🌸 ikigai 生き甲斐 is a reason for being, your purpose in life - from the Japanese iki 生き meaning life and gai 甲斐 meaning worth 🌸
I just deleted an entire essay draft. Again.
This happens more often than you might think. I'll get halfway through writing something and realise it's just not hitting the mark.
Not helpful enough. Not me enough.
But I'm not frustrated. Well, okay, maybe a tiny bit *grin* I'm mostly fascinated by my evolving ability to recognise when something isn't salvageable.
If you’re rolling your eyes, I get it. Why should anyone care? But stick with me, there’s a lesson in it that goes beyond the usual “you learn from mistakes” platitude.
This 'sensing and correcting' is a form of intelligence that's far more valuable than getting it right first time. Real life rarely has a flawless blueprint or map, we are like boats bobbing in turbulent waters, constantly adjusting course.
I've been inspired heaps by Dan Koe's essay How To Join The Top 1% Of Intelligence his words really struck a chord with me;
"You can judge intelligence based on the system's ability to iterate and persist with trial and error. A ship blown off course that corrects toward its destination."
That being “smart” in the traditional sense, acing tests or knowing random facts, isn’t actually *that* clever in practice. More important is recognising when to pivot and having the resilience to keep going. It’s the intelligence of iteration.
This is important for our approach to finding ikigai, knowing in our bones we need to adjust our course as we go.
Redefining intelligence
I swing from feeling really clever (I devour new stuff constantly) to feeling really thick (am I the most gullible and easily led person by a clever argument?), often several times on the exact same day, ahem!
Why do we mostly equate being smart with IQ tests and good grades?
The intelligence that helps us find and live our ikigai comes from a different source; our ability to learn, adapt and grow from experience.
I used to believe I needed to have everything figured out before I could start pretty much anything. That somehow if I just thought hard enough, read enough books or made enough plans I'd discover my perfect path.
But that's not how life works is it?
Real growth comes from trying things, noticing what works (and what doesn't), and adjusting accordingly. It's being brave enough to experiment and wise enough to learn from the results.
Think about how a ship navigates, not a single course blindly followed. Instead, it's constant tiny adjustments based on wind, waves and weather. Our journey to purpose works the same way.
This isn't just my opinion. Cybernetics (fancy word for how living or artificial systems regulate and adapt) teaches us that intelligence is fundamentally about iteration and resilience. It’s about taking an action, observing the outcome and making adjustments based on what was learned.
I chuckle when people seemingly dismiss AI as being ‘just a prediction engine’ as if humans aren’t also constantly engaged in prediction. We navigate life by anticipating what’s likely to happen next, drawing on patterns we’ve internalised from past experiences. So immersed in these processes that we rarely notice them.
Just like AI, we rely on complex pattern recognition and feedback loops to make sense of the world and refine our actions.
As humans our magic isn’t in the predicting, it’s in the learning and adaptive shifts we make when those predictions fall short.
The feedback loop of life
Our journey toward ikigai isn’t linear. It’s a self-correcting process;
Acting: Taking steps toward what we think might be our purpose
Sensing: Noticing how those actions feel and what results they bring
Comparing: Checking if we're moving closer to or further from our goals
Understanding: Gaining deeper insights about ourselves and our path
When I began this Seeking Ikigai journey, I had no idea where it would lead. Each small step teaching me something about who I am and what truly matters.
Small experiments and imperfect tries revealing what resonates and what falls flat. Case in point; my most popular YouTube upload to date was a spontaneous hair-cutting video I posted without any strategy. The response taught me that authenticity trumps polish as it ended up reaching hundreds of thousands of people! A genuine desire to help others often resonates more than perfectly polished content, a lesson I couldn't have properly learned without seeing the results for myself.
Your brain on purpose; the meta-view of learning to learn
The beautiful thing about seeking ikigai is that it helps you to practise and develop this kind of intelligence. The four elements I am drawn to in hatarakigai; what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs and what you can be paid for - create a self-correcting system.
When these elements are out of alignment, we FEEL it. That discomfort is a form of intelligence, it's our internal GPS telling us we need to adjust course.
Exploring our unique intersection of traits and interests and seeing how that can be woven into helping the world and making money takes time and effort.
One of the most powerful things we can do is occasionally step back and look at our lives from a higher perspective. I love using my bullet journal for this, it helps me spot patterns I might miss in the day-to-dayness of a busy world.
Your iterative toolkit - Here are some practical things to think about when developing this intelligence;
Learning Logs; Track what you try, what works, and what doesn’t.
Pattern Recognition; Note recurring themes or emotions in your experiences.
Course Correction Pages; Record when you’ve changed direction and why.
Meta-Awareness Prompts; Regularly ask, “Am I growing and adapting?”
The intelligence of joy
If you’re tired of hearing that “mistakes are lessons,” let me reframe it. Mistakes aren’t lessons, they’re data points. The more we collect, the clearer our path becomes. Each wrong turn refines our understanding of what brings us closer to our ikigai.
The more we embrace this intelligence, the more joy we find. Why? Because we stop seeing mistakes as failures and start recognising them as the map guiding us.
Each "wrong turn" becomes valuable information guiding you toward your true path.
Your ikigai journey is uniquely yours. The goal isn’t to replicate someone else’s path but to keep iterating until you find what works for you.
You don't need to be the smartest person in the room to live a purposeful life. You need to be willing to learn, adapt and keep moving forward.
So, what small experiment will you try this week? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. How do you learn and adapt on your journey? What signals help you know when you're on or off course?
Sarah, seeking ikigai xxx
P.S. Ever heard Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)? It feels right for this moment, to remember our aim is JOY, to have the time of our lives. Have a listen and think about your own journey of iteration.
PPS - Here are some bonus journal ideas to help you embrace this iterative approach;
Ikigai iteration spread - Keep a list of small experiments you could try related to something you're curious or passionate about, dip into it every month.
Feedback Log - Create a spread to track how different activities make you feel, what patterns do you notice?
Adjustment Tracker - Note down what you've learned from recent "mistakes" and how you might adjust going forward.
Meta-Reflection - Once a month, step back and look at your journey. What bigger patterns are emerging?