How to Discover Your Ikigai

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that combines the terms iki, meaning “alive” or “life,” and gai, meaning “benefit” or “worth.” In combination, it refers to your life’s worth or its purpose. It’s a new-to-me term I recently picked up in a piece from Positive Psychology. And in this moment it resonated with me big time.

 

Who isn’t on a hunt for purpose these days? We’ve talked and talked about the Great Resignation as people have continued to leave their jobs, noting a feeling of “meh” at work. They want something more.

 

And now that resignation may be evolving into the Great Sabbatical, as Danica Lo notes in her recent Fast Company piece on the subject.

 

Lo shares this quote from DJ DiDonna of The Sabbatical Project: “The pandemic is forcing people to make a change and to think about life and about themselves in a way they probably wouldn’t have ever done normally—about how precious and short life and our time is.”

 

If you’re one of the many who is searching or longing, then let’s talk about how you might tap into your personal Ikigai.

The components of Ikigai

A person’s Ikigai is made up of four key elements:

 

• What you love: your personal preferences

• What you’re good at: your skills and talents

• What the world needs: a space for your skills and talents 

• What you can get paid for: the commercial viability of that “stuff”

 

By exploring these four areas with a sense of curiosity and wonder, you may pick up some important insights about yourself. It’s more art than science—there’s no precise formula. And your answers will likely evolve over time. But just start where you are.

 

I realize I’ve done much of this work myself over the years. And I’d love to share some of my own insights to see if they might help trigger a set of your own.

What you love

My first post-grad school job was with a company offering a management rotation program. I accepted because frankly, I had no idea what I wanted to do. And this felt like a professional tasting menu.

 

I stayed with that company for five years, having full responsibility for an entire department soup-to-nuts. I was accountable for operations, execution, inventory, people, budgets, and more.

 

I was...

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