No Longer an Asshole
While it’s true that your strengths can lead you to amplified success, where does your happiness in life enter the equation? One of the directions of Ikigai is to do what you’re good at (your strengths). Happiness comes from another of the four Ikigai directions: do what you love.
How much of each day do you spend focusing on your happiness? What percentage of each twenty-four hours do you concentrate on doing what you love? When you were a child, a hundred percent of your day was dedicated to doing what you love. When you became an adult, your priority of experiencing a joyful day vanished. Being an adult means a focus on finances becomes more important. But does being an adult mean you have to become an asshole?
When John Kitchin was fifty-five years old, he believed he was an asshole. He was a successful, extremely well-paid doctor who lived in a mansion and drove expensive sports cars. He even collected exotic animals as a hobby. He thought he had it made. Then he started to go blind.
He began to notice that his vision was blurred in the center. It became so bad that if he looked at medical documents or X-rays, he couldn’t read them. Faces he had known for years were blurred too. He could look at a colleague dead in the eye and not recognize them at all without hearing their voice. John knew it was time to make a decision about the rest of his life. He chose to stop being an asshole.
What made John decide to stop being an asshole? It was a short, benign conversation he had at the hospital one day. He recalled a cheeky chat with an elderly gentleman he had met one time in a cafeteria. John stood patiently in line behind the old man as he piled more and more food items on his plate. John smiled and asked the old man how old he was. “Ninety-three,” the old fella answered. John took one more deep step into the conversation.
He quipped, “How does a strapping young man like me get to be an old codger like you?” The old man’s answer stuck in John’s mind like a red-and-white-striped pylon at a fork in the road.
“Do what you want to!” he snorted.
As John stood at the sudden fork in the road ahead of him, he saw himself taking one of two paths. One path was suicide. The other path was to take the old man’s advice to “Do what you want!” John chose to do what he wanted to do. Of all things, he chose roller skating.
Despite the financial success he had found throughout his medical career, he wasn’t really happy. He spent each day focused on nothing but financial success, and no time at all focused on his spiritual happiness. He realized that when he was a kid, spiritual joy had been his only focus. He wanted to be like a kid again.
John strapped on a pair of rollerblades and started gently gliding up and down the sidewalks along the beaches of San Diego. It was pure bliss. He felt joyful like a kid again. There was something about the push of one foot and the glide of the other that put him into a perpetual meditative feeling of ecstasy. It was as if he were skating in slow motion. The grin on his face had a certain wonder about it. He skated day and night.
As the year passed, John’s presence did not go unnoticed. The locals along the beach started to recognize the man who would skate with an always present look of surprise on his face. The locals started to call John Kitchin Slomo. Who is this man? What’s his story? Why does he do what he does? They appreciated him.
John’s new life as Slomo allows him to live with his own set of life rules. His medical description for his current state is that he believes in and lives his own personal delusion. He lives his life the way he does because he chooses to. Best of all, it works for him and only him.
When the locals see Slomo skate toward them, they cheer. They call out, “Hey Slomo!” They applaud for him. Slomo doesn’t see a single one of their faces, but that doesn’t matter. He’s not an asshole anymore. He escaped. The people are cheering for him because he does what he wants to. Slomo’s Ikigai is to feel joy. It’s what he’s good at. It’s what he loves to do. It’s what he sends out into the world. It’s what he gets back in return.
If you could do what you wanted to, what would you do? There are no limits or rules. I know a man who is a Scotch whiskey expert. I know another man who finds joy each day in handcrafted Japanese knives. I also know a “wolf lady.” Dr. Seuss had it right when he wrote, “Today you are you, it’s truer than true. There’s no one alive who is youer than you.” But who are you?
You Are Not Your Job. You Are
Your Work.
You are not your job. You are your work.
According to Dictionary.com, the definition of a job is “a paid position of regular employment.” You need a job, so you can pay your bills, have a roof over your head, and put food in your belly. It’s a reality of the world you live in. It costs money to live and survive.
But work is something much different. The definition for work is “activity involving mental or physical effort in order to achieve a purpose or a result.” Work is something you do on purpose. The result is a more meaningful you. You are your work.
When John Kitchin lived his life as a successful doctor, he lived his life as his job. He realized that he went to his job every day, so he could build his bank account. It seemed fulfilling to him at first. But as his job progressed, so did his commitment to the almighty dollar. Money was the way he measured his success. But over time, he began to question his motivation. John recalled days when he would be driving home in one of his fancy sports cars and wonder, “How much of the day promoted me spiritually, and how much of it promoted me financially?”
John was asking profound and important questions about the way he lived his life. John was asking about the way most of us live our lives. Most of us start off life as spiritual beings. We did activities every day for the pure joy if it. We grew older and more educated. We began to see the world as a collection of needs. Then the adulting started, and we got sucked into the vortex of money, money, money. We believe that our days are meant only for making money. When we earn more money, we can buy more stuff. We believe that more money and more stuff would make us happier. Eventually, John realized something that shifted his understanding of reality. In a video interview about his life, John said that focusing every day as an adult on financial progress is “the most absurd, stupid way of going through a life, but we are all doing it.”
Again, he wondered, “How much of my day promotes me spiritually, and how much of it promotes me financially?” Try asking yourself the same question.
Let Serendipity Be Your Copilot
If you’re like most people, you live life like John Kitchin once lived his life. It’s what we’ve been conditioned to do. Is it possible to live any other way? You bet it’s possible. Mike and Anne Howard have followed their Ikigai without having a job for the past eight years. They focus on their work instead. They focus on their Ikigai.
Leading up to their wedding, Mike and Anne dreamed about all the amazing places they could go to on their honeymoon. They started to write out a list of places to go and things to do. Their list grew longer and longer.
They
