Behind the Scenes of Ikigai
There are some Japanese words that immediately grab the attention of our western minds such as Kintsugi (here is a video by us), Wabi-Sabi and many others. Besides the beauty associated with them, they also come along with a magical philosophical touch. One of the most famous examples is “Ikigai”. Ikigai is a Japanese social concept and philosophy on how to approach a meaningful life.
Over the last years, the topic of Ikigai gained more and more attention as people are amazed by the mental happiness of aging Japanese citizens and their will to work their whole lifetime.
A wonderful example is probably the most famous Sushi Chef Jiro Ono.
„Even with 95 years of age, I do not feel like retiring.“ – Jiro Ono
In our western perception, Ikigai is used in sense-making, purpose finding and other activities that guarantee a sense of fulfillment and a profitable life. This concept became so widespread that it began to get incorporated in many purpose-finding seminars, books and coaching sessions.
The IKIGAI Venn diagram is a Spanish invention
Did you know, that the widely spread westernized Venn diagram was an invention by a Spanish astrologer and author André Zuzunaga? He is the original creator of the purpose Venn diagram model. He doesn’t get a lot of credit for this, but he published this diagram in 2012 and called it “proposito”. His leading question for the Venn diagram was: “What would you do if you were not afraid?” (¿Qué harías si no tuvieras miedo?).
It was subsequently translated into English on thousands of websites and millions of social media posts. Zuzunaga’s Venn diagram ended up being associated with the Ikigai concept in TED talks, although the Japanese philosophy is centuries older and was never associated with this graphic.
The diagram asks questions centered around one’s talents, passion, mission and the like. The idea behind this is that discovering your passion invokes an intrinsic motivation when aligned with your values and mission.
We are constantly searching for direction and purpose in our personal and work lives, and that’s how many of us stumble on the IKIGAI as a concept for career advice as you would find on Skillshare. Another great example is the workshop by Chris Do. “How To Find And Do Work That You Love” went kind of viral on Youtube. This is in my opinion a great example how this interpretation may help you to achieve your goals and aspirations. Albeit a pretty nice tool for reflection; in fact a constructive tool that helps one figure out questions like “what am I good at”, “what motivates me?” and “how can I align meaningful {and paid} tasks?”
However, with a view from the original eastern tradition, this is somehow missing some essential points of the Japanese Ikigai philosophy. This is always a big challenge trying to “transfer” philosophies into a foreign culture.
So if you ask the Portuguese about “Saudade”, they will tell you it is way more than mere “desire”. The same applies to terms like Heidegger’s “da-sein” which is not the same as “being present”. So it always difficult to translate words, but even harder to contextualize philosophies.
What Ikigai Meant
In Japanese culture, the “question of meaning” is clarified along the way — often in life’s everyday situations. And this picture can help us to find the right answer to this big question of meaning since we often stop to ask this rather important and life-defining question. However, if we don’t start doing something, how can we tell if it makes sense to us? In Japanese philosophy, one’s “calling” can also be found in — but not restricted to — one’s job, but mostly in the supposedly simple things of everyday life.
The grand destination that we hope to arrive at, that we hope gives meaning to our lives and rid us of all forms of existential crises is unfortunately not the major proposition of Ikigai. Ikigai (Japanese, 生き甲斐) whose use first appeared as early as in the 14th century in Japanese literature originates from the words iki meaning “life” and kai meaning “reason; worth; use”.
There are many definitions on Ikigai today. Ken Mogi, maybe the leading researcher on Ikigai alive today, describes Ikigai as a “spectrum”.
Mieko Kamiya, the first clinical psychologist who studied and wrote on the topic of Ikigai almost her entire life, wrote:
“It seems that the word ikigai exists only in the Japanese language. The fact that this word exists should indicate that the goal to live, its meaning and value within the daily life of the Japanese soul has been problematized. (…) According to the dictionary, ikigai means “power necessary for one to live in this world, happiness to be alive, benefit, effectiveness.” When we try to translate it into English, German, French etc, it seems that there is no other way to define it other than “worth living” or “value or meaning to live”. Thus, compared to philosophical theoretical concepts, the word ikigai shows us how much the Japanese language is ambiguous, but because of this it has an effect of reverberation and amplitude.”
– Mieko Kamiya, “Ikigai ni Tsuite” (“The meaning of life”)
Ikigai as an ideology proposes finding joy and fulfillment in little, day to day activities rather than concerning itself with a grand ultimate goal.
Mieko Kamiya had many struggles in her life and lost her love in her early years. She examined lepers and many around her thought this was her “vocation”, her Ikigai. Finally, she found her Ikigai in writing about the Ikigai. This is what she wrote after an art exhibition in her diary on her way home:
“At the exhibition and on the train home, I continued to think about it and repeated the sentence: “Devote the rest of your life to this task! I should finish my dissertation as soon as possible so that I can start working to fulfil my mission”. – From “A Woman with Demons, The Life of Kamiya Mieko”, 2006, Yuzo Ota
Mieko Kamiya was extremely passionate about her work, she expressed her innermost being by writing. It reflected her unique life and her research activities about the meaning in life. She studied Viktor Frankl and the Vienna School of Psychology. But foremost, her writings reflected her personal struggles in life. Ten years before she finished “Ikigai Ni Tsuite”, she first held the idea of writing about it. That she would find such fulfillment in writing was only revealed to her in the process:
“At night I was again absorbed in writing about Ikigai. With ideas bubbling up inside me, I played quiet piano pieces for an hour, partly to put my children to sleep and partly to calm myself down. What a moving experience it is to be able to combine all my past experiences and studies with my writing into a unified whole”. – Mieko Kamiya, from her diary.
So if you think, you can find your Ikigai by filling out a diagram – you might miss something more meaningful and important below the surface.
