How I found my Ikigai   

13 May 2019

Ikigai is a Japanese concept of Purpose, the reason for being. Finding the Purpose may prove elusive as one has to meet all four parameters – know what you love doing, what the World needs, what you are good at, and what you can be paid for. Wow.

Many of us can articulate at least one or two components of Ikigai because we all have something that we like doing. It’s way more challenging to assess our signature capability (i.e. what we are good at) and connect it with what we can be paid for it. Let’s pause here for a moment.

When do we realize our strengths?

For many, this process starts in childhood. For others, it is not so straightforward.  In my childhood I was ‘good at’ arts (played a piano, loved painting and creative writing). As a teenager I had a dream of becoming a composer. In my adult life, I studied linguistics, international relations, business and organizational coaching, among other things. I went through career transitions and was ‘good at’ picking up new competences and worked hard. I did not pose the question what I am good at, rather, I felt I just had to do my best to stay in the race /succeed. I also found that I not always enjoyed what I could do really well.

A few years ago, I went through a challenging time which presented the opportunity to re-evaluate myself. What are my strengths? What am I best at? What can I be paid for?

Typically, my first step was to revisit my CV. Where was I most successful? In all my past positions, to a similar degree. Not helpful. What else? I re-examined my psychometric profiling Disk and MBTI. These pointed to decision making abilities and innovative thinking. All fine but not a revelation. What else? I recalled my education-occupation range. Perhaps one of these was what the World needed, only I had no desire to be shoe-boxed back into ‘marketing’ or ‘teaching’. Still no light at the end of tunnel. My Coach suggested a Character Strengths survey, which ranked my top strengths as Creativity, Judgment, Love of Learning and Curiosity. The results were consistent with my MBTI type (INTJ) and stated the obvious, I thought. So what now? This felt like a dead-end.

The strengths approach is based on positive psychology premise that we have to build on our strengths rather than focus on ‘fixing’ our weaknesses. This resonated with me. I often felt “I was not enough” and this fueled my pursuit of excellence and learning.

Eventually, I arrived at the question: which character strength enabled my success in the line of my previous jobs? What has made me an agile learner capable of picking up new stuff so quickly? I’ve always had bad memory. At school I struggled to memorize information but got good marks. How did I learn? It was imperative for me to digest things. If I could deeply understand and explain it, I could remember.  The same approach worked for me at Uni. I was doomed to heavy reading and bridging concepts while my groupmates could cram the notes overnight and happily pass exams. I advanced my visual learning ability by drawing mind-maps; later in my career this helped me to design conceptual models. I thrived on strategies of all sorts. Most of all I enjoyed thinking. Imagining. Questioning. I was often told I thought differently.

But how exactly this Thinking Differently could serve me now?

How can I make it work for me?

When I commenced a postgrad coaching course 3 years ago, I wasn’t yet seeking the answer. On the contrary, I approached the challenge as a yet another new thing to learn, get ‘good at’ and be ‘paid for’. The learning, however, had a great impact on me not only because I have developed a new capability, but because I encountered how other people think. Partnering in a meaningful conversation is special: you are trusted to follow other people’s thoughts, listen for the weak signals and notice when the shift happens. The right and timely question has the power to unearth a new perspective and surface an unexpected solution.

How the shift happens? What triggers effective thinking?

My curiosity led me to explore Meta-thinking (or thinking about thinking). I discovered how psychology of critical thinking feeds creativity and emotional intelligence (contrary to a common belief). Thinking is the foundation of everything we do.

Gradually, new ideas started shaping up as I could envision myriads of applications of purposeful Thinking. What would happen if more people could think more purposefully and effectively? Critically and creatively? How much better place the world would be?

And then it clicked! People would be able to evaluate life situations and make wise choices. Avoid traps of false assumptions and unnecessary conflicts. They would enhance self-awareness, improve relationships and just be happier. And they could see their next steps with clarity, be strategic in their intent and actions. They could be open-minded and future-ready rather than resistant to change. All this certainly sounds like something that the World Needs!

Everybody does thinking, only are all types of thinking equally productive? Quality thinking is effective thinking. It activates your brain and grows mindsets. It is transformative. And it can be learnt.

I re-examined my Ikigai. I think I have pulled together all necessary ingredients: I love challenging people’s thinking to expand their mindsets, tick! I am in-the-zone when working on it (psychologists would call it ‘a flow state’). I am good at it (so I am told), tick! The World needs it, yey! I can help others to learn skills or coach them to think more effectively and be more productive. Will I be paid for it? It looks like it, some projects are in the pipeline already.

