Turning Around

Ganbaru 頑張る

1: to persevere; to persist; to keep at it; to hang on; to hold out; to do one's best;
2: to insist that; to stick to (one's opinion);
3: to remain in a place; to stick to one's post; to refuse to budge

(Meaning from Jisho.org, an online Japanese dictionary)

It's Monday and I haven't found a focus I want to work on but I'm already facing some difficulties sorting out information. Firstly what do I want to find out from this theme of "to do one's best"?

Do I..? What do I want to know about ganbatte?

1. Want to know how it is being used in Japanese culture?

2. Want to explore how the word affects people?

3. What is ganbatte? How to ganbatte? Why ganbatte? When to ganbatte?
4. How is doing one's best applied in human spirit, when you say "do your best" and think that way, how far can you go?

5. Do I want to focus on Japan's use of this ganbatte spirit? Or am I more interested to find out how encouragement affects the human's ability to achieve.

6. Is ganbatte an invisible force that pushes human beings to achieve their maximum potential?

7. To keep be reminded to "do your best", does it help to boost your spirits and in return, raise your productivity?

Sadly I think I'm being tied down by language for this project if I were to focus on how this "ganbatte spirit" works in the Japanese people. Although what spurred me to choose this topic was due to "ganbatte" being used more recently to encourage the quake victims. But also I've always been interested in this use of "ganbatte" in songs, media, movies and dramas in Japan. Actually they're my source of encouragement or motivation whenever I feel down or stressed, I do feel spirited when I listen to these songs or reading stories of not giving up in times of difficulties and so on. Somehow not getting information from its origin source of use makes me doubt its accuracy at times.

So I guess I'll be turning my direction slightly towards the effects of perseverance and hanging on, what can come out of it? Or to put it in another way, how can encouragement help humans to achieve?

Ok great, at least I've narrowed down to something after typing all these.