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- ADAPT #33 - 🤘 You Will Never Get "There" (and that's okay)
ADAPT #33 - 🤘 You Will Never Get "There" (and that's okay)
Gus Balbontin
May 02, 2024
By Gus Balbontin
This week I ran a little career masterclass where I shared how I built a Portfolio Career to lower my risk, turn my unrealistic dreams into realities and own my career pathway.
Just to add a touch of realism and balance to your thinking:
What I built for myself is not what I expect any of you to build for yourselves!
What I share is not perfect, like any model it has pros as well as cons.
The reason why I find it powerful to share it’s because it provokes you and shakes you into paying attention and building your very own one.
If you’ve been with me for a little while you know I’ve just come back from Japan!
So I am going to join the dots today and cover my thoughts on a Japanese model called ikigai, something Lucas put in front of me and got me thinking about.
And as per above, it’s a model, it’s not perfect, but another way of making sense of reality.
I shared my thoughts HERE on how in Japan a word can mean an entire concept and how powerful that can be.
This concept carries meaning and builds even across generations, pause for a second there:
think about the impact your career and your path has not in you but in your kids and kid’s kids.
Woah 😮 - BUILD A CAREER THAT NOT ONLY IMPACTS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY BUT THE GENERATIONS TO COME”
Now that’s audacious - that’s impact on a different scale, unrealistically powerful to think this way perhaps?
For ikigai, there seems to be many translations as it is expected with Japanese concepts: “a reason for being”, “happiness of being busy”, “a motivating force”.
Here is a drawing that helps get your head around it:
(I think Marc Winn drew this picture to try to explain it)
But I can’t help myself sharing this from one of my most favourite ever minds, David McCandless (I did a piece of work with him back in the Lonely Planet days).
He corrects Marc’s diagram a bit and adds another layer of meaning:
Anyway, sidetracked…. the model calls out 4 key elements:
Love
Community
Skills
Money
And it kinda suggests that if you balance those out you will find ikigai - a happy balance between these elements, a place where you belong and contribute and get rewarded and do shit you like doing basically. Purpose.
These forces change over time and maintaining a balance becomes increasingly more difficult.
Eg: We need more money. We acquire more skills. Our communities become global and larger. We spread our love further.
The delusion, the misconception, the danger of this model is:
a) thinking it is static; and
b) thinking it is a destination (instead of an endless journey)
Remember your career, or the pursuit of love and community and money and Balance in life is not a place you arrive at, it’s elusive.
It’s like a giant pendulum swinging between all four elements.
At points in time it is in the middle and you feel ikigai, but at other points it’s full of money and no love or full of community with zero skills being deployed!
The same way as I always ask people in my career program to set vague goals…. because trying to chase SMART goals in life is a recipe for disaster!
I conclude that you should pursue…
ikigaish rather than ikigai.
Don’t be sooo precise, don’t think anyone else is.
Just learn to enjoy the pursuit of a vague sense of balance.
I suffer very often of focusing too much on reaching the destination and forgetting to enjoy the process, the journey.
So much so, that sometimes I arrive only to immediately set a new destination and start the chase again - it’s a relentless game - looks very successful from the outside but on the inside it can feel empty - feels like nothing is ever enough.
So let this be your reminder and mine:
Own your career, mean it, drive it, change it, but remember you will never get “there”.
Love
Gus
P.S. If you're ready to take ownership of your career and life, and want to invest in yourself, on your portfolio career and want to be guided by myself and supported by an amazing group of peers, don't miss out on our Career Ownership Workshop! We've just launched tickets for Cohort 2, happening this June.
Places are intentionally limited to ensure a personalized, interactive and intimate experience—perfect for those seeking meaningful and guided growth. Secure your spot today!
My recommendations:
After the HUGE success of the first event of the “Culture Can’t Be Fixed” series organised by Neu21, it’s time for event number two!
Did you know that the way we structure organisations hasn’t really changed in centuries? Can what worked in the 1860’s really serve us in the 2020’s?
The next in our "Culture Can't Be Fixed" series will challenge the myth that organisational structures are set in stone and show how they can evolve with creativity and collaboration.
Join Eduardo Nofuentes and Katya Noble, as they explore innovative ways to transform work culture through flexible and dynamic ways of designing teams and businesses.
If you’re keen to explore workplace culture from a different angle- this event is for you.
Bring your questions and challenges – let’s rethink the possibilities together!
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