PP, Week 1: Finding your Ikigai

In the first week of class, we were briefed on the assignment for the course professional practice. The assignments are separated into 4 tasks that we would progress into through the semester.

Moving on, we were then told to watch a video on How To Find YOUR Life Purpose and Career (Ikigai).

How To Find YOUR Life Purpose and Career (Ikigai) by The Futur

The video talks about the Japanese term "Ikigai" which translates to purpose. And people use the word together with finding which will make it a term "Find your Ikigai". I have been exposed to this teaching before, from a camp before the pandemic was a thing, so basically, to set your mindset straight, an Ikigai worksheet is one of the ways to get a clearer picture of what your purpose is, what are we truly living for.

An Ikgai worksheet done by me.

The Ikigai worksheet consists of 4 circles with different elements, and each element intercrossing each other will create another 4 elements. 1st tier is the outer circle that'll question your personal thought:

1. What you love?

2. What the world needs?

3. What you can be paid for?

4. What you are good at?

What you love?

The things that I love I wrote, cute animals, food, money, and simplicity. Cute animals are needless to explain they never fail to make me smile no matter how sad I am, as a matter of fact, they cheer me up when I'm down. Food on the other hand is something I'm obsessed with, I don't know where I'd be without good food filling my hollowness. Though it can sound very superficial, money is something I do love a lot, in this day of age, without money we can really do anything, but with money the sky is limitless. Finally, simplicity, after going through all the materialistic stuff, I still enjoy the simple things in life. If there's an opportunity I'd love to live outside the city and stay in a secluded area where I could simply just live life.

What the world needs?

In this circle, I wrote empathy, renewable resource, happiness, and peace. Needless to say, hate is growing in this day of earth where people are being denial of the people different from them and the lack of empathy does not help either. This also would relate to happiness and peace, the hatred and arrogance won't create happiness and peace, it will just cause chaos and war. Understanding and communicating is the way to go in order to live a harmonious life. Not to forget renewable resources, the earth's resources won't last forever, and to really preserve them, we need to start using renewable or reusable resources to really save the planet.

What you can be paid for?

For this question, I kinda stuck a little, cause of the limited jobs I did? And so I only wrote graphic designing and event planning. Graphic designing is quite an obvious answer, since that's what I'm majoring in, there's a wide scope of things I can do with this skill so that's an interesting career to look forward to. On the other hand, event planning is actually just an experience, I didn't really get paid for it, but looking at it from a commercial perspective, it can be a paid-for if the society or community is willing to pay for the service, since it's not actually easy work, and so I put it in this circle.

What you are good at?

Not gonna lie, everyone can be good at anything, they just need practicing. And so as a practitioner I would say I'm pretty good at illustration, planning, applying makeup, and listening to others. Illustration or drawing is something I've been introduced to since young because of my surrounding, and so I've picking up the pencil since then and the rest is history. Planning is something I'm good at, but executing it is still a struggle, so particular skill, I'm still sharpening, cause in order to execute the plan, looking ahead for obstacle is something I need to put more effort in that part I guess. Another skill I've obtain is applying makeup, I took an interest in it after looking through beauty magazine, obsessing over how to look under 30 when I'm only 13, and fun fact, I was either choosing the cosmetolgy route or graphic design but my beloved mother interfered with my beautician dream which landed me with graphic design. Lastly, it's been said by people around me that I'm good at listening to other's, just hearing them out is doing them a favour is like doing a part of my job in being a friend to them but it's said that not a lot of people have, so I think that something to be proud of.

Intersecting Points

1. Passion - What you are good at? + What you love?

2. Mission - What you love? + What the world needs?

3. Vocation - What the world needs? + What you can be paid for?

4. Profession - What you can be paid for? + What you are good at?

After answering the 4 questions, I somehow find things that can be quite useful in my career that I didn't take in mind, which is planning. I have been planning camps and events for society and turns out I enjoy doing it which could also benefit me in my future. And another thing that is kinda out of context is that the skills which are things I'm good at can be very wide, not related to graphic design too but at this day of age, anything is pretty much related to graphic design anyways, but it can be hard picking a field with different skills.