You think you are done.
Your drawing is finished.
Now you can tell your story.
Sure, when things are clear you can stay there.
But for professional reflection you need to go further.
How do you find your purpose?
This model makes it look easy. You only have to answer 4 questions.
But sometimes a model is counterproductive.
And do you really need it?
Let’s explore the above Venn-diagram for purpose finding. A Spanish astrologist developed it years ago. Then blogger Marc Winn put the term Ikigai in the middle: A Japanese concept that describes what you find meaningful and what makes you happy.
Winn got the ikigai-concept from a TEDTalk on the blue zones. Blue zones are areas in the world where many people live a 100 years or more. And what turns out: If you know your ikigai, you live longer and happier.
They immediately know the answer. Like the great-grandma: She just wants to hold her great-grandchild. Or the grandpa that works in his garden every day.
In the related Hedgehog concept of Jim Collins that is where you need to be.
His hedgehog comes from a parable by the greek poet Archilochus: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. The fox thinks of all kinds of strategies to catch his prey. But he does not get the hedgehog: His spines always work.
By finding your hedgehog concept you can turn a successful company into a great company says Collins in his book Good to Great.
It is not something you pursue, it is an insight: What could your company be the best in the world at?
When you discover that, you skip everything else. All organizational activity is targeted to the further development of the hedgehog concept.
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin sees the hedgehog and the fox as 2 ways to approach life. He uses the dichotomy as a playful pair of glasses to compare a number of big thinkers.
The fox pursues diverging interests and takes his experiences for what they are. The hedgehog has a central vision on life through which he looks at the world. He tries to fit everything in his worldview.
The divide is a starting point for a 63-page essay in which Berlin studies the work of Tolstoi.
As a pair of glasses: an entrance for reflection.
And no, you do not have to write an essay. A few mindmaps are enough.
Not everything you come across has to fit in the 4 balls. And not all your activities have to direct you towards the center. Then you get stuck.
You look at your experiences with an open mind. When you explore activities in different areas you have a bigger repertoire to fall back on in a challenging situation.
It is about the attention you give to what you do. And it changes during your lifetime.
It does help when you think about what is important to you and about what energizes you.
Here you find 3 pdfs with visual templates to explore your purpose. I connect it to your sweet spot and with the golden circle of Simon Sinek. And I added some extra questions to get you going.
Who knows: Maybe you discover connections you did not see before.
A model makes purpose finding manageable, but you can also get stuck. Not all your experiences fit in a closed framework. And they don’t have to.
Print the pdfs and reflect on what matters to you. Or water your plants.
