Introduction

Hi, my name is Chris and I am a recent proponent of Ikigai. If you are reading this publication I am guessing you already have a rudimentary knowledge of what this concept is, but for those of you who are less familiar, Ikigai is:

“a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being.” The word “Ikigai” is usually used to indicate the source of value in one’s life or the things that make one’s life worthwhile. The word translated to English roughly means “thing that you live for” or “the reason for which you wake up in the morning”.” — Wikipedia

Each individual’s Ikigai is personal to them an reflects their own values, beliefs and is an expression of their inner self represented faithfully, which in turn promotes a feeling of wellness and being at ease.

“The origin of the word ikigai goes back to the Heian period (794 to 1185). “Gai comes from the word kai (“shell” in Japanese) which were deemed highly valuable, and from there ikigai derived as a word that means value in living.” — BBC

So in everyday meaning in Japanese, iki is parallel to the word life and gai relates to worth, which is how most western interpreters get to a meaning of “Your reason for being”.

Experiments in Ikigai is not about ‘Wellness’ in the movement sense of the word, but more of an exploration of the concept as it relates to work-life and a modern lifestyle. The benefits of Ikigai are well documented in the communities of Okinawa, by Dan Buettner, so we won’t dwell on them here.

To give readers a sense of why I’m writing this, I may be useful to explain a little more about myself and why I am now interested in this subject.

My Background

For many years I followed the path that many do and built a career in media, starting off on the supplier side of the industry, and eventually moving through a series of companies and roles to a position where I had become a director. At this point, I had just been offered another role at a large publisher in the UK and my company offered me equity in a bid for me to stay. This came with some caveats, but at the time I was happy to stay, as I was just about to get married, and owning part of the company was very appealing.

Fast forward a couple of years, I’d worked my socks off, we prepared the company for sale and the company was bought in a ‘paper deal’. In the interim, I didn’t receive any of my promised shares or my steak of any sale proceeds because of those caveats, which related to the overall performance of the company which ultimately, I didn’t have control over. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not grumbling. At this stage, I had already figured out that it was very unlikely that any of the other Directors would get paid out with the exception of the CEO.

When that chapter of work closed, I had time to reflect before the sale completed and realised that I really didn’t know what I wanted to do next. What I did know was that the value exchange for what I had been doing wasn’t something that I wanted to continue to propagate. I enjoyed lots of elements of my work, but there were also lots of other things that I was less than comfortable doing too. It was time to really think hard about what the next stages of my career would look like.

Also, my wife had just fallen pregnant, so although elated, I was also feeling the pressure to figure these career dilemmas out quickly, before she went on maternity leave. However, I was lucky enough to have already done some pieces of consultancy at another major publisher, while I was in my previous role. We exchanged time and knowledge around programmatic monetisation and branded content distribution. They were looking for someone to help out with their branded content proposition, so I decided to take up a new contract consultancy role to help them with this.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Unknowingly, this is how my adventure into Ikigai started. I started to re-evaluate my value, responses, attitude and ethics around work. My journey has only just begun, so over the following months I would like to take you with me and share my experiences, the bad as well as the good, the embarrassing moments, the failures and pitfalls so that you might be able to do a better job of it.

Hopefully, over monthly installments, I will have made enough progress to make these stories interesting, and valuable enough for other people to start giving it a try.