This is because my support of important elements of personal wellbeing difficulties and of improvements to service responses within those specific areas, will not be within my control to execute entirely.
The eventual outcomes will be the result of other people’s actions, and will be dependent on how well I can explain what I see/know in a way in which it will resonate with others and will assist them in removing the personal and professional obstacles that may cause them to remain as they are.
The best way that I think I can communicate to you how I became consciously aware of the “knowing” that I have in my mission, is to share with you the story of how I came to realise this myself.
The story begins with a Japanese concept Called “Ikigai”, I am not sure if you are familiar with it? But it is a pretty cool way to work out your personal mission, if you understand it!
Ikigai has enabled me to understand my purpose, in a roundabout way, during my late forties (Yes, I know this is late!). Well, I say it helped me to understand my purpose, but in hindsight I already understood it in a way, but I had strayed away from it and I hadn’t realized it until I was forced to look for it when I no longer felt that I could continue as I was! Even though I kind of knew my purpose was in supporting others in some way, I didn’t really know how to channel it and work out “my why”. I guess that kind of left me drifting and procrastinating on a set path that was just burning me out for some years.
Ikigai breaks down into;
“Iki” which means alive and “gai” meaning worth.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ikigai as;
“A motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living”
Others describe it as;
“A reason for being”
Quite randomly, I was given a book recommendation on the concept by a colleague a couple of years ago, and I had not really paid much attention to it at the time. I guess you could conclude that the book didn’t grab my attention back then, I was working hard in my chosen career and I had placed it down after reading a chapter or two where it was left to sit on the bookshelf gathering dust.
My limited reading at that time was just about enough for me to reflect on what I felt the book was trying to teach me. That I needed to feel that within my life I somehow, I had a worth and in identifying this worth and staying true to it would be my “why” and my “reason” to pursue it and to align with my purpose.
I felt a bit lost with the concept as I was convinced that if you had stumbled across your true “why” you would just know it and I didn’t feel I did as I had been confused by the lost momentum I felt with my work.
You see, what had been unknown to my colleague when she had given me the book, was that I had been experiencing a period of feeling a bit lost in my professional career. I was feeling quite restless and unfocused and at a real cross roads, which was a scary prospect to me. I thought I had my purpose, and so I could not understand why I felt like I did. The drive I had had for the career I had chosen had been quite relentless and I had put everything into it, studying for over eight years solid at the time of writing this, thousands of clinical practice hours and gaining many significant qualifications! The more I felt burnout, the harder I strived, thinking this was the answer.
But something felt missing, I didn’t feel as fulfilled as I had believed I would do, yet I was soldiering on and hoping that at some point, clarity would come to me. Maybe I was not following my Ikigai like I thought I had been, but maybe now was the right time for me to pay attention and to find it. I knew that I had lost direction, and my creativity for my past concepts (away from my clinical practice) had dwindled to the point that I would sit in front of the computer blankly devoured of any capacity to type anything, and crippled with self-doubt (Which had gone on for years now!)
What was once a sense of pride and purpose for me now felt like it was beginning to seriously test my ability to carry on.
Going back to the book, after reading the couple of chapters that I had read, I could not understand how I would have such a degree of inner knowing of my worth in this world, that it would reveal my genuine meaning and lifelong why? Was this possible? How would I know that I so passionate about “this thing, my very reason for being?”
I remember at the time mulling this over in my head. I think I knew I was at a crossroads. I didn’t want to give up on everything I had worked so hard for and my passion to support others, but I think I knew that it maybe was not quite working for me, in the format that it was. Something about the direction was not quite right. In a panicked effort to find an anchor, I began to reflect on external hobbies or career adaptions that may give me the answer and my mojo back, but I was unable to identify anything to hand that gave me the feeling I was imagining I would know was my Ikigai. My solution was to just carry on which was the only way I knew to deal with things.
A year or two later, myself and my family were away for the weekend and I was idly watching the TV. I forget the exact programme, but it was a series dedicated to visiting the parts of the world where much of the populations had lived until they were over 100. There was an episode where the presenter was in Japan, in a very rural area, interviewing a man in his late 90’s who was happily carving walking sticks.
Coincidently, they began to reflect together on the concept Ikigai, and boy was I sat upright and listening! The man had a talent, an ability to carve amazing walking sticks that helped other people to walk. He loved his work; it keeps him youthful and focused. He was able to continue to work into his old age and his work helped to keep his body supple, healthy and active. His Ikigai provided him a means to support his own living costs, and a professional identity, but most importantly, his uniqueness and his own ability could be identified as his mission, his unique superpower, his reason to contribution to the world. His sticks would help others to walk, and to live their own lives to the fullest. They could have contribution to their life, because he was able to connect and follow his Ikigai in his.
When the man mentioned that long after his death, his sticks would remain and continue to help others to walk, I finally understood Ikigai and instinctively, I knew what mine was. My creatively, drive and excitement to contribute my own legacy that would serve others was re-born at that moment.
The Mission
My career aspirations in some ways have reflected giving to others what I felt was missing for me, during my own adversity. My training as a therapist has reflected my passion to not only support others, but to give them confidence in my ability to help them.
The therapeutic profession, by its very nature, gives the capacity to continually learn and the choice of training in different area’s is endless. I guess that I could summarise my additional training choices to have mirrored the path of my own journey in part to make sense of what happened to me and how this impacted my own life.
