Ikigai, pronounced "ee-key-guy", is a Japanese term that can be translated to "reason for being". In short, it is a concept to help us find meaning and purpose in our lives.
We often associate Ikigai with career development but it is more than that. It's a way to unlock growth in different aspects of our lives.
What does it mean?
Ikigai is composed of 2 Japanese words:
- "iki" means "life"
- "gai" describes something of value or worth
Finding your Ikigai is considered to be like finding your place in the universe in a sense. It helps you find your place by defining 4 main characteristics:
- What you love
- What you're good at
- What you can be paid for
- What the world needs
What can Ikigai help us with?
People often discover this concept when feeling unsatisfied with their current situation. True Ikigai happens when we can balance all 4 characteristics.
Unfortunately, we can often find ourselves at the intersection of only 2 or 3 circles. This leaves us with a feeling of lack of balance in our lives:
- Not doing what we love leaves us empty
- Not being good at what we do triggers uncertainty
- Not being paid for what we do prevents building financial wealth
- Not being a part of what the world needs gives us a feeling of uselessness
Searching for our Ikigai is the act of trying to find the balance that will land us right in the middle of the 4 circles.
How to put it in place?
Let's start by addressing the fact that finding our Ikigai is not as simple as it may seem. It takes time and as our lives and the world evolves, our Ikigai can shift one way or another.
Finding our true Ikigai is far less important than keeping the mindset to search for it. Here is how to find it in 4 steps:
Ask yourself the 4 questions:
That's easy to say, more difficult to achieve once we pick up a pen and a piece of paper. For example:
- How do we know what we're good at?
- How do we know we truly love something?
- What does the world actually need?
These questions are very personal and will vary from one person to another. The capitalist and an environmental activist would argue what the world needs. What you can be paid for can change with technology and scientific advancements.
This is why revisiting this concept regularly is the key to finding balance. As our lives change, so does our approach.
Here are some questions to help you reframe the big questions and find your true answers:
What do I love?
- What is one thing you can do for hours without being distracted?
- What gets you excited to leave your bed in the morning?
- What is something that you have been doing instinctively for years?
- In 10 years, will my passions have changed?
What am I good at?
- What is one thing your friends and family come to you for?
- Can you easily learn new concepts in your field?
What can I be paid for?
- Do you know people who are being paid for the same things you do?
- Is your skill a niche or is there a high competition?
- Have people come to you to buy what you do?
What does the world need?
- What is a core value you believe in?
- If you have kids or want to have kids, what impact do you want your accomplishments to have on their world?
- How many people can your work positively impact?
Brainstorm some of these answers
What if you haven't found a positive answer to all of the questions above? That's okay, most people don't on the first attempt. It simply means that it's time to brainstorm some ideas that will help with those questions.
This is the part where you need to be very personal. Turn off social media, turn off the TV, and put your phone on silent. Grab a piece of paper and start picturing what your dream life looks like.
Ask yourself simple questions like: where do you live? How often do you see friends and family? What do you wear? What are the places you'd like to visit more often? How much work do you want to do every day?
This is not a way to predict the future. This is simply to find out in which direction you need to go next. As mentioned in this article life is all about going one step at a time. It's about slowly finding the answers to the most difficult questions./p>
Take one question at a time, study it carefully and be honest in your responses. Remember that you are doing this exercise to initiate change. If all the answers came naturally, you would have found your Ikigai already.
And by the way, if you're not there yet, don't think you're the only one and everyone else has found their Ikigai. That is simply not true, we are all on our own timelines with different end goals. Other people's answers have nothing in common with your own answers.
Search and ask around
One reason why we might struggle to find our Ikigai is simply that we don't know what we don't know. In that case, we need to find a way to get this knowledge from somewhere else. We must find out if our beliefs are actually true.
Consider searching online, making calls, and reaching out to successful people. This step is all about giving you the clearest picture possible of the end goal. Sometimes we envision things to be a certain way when the reality is much different.
