I Finally Found My Ikigai

“When you bow deeply to the universe, the universe bows back.” ~ Morihei Ueshiba

Have you found your ikigai? Ikigai is the Japanese concept of “a reason for being.” Everyone has an ikigai, but yours is personal to you. Your ikigai is the intersection of your passions (what you love), your talents (what you are good at), your purpose (what the world needs) and your enterprise (what you can be paid for).

Ikigai

If you haven’t found it yet, don’t stop searching. Because once you find it, the universe bends towards you. When you find it, you find your flow.

Here’s a simple exercise you can do right now. Score each of these four questions from 0-10 - from 0 being not at all, and 10 being 100%:

  1. Every day I am doing what I love to do
  2. Every day I only do what I am good at
  3. Every day I am doing what the world needs
  4. Every day I am getting paid well for what I do

Got your score? Add them up.

Now score yourself for where you were at the end of 2015. How much progress have you made? And now set your target score for the end of 2017.

If you like having measures to keep track of your progress, how close you are to your ikigai is the most important measure of all.

“It is never too late to be who you might have been.” ~ George Elliot

This is originally posted on Roger James Hamilton's Facebook post on 17th December 2016.

Well, after searching for a long time, I finally found that my Ikigai is contributing to the world and future through software development. But, doesn't mean that only as a software engineer, but it can be a project manager, product manager, or even just a technical writer.

I am feeling like I am fully living my life when it's about developing an app.

A reminder to myself, that I wrote on my Facebook post on 27th July 2011:

Jangan hidup untuk masa lalu, masa lalu tidak bisa kita ubah. Jangan juga hidup untuk masa depan, kita tidak akan sanggup memikul beban tanggungan masa tua kita. Hiduplah untuk hari ini, kita ada hari ini karena masa lalu kita dan karena yang kita lakukan hari ini yang akan menentukan nasib kita di masa depan. So, apapun yg kita lakukan hari ini, lakukanlah yg terbaik.