The Christmas season was approaching and the online toy shop had never been busier. The shopping frenzy had started already in November, with double, then triple, then almost tenfold the usual daily orders. I'd worked in the customer service and was the only one covering the Croatian market.

In those frantic days, the courier service made even more of the bizarre mistakes and wrong deliveries than otherwise. They would send a parcel to Austria instead of Croatia, or they would send a wrong parcel to a remote island where the delivery comes just once a week! By the time the increasingly angry and fuming customer finally got her parcel, a good 3 weeks would have passed.

 

I had to be a buffer for all those mishaps and often tried to explain the inexplicable. Why does the remote islander need to pay a fee (even if it’s symbolic, 10 €cent) upon receiving her long-awaited, mixed-up parcel, 3 weeks after its due date? Didn’t she deserve an apology letter from the company and a symbolic gift, instead of a symbolic fee?? Of course she did, that would have been the right thing to do!

 

But no, this wasn’t that sort of company. They didn’t really care about the customers, only about the sales. But how do you grow your sales if your customers aren’t happy, you may ask? Well, it didn’t bother them because the majority of the customers weren’t complaining. And those that did, even if rightly so – well, they can wait. We’ve got more pressing things to do.

 

A recipe for burnout

 

And indeed, even in the height of the Christmas season, I had to add a certain amount of new products to the online catalogue daily, so they are available for purchase. My bosses didn’t care that I was drowning in clients calls, order modifications and delivery delays, and that this took up most of my working hours. They wanted to see the norm met. So I had to work (luckily from home) till late in the night, trying to squeeze a few more product translations before midnight, so that the bosses wouldn’t be mad at me the next day.

 

Never in my life had I been so looking forward to the weekends, so that I can simply unhook from the daily grind and have some peaceful time for myself (although weekends too were often spent doing the chores, which I had no time for during the week, although I was working from home). And the thought of starting it all over again on Monday morning filled me with terror.

 

Less than 6 months on that job and I was already suffering from burnout, something I’d never experienced before. I was so much on the edge that a salary delay of a few days, coupled with a strange episode of spotting mice in our flat (in a high-rise, probably they got in via the sewage pipes?) and spending several days setting mouse traps and waiting for the result... almost led me to a nervous breakdown. I was done, I just couldn’t take it any longer. But I didn’t have the guts to quit right there and then, but only some time later, when a better offer came, which „saved” me from my misery.

 

Don’t get me wrong, customer service isn’t the worst job one can have, far from that. But in the company I worked for, it was seen as a necessary nuisance. The only part of the job where I actually felt some kind of satisfaction was working with the customers, trying to be helpful and of service. But it wasn’t what the company valued – they wanted me to spend less time on the customers and more time translating product descriptions. I was criticized for being too slow with that, when in fact I wanted to ensure quality, because if the description didn’t fit the actual product, we would get complaints. So if I wanted to prevent a barrage of customer complaints, I’d better re-check those descriptions. But the bosses didn’t care about that – they just wanted speed.

 

Giving up my dreams

 

So none of my good qualities were appreciated, and also, none of what was important to me was important to my bosses. We had a different set of values – it was a complete mismatch. That’s why I felt much worse than I probably would have felt somewhere else, where respect for the customer, willingness to help and swift handling of complaints were appreciated qualities. That’s also why I got to the point of burnout within less than 6 months.

 

But on some level I believed I deserved that job, that’s why I was afraid to leave. My self-esteem was very low and I thought I’d never be able to live my dreams. Or worse, that my dreams were just lies I was fooling myself with, and that it was time to accept „reality”. That I should forget about my passion and purpose, and get myself a job – any job – and be happy with it. It was a defeat of my soul and spirit, and I found myself in the valley of tears, working my butts off for a meager pay, with no joy, no satisfaction, no meaning, just bare survival.

 

Luckily, it didn’t last long. About 6 months later I got another job offer, and I jumped at the opportunity. This other job wasn’t ideal either, but since it was just part-time and much more relaxed, it gave me more time for myself, for hobbies, for relaxation, for simply listening to my inner voice. I felt incomparably better than at the toy shop.

 

What does success mean to me?

 

With the help of a counselor, I realized that I don’t need to give up on my dreams, even if they haven’t materialized yet. I could still have dreams and aspirations, but also keep them grounded, make sure they are feasible. I can give myself another chance. My biggest problem was that I’d lost trust in myself, that’s why things looked so bleak. But if I can rebuild that trust, there’s hope for the future, there’s hope for success.

 

And then I dug a little more... what does professional success even mean to me? And the answer came: It is doing what I love and earning a decent living from it. Is it impossible? Is it a pipe dream? I no longer think so. But it was one of my deep-rooted, unconscious beliefs: that I wasn’t capable of succeeding in what I loved. Probably it goes back to my mother always belittling my dreams and telling me „who do you think you are”, and „life is hard, you better get a grip.”

