It is crucial for people to acknowledge their professional purpose in order to achieve an authentically fulfilling career.
Why finding the individual purpose is that vital for anyone keen to wisely choose his/her own professional life? Because purposeful choices lead to meaningful careers.
Discover more here about why we – as human beings – are “hardwired to seek meaning and purpose” and why the purpose at work is more important for women than for men.
When a career is meaningful for the person who chooses it, that career is a a truly successful one. And it ultimately is a soul-sustainable career as well. Know more here about what soul-sustainable career exactly means.
However, being aware of the importance to find the individual purpose for a professional life to be fulfilling and successful does not mean that find it out in practice is an easy task to accomplish. It is not an easy one at all.
Out of the many methods designed to help people find their purpose at work, Ikigai is a very simple yet powerful and holistic one.
What is Ikigai?
This is how Wikipedia describes it: “The term ikigai compounds two Japanese words iki meaning ‘life; alive’ and kai meaning ‘(an) effect; (a) result; (a) fruit; (a) worth; (a) use; (a) benefit; (no, little) avail’ to arrive at ‘a reason for living (being alive); a meaning for (to) life; what (something that) makes life worth living; a raison d’etre”.
I’ve also seen ikigai translated as:
- “reason for being”
- “the reason for which you wake up in the morning”
- “the art of doing what you are”
The Ikigai Diagram
Ikigai is basically seen as the convergence of the following four core elements:
1. What you love (your passion)
- What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about making money?
- How would you spend your time on a long vacation or a free weekend?
- What’s exciting to you and gets your juices flowing when you do it?
- What could you enthusiastically talk about for hours on end?
2. What you are good at (your vocation/your strengths)
- What parts of your current job are you effortless good at?
- What are you among the best in your workplace/community (or even the whole world) at?
- With some more education and experience, could you be among the best at what you do?
3. What the world needs (your mission)
- What problems in your society would you like to help solve immediately?
- What issues in your community/ the whole world touch you emotionally?
- Are people willing to part with their resources to buy what you’re selling?
- Will your work still be relevant a decade (or even a century) from now?
4. What you can be paid for (your profession)
- Lately, have you been paid for what you do? Have you ever been paid for what you do? If not, are other people being paid for this work?
- Are you already making a good living doing what it is that you’re doing? Can you eventually make a good living doing this work?
The word ikigai, that space in the middle of these four primary elements, is seen by the Japanese as the source of value or what make one’s life truly worthwhile.
How to use the Ikigai framework to find your professional purpose
Do you want to start deep diving your individual purpose? Or do you feel you could benefit from reinvigorating it? Let’s start using the Ikigai framework and the super simple exercise below:
- Take 30-60 minutes to reflect alone, with a notebook and a pen
- Make use of the table you can find attached. Spend 5-10 minutes on each one of the four quadrant, reflecting on and writing down the strongest ideas that come to mind for each one
- After making notes on the quadrants, try to write a single sentence that expresses your ikigai: the intersection of the four areas. It doesn’t have to be concise, grammatical or polished
- Reflect on what you’ve written. Share it with someone close to you. Consider how closely aligned it is with your professional life today
- Finally, if you discover that there is misalignment between your ikigai and your current work life, challenge yourself to take one small bold step right away: think about what you can actually do today to begin to move just a little bit closer your sense of purpose…even the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step!
Unlike Western ideas of success, which are fairly narrow, everyone has ikigai no matter their job or class or education level. It’s not about achieving what other people have for yourself, but finding your own unique sweet spot. Start self-reflecting on yours or get in touch if you want to be guided in discovering it.
