Ikigai influencing small businesses I’ve tried to wrap my head around “The Great Resignation,” as it became known after the epidemic, to comprehend the true motivation behind why so many individuals opt to establish their own businesses full-time or pursue side hustles in the hopes that they may one day become their primary source of income. The big quit is frequently attributed to factors including burnout, a desire to work remotely, poor treatment by employers, and inadequate pay. However, I believed that these justifications weren’t enough to support the radical change in work. As I worked to understand the motivations, I thought back to an article I wrote about personal fulfillment in March 2015 and wondered if there might be a connection between that and the Great Resignation.
After some thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that the ability the pandemic brought to reexamine the personal fulfillment derived from one’s job is the main motivating factor behind the great resignation and explains why more and more workers are choosing to leave stable paying jobs to start their own small businesses or engage in a side hustle to feed their journey of personal fulfillment.
As a society, we were accustomed to and shaped into a routine of obedience and doing what had to be done without much thought to what truly made us happy before the 2020–2021 pandemic. We were instilled with the habits of going to school, doing well in class to get into college, and picking a vocation that would pay well so we could retire comfortably. People typically only choose jobs in order to sustain their lifestyle. Sadly, this frequently led people to select a line of work that did not offer much in the way of personal fulfillment. Going to work becomes a hassle and eventually soul-crushing when you do not receive any kind of personal fulfillment from your position.
Many people paused in response to the outbreak. It gave them the opportunity for introspection that they were deprived of while they worked from 9 to 5 every day. A lot of workers started to understand that there must be more to life than working a pointless job for more than 40 years until retirement.
They received numerous rounds of direct stimulus funds, American Rescue Plan benefits, and direct monthly child tax credits as incentives to work toward their personal satisfaction goals. All of these payments and benefits served as start-up money for many people who decided to rethink the traditional 9 to 5 workweek.
Add to that the dearth of daycare facilities that led many former dual-income families to choose one parent to take on a more flexible work schedule and serve as a daycare provider. Many stay-at-home parents began home businesses or side hustles to supplement their income and achieve their ikigai personal fulfillment goals. To pursue their life’s work, they gave up a job, which is the essence of ikigai.
The greatest way to put it was when Tim Tamashiro defined a job as something you do to make money in his TEDxYYC address. It is a regular paid job that enables you to cover expenses like rent, food, and so on. Your responsibility when working entails exerting effort in order to get compensated. Most persons who had jobs did not find them to be very personally gratifying. Before the pandemic, the vast majority of people were trained to spend their lives in that way.
Work, on the other hand, is what you do in order to get a certain outcome. Work is any activity that requires both mental and physical effort to accomplish a goal or result. The outcome might be the launch of a brand-new product that you believed had the potential to alter the course of human history or a goal to make you more relevant. Working for a goal is much more personally satisfying than simply putting in the required effort at work. Entrepreneurs have always been motivated by work to forgo security in favor of pursuing a goal.
So, in my humble opinion, the great resignation has nothing to do with being overworked, getting treated badly by employers, or not making enough money. It is about people switching jobs so they can concentrate on locating rewarding employment. Your task won’t feel like work if it personally fulfills you. You’ll have more energy in the mornings, look forward to the day ahead, put more of your energy into your work, and overall lead a happy life. Ikigai is where you find your work.
The illustration I used in that first post was inspired by the Japanese concept of “Ikigai” and discussed how to choose the career that will bring you the most happiness. The phrase “ikigai” comes from two Japanese words: iki, which means “life; alive,” and kai, which means “result; worth; benefit.” Simply expressed, it has to do with achieving personal fulfillment or living a meaningful life.
The most typical visual representation of ikigai is a Venn diagram. Four circles that overlap each other form the intersection of your ikigai personal fulfillment.
- what you enjoy doing
- What the world needs is what you are really excellent at
- what you are compensated for
- A profound understanding of these four questions is necessary for achieving personal fulfillment or ikigai. As a starting point for assisting you in discovering your ikigai, The Institute of You developed a useful list of questions.
How to Respond: What Do You Love to Do?
- What in life do you value most?
- What are your core principles and how do you live by them?
- Who do you enjoy spending time with the most?
- What do you want out of life?
- What causes you to laugh?
- What places can you find beauty?
- When you’re joyful, what physical feelings do you experience?
- What helps you relax?
- What do you want to learn that you don’t already know?
- How to respond to the query The thing you excel at
- What do you like to do on your free time?
- What do you find simple?
- What achievements do you have?
- What do you most relish doing in life?
- What qualities do you have?
- How to respond to the query What the planet requires
- How can I help you?
- What could people possibly do better or otherwise?
- What is missing from the world?
- What will you abandon?
- How could you become more active in your neighborhood?
- What you can get compensated for, and how to respond
- How much money do you need to meet your necessities each month?
- If you had extra money, what would you do?
- Which type of work would you prefer: full- or part-time? Permanent or transient? employee, independent contractor, or proprietor?
- Which type of workplace—working from home, having an office of your own, or an open space—would make you happier?
- What professions demand the talents you now possess? (Read “What You Are Good At”)
- What aspects of the business you work for are essential to you?
- How do the people who pay you or your company align with your values?
- How do you define success?
Ikigai is unique to everyone of us and stands for the intersection of our career, mission, and passion in life.
- Your area of expertise and area of love are your passions.
- What you love and what the world needs are your goals.
- Your profession is what you can get paid for and what the world wants. Your vocation is what you can do well and what the world needs.
- To find their passion and link it with their skills, what the world needs, and what might bring in money, successful businesspeople engage in a thorough introspective investigation of their souls. Finding your ikigai, or what it takes to attain personal fulfillment, is not only at the core of the great resignation, but it is also the fire that is shaping the future of small enterprises.
