ikigai

I can’t exactly remember where I first came across this concept, but it was probably via a bullet journal person. I started this style of journalling in 2017 after falling in love with all the gorgeous spreads people came up with, so since then I’ve always started a new journal with the so-called ikigai Venn diagram as you can see from my current book;

I drew it out, thought about the fact it instinctively made sense to me, then I didn’t tangibly do anything with that. I have no idea how it has taken me over 6 years to spot this anomaly and realise I’m probably missing a trick here!

So for the past few months I have been reading up extensively on this topic, reviewing resources that I’ve found and looking at how to create a meaningful process to help unearth my own ikigai, which I hope may help others too!

I think developing approaches to identify your very best answers for each of the four buckets is by no means straight forward, never mind clever ways to look for the intersections between them all if you have been able to come up with some answers;

  • WHAT YOU LOVE

  • WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS

  • WHAT YOU ARE GOOD AT

  • WHAT YOU CAN BE PAID FOR

I also discovered Ken Mogi who is an amazing thinker, his book on ikigai is fab if you get a chance, but he also shares his wisdom on YouTube, I recommend watching this short video as he introduces his 5 pillars to ikigai ;

So they are;

  1. Pillar 1: Starting small

  2. Pillar 2: Releasing yourself

  3. Pillar 3: Harmony and sustainability

  4. Pillar 4: The joy of little things

  5. Pillar 5: Being in the here and now

So now we have 4 buckets AND 5 pillars to consider, how do we weave together exercises and practices that make sense of all of this?

I’m thinking that there are probably a few things I can pull together for this, a series of exercises that you may want to do as part of your year end/year in review/setting next years goals type planning. A lot of us like to do this in an analogue way, handwriting has been found to lead to a stronger conceptual understanding, improved focus, and better memory recall compared to typing. So perhaps printables or even a semi structured printed journal, or stickers to paste into your own planner. I also think that human coaching alongside AI pattern spotting could lead to some interesting app and community ideas too. I will create some ideas and test them out, I’m really excited to hear from you if you have ideas for this as it would be lovely to collaborate!

Oh and to save you having to look it up, here is a definition from wikipedia;

Meaning and etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ikigai as "a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living". More generally it may refer to something that brings pleasure or fulfilment.

The term compounds two Japanese words: iki (生き, meaning 'life; alive') and kai (甲斐, meaning '(an) effect; (a) result; (a) fruit; (a) worth; (a) use; (a) benefit; (no, little) avail') (sequentially voiced as gai), to arrive at 'a reason for living [being alive]; a meaning for [to] life; what [something that] makes life worth living; a 'raison d'être'.

I’ll update this page over time as and when I come to any conclusions or come across new cool stuff!

Sarah, Seeking Ikigai xxx

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