Key Takeaways
I'm fairly confident that our greatest growth comes from consuming detail and pondering perspectives, not from speed-reading bullet points. If you find yourself completely disgusted by the lack of an executive summary here, you're welcome to ask ChatGPT to summarize this for you.
If you choose to continue, you'll walk away with:
Context on why chasing dreams is ideologically sound but not practical
Something better to chase than your dreams
A new way to find your purpose and the way you contribute to society
A different way to inspire our children
Thought Starter
In school, we're told to follow our dreams and this has always seemed like logical advice to give and empowering advice to receive - but is it actually our dreams that we should be chasing?
Are the moments when we find ourselves feeling like we're drifting through life unfulfilled or unsuccessful because we took this age old advice, but never realized there's more than one step to shaping our reality?
I now find myself ready to argue respectfully, but adamantly that chasing your dreams is an imperfect construct. Not because it's incorrect, but because it's incomplete. We're doing ourselves, our children, and anyone who seeks our advice and support a disservice by ending our inspirational pep talk with "follow your dreams".
The good news is that over 1,200 years ago, someone far wiser, selfless, and enlightened than myself and many others developed a blueprint that we could be following (or adapting) as individuals, and a society - to live a full and purposeful life.
When you finish reading this, I hope you'll stop chasing your dreams, and start pursuing something far, far grander.
Dreams are a building block
Our dreams are wonderful, they're our personalized manifestations of an idealistic future-self and set of specific circumstances or outcomes that we want to see come to fruition. They give us clarity for what is typically an unclear future, they give us something to focus our time and energy on, and they give us fuel to see things through when the going gets tough and adversity rears its head unexpectedly.
Dreams give us our own unique north star to follow while the rest of the world stares up at the same star to guide their journey. A point of unique differentiation from everyone else on the planet. Our dreams are the foundation of what motivates and inspires us as we circle the Sun and convert oxygen into carbon dioxide.
No one can take them away from us, either. Dreams represent what we want to become, accomplish, or achieve. They're the rawest and most pure form of inspiration and motivation that we have in life, and they play a critical role in finding and achieving something far more powerful than our dream.
We're taught to shoot for the stars, let our imaginations take us away, and that we can be whatever we want to be. I'm not suggesting that this is a bad way to inspire our children, ourselves, or the next generation. But if this is the extent of how we help our children (or ourselves) develop and shape our future reality, we're missing a critical component that may ultimately play a role in why no matter how old we get, or how successful financially we may become - we still feel unfulfilled.
Dreams are a building block towards something far bigger and more impactful. We need to stop thinking about and speaking of dreams as the outcome of our efforts, and start thinking about them as the fuel for our growth, development, and achieving a symbiotic relationship with society.
Finding symbiosis through product-market fit
Anyone who's ever worked in marketing or listened to one of the 10,000 different startup podcasts out there has heard of product-market fit. It's one of those great buzzwords that people often repeat in conference rooms during one of their verbose contributions to a meeting that probably could have been an email.
In our case, for the sake of this discussion - let's think about when an entrepreneur or company has an idea for a new product or service. The idea for a specific product or service, and the implied success and benefits that will come from it's launch is their own organizational dream, right? Once they launch their product, their dream will be realized.
They may be successful in developing the product. They may be successful in making the product available for purchase. But unless the product that they launch is built well, addresses a need of consumers, and consumers are willing to give the company a certain amount of money in exchange for the chance to solve the problem that the product is touted to resolve... what you have is nothing more than a thing on a shelf that you built.
When we teach our kids the value pursuing their dreams, or as we approach our own dreams - we have to take it beyond the one-dimensional exercise of what we want. We have to ensure our dream has product-market fit with society and our own abilities.
Our dreams need to give way to something more honed, refined, and aligned to the needs of society and civilization. If our dreams aren't in symbiosis with the current or aspirational needs of society, they aren't likely to ever become a sustainable source of living for us. Inevitably, if they fail to achieve or maintain a product-market fit with the world around us - they're doomed to be extinguished by the waters of reality.
Your reason for being goes beyond your dreams
We tend to think about and talk about our dreams as the reason for us being on Earth. They're the thing that motivates and inspires us to move forward, to pursue life, and to achieve what we set out to accomplish.
While we're taught and inspired to find and follow our dreams, Okinowan (and the broader Japanese) culture encourages people to find their personal ikigai.
Ikigai which translates to "a reason for being" is a Japanese concept that refers to something that gives a person a sense of purpose and a reason for living. It was first adopted over 1200 years ago, and it's had a profound impact on an entire culture and civilization.
Perhaps it's time that we stop pursuing a dream, and begin pursuing our ikigai.
The difference between a dream and ikigai
There's lots of different ways we could characterize these two concepts, but let's try this out for now.