Although this may seem selfish, logically, I feel it to be quite normal for people to be naturally drawn to what feels familiar, and I do see it as beneficial to the people I work with. It most definitely contributes to my ability to empathise authentically and to find a part within myself that matches with what my clients bring, enabling me to connect to seeing the world as they may do. In addition, the additional training I have undertaken has given me a much greater knowledge base within the areas that I am truly familiar with myself, strengthening my ability to support and guide others through their own path, and to a more positive outcome.
I realise that the key to me hanging onto the creative part of me flowed when I was true to who I was, but the spark dwindles to literal incapacitation when I attempt to fit a mould or model myself to the expectation of how I think I should be, or to meet an external expectation of me. This, I have come to learn feels like smothering my Ikigai with a pillow while it slowly suffocates to death.
At the beginning of my own journey to support others, during the very late 90’s, I created a website, born from my own experiences with anxious feelings. In those days there was not the social media presence that there is now and given I had myself found the onset of anxiety terrifying, I wanted to help others to understand anxious feelings and to understand how their responses to these feelings may be intensifying their anxieties and keeping them stuck. I remember absolutely knowing at that time how valuable my work was and driving force at that time was clearly defined. “If my work helped even one person to change their relationship with fear, then my efforts to communicate my experience and my learnings would be worth it”
I hadn’t linked it to a concept such as Ikigai at the time, but this work, I think had touched on the essence of mine. I was passionate, motivated and full of ideas, it was there all along.
A number of years later, I trained as a therapist to enhance what I was trying to do and to give others the confidence in my abilities to support them. I was super motivated and professional in my approach to my clinical work, and I described myself as a sponge for learning, in fact my commitment to continuous learning to aid my ability to help others, relentlessly took over the majority of my spare time over many years.
During the early days of my therapeutic training there was a comment that I should mention was key to my conformity to an expectation of what I felt I should be, rather than who I was;
“You know the website you have? Well, you best be careful as the professional bodies and ethics won’t like you disclosing yourself in that way”
I was so new in the profession that I felt I was doing something wrong and certainly the comment rightly or wrongly had influenced my confidence to bring aspects of my true experience/personality into my work. I had duly suppressed the part of me that helped others to relate to their experience, by explaining mine.
Along with some other things over the years, theses were essentially events that lead to the joy I had in my work had started to slip away, and my creativity had died with it. It left me questioning my purpose while feeling tired and burnt out. I must have been smothering my Ikigai with a pillow all along.
Something was asking me to re-evaluate my approach and to work how to instigate a change that would help me to move forward in a way in which things worked more in alignment for me, this did not mean that it needed to end, more that it needed adapting as it was no longer working for me in the way it was. My problem was that I didn’t know how I could do this without admitting to myself what was wrong and then fearing the part which asked me to take accountability to change something!
Once you admit what needs to change, I guess the fear is about then changing it!
A big issue for me has been self-doubt, and forcing myself to stay “safe” in what I know. I was looking at other professionals and thinking that they are happy as they are, and negatively internalising that I was not! But ikigai is not a shared journey, it is a personal one and we must all be brave enough to follow our own path.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe the whole process has in some way brought me closer to my Ikigai and to know where my focus needs to be, none of it is wasted as it has equipped me with the skill set to drive my ideas forward. The journey has allowed me to reflect on, my client practice, the therapists I supervise, my study and research, and other supportive services, to observe what needs are not being met and why. This has allowed me to formulate my ideas and to work out a plan that can meet these needs.
Going back to my Ikigai
All of the story so far has brought me to the point of it being impossible for me to continue my career in a way in which I am supressing who I am or for me to live in a state of constant procrastination as I fear putting myself out there!
The fear of staying the same is now out weighing the fear of change.
Nowadays there is people all over online sharing. Life is too short to not share the part of you that will have a positive impact on the lives of others. I know I have valuable experiences and professional skills that I can in a way in which strengthen both professional approaches and personal journeys.
So, my Ikigai is…
To go back to the root of who I was all of those years ago, and bravely sharing my knowledge in experience to support other people in their own journey. To use professional and academic skill and expertise in the same specific areas of difficulty to remodel the helping systems and professional approaches to individuals that seek their help.
I believe that what happens to you, becomes a strength if you work to understand it and then channel it in a way in which enables you to live your best life and if you chose to do so, using your own journey to give hope or clarity to others.
This remains my motivating force, but also forms the basis of my own self worth in some way and provides a sign that I too prevailed and built resilience through the difficulty that I have faced.
I will facilitate this work through my books, my online courses and a limited degree of 1 to 1 EMDR practice.
Let me show you the power of therapy in my own way, a way that may challenge your perspectives.
Some would say perspective is everything.
Final thoughts…
I think Ikigai or missions are always there, I think they actually live inside you, you can’t always see them until the time is right, but somehow, they reveal themselves to you when it is. I thought I had missed my time, letting very dear to me personal endeavours seem to slip by the wayside, but now I realise that timing was everything and now is the right time to come back to this work after all.
My mission will be my informed contribution to the world, though authentic concepts that were all created many years ago, but that I cannot leave suppressed when they really could make a difference to others. My hope Is that my work will continue to provide a legacy when I am gone.
I look forward to working with you all and to stepping into my personal power to do so, while also helping you or your service, to step into yours.
