How to Turn Your Job into Your Calling

"Let's endure for three years"

When I first joined the major tutoring school, I was struggling with continuous failures. I was assigned as the classroom manager, responsible for all aspects of classroom management, including student recruitment and follow-up, hiring and salary management of instructors, and parent meetings, just after a three-month training period. I thought, what a reckless company this is.
Being a newcomer, I was not allowed to be complacent. My boss would sternly remind me, "Sales are dropping." I had joined the company wanting to interact one-on-one with children, but instead, I was exhausted every day, overwhelmed by securing students and dealing with complaints from parents. I was starkly confronted with the gap between the world I envisioned and reality.
On top of that, I was met with complaints from instructors who were not much older than me, saying things like, "Your work is slow" and "Are you taking a break while we are working?" If I couldn't get along with the instructors, the classroom wouldn't run smoothly, so I was troubled by these relationships. I thought I would try my best for three years since I had joined the company, but I was just enduring painful days without knowing what to do to improve.

What do I want to do in the future?

One day in my second year after joining, a senior said this in front of my peers:
"W only became the classroom manager because there was no one else."
I felt incredibly frustrated and thought, "I can't end it like this." Motivated, I returned to my roots and began to think about what I wanted to do in the future. I read in President Okawa's book 'The Law of Success' open_in_new that "When you are unmotivated, in the midst of failure, or in sadness, let's try to design a new life plan", and I immediately put it into practice. Remembering the ideal I had before joining the company, which was to interact one-on-one with children and help them grow, I planned to become a classroom manager of a large classroom by the age of 30, and then aim to be a block manager overseeing multiple classrooms. To achieve that, I decided to produce results beyond what was expected.
As I did this, the desire to "help others" and "not only support students but also guide struggling juniors" began to arise. This completely changed my attitude towards work. When I thought, "I have to do this or my boss will get angry," I couldn't do anything at all, but once I set my own goals and decided to achieve them seriously, I could see what needed to be done.

Changing my passive attitude made work interesting

I decided to take action to improve my declining sales performance.
Until then, I had been passive, thinking, "I hope a new student will come in," and hardly did anything myself, but I started making phone calls almost every day. I valued communication with current students and parents, encouraged them to take classes in subjects they struggled with, and paid attention to prevent them from dropping out midway.
As a result, I began to see gradual improvements. My positive attitude changed the overall atmosphere of the classroom significantly. The instructors started actively proposing ways to guide students, and things began to come alive. As a result, by my third year, I was able to achieve results exceeding the company's expectations in terms of student numbers and sales.
Once the classroom management started to run smoothly, work became enjoyable. Even when I missed the last train and had to take a taxi home repeatedly, I didn't feel it was tough. I was entrusted with a classroom that was among the top in the country, managing hundreds of students and about 80 part-time instructors.

Work is interesting because it is "helpful to others"

At one point, a junior asked me about the "secrets to successful life planning." I believe that people before entering the workforce have vague ideals about work. I hope that even when faced with harsh realities after joining a company, they do not forget those ideals. Otherwise, even if they set goals, they won't be able to put their heart into them.
In my case, I initially had the ideal of "interacting one-on-one with children and helping them grow," and I set specific goals to realize that.
What I felt after becoming a working adult is that there is nothing that surpasses the joy of "being able to help someone." It may take some time to experience that joy, but I now believe that a job where you can savor that joy is what we call a "calling."
My next goal is to do work that can change not only children's but also parents' awareness of child-rearing. And someday, I hope to create a tutoring school that aligns with my ideals.