Have you found your Ikigai?

I am lucky enough to have received my professional training from Barefoot Coaching, run by the inspirational Kim Morgan. Since I finished my time in the classroom, the experience of seeing my clients understand themselves better and grow frequently reminds me of the excellence of the course in its width and depth of material, models and client orientated exercises.

I also have the sage words of the brilliant lecturer Simon Machin forever ringing in my ears “beware the coach of one book!” i.e. eat, sleep, read, learn, repeat! Keep improving my knowledge base.

With that at the forefront of my mind I am always on the lookout for different thoughts, learning and tools that can help unlock my clients’ thinking and beliefs.

A model I recently came across is the Japanese concept of ‘Ikigai’ (‘iki’ meaning ‘alive’ and ‘gai’ meaning ‘worth’) many cultures have their own versions of this. The French have “raison d’etre” the Danish have ‘Hygge’ and so on and so forth.

What I love about this particular model is that it is simple in its concept. There are four main areas to consider, ‘what you love’, ‘what you are good at’, ‘what you can be paid for’ and ‘what the world needs’.

Through working on these areas, drawing up lists, challenging yourself, and by testing and analysing the common factors in all four areas you will discover the shared values that drive your passion, mission, vocation and profession.

You can then distil these four elements to find your ‘ikigai’ or as some people put it ‘your reason for getting up in the morning’. As with all good models, I find it pays to revisit them over time, the outcome can change in line with your circumstances.

It helps to identify a number of factors that could explain why you feel you are in a rut, what might be lacking and therefore what you might need to adjust to feel happier.

There are lots of models out there for analysing your values, discovering the things that drive you and there are many deeper experts on this specific model than me.

The beauty of this is you don’t have to use ALL the models or indeed stick to just one book…keep trying until you find the one that suits you best.

As they say in Japan がんばろう(or more like ‘good luck’ to you and me!)