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Phrase: Do your own thing
In Japan, doing your own thing has traditionally been frowned upon.
Following the crowd was what got you rewarded.
However, with the decline of lifetime employment and good pension plans, more and more Japanese are deciding to take a chance and see if doing their own thing can get them better rewards.
You see, when you do your own thing, you do something the way you want to do it, not the way others tell you to do it.
It’s quite scary for anybody and especially challenging when you don’t have a cultural tendency to go it alone.
One of the problems in society today is that many of the strict rules people are told to follow don’t make sense anymore.
Times have changed, but the rules are stuck in the past.
On top of that, companies used to reward people for following the rules with increased wages and promotions.
Not so many people are so lucky anymore.
Therefore, if companies are not loyal to their employees, why should young people be faithful to the companies?
They might as well do their own thing and see how it works out.
Of course, in the early 2000s, NEETs (people with No Education, Employment or Training) tried to do their own thing, but it was an exercise in futility.
These days, the next generation of young people doing their own thing are doing it better.
They are forming startups and becoming entrepreneurs and freelancers.
They use and enhance the skills that they have to be able to do their own thing and benefit from it.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 71.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.