A dream refers to an aspiration, goal, or idealized version of what you want to achieve or become in the future. It's something that you might fantasize about and can sometimes be lofty or overly ambitious. It provides motivation, but does not represent or reflect your current reality. A dream has no constraints, no parameters, and no boundaries - it can be whatever you want it to be. The only limits to our dreams are the limits we personally place on them.
Ikigai on the other hand is about finding your reason for being. While your dream represents a single input (i.e., the thing you want to achieve), ikigai represents the convergence and confluence of four things.
Some of these things are within our control and based on our own pursuits and ambitions, and some are based on the needs of those around us.
Our dreams ultimately fail, fizzle, or get abandoned because they fail to achieve and maintain societal symbiosis. With ikigai, we can refine the raw dreams we have into a deliberate, purposeful, and rewarding way of living.
We have to stop stopping at a dream. We have to start teaching our children how to take their dreams and use them to find their ikigai.
Finding your ikigai
Your ikigai is a glorious confluence of our selfish and selfless ambitions. A tug of war between what we want and what society needs and values. It's the epicenter of four never-ending and constantly changing forces
To find your ikigai, let's start by visualizing a venn diagram with four circles, numbered one through four.
Now, let's turn your generic diagram into a powerful representation of your search for ikigai. Let's relabel circles 1-4 like this. These are the four components that determine your personal ikigai.
What you love
What you are good at
What the world needs
What you can get paid for (or rewarded for)
Step 1: Start with what you really enjoy doing
Your search for ikigai starts with the things in life that you enjoy. So think of one thing that you really enjoy doing. I mean, really enjoy! Technically, this could even be something you think you'll enjoy.
Proceed to Step 2.
Thoughtstarters: Playing baseball, drawing or painting, smiling, yelling at people, traveling to space, crafting AI or digital art, etc.
Step 2: Are you good at it?
We enjoy doing a lot of things, but for most of us - we're not always good at everything we enjoy. Are you good/competent at the thing that you selected in Step 1?
If yes, move on to Step 3.
If no, head back to Step 1. Objective competence is required to proceed to step 3.
Step 3: Does society need it?
Does the world or society need the thing that you've identified in Step 1 and 2? If you do the thing that you enjoy, and you're good at it - does it address a current or aspirational need of society? Does it help society function, improve, or grow?
If yes, move on to Step 4.
If no, head back to Step 1. What you've found is your passion, but not your ikigai.
Step 4: Will people pay you for it?
If you were to do this thing that you enjoy doing, and are good at, and it's something that the world and society needs... will someone pay you for it, and/or is it something that you can be rewarded for?
If yes, you may have found your ikigai!
If no, return to Step 1. What you've found is a mission, not your ikigai.
Understanding Ikigai
One of the truly eye-opening resources that the ikigai concept gives us is the ability to recognize that for something to be our purpose and reason for being, we must find it at the intersection of all four constraints.
Ikigai shows us that there are things that we think are our purpose, but are actually something else because despite satisfying 2-3 ikigai parameters - they fall short of satisfying all four.
Our passion is what we love + what we're good at
Our mission is what we love + what the world needs
Our profession is what we're good at + what we're paid for
Our vocation is what the world needs + what we can be paid for
None of these four things are our ikigai, but oftentimes we may mistake them for our life's purpose.
Our ikigai is what we find at the epicenter of our life - the area where the thing we love meets our abilities, the needs of the world, and also turns out to be something that individuals value enough to reward us for.
Your ikigai can change or evolve at any time
The passage of time gives us the ultimate opportunity to become more today than we were yesterday. Our ikigai can change at any time, and some people may even identify more than one ikigai at any given time. The passage of time allows for new things to enter (or exit) each of our four cirlcles.
What we love, changes
As time passes... we try new things, and in trying new things - we find something new that we love doing.
What we're good at, changes
As time passes... we spend more time doing the things we love and we become better at them. We become good at these things due to the experience and practice we've been getting over time.
What the world needs, changes
As time passes... the needs of the world and society change. They may not change overnight, but gradually the needs of the world adapt to the challenges that the world faces or the ambitions of the society inhabiting the world.
What people will pay for, changes
As time passes... what people are willing to pay for will also change. Their own individual situations as well as the conditions of the world or their own pursuit for improvement will inform what they're willing to give up value for.
Stop chasing your dreams (seriously)!
There's something far grander and wonderful than your dreams waiting for you. If you keep chasing your dreams without reconciling them with your skills, the needs of society, and the aspirations of others - you're buying a lottery ticket, but never scratching it.
Whatever reason you have for chasing a dream, I hope after reading this you feel inspired to stop chasing success and start chasing purpose.
