How many frogs have you kissed?

It has been the third day of my company training on innovation from Monday. Being a marketer, we are always taught to get the right consumer insight, craft the brand vision and deliver 360-degree marketing campaign. Sometimes I wonder we actually spend more time to understand our consumers than to understand ourselves. If a good insight states the truth that changes the way we see the world, how well do you know the insight of yourself that changes the way you see who you truly are and what you truly want?

In the training yesterday, we were taught that having an innovation is like kissing frogs. Only by kissing the frogs, you know whether it turns to be a prince aka brilliant product. And most of the times, the frogs are just frogs. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know. This just gives me something to think: If our inner potential is the prince, how many frogs do we need to kiss to unlock that and live our dream? And does everyone have at least one prince ultimately? Or some of us are just born to have only frogs?

Since I was fifteen, I have been kissing a lot of frogs. My frogs include piano, guitar, French, Japanese, fashion design, graphic design, ice skating, wakeboarding, economics and now, marketing and writing. Most of them turn out to be just frogs. It starts off with anticipation and fantasy then eventually ends up with no where. Or maybe we just assume the prince will come right away once you kiss the right frog. But the truth, perhaps, is that you need to commit to kiss the frog in your lifetime to turn it to be a prince. Perhaps, we need to bet our time, hard work and hope into some frogs that we believe they can turn princes and lifetime success.

“Everyone seeks happiness, but we don’t always know what makes us happy, even if we think we do.” I learnt this from a random line in the training presentation yesterday. But really, we don’t know even if we think we do. All we can do is to take the chance, kiss the frogs, and finger cross.