Surprisingly, I found my Ikigai by building on the synergy of my innate character strengths. Surely, I have professional experience and specialist knowledge under my belt, only these appear to have less impact on finding the Purpose.

If you haven’t identified or worked on your Character Strengths yet, you may have missed the opportunity to pursue and find Your Ikigai. It may take time to discover it, but it is definitely worth it.

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Authenticity: Your Most Powerful Inner Resource  

22 May 2018

I am sharing my personal story to encourage other career professionals (including coaches) to search for their authenticity for self-realisation, fulfillment and self-confidence.

I am one of those people who always suffered from perfectionism and self-doubt, only my life threw challenges at me such as career transitions and moving countries. My last career extension into coaching placed me out of my comfort zone again.

Regardless of a pretty solid coaching training foundation, the thought that was drilling my brain was ‘I was not enough’. I chased new learnings in order to call myself a Coach: kept registering for new coaching courses, international conferences, got myself a PCC Coach to work on my strengths, purchased a pile of coaching books and spent every commuting hour studying. While I was pouring money into the Knowledge Jar, my former peers coaching students started coaching businesses and were filling in schedules with paid clients. I, however, still was ‘practicing’.

My character strengths and professional skills analysis helped me to shape my coaching ‘niche’, but not the ‘brave’. Will I be capable to deliver?

As a professional marketer in (one of) my previous careers, I understood the need for social media and self-branding but was really scared to ‘pronounce myself a Coach’ publicly. The idea of ‘selling myself’ to potential clients was daunting to me, someone who is a true introvert, avoids networking and doesn’t even have a Facebook account. You get the picture.

It’s all a matter of confidence, said a cat passing by a line of guard dogs.

How to build confidence?

Evidence suggests that some lucky people are born confident.  Over-confident people suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect (a cognitive bias of people, mistakenly assessing their ability greater as it is), and some competent people battle the ‘Impostor syndrome’ (an inverted version of the Dunning-Kruger effect). I came to realization that knowledge plus confidence is the recipe for moving forward. Positive psychology encourages us building on our strengths. To address the latter, I completed all available psychometric, EQ assessments and strengths tests. I got my pleasingly high percentage scores of creativity, strategic thinking and other desirable traits but I didn’t feel like a more attractive value proposition to clients. Behavioural psychologists advocate teaching confidence skills, including confident thoughts and confident feelings which translate into confident behaviour.

I rotated in a vicious circle. Exhausted from gurus’ teachings of how to ‘find your niche’ or ‘steps to more clients’, I asked myself this question:

“How can I create my unique brand of coaching that would make me confident and my clients trust me?”

Without going into depth of branding theories that supported my reasoning, I’d simply summarise here that sadly, personal branding is frequently confused with ‘making a good impression’, dressing it up with a social media mix rather than making it truly authentic.

I felt that my authentic connection would help me to create the ‘chemistry’ with a Client. I needed to find my own Coach identity.

My long search for the right questions resulted in a personal branding model which I titled Brand ID©.  It rests on the 2 key identity connectors that make a whole entity: Inspiration and Dedication. The Inspiration flows from your Self-Concept which evolved from experiences and your turning points in life. But equally enlightening part for me was to explore my Dedication and then project my potential from Present to the Future.  By connecting the dots of Inspiration and Dedication I created my own constellation of authenticity, my Brand ID. I could see myself as a Whole Self.  I was enough.

What was the impact of my self-discovery?
  • First, it is not about re-inventing my identity. It is about reconnecting at a very deep level with my strengths, innate talents and passions. I can draw on my identity and authenticity as an inner resource.
  • Second, I could clearly identify potential areas of my professional work. I piloted my Brand ID© model with coaching clients and was amazed to see its effectiveness.
  • Third, I am an Authentic Coach who works with the best matched Client. I do not need a fake image, do not require artificial niches, and I do not need all types of Clients. I’ve got focus: I know what I want to do and what I would rather not do.
  • Fourth, the awareness of self-strengths enables me to channel them into other pursuits. I created a service canvas with a clear value proposition to clients. Strategy On A Page, Authentic Leadership Development, Design Thinking, and other services – they all fit with my boundaries and capabilities.
  • And lastly, I gained self-confidence.

As said by Wayne Dyer, “remind yourself that you cannot fail at being yourself”.

With gratitude,

Elle Taurins