Have you found your ikigai now?
Once you find your ikigai, in order to make the maximum use of the life-giving power of ikigai, I recommend you to explore your ikigai to be flexible and open.
When I left the university I thought writing books was my ikigai, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find any publishers who wanted to publish my book once I lost my position in the university.
Should I deplore the world? Or wait until ”Lady Luck” smiles on me?
There are many people who look back on their lives and say, “Actually I wanted to do such and such, but I couldn’t”. That is not the kind of thing that I would want to do when I get old!
So, I asked myself, “What element inspires me with writing books?” The answer was: I love sharing inspirations with others! If that’s the case, I thought, I can do that right now, completely on my own. I started writing blog articles, self-publishing kindle
books and organizing and talking at events.
“Sharing inspiration with others” was a more refined version of my ikigai than “writing books”, but recently, I found an even more refined version of my ikigai. That is: “I love sharing experiences that inspire me”.
Then, I started organizing meditation events because meditation has always been my primary source of inspiration. Through this meditation project I approached deeper into the core of my ikigai and I felt more fulfilled, and that helped me discover more ways to express my ikigai, too.
So, if you meet hindrances to express your ikigai, you can consider it as an opportunity to refine it. Then, you will find it is really simple. It can be like: making the world beautiful, tapping people’s potential, connecting different things and creating synergy, etc. That means it is applicable to any situation! You will be able to find many outlets for it. The good thing about ikigai is that you can express it in more than one form.
Ikigai is a concept that has actually saved many people against depression after losing their job or after retirement.
Losing our job that corresponded to our ikigai might be a painful experience, but if we clearly see what element in the job inspired us, which is the core of our ikigai, everything else may appear to be incidental, which we can let go of easily, with the workplace we have just lost being one of them. Then, our ikigai might help us to recreate our life and push us into a new stage of our life. It makes us resilient.
Ikigai is not all-or-nothing!
Another thing I learned through my experience was that ikigai is not all-or-nothing. We can start very small, and when it is truly our ikigai, we feel the same amount of joy regardless of how small the expression might seem to be.
As long as hitting the vein of the life-giving force of ikigai is concerned, we do not need to mind whether it is done in our job or hobby, worldwide or just inside our family. How talented we are, or whether we are professionally equipped or not, are also a secondary issue. More important thing is rather, to keep expressing our ikigai in whatever situation we may find it possible. Ikigai can be nurtured only by practice. The more we express our ikigai, the more enlivened we are.
Isn’t it wonderful that we have means for happiness in our hands. We are never a victim of some deplorable situation, or we don’t have to wait until Lady Luck smiles on us.
If you want further information about ikigai, visit my website. The link is at the end of my profile.