Unpopular opinion: the Ikigai framework is not helping you
The Ikigai framework is not helping multipassionates find clarity. It is making them more stuck. You have probably seen the diagram. Four circles. What you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, what you can be paid for. Find the center where all four overlap and congratulations, you have found your purpose. Sounds clean, right? Here is what nobody tells you. That diagram is not even real Ikigai. It is a Western invention that got projected onto a Japanese concept and went viral. The actual Japanese understanding of Ikigai has nothing to do with a Venn diagram. It is a feeling. A state of being. Japanese researchers describe it as something deeply personal and internal, ๐ป๐ผ๐ ๐ฎ ๐ฏ๐๐๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ๐๐ ๐ณ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฒ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ธ you fill out in a weekend. ______________ But the bigger problem for multipassionates is the assumption baked into the diagram itself. It assumes you are looking for one thing. One intersection. One answer. So when you sit down to fill it out and you have seventeen things in every single circle, the framework has no idea what to do with you. You feel like you failed the exercise. You think the problem is you. The problem is the framework was never built for a brain like yours. Ikigai was designed for people who need help finding their one thing. ๐ ๐๐น๐๐ถ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐ ๐ฑ๐ผ ๐ป๐ผ๐ ๐น๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ฝ๐๐ฟ๐ฝ๐ผ๐๐ฒ. They have too much of it in every direction. What they need is not a tool to narrow down. They need a container that can hold all of it and still make sense from the outside. Have you ever tried the Ikigai exercise? What happened? I am genuinely curious ๐๐ฝ