 

I am not escaping reality and the need for hard work, and putting in the effort, and perhaps even failing a few times. However, I do believe in ikigai. In finding that sweet spot where you do what you love and that you’re good at, and there’s a market for it so you can make a living from it.

 

What is ikigai?

 

Let’s look at it a bit closer. Ikigai is the cross-section of 4 things:

 

1) your passion (what you love and brings you joy),

2) your skills (what you're good at),

3) a particular need or problem in the world that needs solving, and

4) your ability to get paid for that service.

 

 

 

If you have a passion and skill in something, say repairing old gramophones, but no one needs your work, you can’t make a living from that.

 

If you have a skill and you get paid for it, that’s your regular job – maybe you don’t particularly enjoy it, but it pays the bills, so you stick with it.

 

If you fulfill a larger need in the world, e.g. you are a doctor, and you get paid for it, that’s nice, but if you aren’t passionate about it (say you only became a doctor because your parents expected it from you), that’s also not the real thing.

 

And finally, if you fulfill a larger need in the world and you’re passionate about it, say you’re a street musician, but you’re not very good at it, chances are you aren’t going to be able to make a living from it.

 

For ikigai, you need all four circles to overlap.

 

Finding your ikigai

 

I've written about purpose before. In the above diagram, your purpose is the overlapping of your passion and what the world needs. That’s because your purpose is always related to serving other people, helping them improve their lives in some way. It’s never just about yourself and your own needs. And if this service of yours also provides added value, so that people (or organizations) are willing to pay for it – bingo! You’ve found your ikigai!

 

So the formula for ikigai is:

 

    you love it

+ you're skilled at it

+ you help people with it

+ people are willing to pay for it

 

Perhaps you already have a passion and feel a calling to help in some issue large or small, making the world a better place. If that’s so, you already have 2 circles of the diagram figured out: passion and the world’s need. It can remain at the hobby level, e.g. you can volunteer in an organization that helps poor children, or helps protect the environment. You don’t need to quit your job to do that, and that’s perfectly fine.

 

However, if you feel this passion is more than a hobby and you want to dedicate your life to it, that’s when you need to figure out the other 2 circles as well: becoming really good at what you’re doing, i.e. developing the necessary skills, and finding a way to earn money from it. In order to accomplish that, you might need to go back to school, or enroll a training course, learn marketing skills, learn fund raising, etc. This will enable you to create a product or service with an added value, which people are willing to buy.

 

For example, someone who is passionate about saving the climate might start a non-profit and create worthwhile projects that will attract donations. He (or she), as the chairman of the NGO, will receive salary for his work, and at the same time, he’ll be working on projects he deeply cares about. Or, an adventurer with entertaining skills might get a contract with a TV channel to finance his trips to exotic destinations all over the world. In order to succeed, the climate enthusiast needs to learn project proposal writing and fund raising skills, while the adventurer needs to learn how to behave in front of the camera. Their ikigai is the combination of their passion and talents on one hand, and their acquired skills on the other.

 

For me, psychology and personal development has been my long-time passion. It started with the need to help myself, since I felt so inadequate, awkward and “not good enough” overall. Because of everything that I’ve been through and the lessons learned on my journey to my authentic self, I felt it was my calling to help others in a similar situation suffer less, and find their unique path and their happiness faster. It was something I wanted to dedicate my life to. So I’ve graduated from a personal development training and a coach training, and this enabled me to develop the necessary skills and competencies to work as a life and career coach. This is how I’ve created my ikigai.

 

Do you even need ikigai?

 

Living in the ikigai zone isn’t for everyone, neither is it a precondition for a happy and fulfilled life. Some people draw the greatest fulfillment from their family, and their job is there to support the needs of their family. Their hobbies and charitable work might also give them a sense of fulfillment and purpose, so they aren’t missing anything from their lives. They are happy and content. They don’t need to go full-blown ikigai.

 

However, if you have a deep yearning to help or serve people in some way, to help a cause that is dear to your heart, and at the end of your life, you would regret for not having tried it – then you’re a candidate for an ikigai life. It doesn’t mean you need to quit your job immediately. Instead, you can start improving your skills and competencies, needed for the ikigai level. You can do pilot projects to taste the waters and see if there’s any interest. You can find many ways to move towards your dreams, without jeopardizing your livelihood.

 

Ikigai or not, what we all need is more passion and purpose in our lives, and our careers too. If you would like to get off a treadmill job that is draining the last atoms of energy from you, and find your purpose and perhaps even your ikigai, I’d be more than happy to help you on that journey.