From the course: Guy Kawasaki on Turning Life Wisdom into Business Success

Mahalo (gratitude): The importance of knowing your roots

From the course: Guy Kawasaki on Turning Life Wisdom into Business Success

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Mahalo (gratitude): The importance of knowing your roots

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- I come from a lower middle class part of Honolulu and I don't want to paint the picture of total poverty, you know, just overcoming horrendous conditions 'cause that's not true. I had a very happy lower middle class upbringing. I'm third generation Japanese-American. My family came over from Japan because of the lack of economic opportunity. And you could also make the case that my family came over because at that time males in Japan were conscripted. So you were drafted to go fight in China. So you could make the case that I come from a family of draft dodgers. And the lesson that I learned here is that, you know, my family made a very big decision. They didn't just change job or change streets or change prefectures, they changed countries. And the wisdom I got from that is you know, change in losing game. If you're in a game that you cannot win, the odds are stacked against you, then change it. And in their case they left Japan and moved to Hawaii. Now it's not like they moved to Hawaii to become investment bankers. They moved to Hawaii to pick sugarcane. So pick sugarcane, first generation, second generation, real estate broker, state senator. My father, third generation, goes to Stanford, Silicon Valley, tech, the whole thing. So I'm the third generation, but the first generation, the generation that moved to Hawaii is what changed the game.

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