What You Know About Ikigai is Dead Wrong

And it’s making you choose the wrong things in life

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You’ve been bamboozled. What you know about “Ikigai” is wrong — dead wrong. And it’s making you choose the wrong things in life.

I hate to break it to you but, Ikigai is not the intersection of:

・what you love
・what you’re good at
・what the world needs
・what you can be paid for

That’s just a bunch of nonsense started by an uninformed blog post 9 years ago. Do you want to know how it happened?

Most importantly, do you want to know what Ikigai really means and how you can apply it to your life now? Okay, then let’s dive in.

A History of Misinformation

It all started when Marc Winn saw Dan Buettner’s 2014 TED talk on “How to Live to 100+.”

In the Talk, Dan showed a compelling narrative that having Ikigai is the secret to why many Japanese, particularly…