Every time I’ve done something that actually changed my life, someone laughed at me first.
Not metaphorically. Literally. People telling me I was wasting my time, that I was being naive, that I should stop before I embarrassed myself. And every single time, looking back, that mockery was a signal — not that I was wrong, but that I was finally doing something worth doing.
Let me walk you through it.
When I started preparing for university entrance exams, I had a specific school in mind — one that was considered out of reach for someone like me. I started studying seriously, putting in hours most people my age weren’t willing to put in. And almost immediately, people around me had opinions. “There’s no way you’ll get in.” “Why are you trying so hard? It’s pointless.” I got in. Years later, I barely remember their names. I remember the acceptance letter.
When I quit my corporate job to build something of my own, the reaction was even stronger. I was leaving a stable position at a major company — the kind of job that, in Japan, people are taught to hold onto for life. “You’re throwing away something so secure.” “You’ll regret this.” Within about a year, I’d built a business that let me work and travel freely, on my own terms. I don’t regret a single day of it.
When I started approaching strangers on the street to build my confidence and communication skills, the mockery reached a whole new level. This wasn’t a quiet, private kind of judgment — it was loud, and it came from every direction. People assumed the worst about why I was doing it. I kept going anyway. Over the years, that practice turned into more than 20,000 real conversations with strangers across more than 30 countries. It became something I could actually teach. It built genuine confidence that didn’t depend on anyone’s approval. And it created some of the most meaningful relationships in my life — not just romantic ones, but real friendships I never would have made if I’d stayed quiet and safe.
When I started doing interviews in English with strangers around the world, on camera, in my second language, the criticism didn’t stop — plenty of people mocked me online, and plenty of strangers turned me down on the street before they’d agree to be interviewed. I kept going anyway. That project eventually grew into an audience of over a million followers across social media.
Right now, I’m taking on a new challenge — growing that audience further by posting short videos where I speak alone, on camera, in English. And just like every time before, some people are already mocking it. But just like every time before, I’m certain that if I keep going, this will work too. I’m writing this down publicly so there’s no easy way to quietly back out if it gets hard. Call it burning the boats.
Here’s the thing I want to be honest about: the people who mock you are not bad people. Mocking the unfamiliar is just human nature. I’m not going to pretend I’m above it either — if I see someone online attempting something that looks absurd or doomed, there’s a small, automatic part of my brain that judges first and understands later. I just try not to say it out loud. We’re all running the same operating system. Some of us are just trying to catch ourselves doing it.
So if mockery is just human instinct, what does that actually mean for you?
It means the existence of people who laugh at you isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a filter. It’s the thing that separates people who actually follow through from people who just talk about it. Most people, faced with enough resistance and enough laughter, will quietly fold. They’ll tell themselves it was a silly idea anyway. That’s not weakness in some abstract sense — it’s just what happens when you don’t have a strong enough reason to keep going.
The people who do succeed are not the ones who never get mocked. They’re the ones who get mocked just as much as everyone else, but who’ve decided in advance that it’s simply the cost of doing something real. They treat it as a kind of test, not an insult. And if you can shift your mindset just slightly — from “they’re laughing at me” to “they’re laughing because this is actually working” — that ridicule stops being a threat and starts being fuel.
I’m not saying this to sound tough. I’m saying it because it’s the most consistent pattern I’ve seen across every meaningful thing I’ve ever done. The exam, the business, the streets, the camera — different contexts, same response from the people around me, same outcome when I refused to stop.
If there’s something you want to do, and you can already hear the voices that are going to laugh at you for trying — that’s not a reason to stop. If anything, it might be the clearest sign you’re finally aiming at something worth the discomfort.
