What is your IKIGAI

IKIGAI is a Japanese concept that emphasizes on knowing the reason for your being. We all want to live a positive, healthy life, and strive at exploring the factor on how to achieve this well-being. The answer is simple, know your “IKIGAI”. The key to the happy life is knowing for yourself what makes your life worthy. This Japanese concept of IKIGAI is a beautiful pathway to identify the source of value in your life.
At some point in time, you would try to answer this question ‘what am I doing in my life?’, ‘what makes me feel happy?’, ‘what is my purpose of being?’. The journey to fetch the answer for these lingering questions most time ends up with the question itself and you continue traversing with your daily mundane. How lovely would it be to wake up in the morning to work and strive for achieving your life purpose? How eccentric it is to feel the positive energy in you bubbling to make the most of your day. Yes, to lead such an impactful life, it is essential to know your IKIGAI.

Know your IKIGAI

Here is a simple technique to discover your IKIGAI. All that you need to do is brainstorm what are the factors that drive you under each value concept in the IKIGAI. Well the caution is that your brain is certain to dangle during this discovery. The reason is, you are new to this self-analysis mode. However, keep yourself going at your pace and light your IKIGAI.

What you love

What are those ideal things in life that you love doing for the rest of your life? Those things for which you might not be paid hard cash, but you love to do. Here lies the Passion and Mission of your life. Let say I am passionate about writing blogs; it simply means that it is something I love doing it for the rest of my life.
Pick your passion and mission for your life from those factors that fall under the Love category.

What you can be paid for

We all play a certain role as a professional at work. The work may or might not be related to the curriculum you pursued, but over the period you develop certain expertise and are a professional. Those work roles are something that you are linearly paid for and the work niche that plays the vocation of your life. Figure out for yourself what are the niche skills you have and that becomes the vocation for your life. If your niche lies in landscape photography wherein you are a photographer by profession, then your vocation is landscape photography.

What you are good at

Sometimes what you love and what you are good at might be the same and at times different. Like for myself, I love to drive car, but I am not good at it. It sounds like you too 😊 Well, as humans, we most time live in the grey zone and not perfect white or complete black zone. Hence, our life aspects most times live in combination of one or more factors. Now, list all those factors that you are good at and then identify the passion that lies between what you love and what you are good at. Some of the factors that you love might need you to upskill in order to make yourself good at it and pursue whether as a passion or profession.

What the world needs

You believe in giving back to the community, the city, and the world you live in. Check for yourself what contribution of you does the world need to make a positive difference. Factors under mission and vocation are the key items that drive the fact of giving back to the world. Let say, your mission is on empowering the needy in your community, then it is something that the world needs as well. This is going to be your IKIGAI for mission.

IKIGAI expansion

Each of these items in the IKIGAI cycle is a union of all key modules in our life. Observe it closely, you see that the Passion, Mission, Vocation, and Profession that are the main ideologies in life are all driven by one or more factors. Most times, these factors are intersection of 2 factors in the IKIGAI discovery mechanism. Hence, it is very important for you to take your time, list out all the items under each of the sections such as what you love, what you good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. Next step is to, drill down to individual IKIGAI elements. For example, to identify the profession, you already know what you are good at and what you can be paid for. It is easier to choose your profession now. Similarly, do this exercise to uncover your Passion, Mission, and Vocation as well.

Finally, jot down the top items that you want to act right now in each aspect of your life. This way, the IKIGAI is ready for your life. I hope this blog is inspiring enough for you to unleash the IKIGAI potential for your life. Now, get on your toes and try out this method. Do share your comments, did your brain get jam packed while exercising this out or where you super-fast in getting to your IKIGAI. I would love to hear back from you.