Why Adding Ikigai to My Professional Development Saved My Career

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Why & How I Discovered Ikigai

It was March 2020. A pandemic shut the world down, putting my career path and financial security at risk.

I’d be surprised if you’re surprised it was COVID-19 that drew me to explore ikigai. Coronavirus is synonymous with existential crisis. Everyone was and still is questioning why they are here and what they’re supposed to be doing with their lives since this disease was introduced to our vernacular.

During the global COVID lockdown, I started my blog, Leading Like a Lady. That’s because B.C. (Before COVID), I thought I was living my dream—moving abroad to Nairobi, living in an industrious part of the city, and working as a manager for a project commissioned by the Japanese government. But when I was forced to move back to the States as COVID canceled all my business meetings and trips, I came to two realizations. 

One, I was so happy the rest of the world was forced to slow down because that meant I could without feeling guilty. Truth be told, I hate the grind culture (which is why I left NYC for Nairobi in the first place). Two, I realized that most of my career choices, including my most recent one in venture capital, were made only because I’d sacrificed so much in student loans and emotional labor to get the highest-paying jobs available. 

In this patriarchal, capitalistic, and individualistic society, the Strong Black Woman trope is a survival tactic I and too many other women depend on. And we fall into too many pitfalls when we fail to be honest about how we use this veneer to cover up our fears and vulnerabilities while working in extremely competitive settings. 

So I decided to use my blog, Leading Like a Lady, to map out a better solution for our professional development that considers our personal well-being.

The History Behind Ikigai

A Japanese, Nigerian, and South African Walk Into a Bar…

This isn’t the setup for a joke, but a way to introduce a question: what do Black and Japanese people have in common?

The answer is an ancestral ritual to work with the greater good in mind.

Ikigai is a Japanese word translated as “reason to live”. I came across this concept for the first time while reading Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap during quarantine, which I heard about on a podcast led by Black comedian KevonStage and his wife, MrsKevonStage. Ironically, I was learning about an idea from a white author, an idea that never came up in my African household but can be directly linked to my Nigerian heritage and other African cultures.

The Igbo ikenga, for example, symbolizes the honor and reward someone gets for centering the impact on the community versus their individual gain when mastering a profession. The Southern African phrase Ubuntu ngumtu ngabanye abantu translates to “a person is a person through other people”, which means that a person lives at the service of society, not just to earn money or prestige strictly for themselves.

In this greater context, the full meaning of ikigai transcends what we commonly describe as a purpose-driven life. It’s a life we live intentionally developing a craft and love for something that’s going to make the world a better place.

With the growing obsession with self-care and the #softlife, practicing ikigai strikes a moral and mutually beneficial balance. You take care of yourself while taking care of others.

My Ikigai-based Professional Development Plan

So how does ikigai make you better at your job, and at being a people person? With this other great book, I learned how adding repetitive ikigai-approved habits allow me to selfishly pursue what I want and selflessly make a contribution to people who need my services. Here are four main steps I take frequently:

1. Vision Mapping (annually)

Visualizing who you want to be and how that’ll upgrade someone else’s quality of life is a powerful exercise. I’ve replaced new year's resolutions with this practice, and it’s made me less intimidated by my goals.

I start with a category, or an aspect of my life I’m planning for (e.g. building a tribe, establishing my voice, or financial literacy). Then, I summarize what success looks like in one sentence. That sentence becomes my mantra and metric. My aim is to make this a factual statement, something that has come to pass, before the end of the year.

Then, I literally take a picture of what this statement looks like. I love using tools like Canva to create these visuals. You can also take the traditional route and copy and paste photos from a magazine that relate to this objective. See my Vision/Money Moves Planner (page 6) for an example.

2. Zone of Genius Inventory (monthly)

The next step is evaluating how this bigger vision fits within my Zone of Genius. According to the pillars of ikigai, you must be able to sustain yourself while pursuing your vision. This includes financial stability, but also practicality. You have to ask yourself, is this something I already have a natural ability to do, and do I have the time to do it at the frequency needed to make a difference?

