What is “Mr Perfect’s” success theory?

Musician, actor, entrepreneur… GACKT-san is the Mr Perfect who keeps producing the best results in whatever he does.

This January, the book, “GACKT: The Art of Super Thought” which is packed with his way of thinking was released. This time, the R25 generation who are “trying my best but can’t get results” will get to learn the “thought process of those who achieve results” from GACKT-san himself…!


【GACKT】Actor, singer-songwriter born in Okinawa prefecture in 1973. Presently living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Aside from being the first Japanese national to be awarded “Best Asian Rock Artist”, he is also an entrepreneur and businessman in a wide range of industries like real estate for the affluent, food and beverage, and others

This time, we’re doing a remote interview from Malta.

It started out with me feeling nervous and worried about whether we will be able to conduct the interview smoothly, but the interview concluded with an unexpected end… I hope you enjoy this from start to end!

〈Interviewer ＝ Sano Tomoki〉

Getting straight to the heart of the matter… GACKT-san speaks of the ‘crucial difference between those who achieve results and those who don’t’

Sano (S):
GACKT-san, can you hear me…?
Good day to you!

GACKT-san (G):
… Helloo. Thank you, GACKT here.
My hair’s a bit of a mess, sorry about that.


Just to let you know, he was beyond cool

S:
Today, I’d like to ask GACKT-san about the ‘thought process of those who achieve results’.
Like, what’s the difference between those who achieve results and those who don’t.

G:
The difference between those who do and those who don’t, huh…
Actually, until my teens, I was also a very negative person who got discouraged and gave up halfway with everything.

S:
Huh…!

G:
But I met my mentor at 19 who hammered ‘the mentality to never give up until I win’ into me through this way of thought called ‘kingcraft’ ¹.
Throughout the subsequent one year, I put every single thing he taught me into practice and fully mastered that mentality when I was 20… I thought, ‘Ahh, I’ve won.’

S:
T-Twenty… Isn’t that too young???


At the age of 20, GACKT-san was convinced that he had ‘won’. I, on the other hand, skipped out on driving school so much that I had to be driven into a corner to attend

S:
The ‘mentality to never give up until I win’… What exactly did GACKT-san apply this to?

G:
Hitting on people.

S:
Huh…

G:
I decided that I would ‘call out to 50 people per day’, then went right ahead and did it.
Personally, I’m using this teaching method to teach this mentality to youngsters even now but…
Although this is an amazing training exercise, you’d get hurt a lot. Because people would keep laughing at you and keep treating you like you’re a freak.

S:
T-that’s… too terrifying…
I definitely don’t have the mental fortitude for that.

G:
But, you see, it doesn’t matter how many times you get rejected. Because ultimately, the goal is ‘to call out to 50 people within the stipulated time’.
If you’re focused on clearing the mission within that time period, you won’t have time to feel hurt. You have to quickly move on to the next person.
And as you do that, the significance of ‘getting rejected’ will disappear with time. Because this failure will simply become ‘a natural occurrence’ in your journey to clearing the mission.

S:
In other words, is this a sort of psychological training to ‘keep failing and grow stronger under the battering until you become numb’…?

G:
Wrong. This isn’t a question of whether someone grows tougher or not under that beating.
Failure is not about the ‘result’ but about ‘the process you go through to get those results’. That’s why, in the first place, there’s no need to get hurt.
The purpose of this training is to help people understand this fact.

S:
No need to get hurt…

G:
As to the difference between those who achieve results and those who don’t, the answer is very simple.
‘Whether you give up halfway or not’. That’s all.
For those who achieve results, no matter how many times they fail in the process, they would ‘keep going until results are achieved’. These people won’t ever say the words, ‘Nothing will come of this.’ They will always say, ‘I just haven’t seen results yet.’

S:
… Come to think of it, in our previous interview you did also say that, ‘Things aren’t split into paths of either “success” or “failure”. It’s “failure”, “failure”, “failure”… “success”. The path simply continues until you succeed.’

G:
But that holds the nuance of getting through things with fighting spirit and perseverance. For people to stay strong without breaking down halfway, I think ‘mental fortitude’ is necessary, but not [fighting spirit or perseverance].
You just need to understand that the truth is ‘failure = the process to achieving results’.
And to a certain extent, if you want to uncover this truth as soon as possible, you need to have racked up ‘a certain number of mistakes’ before it will happen.

Majority of the people in the world are disastrously bad at “hurdle setting”

S:
But, honestly, there are also people who get discouraged…
Do you have any tips for getting through this?

G:
Right, well… Firstly, what exactly is ‘the difference between those who work hard until they achieve results and those who get discouraged halfway’. Let’s figure this out.
Think about it. When it comes to ‘games’, why do you think everyone keeps trying again no matter how many times they fail?

S:
Games… I wonder…

G:
The answer to this, is ‘because they know the joy of reaching the goal’.

S:
The joy of reaching the goal, huh.

G:
Games are really well made in the sense that they would definitely set ‘a hurdle so low that anyone can cross it’ in the very first stage to teach players the ‘sense of achievement when you clear a stage’.
After that, they’d raise that hurdle bit by bit, but… to the players who got this sort of ‘masochistic joy’ of ‘breaking past hurdles to reach a goal’ etched into them, the only thing they have in their sights is the goal.
That’s why, no matter how many times they fail, they will keep trying again until they clear the stage.

S:
Ah, I guess I understand that feeling.

G:
On the other hand, people who don’t know the joy that comes right after passing the hurdle will end up focusing on these immediate ‘agonising’ and ‘bitter’ feelings. And that’s why they will get discouraged.
In other words, to become ‘a person who will not give up until results are achieved’, you need to know ‘the joy of breaking past hurdles and reaching the goal’.
You got that so far?

