Many of you might be familiar with the Japanese concept of 'ikigai' - or we could call it an approach to life - and many of you might think it's overused. But I have chosen it as a central element of my coaching practice for a reason. This is what I would like to share in this article and I hope to shed some light on another aspect of this personal development tool, also known as the Japanese secret to longevity.
Ikigai in Japanese means the meaning of life or the reason for our existence (ikiru in Japanese means life and kai means the fulfillment of a desire) and it consists of the following four dimensions:
What I am good at;
What I love doing;
What I can get paid for;
What the world needs.
This approach to life is also interesting because in the Blue Zones, which have been shown to have lower rates of chronic disease and the highest proportion of people over 100, people have been found to have a strong correlation between living a long and healthy life and finding their ikigai. This may suggest that if we are "in our center" and we are able to maintain this state of mind, we can significantly contribute to the number of years of our life and the quality of our last years or decades. (If you want to learn more about Blue Zones, I recommend this Netflix documentary.)
What I wanted to touch upon, however, is the "what the world needs" dimension of ikigai. For me, this is where career coaching meets sustainability - or in more fashionable terms, regeneration. What kind of world would we live in if everyone did what they loved to do, what they were good at, what they would be paid for, but on top of that, what they were doing would be aimed at making the world a better place?
This is what I would like to focus on in my own work. I believe that the most complex and pressing environmental and social challenges we are facing cannot be solved in any other way - and we cannot afford not to address them in our professional lives.
A coaching process is a great way to help you identify your strengths and areas for improvement, to find the activity that can become your vocation and, if you have these, there is a good chance that there will be a paying demand for it. In addition to this, I want to support you in the thought process of complementing these with a cause that is important to you, that you are passionate about and with which you can make a positive impact on a community and ultimately on society as a whole. This could be called legacy, but in my opinion it is much more than that, as you can already see the benefits of it in your own life and in the lives of those around you.
"He who helps others helps himself. Because when you lift others up, you lift yourself up." - Buddha
Ikigai can be seen as an overused personal development tool, but if we understand its deeper message, we will not only feel its impact in our own lives, but we can contribute in our own way to making the world a better place - which will reflect back on us and reinforce our sense of being at our centre and finding meaning in life.
Comments