Know Thy Path to Your IKIGAI

There are broadly two kinds of people these days.

1. One says: “Life is not easy! I need to work hard & smart! Not give up. A path will emerge.”
2. Other says: “Life is not easy! I am feeling low. I can’t do anything anymore to change it. I expect someone else to solve things for me.”

Both have the same starting context. But their defined actions vary!

Two factors drive the defined actions for any individual:

1. Expected rewards (outcome)
2. Committed efforts (inputs)

Everyone wants to maximize the rewards for themselves while incurring minimum effort. That’s the basic Optimization problem. But is the objective to achieve as much of expected rewards as possible or minimize efforts as much as possible. Every individual needs to decide the value of these two factors for themselves & act accordingly. May be the values will change as well with time as the individual gains more experience/wisdom & evolves economically / mentally / socially and hence, revisiting these for yourself every now & then is quintessential.

“I want to work an INR 1 Cr annual job & I want to work 9 to 6 every day.”

“I want to work a corporate job but I should not have pressure of targets.”

“I want to work a job but there should not be any review meetings.”

“I want to study what I am not sure I like and is very demanding but I want to be happy.”

No one gets anything in life for easy. Someone, somewhere slogged in life to create an opportunity which today seems “easy”. Even Sunny Deol’s son was bullied at school. Even Ambani kids have the pressure of maintaining their group’s stellar track record of success every time.

The important thing thus is:

1. Knowing where do you stand on those two factors & what is your optimization path
2. Having an open communication with your economic key stakeholders (family on whom you are / were financially dependent & who will be financially dependent on you today / tomorrow) about your views on the two factors

This will naturally enable the person to change life decisions, change career track, change life track as & when needed. Not everyone can do everything. You might be good at many things, but you might not like to do most of those things. It is important to spend time to identify your IKIGAI – define a path towards that IKIGAI – work towards the same – review it often.

Learning to articulate your thoughts rationally about the above subject without feeling hesitant or struggling to express is key.

A high degree of social, emotional & communication skills are needed for the same. We need to be teaching these proactively & not hope that it will happen accidently.