Ep 24. Find Your Purpose/Ikigai: a Path to Health, Wealth and Happiness

Nov 8

Episode show notes

Many of the women reaching out to me feel they lack a bigger purpose in life or career.

They push and grind through their day-to-day, often feeling exhausted, and wondering what the point is of it all.

Working hard but lacking a direction, purpose, or goal that feels meaningful to you, can lead to burnout, stress, bitterness, or just unhappiness in general.

And in my world, life can and should be so much more than that!

The good news is that there is a whole range of things you can do to change that situation.

Finding your purpose is one of them, and I love supporting my clients to do exactly that.

This week’s episode will dive into what this fluffy purpose thing is all about, how I work with my clients to discover theirs, and what you can do yourself to discover yours.

This might be the big missing key for you to dare to take a leap in your life and happiness!

Hi ladies,

I’m sure you have heard of the word, intrinsic motivation.

It’s the motivation that comes from within, a positive driving force to take action.

This motivation often comes from feeling a sense of purpose with what you do.

The bestselling author Dan Pink wrote the book Drive, which I love, and often refer to. If you haven’t read it, go check it out.

He talks about the three things behind what motivates us; autonomy, mastery & purpose.

Having all these three in place + being paid enough for your job, chances are pretty big that you feel motivated.

But what if you sense that the whole purpose thing is missing?

Maybe you don’t feel so passionate about the things you do every day?

It’s more like, meeh, or even like genuinely dislike, wishing you did something totally different.

But how do you find out what to do instead?

A great question and this is such a common reason for reaching out to a coach, feeling like something is missing or that something is off, but not knowing exactly what, or how to change it.

And there are several ways to come to that conclusion.

One of them is discovering your Ikigai.

Ikigai is a Japanese concept, meaning reason of being, or life purpose.

It’s a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment that follows when you pursue your passions.

When I changed careers to become a coach, I felt right at home, and this is because I had found my Ikigai without knowing it!

My self-confidence grew a ton and my happiness too! And success came as a result of it.

And I see this happen with my clients too.

I came up with an exercise that I call Your Zone of Genius, and Ikigai is a big part of it.

I take all my clients through it because it gives so many clues as to where they can start looking for more meaning and purpose + and it has a big confidence component to it as well.

As humans are complex, we get to look at health, happiness, success, confidence, and meaning from a holistic perspective.

There is a tight connection between finding more purpose and meaning in your life, and feeling better, and performing better!

So this is a virtuous cycle!

But knowing where to start is key.

Sometimes we can’t even start looking at changing big things around until health is in place and sometimes, health and wellbeing come as a result of making the changes!

I would love to support you now to find out what this is for you!

Let’s look at the Ikigai model:

Ikigai has 4 main components;

What you love doing
What you're good at
And what the world needs
What you can be paid for

Imagine seeing this as a flower, with four petals.

The Ikigai is in the middle, in the intersection of all these four things.

It’s like finding the red thread in your life between your passions, skills, and what’s meaningful and important to you.

And if you want to use this to find a new career, it’s gotta be something you can be paid for too.

This can be tricky to come up with yourself, that’s why it can be very effective to do this exercise with a coach.

And I do this in my 90-min strategy sessions for example, that you can book on my website. I’ll drop a link in the show notes to this.

And in this exercise, which I call Your Zone of Genius, we also discover your values, and many other things, to truly come up with how you want to design your life, according to what comes up.

To mention a few examples of what has happened to my clients as a result of doing this exercise;

One client left her job to switch careers completely, from being a business analyst to going into consulting, as she realized that she loved to strategize and needed more interaction with people. She also decided to move to another country as she was very unhappy where she lived and worked.

Another client decided to leave her career within HR to become a coach. She jumped on a coach training and is now running her own business, supporting women to trust their intuition among other things, which was key to her taking the leap.

One client realized that a business idea that she had been thinking about was super aligned with her skills and passions and might take that on as a side project, until she decides to leave her current job and do that full-time.

A last example is a client who realized that many of her previous jobs were ones that she felt almost pressured to take, that the tasks weren’t really what she liked doing but it looked good on the CV. So now she is going back to the drawing board and thinking about what HER dream career looks like and will apply to jobs that suit that and her dream life setup with three small kids.

So now, if you want to do this exercise, grab a notebook and a pen;

What do you LOVE doing?

At work, in your spare time, get down all of it. When do you get lost in curiosity and flow?

What are you GREAT at?

Ditch the inner critic here, and just swim in your own awesomeness. What are your biggest strengths and skills?

What does the world NEED?

Which causes do YOU care about? Cause even if you want to save the world and fix everything, which I’m sure we all do, find the top three or five causes, that are most important to you.

And finally;

What can you be paid for?

Given your current skills, experience, interests?

And maybe even, what can you be paid for if or when you develop those?

I hope this gives you some clues or red threads, and I would love to hear how you get on!

I answer all DMs or emails I get so please share what you come up with.

Something I have realized since making this shift is that doing what I do doesn’t really feel like it’s work.

Spending my days coaching awesome women to feel better, and get more energy, control, and confidence is such a joy. And helping them find the missing pieces in their lives and careers is truly meaningful.

And I can also spend hours and hours listening to podcasts on women’s health, reading about personal development, well-being, brain science, confidence and just wanting more.

I nerd out on everything from how the pelvic floor is connected to our overall wellbeing, or optimizing women’s hormones - while doing laundry or cooking.

This is intrinsic motivation and driven by a deep sense of purpose, curiosity and interest.

What could this be for you?

I believe we all have this possibility within ourselves, to connect with

And if you want some hand-holding through this process, grab a 90-min strategy session with me or enroll in my VIP program.

We will create magic together!

Until next time, take care of yourself, and go be a badass!