Finding Our Purpose – the four steps of Ikigai

The Switched ON Community looks far and wide for wisdom, so it was with great excitement and enthusiasm that I’ve come across Ikigai, a Japanese philosophy that loosely translates as finding our purpose in life.

Discovering our life purpose, and then working to achieve that purpose, is just about the perfect elevator pitch to describe our definition of Switched ON.

Ikigai has the dual ambition to change our mindsets and change our circumstances – each of us pursuing our passion as our profession, entering a sustainable ‘flow’ mindset, and connecting with the rest of the world as a useful and valuable member.

Ikigai contrasts living a life of purpose and value with the misery of working at a job we loathe, and the attendant psychological and physical health wrought by depression, disappointment and disillusionment.

This short video from Einzelgänger breaks down Ikigai into its 4 dimensions:

·        identify what we’re good at

·        it must be something we love to do

·        it must be something the world needs

·        it must be something we get paid to do.

What’s especially appealing and novel to me about this interpretation of Ikigai are points 3 and 4. As the narrator says, even the most dim-witted of us can realise that it’s better if we focus our lives on what we’re good at and what we love doing (dimensions 1 and 2).

But to tie our passionate pursuit so explicitly to the wellbeing of the world makes perfect, holistic sense. It aligns us with our society and our environment and fosters synchronicity between our passion, our mission, our vocation and our profession.

I also like the idea that our passions should become our careers. It draws a clear distinction between our profession and our hobbies and reinforces the idea that we should become masters at our passion rather than wasting time on tasks we’re no good at and / or don’t enjoy.

The two other characteristics of Ikigai that I believe will appeal to the Switched ON Community are that it forces us to hone our instincts – and to act on them – as we discern what exactly our life purpose should be.

The other is its in-built review mechanism – to adopt an Ikigai approach means we’re constantly reviewing our lives and what we think, what we know, what we do and why we do it.

In the Switched ON World, once we Switch OFF, we start to wither.

For more information about Ikigai, here’s links to a video from the Philosophies for Life series and the book mentioned in the Philosophies for Life video, Ikigai - Japanese secret to a long and happy life by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles