Ikigai: what it is and how to discover yours?
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Have you ever wondered what your life purpose is? If you still haven’t been able to find an answer, you need to discover Ikigai, a Japanese idea that offers a path to make finding your purpose easier, through 4 questions related to contribution and personal fulfillment.
You may have already read about it somewhere or perhaps you’ve seen the four-circle diagram, but after all, what really is Ikigai?
Formed by the combination of “iki,” which means “life,” and “gai,” which means “worthwhile,” Ikigai is a Japanese concept that helps with self-knowledge and the search for your life purpose and reason for being.
Ikigai states that purpose is any intense and transformative activity you can bring to the world as a form of contribution and still be rewarded for it. As we mentioned at the beginning of the text, discovering your purpose according to Ikigai can be done through 4 questions, which are:
What do you love?
Your Ikigai should be something you enjoy doing. Think of anything that makes you feel good, something you would gladly do at any time.
At this stage, you should think about what tends to boost your dopamine levels. You know that thing you always do for pleasure in the blink of an eye? It can be as simple as a hobby you really enjoy doing, such as writing, creating videos, taking photos, painting, dancing, baking, or even collecting stamps.
What are you good at?
Another thing that can help you get closer to finding your ikigai is discovering what you are, or would like to be, good at.
Is there something you naturally excel at? Something you can do effortlessly or are considered an expert at? Or perhaps there’s something you’re willing to learn by doing, something you’ve strived to learn by doing, or worked hard to achieve?
It might be a skill you’ve spent years perfecting, such as videography, public speaking, fashion design, marketing, or even computer programming;
What can you be paid or rewarded for?
To find your ikigai, you should also know what you can be financially rewarded for. Keep in mind that, to survive, we need to earn money to support our needs and daily expenses.
Thus, your ikigai should ideally be something that can pay you. It’s not enough that you just love what you do or that you’re good at it; it also matters that you are properly compensated for it.
What does the world need?
The fourth question to find your Ikigai is something the world, or a community, needs. Knowing that what we do helps make the world we live in a better place makes us feel good.
This makes us feel that we are playing an important role in our community. Nowadays, one reason many people are not happy with what they do is because they don’t always see the value in what they do.
Knowing that your work can change other people’s lives can help you get closer to finding your ikigai.
A great way to visualize all your answers is to put them in the Ikigai diagram itself. That way, you’ll be able to discover what you can do daily to reach your life purpose.
Now that you know what’s needed to find your ikigai, you can start analyzing what those four components are in your life.