Gay Hendricks calls this working within your “zone of genius”. In this zone, everything just flows. Hours can go by and you don’t feel stressed or tired by the activity. As a matter of fact, you have the intrinsic motivation to keep going at it and to outdo yourself regularly. 

After I have an idea of where I’m heading, I create a checklist of the talents I have and my level of competency in each of them. If those ranked as excellent exceed those ranked as basic or incompetent, then I know my vision is taking me in the right direction. If there are key activities that I’m less than exceptional at but are necessary to accomplish the vision, I list those as tasks to outsource to more competent professionals (making sure I have enough funds set aside to pay them appropriately).

The goal isn’t to know how to do everything but to have enough of a skill set to carry out Step 3, which is executing your vision.

 3. Gamifying My Action Steps (weekly)

Honestly, there are days when the insecurity creeps back in, or other responsibilities seem to pile up, or I’m just not in the mood to work at all. So I still need small wins and a community of like-minded people to inject me with the confidence boost to persevere. This is one reason why practicing ikigai is nearly impossible in a toxic work environment, unless you’re able to fully disassociate from it (I can not) or have unlimited mental health days. And it’s also a reason to create external incentives regardless of how passionate you are about the new career, hobby, or cause you’re pursuing.

Gamifying my action steps is a strategy that’s been super helpful to me. A bingo card breaking down my big-picture goal into tiny steps gives me the option to do (or not do) some things depending on the mood I’m in that day. As long as I hit all my marks laterally or diagonally by the end of the week, I win! You can download a copy of one I made for my investment goals here.

I at least try every week to check one box off my bingo card: meeting with other people who share my ikigai, or professional and personal vision. Based on the book written by Shizuka Kobayashi, this provides accountability and encouragement. I can testify that joining several meetups and sharing my work with other aspiring writers gave me the courage to keep Leading Like a Lady going, and also kept my ego in check when I complain that the blog hasn’t grown to the level of fame or subscribers as fast as I would like. These accountability partners help me keep realistic expectations for myself while reassuring me when I’m producing quality work.

This all directly connects to the ikigai pillars of starting small, releasing yourself from undue pressure (or giving yourself grace), and going with the flow. 

4. Creating a Dashboard for Routines (daily)

The best thing I’ve done for my ADHD brain (a post on that coming soon) is to create a project management dashboard for my daily ikigai routines.

With Trello, my favorite project management tool, I’m able to break down my action steps into buckets and set calendar reminders for getting them done. I also use Trello’s checklist feature to break them down into micro-steps, so that I’m VERY clear on how to get them crossed off my to-do list. 

To me, this aligns with the “here and now” principle of ikigai. Rather than trying to keep up with everything I want to fulfill by the end of the year in my head, I can relax and be present with what’s on the agenda now. I don’t look at the next bucket of items I’m planning to do until those right in front of me are addressed. And once my allotted time for working on the items is up, I can fully shut down both my computer and my mind. Tomorrow, Trello’s going to automatically give me the rundown and structure for the day. As of 6 pm on the dot, there’s no need to think about it anymore.

My Results

Ikigai has transformed my mind and soul. I’ve seen signs of good mental health, going from neurosis and anxiety to assurance and calmness. I operate less out of competition with my peers, and more out of gratitude for the privilege to be who I’ve always wanted to be.

In 2020, the year I left Nairobi and the job that brought me there, I gave a TED talk, was hired for several paid speaking opportunities, and began my pivot to journalism on a HIGH note. More importantly, I’ve received messages from over 300 Black women and women of color expressing how my content has taught them more about themselves and subjects they thought they’d never explore. This is one of my favorite testimonials from a Leading Like a Lady subscriber, and I humbly anticipate many more.

And I must reiterate that ikigai is just a Japanese word describing what we, as Black and Brown women, inherited from our ancestors. The principles of working with purpose, and balancing ambition with altruism is just as African as it is Asian. Work ethic doesn’t have to be to the detriment of nobility.

Leave a comment below—are you inspired to add these principles to your professional development? What would it look like to execute this within your organization or small business?

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