Ikigai – A Japanese Concept We Should All Explore

As you may suspect, the word “ikigai” is Japanese and it’s one of those words that doesn’t really have a precise translation.

Ikigai is a compound word, being made up of “iki”, which means life, and “kai” (or, sometimes, “gai”), which means effect, result, fruit, worth, use, or benefit, and it’s best approximated by the phrase “reason for being” (or “raison d’être as the French would say), the “reason you get up in the morning”, or a feeling of happiness you get simply from being alive.

It’s worth noting that the English word “life” has two distinct meanings:

1. Lifetime – i.e. the period from birth to death.
2. Everyday life.

In Japanese, these two meanings translate as two different words, and the concept of ikigai is more appropriately represented by the “day-to-day life” meaning.

According to the Japanese, everybody has an ikigai – whether you’ve found it yet or not.

It appears that this concept originated in Okinawa, which is a chain of over 100 islands to the southwest of the major island on which Tokyo is situated.

Interestingly, Okinawa is renowned for the longevity of its inhabitants.

Similar concepts appear in other cultures too, who also share the trait of living longer than average.

And while eating a healthy diet is a major factor when it comes to health and longevity, it is posited that happiness too plays a significant role.

Four Factors

In its most popular form, ikigai is the intersection of four factors:

1. What you love – which is your passion.
2. What you are good at – which is your vocation.
3. What the world needs – which is your mission.
4. What you can get paid for – which is your profession.

The following diagram is a neat summary of the above four concepts:

Note, however, a strict Japanese interpretation may omit the profession part of it – i.e. it needn’t have anything to do with how you make your money.

Like most things in life, however, knowing what your ikigai is will not help you unless you do something about it. In other words, you need to put it into action.

For some, their work will be the reason they get up in the morning – and not just from an earning money and paying the bills perspective.

This can be why retirement is so difficult for such people.

My father was a case in point.

He had no real interests or hobbies, and most of his weekend was spent doing business-related activities, so when I was forced to shut his business down shortly after his wife (and my mother) died, because he was no longer fit to run it, he became an empty shell of a man.

No matter what we suggested, even activities he’d enjoyed with my mum (e.g. playing cribbage), he simply didn’t know how to engage with life any longer, because he’d had nothing but the business he’d owned and run for the previous 30+ years.

But for those who derive their reason for living outside of their work, finding your ikigai can bring you immense pleasure and happiness.

If you look at the other three factors, you can see why they are important.

They say that doing something you love doesn’t feel like work at all, and let’s face it, given a choice, who would pick something they don’t enjoy over something they do?

As for doing what you’re good at, there are two aspects to this – talents and skills.

Talents (sometimes referred to as strengths) are innate, and remain fairly static over the course of your life, while skills can be learned.

Every job requires some degree of skills, regardless of what they say – even “unskilled” labourers have skills.

If you want proof of this, watch a show such as Undercover Boss, where the CEO / owner of a company (or another person from the senior management team in some cases) goes out and tries to do the jobs that some of their lowest-paid workers do.

In almost every case, they make a complete mess of it – because they haven’t yet learned the necessary skills.

So while people are often happy to spend time learning a new skill because of the pay-off later, in general, would you rather spend your life doing things you’re good at or things you’re bad at?

And lastly, what the world needs.

This is an interesting one because one of the key motivators, especially at work, is doing something that makes a positive difference to others.

During my many years working for a major British bank, I spent a lot of time talking to, sitting with, and working with, people in the customer service department, and without exception, they all wanted to do a good job, answering customers’ questions and solving their problems, to the best of their ability.

But they were frustrated – partly because of inadequate computer systems, and partly because they were only allowed to spend a limited amount of time on the phone with each customer before they were forced to end the call and hand the problem off to another department, regardless of whether the customer’s request had been satisfied or not.

Solving customers’ problems was making a difference (although in an ideal world, of course, no company would need a customer service department, but in the real world, where we live, perfect almost never exists) and it was difficult to keep these staff motivated when they knew they would not be able to solve those problems in many cases.

