Find Your Ikigai! | Jack Canfield

Have you ever wondered, why am I here? What's my purpose for being? What am I supposed to be doing with my life? What is my right livelihood? What would make me truly happy and really fulfilled? Well, today I'd like to explore that question with you and teach you about a profound concept that can help you answer those questions. I recently began negotiations with a truly wonderful man in Japan to bring more of my work to that country, especially the principles and strategies of success that I teach in my book the success how to get from where you are to where you want to be. And as we talked about how we would do that, we got into a conversation about ikigai, a Japanese concept that can be described in several different ways, but is mostly being talked about and written about today as one of one's reason for being, what I like to call one's life purpose. Now, the idea is that when you live your life in alignment with your ikigai, you get to experience a sense of deep satisfaction and meaning in your life. Now, interestingly, the concept of ikigai has gained a lot of popularity around the world. Books have been written about it, TED and TEDxtalks have been given about it, and blogs have been written about it. And different people stress different aspects of the concept. But what I love about it is that it directs us back to our essence, our real reason for living. Not out of fulfilling some ego needs such as fame and fortune, but in finding a way to express our true self and talents in a way that is in harmony with the world around us. Now, one of the concepts to come out of this is the invitation to explore the answers to these four questions and from where they overlap, to find your ikigai. So I'm going to take you through that. Now, the first question is, what do I love to do? Now, this is a critical question that we all need to answer for built into what we love to do is the purpose for our being alive here on earth at this time. There are so many teachers today that are pointing us in that direction. Teachers of the Law of Attraction. They tell us to do what brings us our greatest joy. They teach that joy is your internal guidance system that tells you whether or not you're on purpose. Joseph Campbell, one of the great writers and teachers of the last century and the author of the Hero's Journey and instructed us to follow your bliss. Chris and Janet Atwood, who developed a powerful process called the Passion Test, which we use in our trainings, advises us to always choose in favor of our passions. They ask us to Answer the question. My life is perfect when I am, then you fill in the blank. Now, when Janet took me through the Passion Test, what happened was my top 10 passions, which I identified included hanging out with highly conscious, positive people who want to make a difference, inspiring people to live their highest vision for their life and their business, learning new things and teaching them to others, and traveling to new places and collecting and publishing inspiring stories. But when Janet asked me to rate my number one passion, which was hanging out with highly conscious people, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being high, in terms of how I was actually currently experiencing that in my life, I had honestly rated it as a three. Now, as a result of working with Janet and acknowledging that my number one passion was and realizing that I wasn't actualizing at a very high level, I started the Transformational Leadership Council, a group of about 140 highly conscious people who are committed to bringing about positive change in the world by leading transformational training groups and producing transformational media. People like John Gray, the author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, and Lisa Nichols, who runs Motivating the Masses, Dawson Church, who's an EFT tapping expert and the author of Bliss Brain. Marci Shaimoff, the author of Happy for no Reason and the creator of the Year of Miracles, Dave Asprey, one of the world's leading biohackers and the creator of the Bulletproof Copy and the author of numerous books, including his latest one, which I highly recommend, called Fast this Way. And people like Ivan Meisner, the founder of BNI Business Network International, and Sherry Salata, the former producer of the Oprah show. And of course, Janet and Chris Atwood, the creators of the Passion Test. Now, we've been meeting together for four days twice a year for the past 16 years. And now that passion to hang out with highly motivated, conscious and positive people who are making a difference in the world is fulfilled at the level of a 10 in my life. And so many things have come from that. They've benefited my life and the lives of so many others. Now, for me, being in the movie and the book the Secret, being invited to speaking countries all over the world, being invited to appear on Oprah, Larry King Live, Montel and the Today show. And so much more came from choosing to intentionally create a way to do what I love to do, to hang out with highly conscious people who want to make a difference, all that came from the Transformational Leadership Council. Now, the second question exploring EGAI is are you good at it? You may love it, but Are you good at it? Now for me, I love to learn things. The kind of things I learned from the people in the Transformational Leadership Council and then share them in my work with others, in my speaking, in my trainings, in my individual and group coaching, in my writing, and in these YouTube videos and Facebook videos that I create. And I am very good at it. I seem to have a natural talent for teaching people how to maximize their potential and coaching and facilitating in doing that. I also realized that I was good at convening a group of transformational leaders, people that come from all over the world to meet and share their expertise with each other. So the second question in discovering your ikigai is are you good at one or more of the things that you love to do? Now the third question is, can I get paid for it? For me, I can get paid for speaking, for teaching, for training, for facilitating workshops and training other trainers, coaching people, conducting mastermind groups and writing and publishing books, and teaching other authors how to write and promote their books so they become best sellers, and teaching coaches and trainers how to build their practices. I'm also very good at ping pong, also known as table tennis, and so is my wife. But no one's going to pay me to watch me and my wife play ping pong. I'm also good at telling jokes, but not good enough to be a well paid stand up comedian. I'm good at running a small business, but nobody's going to pay me to be the CEO of a large multinational company. Now, to build on the Transformational Leadership Council example, I found that people were willing to pay to belong to the organization and pay to travel to destinations all over the world to meet together. Now the fourth question is, does the world need. It turns out the world needs the kind of trainings I do. The world needs books that inspire, motivate and inform. The world needs mastermind groups to provide community and accountability for people who want to achieve more success and happiness in their lives. It also turns out for me that transformational leaders and authors and trainers and coaches need to come together to support each other and encourage each other, to share their techniques and their methodologies with each other and to play and rejuvenate with each other. Now the next step after you've answered these four questions is to look to see where is there an overlap of these four things, where they intersect and overlap, what you love to do, what you're good at, what you can be paid for and what the world needs, and if and where they intersect, that's your ikigai. You can see that in this diagram. So I invite you to begin to look at your life and ask yourself, what do I love to do that I do well or can develop into doing it well and that people need and are willing to pay for? It may be something that you can immediately see, or it may be something that takes a while to fully live into, but it's worth it to spend the time to discover and and then pursue. Because when you are leaving your ikigai, you will be happy, successful, making a contribution and experiencing a deep sense of meaning and fulfillment. Now, if you found this video helpful, please make sure to like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one and for additional success strategies and resources on how to identify your life purpose and find happiness and fulfillment in your life. Be sure to visit my website@jackhamfield.com and check out the links in the description below. Also, let me know what you think in the comments and thanks for watching.