If you have searched for “Ikigai” in the World Wide Web, you are most likely to be confronted by the famous Venn diagram. A mingling of your passion, mission, profession, and vocation. When I saw this for the first time, it got me thinking… wouldn’t that be perfect, I thought? The diagram implied that all these four have to come together to find your sweet spot, your Ikigai. Right? Wrong!
This definition, although clever, is “Not IKIGAI.”
The term Ikigai became popular when Dan Buettner’s 2009 TEDx Talk, went viral. In the talk and the book that followed Dan, a National Geographic writer and explorer discusses the world’s longest-lived peoples, distilling their secrets into a single plan for health and long life. He or those before him who wrote on Ikigai never presented this idea.
So where did this Venn diagram representation of ikigai come from? In 2014, almost 5 years after the TEDx talk, a blogger named Marc Winn wrote a small blog, titled ‘What is your Ikigai?’. The blog starts like this “According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai. An ikigai is essentially ‘a reason to get up in the morning’. A reason to enjoy life.” Marc, who was likely inspired by his newfound purpose in life, had heard about the term Ikigai – from the TEDx talk; he had also come across this picture on the concept of purpose by Andrés Zuzunaga. So, what was Marc’s contribution? He changed one word, replacing “purpose” (red * in the image below) with “Ikigai”. As Marc himself put it in a later blog, “The sum total of my effort was that I changed one word on a diagram and shared a ‘new’ meme with the world.” This meme by Marc stuck, and Ikigai soon became the darling of the masses. The reason it became popular was because it aligns with the philosophy of the west, which is to have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, while retaining the mysticism of the east defined by being in service to others.
This interpretation is however limited. The Japanese term Ikigai – is not about finding your sweet spot – it is much deeper than that. It is about finding the inner meaning of living or that which makes one’s life significant.
As another blogger put it, “Finding the answers and a balance between these four areas could be a route to Ikigai for Westerners looking for a quick interpretation of this philosophy. But in Japan, Ikigai is a slower process and often has nothing to do with work or income.” In another twist to this story, it turns out that Andrés’s picture on the concept of purpose resembles the hedgehog that Jim Collins popularized in his book from Good to Great. Though it was initially meant for organizations, he later adapted it for individuals. What Andrés added was the fourth circle on “mission” – what the world needs.
For me, Ikigai is best summed up by the 2011 Netflix documentary “Jiro dreams of Sushi.” The protagonist, Jiro Ono, a Michelin 3-star chef and proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, has spent his entire life trying to perfect the art of Sushi. That is ikigai for him.
While the quest to search for meaning in life is important, it should not become the pursuit of your life. At some point, you should tether yourself and find purpose in what you do. As Paul Millerd explains in his book “Pathless Path,” experimenting on your own to find a life you want to live, rather than “getting ahead” on a script others follow (default path), could be your blueprint to finding your purpose.
However, I believe that whatever is thrown at you, if you take it up with passion and zest, then you are sure to find your purpose. Defining yourself by what you can do will instead constrain you and make it difficult to find your purpose. Despite its misrepresentations and although conceived at the spur of the moment, the Venn diagram of Ikigai makes sense to me. But not in the traditional sense of finding your passion and what you are good at, and then finding someone to pay you for doing it. Instead, find a vocation that helps with a broader mission and put your heart and soul into it. Once you taste satisfaction in that success, it will lead to self-realization of what you are good at and eventually your passion. Finding your purpose is never a linear path; it is a tortuous path.