For Long-Term Happiness, Find Your Purpose
For those of you who have been reading my newsletter and website for a while, you may remember the article I wrote about yourImpact Balance Sheet which talks about how to evaluate your life – not just your career and job but also your side gigs, giving, investing, purchasing in terms of positive or negative social impact. It’s a great tool to make a diagnosis/baseline of where you are in your life and where you can need to do some work to move the needle towards more positive impact.
In thinking of this balance sheet, some of you may have thought about the Venn diagram that is often used to represent the traditional Japenese concept of Ikigai, which is about finding the right balance for a long and happy life. Ikigai translates as a “reason for being”.
At the center of the four circle diagram that is often used to represent Ikigai, when all these axes align and balance out, is purpose:
What you’re good at (i.e., your superpowers)
What the world needs (i.e., solving problems that actually matter)
What you love (i.e., your fulfilment)
What you can be paid for (i.e., how much you earn for the activity)
Now as I was researching this concept of Ikigai further, it appears that this is a Western representation (or rather appropriation?) of Ikigai, and that in Japan, Ikigai while denoting indeed a “reason for being” is more about the joys of simple things, being present here and now, daily rituals and practice, and in fact quite far from the diagram itself!!
So let’s go back for now to the original diagram from Andres Zuzunaga who originally drew it in Spanish as it relates not to Ikigai but in fact to Purpose. Noting perhaps Andres’ is still very similar to an earlier Hedgehog diagram from Jim Collins. Did I go down a rabbit hole trying to parse out the real origin of this diagram? Yes, yes, I did.
The good news of this whole debate on this diagram is that regardless, finding your purpose, can make you live longer and happier.
A January 2021 article in the Washington Post points out: “Although diet and exercise are certainly vital for health, science shows there is another longevity ingredient we often overlook: finding purpose.”
Also from this article, ten studies involving more than 136,000 people found that “having purpose in life can lower your mortality risk by about 17 percent — about as much as following the famed Mediterranean diet.”
Maybe it’s obvious that devoting the majority of your waking hours to a job which does not align to your purpose can feel soul-crushing and that this will impact your health and wellbeing, but I still think most people overlook this.
Of course, this does not mean everyone can quit their day job and suddenly get paid a living wage to work in social impact, but I do argue against the idea of ‘go make a lot of money and then you can give back’.
It’s an idea I have often heard and many of my friends or former bosses/colleagues do subscribe to this. I’ll go make lots of money on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, in management consulting (that’s many of my ex-BCG colleagues!), and then I’ll be able to give money away, retire early, and give back through public service, non-profit work, or if I did really well, a foundation that bears my name.
There are several issues with this approach.
First, how much money is enough? How much do you need for you and your family to be comfortable? How many years is it okay to have a neutral or negative impact in your day job? Will your giving back later really compensate for those neutral or negative years? How many years is it okay to put off living your values and your purpose?
Second, the premise of ‘make money now, do good later’ also rests on the assumption that you cannot make a decent enough amount of money to live comfortably and provide for your family while doing good in the world, and that is simply not true. I do not believe it’s an either / or even if you will have likely have to take a pay cut if you are a corporate lawyer looking to move to social impact. There are plenty of great jobs that pay well / very well in the social impact space, and there are plenty of market opportunities for for-profit social enterprises to flourish.
Of course, you won’t make silly money as you might have in Wall Street’s hey days, and the Silicon Valley unicorn start-ups; but it is only a very small minority of privileged people who have access to these opportunities, in any event.
And I am sorry to say that the opportunity to make the truly silly money is almost always premised on extraction and exploitation, at least of monopolistic positions, of people and the planet.
Is it ok to go make money upholding and profiting from the rigged system, and then go and fix it? If so, is it because I am learning how it works, or that I am trying to change it for good from the inside? Throughout, am I able to live my values?
For me, creating a life full of impact starts now.
To live your purpose, you should start moving the needle in yourImpact Balance Sheet to the positive now, as much as possible even if it’s gradual.
Long story short, the journey always matters as much as the destination.
Now, it’s a journey not something that is easy to suddenly realize overnight. I’ll talk more about this in future posts and my book, but long story short, the best way to get started is with 10% of your time and money. Volunteer for an organization you admire, give them some money too, invest some dollars into impact investing, start applying for jobs in social impact or having coffees with people you meet in that space. 10% is a Saturday or Sunday morning, and an evening a week. It might feel like a lot but it’s certainly possible as a goal, and through this, you will develop more skills and experience, and better understand your superpowers and your purpose which ultimately can lead to finding a job/career that is devoted more and more towards impact.
And perhaps this is where the concept of Ikigai and purpose can meet–that your life is more than your job and that intentional actions even when initially small matter greatly to your reason for being and your overall fulfilment.
