Ikigai is a Japanese phrase meaning “life worth living” that has been absorbed into wester culture as a four lens tool through which to consider if your work is giving you want you need to be happy. As with many things like this, it’s a bit disputed. Summary by The World of Work Project
Ikigai
Ikigai, as generally accepted in the West, is held out to be a Japanese path towards personal fulfilment and wellbeing. While the version of Ikigai that has been absorbed into the western world’s career development toolkit might not be true to its underlying origins, it does tend to be interpreted and represented in a fairly consistent way in the west.
Per the Ikigai model, a fulfilling life is built on four components: What you love, what you are good at, what the world needs and what you can get paid for. These four components are typically shown as a four circle Venn diagram, with Ikigai itself occuring where they all overlap. Other areas of overlap have other names, but we’ve not included them in our diagram.
The Four Element of Ikigai
Ikigai is finding something that you can do with your time in this world that meets all four of these elements, which are fairly interconnected:
1 – You Love It:
What are the activities or pursuits that bring you joy and satisfaction? this element emphasizes the importance of following one’s passions, using ones strengths (overlapping with element 2), finding moments of flow in work and pursuing deeply held interests. The theory is that the more of this you have the easier it will be to sustain long-term motivation and happiness.
2 – You’re Are Good At It:
To find fulfilment in what you do, you need to be decent at it as well, for all kinds of reasons. This element is again about your core strengths, but it’s also about your skills, knowledge, competence, confidence, opportunity to perform and so on. It feels good to do things we’re good at, and to master new things and celebrate our ability to perform at a high level. Of course, it’s more likely we’ll actually get paid as well, if we’re good.
3 – The World Needs It:
Many people think that having a higher purpose (contributing to something larger than yourself) is a key part of happiness, so it’s no surprise that this pops up here too. Often this sense of purpose is linked to finding something that society needs, or which is valued by a section of society to such an extend that it feels meaningful. The view here is that this connection to a greater cause fosters a sense of purpose and contribution, boosting fulfilment and wellbeing.
4 – You Can Be Paid For It:
Gotta get those dollars, right?! It’s all well and good doing something you love, but it also needs to be sustainable, and that means that it supports your financial independence and wellbeing. To that end, to achieve Ikigai, you need to get paid too.
So how do you use Ikigai?
Well, it’s kind of straight forward. The theory is that you should appraise your career and your wider life through the lens of the four Ikigai elements and see which ones you are meeting, and which not.
From there, it’s a “simple” process of making changes to your life and career so that you bring all four elements into being. You don’t need to bring all the elements into your career, but the goal is to find balance in your life. So you might change career, or you might start a new hobby that fulfills some of the gap, if you find one.
Learning More
It might be worth learning more about Values in Actions Strengths, as well as reading up on purpose. Of course, self-awareness is a key part of this too, as is developing an understanding of your personal values.
Career drivers and anchors are other tools that can also help with framing what a good career looks like, and the PERMA model can help with a bit of subjective wellbeing too. On that vein, Laurie Santos’ free, online wellbeing course is also great and worth checking out.
You might also enjoy our podcast on happiness:
The World of Work Project View
We quite like the Ikigai model, and all the other models in this space. They can be helpful as diagnostic tools for assessing how things are going in our lives at the moment, as well as for suggesting changes that can lead to greater levels of wellbeing.
Sometimes though, we also think that acceptance is a helpful tool. Perhaps it’s less a case of changing the one you’re with, and more a case of learning to love the one you’re with. This might be classed as “cognitive crafting”, which is no bad thing.
Also – we think that knowing is not half the battle, as Laurie Santos so excellently says. Personal behaviour change is difficult for many reasons. To really change, we can’t just know about how we might want to change, we need to have a shift in our beliefs or perspectives, or take material actions that change our outcomes. Easier said than done…
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Sources and Feedback
We don’t have a specific source, this is just based on our conversations and workshops on this topic. Please do let us know if you know the original sources we should reference.
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