The Question is “How” not “What”
Ikigai is more about the “how” we look at life, rather than “what” we choose to do. How do I react to this issue? Why do I resonate so much with this?
Mieko Kamiya distinguished between Ikigai-source (what gives me a feeling of “happiness”, such as an activity, a person) and the Ikigai-kan, the state of mind we feel in connection with the Ikigai-source (emotional).
She developed seven dimensions that can lead to a personal Ikigai-kan:
- Holistic Life Satisfaction,
- change and growth,
- a constructive image of the future,
- resonance in relationships and the environment (think of Hartmut Rosa today),
- freedom and
- self-realisation and
- Meaning and value.
Many can probably see the closeness to Viktor Frankl now. You might notice that these principles would later reappear in the field of Positive Psychology — a domain rather dominated by men. Mieko Kamiya, on the other hand, remains largely unknown in Japan and beyond.
Is there an ROI in IKIGAI?
One of the biggest misconceptions today is that your Ikigai has to be profitable and be found in your job. This is at best a materialistic-cum-capitalist mindset which plagues many who go into these purpose coaching sessions. Many immediately associate material wealth with phrases such as “achieve your dreams” or “she made it”. Inasmuch as attaining material success is a deservingly impressive feat, it could not be farther away from what the original Ikigai really is. Ikigai is not a result of societal pressure, but instead a wilful undertaking. This could explain why the inhabitants of the Japanese islands of Okinawa are well known for their longevity. And according to National Geographic, Ikigai may be one of the reasons.
Many of the inhabitants of these islands and Japan as a whole have special skills and talents that yield little to no remuneration, but the fulfillment achieved in their craft is unparalleled. A typical example of this would be the Takumi masters who spend almost 100,000 hours learning to master a craft that gives them an immeasurable sense of purpose in life. The Takumi story is told here.
Finding Mastery in your Ikigai
This level of mastery is not achieved through mediocrity and lackluster. It requires focus, process discipline, mindfulness and attention to detail. However, this is not an unscalable barricade for those who place the utmost significance on their Ikigai. On the contrary, the inner being is at peace and the intrinsic motivation to achieve this plateau of craftsmanship spikes, which in turn releases feelings of accomplishment and fulfillment. This is why many Japanese do not retire from work. They simply continue to do the work they love as long as they are in good health.
Ikigai calls for you to step out of your comfort zone, your zone of bias and out of any preconceived notions of what purpose is supposed to look like. Purpose does not look a certain way, it is felt within the individual. As we influenced by a success and goal-oriented environment, we would love to see a measurable outcome on our Ikigai journey. But connecting purpose to money can be a dangerous path for our souls.
Here we can certainly connect the dots between Mieko Kamiya’s work and Viktor Frankl’s life:
“What then is the meaning of money, or for that matter, the meaning of possessing money? Most of those people who possess it are really possessed by it, obsessing by the urge to multiply it, and thus they nullify its meaning. For the possession of money should mean that one is in a fortunate position. One can afford to pay no attention to money, the means, but rather to pursue the ends themselves — those ends that money should serve.”
— Viktor Frankl, The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy
What if you can´t find your Ikigai right now?
Relax, it will find you someday — on the way.
In an intense effort to find one’s Ikigai, there is often an unimaginable exasperation or disappointment that follows when all effort proves to be of no avail. The feeling that is conveyed out of this misunderstanding of Ikigai is that you have failed if you could not discover your own purpose. This westernized adulteration of this concept lays down a new imperative that suggests that it is your responsibility to discover your own purpose and when you fail at it, then you must be doing something wrong.
On the contrary, what we have found to be true in some cases is that a handful of people don’t find purpose but vice versa. Many times, we set out on a journey; a journey we hope leads us to this great and majestic destination where our purpose or calling is safely tucked away only to discover something entirely different evokes in us that feeling of satisfaction and worth that we seek. Yet for others, they grow to enjoy and find passion in mundane everyday tasks that they do out of obligation. This is the instance where you say, “their calling found them” rather than “they found their calling”. And the Takumi masters are the epitome of this. They put in hundreds of thousands of hours to learn a craft that eventually defines their life purpose. You can watch a brilliant Lexus-produced film that tells the story and philosophy of “Takumi” here.
When looking for a purpose for our lives, we often look to the big things that promise us meaning, but these goals can seem out of reach and overwhelming. But the good news is, it could very well be the other way around. This is what the original Ikigai proposes. The basis of the Ikigai philosophy is this: If we can find meaning in the little things, then we can experience constant tangible moments in our everyday life that enable us to master present and future challenges. These can carry us, make us more resilient when we are facing difficulties.
A Joint Project: Ikigai and Resilience
Many western and eastern studies on stress management and resilience clearly show, that finding meaning is an essential pillar for developing and strengthening one’s own resilience. Scientific studies on the topic of Ikigai and well-being have been conducted in Japan since 1966 — they were able to show essentially three elements that demonstrate the link to stronger resilience. Mieko Kamiya viewed Ikigai and the personality development process of human beings in the flow of time:
- Future orientation is more important than present happiness. Even if people are struggling with their present life, they can still pursue their Ikigai as long as they have hope and a goal in mind.
- A present and actively lived Ikigai is associated with self-efficacy and a sense of self than with the feeling of happiness.
People feel a greater degree of their Ikigai, when they achieve something with their own capabilities. Self-efficacy is thus a key to Ikigai and resilience. - Ikigai is much more strongly linked to one’s values than to feelings of happiness.
Now that we have a relatively better understanding of Ikigai, a different set of questions need to be asked, the most important of which is, “are you finding joy in your everyday life?”.
Take your time, download our alternative visual IKIGAI-model and reflect on your daily actions and habits:
