In this Expert Insight Interview, Celine Santini discusses kintsugi and the art of resilience. Celine Santini is an author of 20 books published in ten countries, a coach, personal development blogger, and illustrator of children’s books.
This Expert Insight Interview discusses:
- What kintsugi is and where it comes from
- How this ancient Japanese philosophy can help us embrace our failures
- The idea of “healing your scars with gold”
History of Kintsugi
Kintsugi is a Japanese art from the 15th century. It used to be focused simply on repairing broken objects, and the idea behind it was, instead of hiding the scars, to highlight them with pure gold.
Therefore, the modern idea of kintsugi is thinking outside the box, and instead of trying to hide your scars, to display and show them proudly. This is obviously a powerful metaphor for life and resilience. It shows that, although an event in your life may break you, it can also present an opportunity to come out of it stronger and more attractive.
Modern Application
These days, because of the pandemic and ensuing lockdown, the notion and philosophy of resilience has been very important. Obviously, the natural instinct for most people is to bury things deep inside and hide them away, trying to present your most perfect profile or image to the world.
In actual fact, what makes a person far more interesting, and crucially, more real, is when they actually embrace the things that have impacted or “broken” them and bring these things to the fore rather than hiding them.
Perfectly Imperfect
The motto of kintsugi is “perfectly imperfect.” This means that, although nobody is perfect, everyone has it within their power to be “repaired with pure gold” and deserves to put the most precious metal in the world on their scars, metaphorically speaking.
This is clearly a very optimistic philosophy, relying on the idea that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Not only is a person stronger having gone through adversity and difficulty, but they are also more precious because the material they used to heal their proverbial wounds is gold.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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