Ikigai is a Japanese word that translates to `what one gets up in the morning to do'. Basically it is one's purpose in life. Dan Buettner reports on Blue Zones at a TED conference. Blue Zones are regions in the world where the life expectancy is significantly higher than the norm. One region is in Okinawa and one of the reasons postulated for the long life of an Okinawan is that they can clearly and immediately express their `ikigai'.
I don't necessarily need to live to 100 and beyond but I would like to have an `ikigai' --- a concrete purpose and passion to my life. At the moment I get up on a weekday and go to work and my weekends are spent waiting to go to work again on Monday.
Expressed another way, I am looking for my job in life. What is the single thing I dedicate my life to doing. This is expressed in another TED talk, this time by Elizabeth Gilbert whose life's job is writing. She gets up in the morning and she knows her job is to write. Her talk is very interesting and I encourage anyone with a creative streak to watch.
How am I to go about searching for my ikigai? Introspection is going to have to be a big part of the process. I need to think back through my life and try and identify the times I was engaged in what I was doing.
Focussed exploration and practice within my current areas of interest will also occur. I am doing what I am doing now for some reason. My life has led me here and it is worth my time to really focus on where I am now to make sure my current feeling of a lack of purpose isn't just due to laziness.
A goal is fairly useless if progress can not be measured. I will track progress by creating sub-goals that capture specific tasks to accomplish as part of my search. If I complete around six to twelve sub-goals this year I will be happy that I made a concerted effort in my search. I may not have found my ikigai, but I'll know that I looked.
This blog will contain reports and notes as I search.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment