My Ikigai

You may have heard me or others talk about Ikigai before. Ikigai is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living. It is useful when looking for new work or new projects.

 

It looks at 1) What you love, 2) What you're good at, 3) What the world needs, and 4) What you can get paid for. It then looks at the overlapping venn diagrams which help identify further attributes about you.

 

For me, the following information came out:

1) I love: having a good time and enjoying myself while performing a given task

2) I am good at: communicating with people outside my organisation, establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships, coaching and developing others, assisting and caring for others

3) The world needs: Communications and Media, Personnel and Human Resources, Mathematics, English Language

4) What I can get paid for: Resourcefulness, improvisation, creativity, eloquence.

 

This is a useful exercise to do as it pinpoints areas of work that you would be better suited to, aspects of your personality and manner that would better be utilised, and also identify what would be needed from those jobs that you may want to train for.

 

I've blanked out the middle section with the actual jobs that it came up with. I'm still working on that aspect!