Ikigai – find your purpose

I recently had the good fortune of a long (enforced) hospital stay. Fortunately, I started my working life in hospitals and have worked in many. You could say that I am very comfortable in hospitals and I love hospital people.

During my recent incarceration, I spent my days phasing in and out of consciousness (due to my injuries), intermittent alertness replacing opioid-induced stupor in a frustrating cycle on the road to recovery. After the first few days my wife brought me my laptop – with a view to my watching movies and browsing the internet during my more alert/lucid moments.

At some point I must have started using the laptop to write. I say ‘must-have’ because I have no recollection of writing. Nevertheless, after a few weeks it seems I had generated quite a few pages of thoughts and anecdotes (over the last few weeks I have been posting these on Linked-in and on the Niche Facebook page). What the break from running my business allowed me to do was re-discover a forgotten pleasure – a love for writing. Having my jaws wired together may also go some way to explaining my need to to write.

Along with a variety of blogs and articles I created sketches, lists, Microsoft PowerPoint slides and plans – with little awareness of what I was doing. Noting my child-like enjoyment, my wife bought me the book ‘Ikigai’ by Héctor Garcia and Francesc Miralles. 

Ikigai is a phrase that the Okinawan community in Japan coined to define ‘purpose’. There is no standard definition of a single persons ikigai, it is beautifully unique for all of us. Our personal ikigai embodies our ‘identity’ the deep reason or meaning behind why we do – what we do. It is believed that once we have achieved the level of awareness necessary to define our ikigai, we become more capable to triumph over adversity. Our personal ikigai gives us clear and concise direction in the face of the most harrowing adversities.

Now, I am not necessarily ‘bought-into’ the concept that when you have found your ikigai, it provides us a guiding light for overcoming fear and uncertainty. However, 5 months on from my accident and I feel I have little by way of mental scars associated with my latest trauma – apart, perhaps, from when I had the drains removed from my head (yuck!).

According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai. To find it often requires a deep enquiry and lengthy ‘search of self’ – a search that is highly regarded in Japanese culture. What is your personal ikigai? What gives your life meaning? What is your internal alarm clock that gets you out of bed in the morning?

…don’t be heroic in your answer to others – be real in your answer to yourself.

The term ikigai is composed of two Japanese words: iki referring to life, and gai, which roughly means ‘the realisation of what one expects and hopes for’. You find it at the convergence of four primary elements:

• What you love (your passion)
• What the world needs (your mission)
• What you are good at (your vocation)
• What you can get paid for (your profession)

Where these four elements overlap and is seen as the source of value or what make one’s life truly worthwhile. Interestingly, while it incorporates the financial aspects of life, ikigai is more often used to refer to the mental and spiritual state behind our circumstance as opposed to our current economic status. Having focused on ensuring everyone in Niche gets their mortgages paid for the last 20 years. I had lost my sense of ikigai.

Historically, we have marked points in the lives of individuals that honour the question of purpose through ceremony, vision-quests and rites of passage. We have done this to help us engage with the essential role that we will eventually play in the greater ‘tribe’. For example, in the past we would often serve a period of apprenticeship – where eventual qualification would be recognized by a form of initiation into ‘the craft’. In modern times this has been reflected in ceremonies where we are given certificates recognizing matriculation and/or qualification.

In the modern age, our decisions around life-focus unfold in a more reactionary way, propelling us into educational, professional and life-directional paths based less on deep inner calling or soul-inspired vision, and more on societal expectations so – called ‘practical reality’ and what is required to survive in the systems we’ve created to live in; just like I had done. How do we peel back the layers and discover why (as individuals) we are here and what we are really supposed to be doing?

First, don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. While each of these viewpoints are compelling in their own right, whether we are following our love, our heartache, or some single aspect of life that which makes us come alive (or a combination of all three!). All of us (or at least many of us) need to follow a career that pays the bills and cover the basic necessities of life. So how do we balance these factors to create a life which is meaningful, purposeful and aligned with our true calling? Is it possible to tick all the boxes? The essence of ikigai gives us a framework to meld these elements into a cohesive whole.

The world we live in changes at a rate many of us find difficult to keep up with. Today’s graduates cannot expect to work in the same field all their lives and it is frequently cited that the majority of jobs our children will be doing in 10 years time have not yet been invented. Will machines and artificial intelligence eventually do away with all jobs? If so and what effect will that have on the human condition? More and more people are feeling the call to align their skills and gifts with a higher cause or sense of contribution. Perhaps you can find a way to channel things you love in directions of positive life changes (but without the intervention of major head trauma). You could start by taking a moment to draw your own version of the overlapping circles of the ikigai symbol and consider the following:

• What do you Love and what allows you to release your inner child’s glee for doing something that thrills you?
• What unique skills do you have that come most naturally to you? What talents have you cultivated and what are you great at, even when you are not trying?
• What cause do you believe in? What breaks your heart or pulls at your gut? What would you give your life for?
• What service, value or offering could you bring to the world that creates real value for others?

Take a few minutes to write down your thoughts for each component of the ikigai blueprint. Look for areas of natural overlap. Reflect on the sum total of these elements and how they may relate to each other. Bring yourself quietly to the centre of the circles and leave space in your mind for whatever impulse or calling may emerge naturally…

Dr Tim Hardman is Managing Director of Niche Science & Technology Ltd., a bespoke services CRO based in the UK. He is also Chairman of the Association of Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry and an occasional commentator on science, business and the process of drug development.