Ikigai – The Fullfilment Project

How To Live Your Purpose

“If you have a strong purpose in life, you don’t have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.”
Roy T. Bennett

Starting With Your Why

The work of Simon Sinek has popularised the idea of having a Why with his book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action and his TED Talk How Great Leader Inspire Action. However, how can you use your Why to figure out what you should be doing in your life, your purpose?

As Simon Sinek rightly tells us, your Why is your origin story, it is the reason behind why you do the things you do. It is how you were raised, the early experiences you had and the decisions you made leading up to adulthood. In essence it is who we are. It is not always clear how to define your Why, but with self-reflection and self-observation you can find it.

Take me for example, I have a desire to figure out how to live life well and to share this with others. I have led worship in Unitarian churches for several years and worked in customer service and special needs education and started this blog without knowing my Why. It took the discovery of Simon Sinek’s book and some focused self-reflection to realise that my Why is to help others to live well, to find fulfilment. In all the areas of my life that I have mentioned I felt at home when helping others.

You might feel comfortable being a leader, being creative, working in a team or working alone. Whatever you do that makes you feel happy or content, these are clues as to your Why, because you feel good doing these things. Your Why is what defines you as a person. If you need guidance on finding your Why I recommend you read Simon Sinek’s book Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your

Turning Your Why Into Your Purpose

Once you have defined your Why, you will be able to use it as a compass to direct you towards the things you should be doing. Ideally, your job should be aligned with your Why. In other words your work should make you feel happy, successful and fulfilled.

This is largely effected by the environment you work in, the leader(s) you have and the people you work with. But, if you know your Why then you can choose work that is aligned with it. Work that you can really get your teeth into and make a difference in the world.

At the moment, with the difficulties caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, we have to do the work that is available. As needs must we must go. However, if you are interviewing for a job it is a good opportunity to interview them at the same time.

Choosing The Right Work

A good question to ask interviewers is how they reward performance. If they reward good performance with bonuses, money incentives, for hitting the numbers they set, then the company values your output over you. If they reward good performance in a way that values you as an employee then the environment you would work in will be more fulfilling and you will feel looked after.

You should also look to work in roles that fit your Why, that align with who you are. The work we do in the world matters. If we are not doing what we are meant to be doing, then resentment and unfulfilment sets in. I recommend using the Ikigai method, where you look at What You Love, What You Are Good At, What You Can Get Paid For and What The World Needs. This will then reveal your Passion, Profession, Vocation and Mission. Knowing your Why will help you fill in these categories and find your Ikigai, your Purpose in life.

Conclusion

When we start with defining our Why we can start to figure out why we do what we do and then what we want to be doing in our life. Once we know our Why we can narrow down what we are meant to be doing, what our Purpose is. And when we live out our purpose, our work feels like a privilege.

Self Knowledge: Doing What You Love

Happiness, The Fullfilment Framework

There are many ways to ‘find yourself,’ not least the well worn concepts of going to spend time in an ashram or travelling the world, but often we discover at the end of these spiritual or physical journeys that we find ourselves back where we started. It is not the places we go to that cause us to find ourselves, but the experiences we have, the searching we undergo and the inward reflections that we have.

In truth, we can find ourselves right where we are. We do, however, need guidance, ironically the kind that you might in fact find in an ashram. If we do not have our own Guru, we can find wisdom in the writings of others, and processes like Ikigai, a Japanese method to find balance and purpose in life. As I have discussed in my last blog post, recommending a book on the subject of Ikigai, there are four areas to focus on in your life that interact in a Venn diagram layout that creates a centre, which is your Ikigai.

The top area of focus is What You Love, which is an enticing prospect, as doing what you love sounds like great advice, except, those who have rushed out and just done what they loved have often ended up as struggling artists or writers, with no financial plan, or steady income, but are prolific in their work, in the thing they love.

It is not that you should not do what you love, but it should be tempered with the other three areas of the Ikigai Venn diagram; What You Are Good At, What The World Needs and What You Can Get Paid For. Life is a complex meandering journey through strife and happiness, and just doing what you love will not always mean you will automatically live a fulfilling life. It needs to be balanced. Figuring out what you love is important, but the other aspects of Ikigai matter too.

For example, looking at what you can get paid for is important, because money allows you to do things and have things in life, money can be viewed as units of freedom, the more money you have the more freedom you have to do and have things. However, if you only think of yourself, in terms of what you love and what you can get paid for, this can mean others suffer so you can achieve personal goals. The amount of money we have does not equate to how happy we are, because we also need to have good, healthy relationships with other people too in order to be happy in life.

Figuring out what you love is a starting point, as is figuring out what the world needs, or what you are good at, or what you can get paid for. Trying to figure out what you were put on Earth to do is not straight forward, I recommend picking one of the areas of the Ikigai Venn diagram and start figuring out what that means to you and move around all four areas, and when you have a semblance of an answer for each area, then your Ikigai starts to take form and you are on your way to a fulfilling life.

