#324: How to Rediscover Your Purpose in Career and Life Transitions

And it is this.

Your reason for being or ikigai is not out there somewhere waiting for you to find it.

It is not a job you have yet to discover or a course you have not taken or a version of yourself you have yet to become.

It is already inside of you, and the work is not invention.

It is rediscovery.

And yes, reinvention.

Now, let me tell you briefly what I mean by ikigai, because if this is your first episode with me, it will give you a bit of a context of what follows.

Ikigai is a Japanese concept, and the word itself is often translated as your reason for being, or more beautifully, I think, the reason you get up in the morning.

It is not new, and it is not invented by a business school.

It comes out of Japanese culture, and it is particularly associated with Okinawa in the south of Japan, which is one of a handful of places in the world that researchers have called the Blue Zones, where people have historically lived remarkably long and healthy lives.

And when researchers went to Okinawa and asked the older people there what it was that kept them going, almost every one of them could answer without hesitating.

It was tending their garden or teaching a craft to somebody younger or caring for a grandchild.

They had a reason to rise, a sense of genuinely being needed, and a role that belonged to them.

I came to understand this far more deeply when I had the privilege of interviewing Frances Morales, who co-wrote the international bestseller on ikigai, and that conversation is in the show notes if you would like to hear it, because it really changed how I teach all of this.

And here is what's really important to understand.

The authentic idea was never a career strategy.

It was never a diagram for choosing a profession.

This idea came from a Western interpretation, which you may have seen online depicting a Venn diagram with four circles, where one of them is what you can be paid for.

That version was assembled in the West relatively recently, and I understand why it spread, because it looks kind of tidy, and it promises an exact answer.

But I believe it is a really oversimplification, and I believe it can lead people astray also, because it teaches that your purpose is essentially a job, and that if a longing does not come with an obvious paycheck attached, it doesn't count.

But as I have worked with so many women on their ikigai, it has come to evolve in my teachings Where we take the paycheck circle out altogether, and we replace it with your values.

Your ikigai or reason for being lives where there are four dimensions which converge.

And those four dimensions are your strengths, which is what you are genuinely good at.

Your passions, which is what you love, the things that make you lose all track of time.

Your values, which is what matters most to you now in this chapter, not the chapter you were living twenty years ago.