Ikigai is focusing on one's self. It is not about seeking approval from other people. It is about continuous growth through the experiences that we have in life.
Nick and Dr. Yasuhiro Kotera discuss how ikigai concentrates on a person's whole being: the desire for growth, improvement, and understanding one's self.
Nick: What's become apparent to me is with almost all the people I come into contact with on the subject of ikigai, all of them have a love of learning -- they just love to learn.
I think that ties in with ikigai: this desire for growth, to improve yourself, and also to understand yourself. So I'd like to also quote from this chapter:
"Both ikigai and transformative education follow a holistic approach, that is looking at individuals as a whole person with their needs, abilities, desires, and resources. Both consider the human being to be a being in development" I love that, "and being capable of learning that can be continuously developed, locate, realign, deconstruct, and reconstruct itself."
Yes, I really think that highlights that hopefully, we're constantly developing and growing, and we are a whole person. We have needs, abilities, desires, and resources.
I think we try to satisfy that through feeling or uncovering our ikigai and also in pursuing knowledge or seeking to improve ourselves through education.
Yasuhiro: Yeah, very important point. I think ikigai ,in a way, gives us that rail or gives us a path that through living experience, I'm in touch with ikigai. I'm doing something right for me, rather than being compared or measured by other external rulers.
That's not always healthy. For example, comparing yourself to colleagues with a salary you get a hold of or in other things. But with ikigai, we feel that, okay, now I'm getting this sense of ikigai. So this is probably right for me and for my life, kind of sense.
That's more a holistic view, not that skewed view towards violence, or rank or status, not that kind of thing. More about you, as a whole person, looking at how well you are, and that's, I think, what ikigai can do.