This is, however, a life long pursuit; figuring out our life’s purpose can take a lifetime, and it will be different at different point in our life. So, don’t worry so much about having it all figured out. Start figuring it out and be open to the many, many possibilities that life has for us to explore and start exploring.

Book Recommendation: Ikigai by Justyn Barnes

Book Recommendation

Book Cover Image Source: Amazon UK

Ikigai Diagram Image Source: ontosomethingnew.org

Buy the book here

Why Read This Book

This is a book that will allow you to clearly figure what your purpose in life is. It is based on a Japanese concept that uses a Venn Diagram to dissect what you do and why you do it to figure out what you want out of life. If you are feeling stuck in a rut or lost in life, this is a must read.

Introduction
Aspects of Ikigai
What Are You Doing and Why?
What You Love
What The World Needs
What You Can Get Paid For
What Are You Good At
Finding Your Ikigai
Epilogue
Recommended Reading
Picture Credits

Summary

This book looks at our seven needs, everyday life and how we live longer when we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. It looks at how What You Love and What The World Needs blends to be our Mission, how What the World Needs and What You Can Get Paid for blends to be our Vocation, how What You Can Get Paid For and What You Are Good At blends to be our Profession and How What We Are Good at blends to be our Passion. The centre of all these is our Ikigai, it is a balance life, which incorporates our personal and professional endeavours. This book guides you through the process of completing your own Ikigai diagram to rethink your life.

Making The Most Of 2019

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“There is a plan and a purpose, a value to every life, no matter what its location, age, gender or disability.”
– Sharron Angle

Why new year resolutions are hard

At the first month of every year the same phrases are banded around, “new year, new you,” “make 2019 your year,” etc. It is also the time when we set new year resolutions that we rarely keep past the end of January. I think this is because we set resolutions that are picked from the collection of universal resolutions that are suggested by our culture. The key, I think, is not to find a resolution that we want to do, though this is important, but to figure out why we want to do it. Why do we want to lose the weight or give up smoking. What is our motivation?

Resolutions are typically hard to keep up, which is why we tend to give up on them a few weeks in. We will give up on anything that is hard unless there is a compelling reason to continue. This reason has to be either a serious one that affects our health or well-being if we don’t, or it is in alignment with our ‘why’, our reason for being.

Finding your purpose

The beginning of a new year is always a good time to take stock of our lives, look back at where we have been and decide on where we are going, but more important, I believe, is to figure out our why. This is a key component of living a fulfilling life. I recommend that you have a look at something called Ikigai, pronounced ikee-guy. This is a Japanese method of figuring out your priorities and motivations, to find your purpose for being.

It works by asking you to put things from your life into a Venn diagram with four categories and four cross-over areas.

I found it beneficial to start with What You Love, then What You Are Good At, then What You Can Be Paid For and finally What The World Needs. Then to fill in the things that fit both categories in the cross-over areas called Passion, Profession, Vocation and Mission. This order worked for me, but you can do it in any order you wish. The aim of Ikigai is to figure out what your passion, profession, vocation and mission are, and they should be based on deep self knowledge. Ikigai is achieved when all of these are aligned with each other in your life. It is the sweet spot of purpose and being.

Once you have found your Ikigai you will have your mission, your profession, your vocation and your passion. Whatever order you decide to complete you Ikigai Venn diagram in, I believe that our mission should be the driving force behind all areas of our lives, it is essentially our Why. Your profession is important because it is necessary to work, so you can pay your bills, but it also affords the biggest opportunity to bring your mission to life, because we spend most of our time each day working.

If you are going to set a goal for 2019, if you have not already, I would work through the process of figuring out your Ikigai and find one big change that you want to make, something embedded in your Ikigai. If you do, it will bring into view the metaphorical mountain that you are going to climb. The summit is your destination, your life’s purpose will show you a big achievement that you want to complete. Once you figure this out you will be at your base camp looking up at your mountain.

Finding a mountain to climb

Next, plot your path to the summit. Like all good mountain climbers, reverse engineer your journey from the summit back to the base camp and then get started. It is time to take the metaphorical mountain that you have been putting off or have not been aware of. Once you have a big 2019 goal don’t let yourself get in the way. Build rituals and habits that support your climb and jettison your unhelpful habits. And don’t forget to use your Ikigai Venn diagram as your compass, because every decision, your thoughts, speech and actions, should come from your Ikigai diagram.

This might all seem like a big undertaking, but remember, small steps count too, as long as you are going forwards. Draw on the support you have around you and find someone that you trust to share your big 2019 goal with, so they can be your accountability partner to keep you on track. Many believe that you only get one life, but even if you believe in reincarnation, it is best to make the most of this human life. I wish you good Ikigai my friends, so that you can live blessed lives in order to be a blessing to others.

Something to reflect on:

Purpose in life should be an equal balance of following our heart and making the world a better place than it was the day you were born into it.

Tag: Ikigai