Today's Tuesday • 6 mins read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
What’s your reason for waking up every morning?
It may lie in the Japanese construct of ikigai (pronounced ee-key-guy). It can help you live longer and bring more meaning and happiness to your life.
In Japanese, ikigai means “a reason for living” or “a purpose in life,” and roughly translates as “the reason for always being happy-busy.”
When you find your ikigai, you will know what to do each day to both fulfill your own needs and those of the world.
How To Find Your Ikigai In 4 Steps
Four steps to achieve ‘ikigai’ or your purpose in life:
- Identify What You Love (Passion): Determine your passions and interests.
- Recognize What You Are Good At (Profession): Assess your skills and talents.
- Determine What You Can Be Paid For (Vocation): Identify your market sources of income.
- Discover What the World Needs (Mission): Find how you can contribute something valuable to society.
Your ikigai lies at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. It’s about blending happiness, passion, work, and money to live a purposeful and fulfilling life.
1. Finding What You Love: Passion
What’s an activity you could do every day and never get bored?
Maybe it’s designing healthy meal plans, practicing yoga, vibe-coding apps, or teaching kids. These are activities that spark joy and keep you engaged.
Make a list of such things you love doing, whether it’s gardening, writing poetry, or solving puzzles. These are your ikigai candidates.
2. Making Sure You Are Good At It: Profession
Once you’ve listed activities you love, ask yourself: What am I good at?
Ikigai is built upon skills and talents. When your passion overlaps with your strengths, your ikigai becomes sustainable and fulfilling.
List the skills you’re confident in or activities others praise you for.
These could be things you’ve mastered over time, like writing, cooking, or problem-solving, or even skills you’ve forgotten about, like playing an instrument or organizing events.
You may have discovered your passion early in life, but abandoned it for choosing a stable job over a creative pursuit. But it’s not too late to reconnect.
Revisit your old hobbies. Is there one thing you’re still better at than others? Take a class to sharpen your old talent.
Say, a younger you captivated people with stories of inventions and innovations. Now, you could get coached on writing articles or honing your oral storytelling skills.
3. Finding A Way To Get Paid For It: Vocation
This is the worldly part: Will people pay for it? Can you earn a living from it?
If people value your skills, whether it’s baking, coding, or coaching, they’ll pay for the results.
If you’re great at design thinking and love it, you could sell your service to businesses needing branding.
So, if you’ve found an activity that you love, are good at, and can monetize, you’re close to finding your ikigai. Creating a life around this creates a perfect work-life balance.
The Japanese believe getting paid for what you love is the happiest way to live. You never need to retire from this work.
4. Making Sure It’s Useful To Others: Mission
Your ikigai isn’t just about you; it must add some value to the world.
Review your list and pick 1–3 activities that benefit others. For example, if you love yoga and are good at it, could you teach classes to help others stay healthy? If you’re skilled at vibe-coding, could you build an app that solves a common problem?
These activities combine passion, skill, income, and purpose, and reveal to you your ikigai.
Putting It All Together
Your ikigai is where these four elements—passion, profession, vocation, and mission—meet.
If they don’t align perfectly, that’s okay. Start small: test one activity, like offering a workshop or creating a side project. Join a community, seek feedback, and refine your path.
Japan’s Toxic Work Culture
Strangely, mainstream urban Japan is infamous for its soul-crushing work culture. The Guardian reports, overwork is a mammoth issue there.
Everyone is expected to put in more than they are paid for. A worker is never expected to leave the office as long as their boss is there.
The average urban Japanese staff overworks themselves to stress, burnout, and sickness. So many of them have died from overwork that they even have a term for this: karoshi.
Meanwhile, in Japan’s villages and non-urban areas, ikigai is the way of life. It is their tradition. It helps them stay happy and connected, and away from work-related stress.
Scientific Studies On Ikigai: Why It’s Good for You
Having an ikigai, or a sense of purpose, can make you healthier and happier. Here’s what the research says:
- Better Health and Longer Life: People with ikigai tend to have better physical health (Murata, 2006), live longer (Tanno, 2009), and are less likely to have trouble with daily activities as they age (Mori, 2017).
- Happier and Healthier Mind: In Japanese studies, ikigai was linked to better physical and mental health, like feeling less stressed or sad (Mori et al., 2017; Okamoto & Harasawa, 2009; Sone et al., 2008; Tanno et al., 2009).
- Stronger Heart and Lower Risks: A review of ten studies found that a strong sense of purpose (a key part of ikigai) lowers the risk of early death or heart issues, like heart attacks or strokes (Rozanski, 2016).
- Healthier Aging and Happier Life: A study in The Lancet found that ikigai helps prevent dementia and physical disabilities over time. It also reduces depression, hopelessness, and boosts happiness and life satisfaction.
- Protection Against Illness: Ikigai is linked to better physical health and a lower chance of dying from any cause (Kotera & Kaluzeviciute, 2021).
- Less Depression, More Joy: A study in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction found that ikigai increases well-being and reduces depression (Wilkes & Garip, 2022).
Final Words
So finally, by combining what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what it can pay you for, you can live and work from your ikigai.
Remember, your ikigai is a journey, not a destination. So take the first step today and keep adding to the process of living with purpose.
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√ Also Read: Summary of The Book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life
√ Please share this if you found it helpful.