Purpose

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds.” — Patanjali

Defining our purpose can be a daunting task. What gets us out of bed in the morning? Is it our family or our career? Maybe it's a hobby or taking a leisurely stroll down the road to stop and get a coffee at a coffee shop. For some, it could also include overcoming adversity in their lives, such as helping a loved one with an addiction?

There is a Japanese concept that has become popular in western culture as a result of its meaning. The word ikigai (E-key-guy) translates into the reason for being. You can apply ikigai as a practical philosophy for life. It is a way to find strength through tough times and overcome adversity. It is the ideal definition of finding one's purpose.

Ikigai is a concept – a framework, a model – that has four key questions that overlap into a Venn diagram:

• What do you love?
• What are you good at?
• What does the world need from you? and
• For what can you get paid?

Let's take a look at each of these terms.

What do you love? This can be considered one of the more straightforward questions to answer. To find what your love is, simply look back on your life and evaluate all the things that make you feel whole or rejuvenate you- give you energy. These could be hobbies or specific interests, including fitness and exercise, cooking, music, traveling, gardening, hiking, or other things. These passions could be related to your work, family, volunteer activities, and interests.

What are you good at? This question relates to your skills and competences-they could undoubtedly be relevant to your professional related to your work. Still, it could also be your personal life may be things that you're good at, such as drawing, music, landscaping, telling stories, or any number of things.

According to the model, if what you love to do intersects with your strengths, in questions one and two, then ikigai says that you have found your passion. An example could be that if you love music and are good at playing an instrument, your passion is being a musician.

What does the world need from you? This question pertains to finding the needs of the world. For example, if the world needs musicians, and you are a musician, you found your life mission. On the other hand, if there are far too many musicians already and the world does not need any new musicians, you may have to explore different needs that you also love doing to find your mission.

For what can you be paid? This last question will relate to the world's ability to pay you for what you're doing. This is essentially the marketplace. If people need musicians and you offer that skill set and are willing to pay for that work, you have found your vocation. At Tiger Resilience, we believe people discover their vocations through their interests and defining their purpose. If the world can now pay you for your musician skills, you have also found your profession.

Using the ikigai template, you can create considerations for your purpose. After some self-discovery, the next step is to find you why? This is the reason why we do what we do. What is the underlying interest? For example, if you are a musician, your why may be that you have a passion, talent, and innate ability for a musical contribution that drives your soul and fulfills you every time you participate in the activity.

Now that you have to find why go back to each of the four domains of the ikigai diagram and articulate each of your why's for each.

When defining your purpose, it is essential to determine your why because a purpose without a why is not a purpose and will not sustain you long term. An example might be that you are good at music but don't particularly like playing music; thus, here is why it's not congruent with your purpose.

There are no right or wrong ways to do this, and there is never a wrong purpose if it has meaning. But, when you see yours on paper, and it lights up your heart, you will know that you were looking at who you are and what you are meant to be.

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