Ugeddit Origins #04: Instantly Best Friends

Sabian: So, I found this guy on Meetup who I’ll call Michael, and when I arrived at the meet location (a nice small coffee shop in Downtown Vancouver), there were supposed to be three of us, but I was the only one who showed up. When Michael arrived, we accepted that it was just going to be us, and started our conversation, and this conversation was one of my biggest eye-openers in the past 10 years up until that point. We discussed the Japanese concept of Ikigai. Ikigai (生き甲斐) roughly translates to your “reason for living”, as in what you are most passionate about that brings fire and life into your soul, every morning to every evening.

We talked about the four individual components that all Ikigai have (and these are just my words to describe them; you can use these or whichever words you think fit better): moneymaker, skill, passion, and service.

• Moneymaker simply means being set up in such a way that you can use it to earn enough money to survive.
• Skill means something you have become good at, it doesn’t matter what, as long as you have gained experience, familiarity, and practice with it enough to do it much better than you used to.
• Passion means it is something you truly enjoy, not just a passing interest or curiosity, but something that consistently brings you excitement and happiness.
• Service is the most important one. It means something that genuinely helps the world, that brings real value to the people around you, and fulfills a higher purpose

These are the four components of Ikigai, and once all of these are built within something you do, that thing becomes one of your Ikigai, and you can even have more than one.

So, when Michael shared this concept with me, it made perfect sense. We understood each other so well, and talking with him was so easy and satisfying that, even as an introvert, I actually felt more energized after our conversation, and I had a lot to think about.

Within the next few weeks, I had realized one of my Ikigai, but it wasn’t Ugeddit…