and how small the contribution may appear to be.

The sense among many workers of an absence of gratitude for their work is a significant problem in business. One study reported that the vast majority of workers are unhappy at work and found that 44% of workers felt that they were overlooked. A surprising 66% said that they “‘sometimes, rarely or never’ feel like they can trust their colleagues to support them at the office.” 64% of employees stated that in times of difficulty their supervisor would “‘sometimes, rarely or never’ support them.”

An overview of the results of the study can be found here: https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/majority-unhappy-at-work

One way to practice gratitude with respect to one’s co-workers is, first of all, to simply take the time to learn what other people in the firm are doing and learn about the challenges they are facing. Simply stopping by the office of someone who is working late night after night and asking them if they need a hand can be a way to show them that people are conscious of the effort they are making and that they are not fighting a singlehanded battle.

A second way to express gratitude is to make sure that the large as well as small contributions of everyone in the firm are recognized and that people understand that, rather than being left on stormy seas without a life raft, they will be supported if they face challenges.

●Thankfulness for a Firm’s Clients. No firm can exist without clients and clients almost always have the choice to purchase the products or contract the services of someone else. Accordingly the fact that a client has chosen a firm is an important act that should be viewed with deep thankfulness.

A way to express gratitude for this is first to try to do the best job one possibily can do for clients. Second, another way to express gratitude is not only through work on particular client taks but also by taking the time to understand a client’s business, celebrate their victories and stay on the lookout at all times for things that may be prove helpful to the client’s business. This type of consideration can often lead to strengthening the business relationship even further which may helpful for both parties.

● Thankfulness for a Firm’s Problems. One of the most powerful ways that kansha can be used is wih respect to the challenges that businesses face. While challenges often cause a great deal of stress in a firm, it is problems that often provide the greatest opportunity for personal and firm growth.

Accordingly, rather than trying to be avoided or viewed as a negative part of work, problems should viewed with gratitude as an opportunity to make a business stronger.

Conclusion

It cannot be stated strongly enough how much energy and grit is required to keep a business going, day in day out through challenges and changing market conditions. Kansha can be an important individual and firm virtue to not only face these challenges but also convert them in opportunities for growth.

The photo for this article was taken from Unsplash. The photographer is Chris Abney.