Putting these three together – finding something you love doing that you’re good at and that helps others – is clearly a recipe for happiness.

And if you can get paid for doing that, so much the better, but as I said above, it’s not necessary.

You can be happy and look forward to getting up each morning without the financial compensation part.

Tips On How To Discover Your Ikigai

Other than what I’ve discussed above, here are a few more suggestions to help you find your passion:

1. As part of this, you need to understand what it is that you care deeply about, and what principles you want to live your life by. (This is something I go into in more detail on here).
2. Don’t overthink it, and get out there and do something. You may need to try various activities before you find the one that resonates best with you.
3. Try to discuss your ideas with others who share your passion, because they can provide you with the benefit of their experience. They may, for example, highlight areas where help is most needed, or factors you had not considered that might make you realize it’s not the right passion for you after all.
4. Accept that you probably won’t find your passion at the first attempt, and that there are likely going to be setbacks and bumps in the road along the way.
5. It has been suggested that asking children what they want to do when they leave school is the wrong question, and that asking them what problem(s) they want to solve is a better one. The same applies to all of us – think about problems you would like to solve, and use that as a clue to where your real passion lies.
6. Consider using your curiosity to derive your ikigai. What is it that you really want to know more about (or even become an expert in)?

Scope

Just because you have identified what you think your ikigai is, that does not mean you can only go all in.

For example, you feel that ending world hunger is what you should do with your life – and yet it’s a massive goal, so massive that you may become discouraged before you even start.

But what you can do is try to make a difference locally – help out at the soup kitchen, pay it forward at coffee shops and restaurants, make food for neighbours or family or friends who are struggling at the moment.

Not only will this approach me motivational for you, because you will be making a difference in some people’s lives (and often people you know or have at least met), but it will give you the experience to try to tackle larger projects down the line.

Online Test

There’s actually an online assessment you can take to help discover your own ikigai, which you can find here.

For purely research purposes, since at 60 it may be a bit late to worry about this, I took the test, which needs about 10 – 15 minutes of your time.

The following image is the results I received – it’s basically a screenshot of the page, which you can click and open in a new browser tab / window, where you will be able to see it better (or download it).

Overall, the assessment is probably not far off the mark.

The basic test is free, but you don’t get to see your ikigai (i.e. the recommendation in the centre of the Venn diagram near the top) unless you either share your results page on social media, or you pay a small amount.

I chose to share it, which brought the cost of the Pro Results down from $9.99 to $4.99, which I did, although I’m not exactly clear what the difference is. (These also have a $199 mentor option, but I didn’t look into that at all.)

It’s worth a go, at least for free, but I think you would be better off creating the lists yourself, as outlined above, and then using those to help define your own ikigai.

Conclusion

Ikigai is just the sort of concept you’d expect to be rooted in Japanese culture, and yet it seems to be foreign to many in the western world, where happiness appears to be more of a destination than a journey.

Of course, consumerism raises its ugly head here too – people are led to believe that buying things (which they may or more likely may not need), whether it’s something new or “better”, is the route to happiness.

Sooner or later, people recognize that this is not the way to go, which is why ikigai is such a refreshing concept, letting you focus on the things you love, that you’re good at, and that can help make the world a better place (for one person or the entire world).

And while the Japanese say that we all have our ikigai, even if you have trouble finding it, the journey of self-discovery alone will provide its own set of benefits.

Finally, I get that most of us have to do something to pay the bills, but we shouldn’t feel we need to be defined by the work we get paid for. We are usually all tired after a day at work, whether that’s in an office, a store, doing manual labour outdoors or in a factory, or whatever, but we do have a choice – we can either sit down in front of the television and zone out, or we can do something that engages us in a more active way, such as our ikigai.

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Blue Zones
2. Ikigai
3. Ikigai Test
4. StrengthsFinder Book