for doing it. A reminder: Ikigai has just four directions.
1.Do what you love
2.Do what you’re good at
3.Do what the world needs
4.Do what you can be rewarded for
Your Ikigai will be distinctive to you, as unique to you as the iris of your eye. So how do you find it? The answers lie in following the four directions.
As simple as the directions seem, they may feel difficult to execute. If you initially consider each of the directions as a question—What do you love? What are you good at? What do you think the world needs? What can the world reward you for?—each of the directions needs an answer to bring full clarity to your Ikigai. Your answers will come to you through your efforts. The effort is the tricky part, because as much as most people want higher purpose, it’s the last thing most people need for basic survival. A life of Ikigai makes purpose a high priority to take action with each day. A little bit of meaning every day will turn into a lifetime of joy.
In the morning, when your alarm clock rings and you reach over with your eyes still closed, blindly smacking at the off button, are you waking up to merely survive the day? You deserve more than that.
Many would have you believe that your days are supposed to be dedicated to achieving success. But success is a measurement of the ego. It only matters to you. You, and the world, deserve more than that.
When you put your Ikigai into action, you’ll wake up each morning with greater purpose. You’ll awaken to each day full of wonder. Ikigai has your map to wonder.
If you’re like most people, you’ve wondered at some point in time, “What is my life’s purpose?” It’s a question that people have been considering for a millennium, but it’s one most people will not answer in their lifetime. This book is meant to put your life’s purpose within reach.
When it comes to solving a mystery, it’s often said that the simplest answer is the best answer. This answer is Ikigai. It has just four directions for follow.
If you’re searching for your life’s purpose, consider this: Your soul has an issue that it needs to resolve. What steps can you take to get the answers you need? My own steps have taken me on adventures that might seem wild to some people. But the search for life’s meaning starts at a time when we are fresh and young; when we are full of piss and vinegar. For most people it started on the first day after high school graduation. But then what happened?
No kid fresh out of high school knows what the hell they are going to do with their life. At best, they are guessing, but aren’t we all? An eighteen-year-old’s job is to be beautiful and to parade around seeking companionship. Their job is to do what their hormones command. They must be seen. They must also experiment with as many grown-up life experiences as possible. Carl Jung called them “athletes.” Nature is doing its job. Their job is to parade their young bodies around in search of a mate.
I often share the immortal words of a fake Buddha quote with fresh graduates. I hold my finger in the air in a professorial manner and state, “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” Buddha didn’t really say that, but it’s still profound because when it comes right down to it, fake Buddha was talking about Ikigai.
In 1987, I was a twenty-year-old young man with long hair, a feeble moustache, and an eager smile. They were my only assets. As far as I knew, my life ahead was meant to be a series of well-paying jobs to earn a living. There was no such thing as having a life purpose. But there was something in my gut that insisted there was more. It whispered to me.
Every day I would wake up in the morning and dutifully grab a quick breakfast and a coffee before heading out the door to go to my job. I was employed on the highways as a survey crew member. My job was to go where the crew chief asked me to go. He’d send me up the road a hundred meters at a time. Then, I’d turn to face him while holding a red-and-white striped pole straight up and down on the road for him to guide through his scope. I would move it incrementally left or right, as he directed me, with his hand movements. If he held his arm out to his left, I moved the pole to my right. If he quickly moved his arm to the right, I moved the pole a little to the left. When the pole was bang on where he needed it, he lifted both arms above his head and formed an X. I dug the pole’s steel tip into the road and marked it with a piece of chalk. Ultimately, what I did was help to make straight lines.
This job helped me to realize that life was so different; life is not a straight line. It’s a meandering, drunken stumble that goes forward and left and right and backward. And there is no one directing you where to go. We go through life like we are barefoot in a monstrous pitch-black room, with a few random pieces of Lego scattered sparingly throughout. Our task is to find our way through the room by learning a little more about the room every day. With age and wisdom, we learn to avoid stepping on the pieces of Lego. The Legos are the painful parts of life. The rest of the room is everyday life.
But what if a dimly lit red-and-white traffic pylon suddenly appeared in that room? It would catch your attention. It might glow just bright enough for you to see in the distance. Would you pay attention to it? Would you walk toward it?
In June of 1987, I lay in my narrow single bed on a Saturday morning, staring at the ceiling. I looked forward to every weekend, so I could have some time to enjoy myself. My job as a survey assistant was a well-paying job but wasn’t fulfilling for me. It was a job, but it wasn’t my passion.
As I lay flat on my back, I wondered what my future had in store for me. Is my current situation what life is supposed to be? Do I work from Monday to Friday doing something that pays well? And then enjoy Saturdays and Sundays, dreading the Mondays, repeating ad nauseam, until I retire? It didn’t seem possible that this is all that life was intended to be.
My dad’s life was like this, though. He was a hard worker. He worked on the highways too. During the summers, he would be gone for months at a time, paving long stretches of black asphalt roadways. He’d start his days at five in the morning. He worked twelve to fourteen hours a day. At the end of the day, he’d grab a quick bite to eat, then head to his bunkhouse to crumple in exhaustion onto his bed. His generation did life that way.
It was depressing to think about my life going forward in the same way his did. I was conflicted. Surveying is a good and