When you are sure of the way you want to go, it's time to figure out how to go from point A to point B.
Create a plan
You've figured out where to go, now let's get you there. The key here is to divide your plan into a succession of small, accessible chunks. If your plan is to become a YouTuber, you can't just become a YouTuber overnight. You need to come up with a list of actions you can take to get there. This list of actions must be concise and give you a clear idea of how it's going to get you closer to your goal.
It's okay if you don't have all the steps mapped out already. As I wrote in this article about Mark Rober, all you need is to visualize the first few steps. As you make progress, the next steps will start appearing.
In the case of becoming a YouTuber for example. Your first step might be to figure out what your niche is and what you are going to be talking about. After that's done, you might need to start creating a habit of writing. You're going to write video ideas and scripts for those videos. At the same time, you can learn how to operate a camera and how to use video editing software.
As you create this plan, you will realize what it takes to actually achieve what you want. Maybe you're going to realize that being a YouTuber requires skills you don't already have. The truth is, YouTubers actually don't spend that much time in front of a camera. Most of the work happens in the planning and editing phase.
You get the point. You need to take the time to come up with an initial plan. This will ensure that you feel confident you're on the right path and that you know where you're going.
Why most people don't find their Ikigai.
Finding our Ikigai is a long process that might feel like we're never pursuing the right thing. Here are 6 ways to be unsuccessful in this exercise:
Wrong plan to get there
This one is self-explanatory. You need a plan, but the plan needs to align with the end goal. In the case of becoming a YouTuber for example, you need to learn at least one editing software. If you don't, your videos will remain a pile of unedited clips that don't make any sense.
Fear of failure
Getting started on something new is scary and there's no secret: you're going to be pretty bad at it at first. There's no way around it. The faster you accept this, the faster you'll be able to make progress. We can't be good at everything we try for the first time. If we did, then all of us would be high achievers in every domain. Accept the fact that it's going to take time and you will be much more successful at it.
Didn't experiment long enough
Talking about time, this one is the number one reason people fail: they give up too early. The 10,000 hours rule might have been debunked, but the core principle remains. It takes a whole lot of time to become good at something. Quitting the idea of becoming a YouTuber after making 5 videos is common. Most successful made hundreds of videos before gaining traction.
Inconsistency
This one goes along the same line as the previous point. In addition to keeping at it for a while, your consistency to get there is going to be just as important. Consistency is all about making sure you show up every day to work on that one thing. It's about coming back for at least 30 minutes EVERY SINGLE DAY. It takes about 30 days to build a new habit. 30 minutes for 30 days is 900 minutes of actual focus and work. If you can't put in 30 minutes a day, it might be time to rethink the idea you're chasing as it might not be the right one.
Unrealistic expectations
Setting unrealistic expectations for ourselves is the best way to be demotivated. There's a famous saying that says "Expectations are the thieves of joy". If we set unrealistic expectations for ourselves, what will happen when we fail at them? We're then much more likely to quit. In the case of becoming a YouTuber, this could be the number of subscribers achieved by a certain date. What happens when the date comes and we didn't reach the number we expected? Chances are, we're going to quit because we were expecting something that didn't happen.
Comparing your story to someone else's
We're all on different timelines. Comparing your story and progress to someone else is a great way to be demotivated. At any time, we should only compare ourselves to 2 people: who we were 2 years ago and who we could be 2 years from now. No one else's progress matters during our journey.
Now what?
Now is the time to get to work. If you've reached this point of the article, you're probably eager to get started on your journey. Grab a piece of paper, turn off your phone and start asking yourself important questions.
You need to figure everything out at once, no one does. You just need to come out of this with the beginning of an idea for what your next step should be. Once you've figured this out, it's time to get to work.
As you make progress on your journey, you may need to come back and re-evaluate your Ikigai. That's completely okay. As we grow, our desires and beliefs change so it's crucial to adapt our goals around them.
I hope this article was helpful and wish you great success in your future endeavour.