“Your Ikigai isn’t a destination. Instead, it’s a current state at any given moment in time. It’s the way you feel about your purpose.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 566
Have you found your Ikigai?
Join the conversation below and go check the links.
531: Ikigai (part 1 of 6)
538: Ikigai (part 2 of 6) What You Love
545: Ikigai (part 3 of 6) What You’re Good At
552: Ikigai (part 4 of 6) What Can You Be Paid For?
559: Ikigai (part 5 of 6) What Does the World Need?
Jack Wilson on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jack Wilson, the Director of Franchise Development for Cinch I.T. and “The Guy with Ikigai” is back to wrap up his series. Here he is:
Jack Wilson: What is going on, Daily Sales Tips Community. Today’s a little bittersweet because I am back with part 6, the penultimate tip of Defining your Ikigai. If you’ve been following along, then hopefully you’ve done some work. At this point, you’ve reflected on what you love, what you’re good at, what you could be paid for, and what the world needs. It’s time to start to tie the strands together and understand how they impact one another and ultimately how they impact you.
Your Ikigai isn’t a destination. Instead, it’s a current state at any given moment in time. It’s the way you feel about your purpose. So rather than putting a bullseye at the center of our four circles. Instead, I want you to map out where you currently stand.
To make this a little easier. It makes sure you pull up an image of the Ikigai concept. There’ll be one in the show notes, or maybe Scott will even sarcastically include a link to let me Google that for you.
On the image, you’ll find several different areas of overlap. For example, the space between what you love and what you’re good at is a passion. What you’re good at and can be paid for as a profession. Use this image to reflect on where you feel you currently are in your role.
Now let’s take it one step further. How do you feel about that? Are you comfortable in your work, but feeling a sense of emptiness or lack of purpose? Or maybe you’re extremely happy and fulfilled, but you’re not quite living in the lap of luxury.
Take your time to identify where you fit. If you’re smack dab in the middle. Well, congratulations. You found your Ikigai, but if you’re like most of us, well, there’s still probably some work to do. And that’s really the point behind the premise, just because you may have found your Ikigai today, things can change. For better or worse the way we feel about our work and purpose can swing frequently. And when they do use the Ikigai framework to plot where you are and how your mindset has shifted, then once you know where you are, you can shift your focus to finding that center again.
Here’s a practical example for you. Let’s say you started a new role as an ag a little over a year ago. You were so excited to be promoted. You love running discovery calls and having in-depth conversations with your customers. And you’re really good at identifying their problems and tying solutions that fit their needs. And as a result, your bumping salary has been met with an ample commission, maybe even better than expected, but now 18 months into your role, you start to fizzle out the excitement’s still there, but you can’t help, but wonder what else is there? How long can I just plug away like this?
Enter Ikigai. What aspect of the framework is missing in this example? What if I told you that you worked for a SAAS company that provided API integration tools, super exciting stuff, right?
It might be missing in your mind is what the world needs. You might feel like the product or service you sell. Isn’t sexy? It isn’t solving some existential world problem and that’s causing you to lose some fire use Ikigai to first identify what’s missing from your equation. Then do the work to dive deep and find the missing component within your work. API integrations, for example, may not seem so cool, but what if your customer was using that integration to streamline medical data use to synthesize a vaccine for a worldwide pandemic? What if it wasn’t? I’ve only given you the tool. Now it’s up to you to decide how to use it.
Scott Ingram: And now, it’s up to you to click over to DailySales.Tips/566 for links to the 5 other tips in this series, the Ikigai image that Jack referenced, and of course a link to Jack’s LinkedIn profile so you can get connected with him directly.
Once you’ve done that, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast and come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!
