Going through rough patches in pursuing my IKIGAI

Leaving a job I love in the social impact space to join the corporate world seemed just a pragmatic decision, but having to work my way back 15 years later was destined, yet not so straightforward.

Having a career as a teacher in government schools seemed destined for me due to my educational background and parental expectations. Not to mention the promise of a well-paying and stable job. However, I resisted all that and hard-headedly pursued my passion - empowering communities, especially the youths, through education and entrepreneurship. For the first 8 years after graduation, I was involved in capacity building and social enterprise projects, including setting up schools and agriculture plantations in remote communities in Indonesia and running social enterprises to support the works of a social service youth organization in Singapore. 

However, the frequent overseas travels and the "long hours-low pay" conundrum of having a career in the non-profit space really affected the family and financial aspects of life such that I was burnt out and decided to leave behind my life passion to join the corporate life in a semiconductor MNC as a manufacturing professional. Even though I was not engineering-trained and knew almost nothing about that line of work, I took it up anyway, for pragmatic reasons. It turned out 15 years later that it was a valuable journey that prepared me well as I returned to do what I love.

By 2016, the company was in its fifth year of a change management or organizational transformation program, implemented globally at the corporate and country levels. I was brought into teams that worked on many continuous improvement initiatives, including productivity, quality, automation, safety, and project management, which can be alien and uncomfortable for an Arts and Social Science graduate like me. The many years of immersion in engineering-related work and the global business environment helped me gain cross-disciplinary skills to become a T-shaped person, working beyond the areas I was trained earlier in my career and education. Working with all levels of management, managing people from all walks of life, and having colleagues from many nationalities and cultures, was not only enriching, but helped me hone my leadership, collaborative, and management skills. Looking back, I would not have learned so much if I had stayed in an SME or in a non-profit organisation.

On the flip side, finding things deeply and personally meaningful was a challenge. Working so hard and yet seeing little meaning and satisfaction was mentally and physically draining. One of the signs that I should finally move on was when a workforce upskilling project for production operators I initiated was terminated as the company expected more from government funding and was unwilling to invest much into training and developing the employees. I then decided to spend more time taking up pro bono and part-time training and consultancy assignments outside my work, including travelling overseas, using most of my annual leave balance for that purpose. One of the projects was a research and field work project commissioned by the World Bank in the Philippines. I even took up another degree programme in Business and attained a slew of people development and coaching certifications.

I was just 4 years shy of reaching the half-century mark in my life and decided that the 15 years in the corporate world were enough before it's too late to pivot back to do what I love and find meaningful. It is not an easy decision for anyone to leave their comfort zone, but I believe I had invested and prepared enough to mitigate the risk. So, in 2016, when I received an offer to lead a regional consultancy for education upliftment projects in third-world countries, I grabbed it. 

It was just serendipity that just a few months after leaving, I was told that the company decided to take the quicker, no-nonsense approach of literally "changing the management", realizing that the highly competitive and volatile semiconductor market could not wait for all the "change management" initiatives to achieve the desired outcomes. In addition, the working environment had become increasingly stressful and toxic as bosses are mainly concerned about bottom-line results rather than people's welfare and career development. Due to that, some of my former colleagues in their late 40s and 50s suffered heart attacks, and one literally fainted during a management meeting, apparently due to stress! Many voluntarily left the company despite earning comfortable salaries and benefits, including those in senior management positions who had served the company for more than 20 years.* 

Anyway, all these circumstances were just intermediate causes for my exit from the corporate "iron rice bowl".  The deeper cause was actually my yearning to achieve IKIGAI - a concept I encountered in one of the coaching courses I attended.

Ikigai means “a reason for being” or the idea of having a purpose in life or more simply, "the reason you wake up for in the morning".  According to ikigai experts, to find this reason or purpose, they recommend starting with these four questions:

• What do you love?
• What are you good at?
• What does the world need from you?
• What can you get paid for?

When "what you love" is aligned to "what the world needs" it will direct to what your Mission in life is, which in turn becomes your Vocation when people are willing to pay you for what you do. On the other hand, when people pay for "what you are good at" it becomes your Profession, and when that is aligned to "what you love", it becomes your Passion. The confluence of all these four aspects of "work-life harmony" will give you the reason for being or your purpose in life. 

The absence of any of the four in the confluence will result in paradoxical feelings or situations as described outside the Venn diagram. Therefore, finding a holistic answer and a balance between these four areas is what you should look for in your career and life, not what you enjoy, not to be rich, not even just to be happy - instead, it's about having a life worth living. This perspective totally changes the common concept of "work-life balance" which usually does not delve deep into the reason for living.

Essentially, knowing your purpose and focusing on a particular sphere of life or activity that makes life worth living not only can add years to your life but also gives depth to them as well. Your ikigai may change depending on your stages in life, and there's empirical evidence that backs up its effectiveness not only in the lives of the Okinawan centenarians but also among middle-aged people and regardless of age.

It is interesting to note that in Japan, where it originated, ikigai is a slower process and often has nothing to do with work or income. It emphasizes process and immersion rather than a final aim. You can read more about how the concept has evolved in an interesting article here. Nevertheless, it is a remarkably effective tool in assessing career directions and options, by asking just four simple open-ended "What" questions. It has worked for me personally and never fails to create an "a-ha" moment for my clients, such that it has become a must-have coaching tool. 

My journey in returning to do what I love would probably be smoother and shorter if I had been introduced to the amazing concept of Ikigai. Nevertheless, we sometimes need to go through difficulties and rough patches in life or career to find our hidden potential or know ourselves better in the process.

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*My accounts are anecdotal and not meant to provide an assessment of the company, which ironically, was listed here as one of Singapore’s top 10 best workplaces for 2019.