Unhustle Mini Playbook to Finding Your Purpose in Life

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This is a simple way to find your life’s purpose based on the Japanese concept of Ikigai (ee-key-guy) that combines the terms iki, meaning “alive” or “life,” and gai, meaning “benefit” or “worth.”

In other words, Ikigai is your “reason for being.”

Knowing your life’s purpose has the potential to increase your well-being, happiness, and fulfillment. The Japanese credit knowing your Ikigai to a happy and long life. It’s the idea of finding happiness in living. The answer to “Why do you get up in the morning.”

The pandemic urged many of us to search for more meaning and purpose instead of living disconnected, sad, lonely, and an auto-pilot. It’s worth keeping in mind that the Japanese have a word for overwork – “karoshi” – which literally means “death by overwork.” Only 31% of Japanese consider work their ikigai based on a survey from 2010.

Japanese people believe that the sum of small joys in everyday life results in more fulfilling life as a whole

Your life’s purpose makes you more resilient.

Unfortunately, we are too busy, too rushed, and too stressed to slow down and think of what life really wants out of us. Why are we on this planet? What is our gift? What is our deeper purpose?

Knowing your purpose may sound like some deep philosophical exercise but it’s actually pretty simple once you do this easy practice.

Here’s how to discover your purpose or your ikigai step by step:

Take a piece of paper and draw four circles all intersecting each other.

 

Step 1: In the first circle, answer the question: What do you love?

This is your passion. What do you love to do so much that when you do it, time seems to fly and you forget about everything else. Don’t overthink this. List down 25 different things you’re passionate about.

Step 2: In the second circle, answer the question: What are you good at?

This is your vocation. Think about your skills. What comes naturally to you? What are you gifted in? What have you learned so far or get paid to do?

Step 3: In the third circle, answer the question: What does the world need?

This is your mission. Knowing your “reason for living” has been associated with positive health outcomes (Fido et al., 2019).

Step 4: In the fourth circle, answer the question: What can you get paid for?

This is your profession. What realistically makes sense to do that provides value in the world and you can get compensated for it.

The cross-section of all four circles is your Ikigai. I did this exercise while trying to discover my purpose. This is how I decided to pivot from marketing to starting Unhustle. Having a deeper purpose has increased my well-being, happiness, and fulfillment.

Research shows that knowing your Ikigai contributes to increased health outcomes:

• Physical health in the elderly
• Psychological wellbeing of carers
• Reduced incidence of strokes and cardiovascular disease
• Mental health

Dan Buettner who studies Blue Zones believes that Ikigai which originates in one of the Blue Zone areas in Japan contributes to the resident’s longevity – the average age there of women is 87 and men 81. Purpose is fundamental to our well-being.

If staring at a black piece of paper is not inspiring, go outside, unplug from your phone and ask yourself the questions. Connecting with yourself, and nature may open up your imagination. It may take a little bit to get your answers. Don’t rush the process but continue to stay curious.

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” — Joseph Campbell

Although Ikigai is not a popular concept in the West, it’s a process for cultivating one’s inner potential. The closest to it is the concept of flow where we “enjoy doing something so much that we forget about whatever worries we might have while we do it.”

Ultimately, we are seeking to have a human experience, a reason for living, a raison d’etre.

Join like-minds on a mission to live well, now.

 

As a thank you, will send you our ebook with real life stories of people and companies who have embraced the unhustle way of living and working and are no longer surviving but thriving.