Finding Your Ikigai

Mistaking our work as our why can make us miserable even when, to the eyes of the world, we seem wildly successful. This is why we see so many people at the top of their fields confessing to battles with depression despite being successful.

At the first level of finding purpose, one needs to discover the same at the individual level.

The management literature centres on finding a perfect job for us to discover meaning. Our work cannot be our why (Purpose).

The Vedic rishis found that everything in the world that blooms is also subject to ultimate decay and dissolution. So, they wondered—are we humans endowed with intelligence should merely just to live a brief life span and then pass away? They reasoned that life cannot be devoid of some higher purpose, especially when we are the only living beings with the ability to think and reflect. We stand at the pinnacle of evolution, a product which has been refined over thousands of years.

Our time is limited, so let us not waste it living someone else’s life and not let the noise of other’s opinions drown out our inner voice.

will we begin to live each day to the fullest as if it was the only one, we had. Now you must live only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognise that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life, he can only respond by being responsible."

Though the goal remains the same, each one charters his path depending on one’s unique intent and inner calling to achieve it in one’s own way.

The lives of those who stand out conspicuous in course of history provide us the needed inspiration and clarity in the roadmap ahead, helping us to come to grips with the trials, tribulations and vicissitudes of fortune, awaken us to ulterior dimensions of life which otherwise go unnoticed.