Finding your purpose
What is it about?
Start by exploring and finding your purpose. This is one of the most crucial phases before deciding to carry on a purpose-driven project.
Why do you do what you do?
Why do you want to do it?
Ikigai
Ikigai (pronounced “eye-ka-guy”) is, above all else, a lifestyle that strives to balance the spiritual with the practical.
It is a Japanese term that roughly translates to “reason for being.”
This balance is found at the intersection where your passions and talents converge with the things that the world needs and is willing to pay for.
Ikigai is about finding joy, fulfilment, and balance in the daily routine of life.
It’s all too easy to fall victim to siloed thinking, that our job, family, passions, and desires are all separate and unrelated aspects of our lives.
The fundamental truth of Ikigai is that nothing is isolated. Everything is connected.
The Golden Circle
The Golden Circle is an innovative concept presented by Simon Sinek in his TED Talk “Start with Why”.
It’s super inspiring and challenges the status quo at its core for identifying your purpose for what you want to do in business, and in life.
The thesis of Simon’s “Start with Why” is his discovery of The Golden Circle. There are three parts of The Golden Circle: Why, How, and What.
Ikigai
Step 1.
Ikigai is divided into 4 sections.
You are talented.
- 1. What activity does make you the most talented?
- 2. What kind of activity do you perform better than anyone?
What you love
- 3. What activities generate pleasure, happiness and purpose?
- 4. What does it bring you during in your daily life?
What the world needs.
- 5. What does the world need urgently in order to solve the most pressing challenges?
- 6. What can you do to make a liveable planet for you and your family?
- 7. What are the solutions the world urgently need?
What you get paid to do.
- 8. What activities do you think are demanded and valuable for your economy and that you can carry out?
- 9. What does it bring value to others?
Step 2. Write down your results on sticky notes and place them on your poster.
Step 3.
Share the results with the rest of your team. Discuss what forces or influences led you to choose each of the activities? Family, friends, money, society, etc.
Golden circle
Step 1.
It starts with your WHY.
Try answering the following:
What is the reason to start a project?
1. Is there a personal experience, pain, frustration, satisfaction or mission that make you act?
2. What do you want to achieve with this project?
HOW
3. What doest make your project different from the others?
4. Is it a validated idea or just a dream?
5. Can you draw the path of your project?
WHAT
6. What is your project about?
7. How does it work?
8. What is it for?
Step 2.
Write down your results on sticky notes and place them on the poster.
Step 3.
Read aloud each one. And combine them all in a single description of your project of maximum 40 words.
Ikigai
HOW TO INTERPRET IT?
Ikigai has some essential qualities that separate it from the so-called “follow your passion” as we conceive it in western culture. Some interpretations of the Ikigai:
1. It is challenging, and it should lead you to mastery of your inner calls.
2. It is your choice, and you should feel a certain degree of autonomy and freedom when pursuing your Ikigai.
3. It involves a commitment of time and dedication. Your Ikigai changes over time, but you decide to pursue it.
In a sense, your Ikigai can serve as a compass for navigating both career and life decisions. Ikigai is often not something extraordinary, therefore, you should not be frustrated if it feels incomplete: Ikigai is a compass, it is not a map with directions.
Golden circle
HOW TO INTERPRET IT?
Why? (WHY)
Simon suggests that very few organisations know why they do what they do, most base their existence on the simple search for money, however, the foundations of an organisation that adapts and connects to its market can answer this question: Why does your organisation exist?
HOW and WHAT may change over time, but WHY is always constant.
HOW?
Some organisations know how they have been successful. They may have a powerful value proposition, a large market, or a novel product.
Try to answer How can your solution stand out from other existing solutions?
WHAT?
All organizations know what they are doing.
They know what their mission is, the product or service they offer, and what they charge their customers to do.
The “what” is what lives and dies in most organizations, and in a very changing world, it may vary hundreds of times.
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