" a reason for being"

A colleague had recently gave me a book for my birthday –  Ikigai (生き甲斐, pronounced [ikiɡai]) is a Japanese concept that means "a reason for being." It is similar to the French phrase Raison d'être. Everyone, according to Japanese culture, has an ikigai. Finding it requires a deep and often lengthy search of self. Such a search is important to the cultural belief that discovering one's ikigai brings satisfaction and meaning to life.[1] Examples include work, hobbies and raising children.[2] 

During our recent Global HR discussion around the purposes and the role of a HR personnel within our organization, the word “Raison d'être” was brought up, and being a French word, it sounds sophisticated and aristocratic and for most of us the impact does not gives us as much as to the meaning of the word.

Least, we didn't realise both words ikigai and Raison d'être are actually so close to our heart yet often we had neglected it or for some who didn't know it existed.  Finding the purpose, reason, why and what we live for, whatever we do, be it for the family or one’s self, we need to find the core, the balance and the purpose of our role and only with that we attain satisfaction to a meaningful life and what the Japanese believes that eventually brings longevity and a happy life.  

I am not going to talk about how to prolong life expectancy and longevity today but rather let’s try to reflect what we are doing today, how well we understand ourselves, learning about our inner self to seek what we really want to do and that ultimately resulting to real contentment. I am sure for most of us it's almost non- existence as we constantly worrying if we have enough today to pay our bills, bringing bread on the table and, the essential for the family sadly to say that’s the purpose for most of us. 

In recent survey, Singapore has the most unhappy and pessimistic workers. The Nation had the lowest score in job happiness and most pessimistic about their job among the seven Asian countries. Among the respondents, workers in the 16-20 years old range were ranked highest in average happiness, while those between 41-60 years old, mostly corporate executives were the unhappy workers. The score shows that the fresh graduates were the happiest lots when they first started their career and it start to go all downhill from there. 

Recently, I had met and spoken with a few senior level executives who said that they are going through “mid-life” crisis and some just quit from their well-paid job while others who can afford spurge into high ticket items. Why? Had we lost our compass and purpose in work life? 

We continue to lead our life in this rat race society, leading and doing things for the achievement of materialistic gain, climbing the corporate ladder or fighting for the most senior or paid job. Have we thought if we are happy at all? We continue to seek materials and status to numb our unhappiness at work. We need to take time and step back to reflect what we really want to achieve to seek the best and core purpose in this short work life span. 

As a career advisor, I had the opportunity to speak with some senior executives where they are in the cross road junction of their career life and frankly a couple of thousand dollars pay cut means nothing compared to doing a meaningful piece of work.

For most of us, we spent almost 4 to 5 decades of work life (shorter for some who choose or can afford to retire earlier), many of us just work for the sake of working to be able to provide for our family. Every morning we leave home for work, spending 7-8 hours to get a job done and we go home. Is there a purpose? Few people really get to work for hobbies and passion and find pleasure, get remunerated and at the same time making it a better place to live in. 

We continue to look some of these reasons behind these widespread of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, to name a few, low salaries, high work demand, poor work life balance, colleague relations and boring work, the list never ends. HR personnel continue to work hard to get employees engage but if the workers had no purpose and reason for being there in the first place, the never ending complaints, demotivated and disengaged employees, office politics, power fighting will continues. 

I had the chance to work in a company previously where everyone had the same set of beliefs, values and passion and thus making work evocative and even if it means hard work and long hours. Everyone was willing and happy to do the extra miles. 

For the last 10 years of my recruitment career, I had met many people from fresh graduates to senior management professionals, I have not come across many people who found their real purpose in their role and that’s very sad. 

As we bear heavier responsibility in life, few people thoroughly thought about what their purpose and reason for being for the role they play.

In the concept of ikigai, discovering our own personal ikigai takes one to do a deeper self-understanding and finding out what makes life worth living for? 

·       What you love doing? 

It is not easy to find the balance on what we love to do over what we need or expect to do. Often, the passion of what we love to do can be so intense that we will sacrifice or do anything to achieve the goals to attain satisfaction. I recalled sometime ago, when I started to develop interest in baking macrons, I had stayed up late and after many failed attempts to make these sweets grew “feet” and even to the extent of travelling to France to learn the making of this delicate biscuits. The excitement and fulfillment resulted from the successful bakes were enormous.   

 ·        Finding what you are good at?  

Leveraging on one’s strength and developing weakness is important for our growth. Only when we identify what we are good at doing then we could contribute our utmost value. 

·        What you can be paid for? 

Finding the right career or occupation suitability and get fair rewards for work that’s been delivered. I had noticed some of my candidates tend to stick on to what they were graduated by training and are risk adverse into venturing different streams and that makes them more venerable when there is an organisation restructuring or downsizing. Unlike the younger generation, they move around, exposing and experiencing different job roles and function to gain different skills, experience and therefore broaden their scope.  Let’s pause and think about in another 5-10 years’ time where most of our jobs may be taken up by technology and robots (as it is, it is already evolving), what will be our available options and the uncertainty that brings along? 

 ·        What the world needs from you? 

We owe to this universe that we live in and how we could make it a better place to live in. We can't avoid the natural disaster such as earthquakes, typhoons, tsunami but we could do our part to ensure that our living ecosystem are maintain and continuously looking at ways to improve the quality of life for everyone.  

We are constantly in the tug of war, finding the equilibrium and right balance is an art and science in living and never to let stress and worry ages us down. Once we achieve in finding the balance, life will be such a blessed.  

Enjoy and appreciate life to the fullest. Good luck to finding your very own ikigai, including myself!