Find Your Ikigai to Get Paid Doing What You Love

Heyo,

For my American friends, hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend last week!

I can’t believe it’s already December… where did all the time go?!

Anyways, welcome back to another edition of the Digital Brand Builders newsletter, a newsletter teaching you one actionable lesson you can use each week to build and grow your own brand online.

I want to teach from my own experience, so I’ll be sharing everything I’ve learned about starting and growing my personal brand and online business over the past several months in the hopes that it helps you do the same.

And by the end of every edition, I’ll leave you with a few action steps you can take to get one step closer to building your own digital brand this upcoming week.

Sound like a plan?

Alrighty, let’s dive right into this one!

Here’s what we’ll be covering this week:

Finding your Ikigai so you can get paid to do what you love.

Iki-what now? You might be thinking to yourself right about now.

Don’t worry, I had the same thought when I first came across the word.

An Ikigai is a Japanese concept that refers to one’s passion that gives joy and meaning to their lives.

Essentially, it’s the intersection between what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at, and what you can get paid to do.

Which is the dream, right?!

Don’t we all want to make money doing what we love?

Alright, let’s look at it a bit closer and actually understand how we can apply it to our own lives so we can start living a more fulfilling life.

(Side note: I will say, finding your “life’s work” is a process. It won’t happen overnight and it might even change from one period in your life to another. Truth is, none of us know what we’re really doing. It’s all our first times being alive and living on this beautiful planet. Your reminder to never take anything too seriously and just have fun along the way :))

If you look at the image above, your Ikigai is made up of four circles:

Now, let’s explore each one and try to uncover how you can find your Ikigai so you can start living a more meaningful, purposeful, and prosperous life.

We’ve all got things we’re good at doing. You can probably even list a few off the top of your head right about now.

Maybe you’re good at cooking or writing. Maybe you’re good at running or speaking. Maybe you’re good at painting or singing.

There’s all kinds of things you could be good at.

And sometimes, you might not even realize you’re good at them. Sometimes people might tell you you’re really good at something when you never even thought of it before.

Anyways, the best way to find out what you’re good at is to listen to yourself and listen to the feedback of others.

For me, these are a few things that come to mind:

These are things I know I’m good at because I’ve practiced enough over time.

So write down a list of everything you know you’re good at. It can be skills or games or projects or things you’ve done in the past.

And if you’re unsure, ask 3 - 5 family or friends what they’d say you’re good at. Sometimes they can see things in you that you can’t even see in yourself ;)

Now, you don’t necessarily have to be good at something you love doing.

I love singing and dancing but I’ll never be the next big pop start lol (or will I 🤔).

But sometimes you might not even know what you enjoy doing. And that’s okay. There are three questions you can ask yourself to figure it out:

List out all the things you love doing… and then ask yourself these three questions above. I’m sure you’ll start to see a pattern form pretty shortly after.

Here’s a list of all the things I can think of that I love doing:

I’m not necessarily good at all these things. And some of them are just that… things I love doing.

As much as I wish I could be a professional sunset watcher, that’s one thing I haven’t figured out yet.

Butttttt… I’m starting to get some ideas and see some patterns between the two lists I’ve written down so far.

Now, let’s move on to the next one.

The world needs a lot of things and always will. So far, the trick is figuring out what the world needs that you’re good at and love doing from the lists above.

The world needs more peace and love. But unfortunately, I’m not God and I can’t just snap my fingers and make all the bad things disappear just like that.

But what I can do is use my skills to make the world a better place… one small thing at a time.

I heard something a while ago from a Sam Kolder video that stuck with me ever since. And it went something like this:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask instead what sets your soul on fire. Because what the world really needs is more people who are feel alive.”

And when I tell you that hits deep… it hit deeeeepppp.

So while it may seem a bit counterintuitive in this section of your Ikigai, usually you can figure out what the world needs by asking yourself what you need.

Because at the end of the day, what you need is also what the world needs.

I’ll leave it at that for you to think about.

Now for the final, missing piece of the puzzle. The last piece of figuring out what your Ikigai is and finding your purpose and going out and changing yourself (and the world in the process):

What can you be paid for?

Truth is, the internet has completely leveled the playing field. If you can think of something, there’s likely someone out there who’s getting paid for it.

Underwater basket weaving. Teaching others how to play video games. Teaching others how to quit their porn addiction (yes, I’ve literally seen someone making a killing online from that which is wild).

Alex Hormozi once said that attention is the new oil. And if you can find a way to attract attention, you’ll attract money to you.

It’s just a matter of figuring out how to get that attention (which you can learn more about here).

Annyyyywayyyyssss… I’m getting a bit off topic. The point is, you can be paid for literally anything you can think of, especially on the internet.

Here’s what I want you to do:

Take a look at the list of things you’re good at and look at the list of things you love doing. Then compare those things to what the world needs and what you can be paid for.

I guarantee you’ll find a few of the same items in all four Ikigai categories. For me, those things are:

Which, coincidentally, are the things I’m doing every day to make a living online. I wouldn’t consider myself a professional writer yet, but 95% of the work I do revolves around writing.

I love and am good at soccer and I love and am good at coaching (at least I think I am lol). And for a few years, I was a soccer coach.

You see, you can turn nearly anything into a fulfilling career for yourself if you know where to start and have the right tools to get there.

Like I said at the beginning of this newsletter, finding/creating your purpose is a lifelong process. It will take a bit of work and experimentation to figure out.

So one thing I’ll say is this:

I’m just some young kid writing this to you on the internet, as you’re reading this on a tiny little computer you keep in your pocket everywhere you go. I have no idea what I’m doing. You have no idea what you’re doing. We have no idea what we’re doing.

We’re human beings, it’s our first time being alive. We’re all just figuring it out as we go.

But one thing I’d encourage you to do is experiment and test out different things as much as you can. Because if you’ve never done something before, how do you know if you’re good or bad at it?

You can’t, right?

You could have the potential to be the best chef in the world but you’ll never find out you’re actually good at cooking if you never try to cook.

I could be the best underwater darts player in the world (is that even a thing?), but I would never know if I never try to play.

You see, life is all just one big game of trial and error.

You experiment and try different things and figure out if you like them or not.

That’s quite literally what life is all about.

So don’t be afraid to try new things and get out of your comfort zone. Nothing good in life ever happened from staying comfortable.

Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Grow. Evolve. Live. Be happy.

That’s life for ya :)

I know this one was a bit of a different newsletter than usual. But I hope you enjoyed it and still learned something from it.

And if you did enjoy it, reply to this email and let me know! Because I might just write some more stuff like this in the future (listening to feedback, remember?).

Anyways, here are your action steps for this week:

That’s all for this one.

I’ll see ya next week!

Connor “never stop trying new things” Flynn

“There’s no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It’s why you were born and how you become most truly alive.”