OK!

G:
However, unlike games, where developers exquisitely design set hurdles ‘just high enough to make players work hard’… You have to set your own hurdles in life.
Majority of the people in the world are disastrously bad at this personal setting.

S:
D-disastrously, huh…

G:
Everyone suddenly sets this far-too-high hurdle for themselves and ends up frustrating themselves before they can even experience the joy of reaching a goal.
This isn’t the way. Every successful person starts out by ‘becoming a person who can clear hurdles on a daily basis’.


Hurdles on a daily basis?

G:
And that’s why I started with the daily hurdle of ‘calling out to 50 people per day’ with all the picking up that I did too.
In the beginning, I was just barely able to meet this goal. But around my 3rd month of doing this daily, I easily managed this without any problems.
Then, I raised the hurdle to ‘getting 50 people to say hello back to me per day’, and after that, I further raised it to ‘striking up a conversation with 50 people per day’.

S:
So, ultimately, it’s about keeping to that ‘daily’ thing while raising the bar.

G:
In one week, there are 7 ‘day’s. In a month, there are 30 ‘day’s. And in a year, 365 ‘day’s.
Life is a repeated routine of ‘day’s.
What’s important is how you improve the precision of spending your ‘1 day’. There is not one person who can achieve great results by neglecting this area.

S:
I see…

G:
Starting with a period of 1 month first is enough. Because the truth is, there are very few individuals who can keep doing any one thing consistently for a month.
If you improve your every ‘1 day’ like this, you can eventually increase the scale of your goals to ‘weekly goals’, and ‘monthly goals’.
When you repeat this process, by the time you become ‘a person who can clear a yearly goal’, there is no doubt that you’d have turned into ‘one of those who can achieve results’.

Until now, even I haven’t used words like ‘talent’ or ‘strategy’ [on myself]

S:
Although, there’s something I want to ask…
If you want to achieve results, not only do you have to rack up your number [of failures], you also need to put in ‘the effort to improve yourself’, right?
So, wouldn’t it be better to strategise properly before taking action…?

G:
Look…
This is going to sound rude but ‘strategise’ is a word that’s meant to be used by people of a much higher level.


He told it to me extremely directly

G:
At the very least, bluntly speaking, when it comes to people who say things like, ‘Work isn’t going well,’ and, ‘I tend to give up halfway,’ have absolutely nothing to do with ‘strategy’.
I’d even go further to say that this has absolutely nothing to do with ‘talent’ either.
People find it easy to say things like, ‘It’s because I have no talent,’ don’t they? But the fact is, ‘No, it’s because this has nothing to do with talent.’ The reason why things don’t go well is simply because ‘you’re not trying’.

S:
… I suppose it’s true that people often use ‘strategy’ and ‘talent’ as excuses to not do things.

G:
Until now, even I haven’t used words like ‘talent’ [on myself] before.
For most people, words like ‘talent’ and ‘strategy are completely unnecessary.
This might sound harsh, but it’s actually better if people thought of themselves as ‘being in a particular phase’. What they need is ‘a number of challenges and retries’. Just ‘try’.

S:
These words have a lot of weight to them when GACKT-san’s the one saying them…

G:
There will probably be people who read this article and still choose not to make a move because of reasons like ‘I don’t have the talent’ or ‘I’m working on my strategy now’ but…
Well, for people like you, things like ‘talent’ and ‘strategy’…
Don’t even start saying ‘t-’ or ‘st-’! (Lol)


I ended up laughing

G:
Don’t use talent or the lack of it as your reason to not try.
People who have done what they needed to do throughout their lives and yet could not arrive at a point that they can be satisfied with; these are the only people who are allowed to say it for the first time on their deathbeds.
That, “I didn’t have the talent for it.”

Even if you can’t achieve results now, “the ones who tried” will be the ones laughing at the end

S:
I’m sure there are those among the readers who ‘lose confidence due to the lack of results’ but…
You’re saying that there’s no need for pessimism?

G:
None at all. Because, you see, you’re on the way [to your goal], right?
Most people just stop walking out of frustration before they can even get to the actual battle itself. That’s no longer a matter of, ‘I can’t’. It’s just, ‘I won’t’.
We’re battling all our lives until we die.

S:
… I think there are a lot of people who will have been encouraged by the words you just shared with us.
Thank you so much for today. I’ll do my best to write a good article too!

G:
Yeah. I’m looking forward to it.
… Though, actually, if there’s still anything else you want to ask, let’s just get through it all now. Since I have time today.

S:
What!????


So…

This time around, it will actually be a double feature!

It was early afternoon in Malta when the interview started, but thanks to GACKT-san saying, “Ask everything you want to ask now,” it was evening by the time we concluded the interview.

In the end, it turned out to be a 3-hour long interview. That was beyond extravagant.

The theme of the second half is ‘Don’t misunderstand the meaning of hard work’. It will be posted in the coming days, so stay tuned!

(Lastly. I’m really sorry that this is an article about GACKT-san, but all the photos are of the interviewer… Please forgive us, we will do our best for the second part…!)

〈Interview/Text ＝ Sano Tomoki (@mlby_sns) ／ Editing ＝ Amano Shunkichi (@amanop) ／ Interviewer Pics ＝ Hase Hidefumi (@hasehidephoto) ／ Interviewee Pics ＝ Ikeda Hiromi〉

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¹ 帝王学 (teiougaku) is what they call the education that teaches a person how to govern as a monarch.

Source: r25.jp 

Translation: Yoshi @ GACKT ITALIA Team

Translation © GACKT ITALIA