Looking for Ikigai

Looking for the intersection that gives meaning to my professional efforts

In the last couple of months, I’ve been reading and learning about topics I did not care about in the past. If I had heard of them, I would have wondered why people would care about them and believe in them.

As a related note, I recently did an assessment about my internal saboteurs, and it turned out I am a hyper-rationalist. My hyper-rationalist persona is questioning the concept of saboteurs. Still, when reading the description, I had to wince once or twice when looking back at my actions and thinking.

I’ve also been benefiting from some coaching, and I’ve started reading about coaching. More than that, I flirted with the idea of becoming a coach/mentor/consultant offering structured thinking to people who are not naturally structured thinkers who desire change but don’t know what to change or how to get there.

I’ve also been reading about emotions; in particular, I’m in the middle of a book I bought years ago, The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You.

It has brought to the surface emotions that have been simmering in my subconscious for the last five or six years, causing me to reevaluate where I am with my professional life and where I want to go from here.

I’ve been meditating for the last year as well, and I’ve been looking at how I create connections with other people. I recently attended an event called Brighton Authentic Relating and Conscious Connections, which I loved. It nourished my soul, and I now crave more deep connections.

These various new experiences and knowledge culminated in being exposed to the concept of Ikigai, popularised by the book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life / The Little Book of Lykke / Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living.

The executive coach Victoria recently exposed me to the concept during a coaching section. We have met only three times so far. During the coaching session, she asked me, “Do you notice anything about the three times we met?”. When prompted, I finally noticed that I had discussed three different directions for my business Mindiply in three meetings over a period of six months.

She noted that my direction changeability may stem from a lack of proper purpose, without which I lacked enough inner motivation to stick to one thing. I was not at ease with the end goal. That’s when she introduced the concept of Ikigai.

I haven’t read the book yet, but I can see how the concept may help me clarify my goals. The core idea is that you are in Ikigai when the following four aspects intersect:

• Doing something you are good at.
• Doing something you love.
• Doing something you can be paid for.
• Doing something the world needs.

During my Mindiply adventure, I’ve always worked at the intersection of “things I love doing” and “things I’m good at”, but not the other two aspects. Recently, I’ve made some progress in looking for something the world needs, but I still need to land on something that sparks my drive.

How will I know when I have found Ikigai? Like when you drink a perfectly balanced cocktail or taste a harmonious bite of flavours: it just feels right.

The downside of this realisation is that it may take time to get there. I need to see more of the world, the people, the places, the work and the experiences. I need to be at ease and progress steadily but calmly without the nagging child in the backseat asking, “Are we there yet?”

Let’s see where the journey takes me.