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- Find Your Ikigai to Get Paid Doing What You Love
Heyo,
For my American friends, hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend last week!
And for everyone reading this, hope you took advantage of some killer Black Friday deals and got some Christmas shopping done.
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 each newsletter, I’ll leave you with a few action steps you can take to get one step closer to building your own digital brand this week.
Because I believe the future belongs to the digital brand builders!
Sound like a plan?
Alrighty, let’s dive right into this week’s lesson!
Here’s what we’ll be covering this week:
Finding your Ikigai so you can get paid to do what you love.
This Week’s Blueprint 🗺
“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 someone’s passion, that thing that gives joy and meaning to their lives.
Essentially, it’s the intersection between what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at, what the world needs, 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?
Anyways, let’s take a closer look and actually understand how we can apply it to our own lives so we can start living our #BestLife 💁🏼♂️
(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 of our first times being alive and living on this beautiful planet. This is 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 different circles:
What you love
What you’re good at
What the world needs
What you can be paid for
What Are You Good At? 💪🏼
We’ve all got things we’re good at doing. You might even be listing a few that come to mind right 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.
What do people say you’re good at?
What things do you look back on and say “I’m proud of that?”
What skills would you use if you needed to make money right now?
These are a few things that come to mind for myself:
Writing
Soccer
Coaching
Organization
Attention to detail
Creating new ideas
These are things I know I’m good at because I’ve practiced them enough over time. And I have tons of experience with them.
So write down a list of everything you know for a fact 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 ;)
What Do You Love Doing? 💗
Now, you don’t necessarily have to be good at something to love it.
I love singing and dancing but I’ll never be the next big pop start lol (or will I 🤔).
Sometimes you might not even know what you enjoy doing. And that’s okay!
Here are three questions you can ask yourself to figure it out:
What’s one thing that looks like work to others but feels like play to you?
What’s one thing you could talk about for 30 minutes straight without preparation?
What’s one thing you would do for the rest of your life if money was no issue?
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 in no time.
Here’s a list of all the things I can think of that I love doing:
Writing
Singing
Dancing
Reading
Painting
Stargazing
Playing music
Playing sports
Watching the sunset
Having deep philosophical conversations
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 or stargazer, that’s one thing I haven’t figured out how to do just yet lol.
Butttttt… I’m starting to get some ideas and see some patterns between the two lists I’ve written down so far.
Make sense so far?
Good, now let’s move onto the next section.
What Does the World Need? 🌎
Look, the world needs a lot of things. So far, the trick is looking at your lists above and figuring out what the world needs that you’re good at and love doing.
One thing the world needs that comes to the top of my mind? More love and peace and less violence.
Unfortunately, I’m not God and I can’t just snap my fingers and make all the bad things disappear just like that.
But one thing I can do is use my skills to make the world a better place… one small step 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 feel more alive.”
And when I tell you that hit 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.
What’s one thing you need in life to feel alive?
What’s one thing you could do the rest of your life?
What’s one thing you think about that keeps you up at night?
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.
What Can You Be Paid For? 💸
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. Playing 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 find a way to 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 here. 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:
Writing
Teaching/coaching
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 until recently, I coached soccer for a few years.
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.
A Final Note on Finding Your Ikigai 📝
Like I said at the beginning of this newsletter, finding/creating your purpose is a lifelong process. It’ll take a bit of work and experimentation to figure out.
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 things out as we go (isn’t that reassuring to hear?).
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 can 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 find that our if I never tried to play.
You see, life’s 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.
So don’t be afraid to try new things and get out of your comfort zone. Because nothing good in life ever happened from staying comfortable.
Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Grow. Evolve. Live. Be happy.
That’s life for ya :)
This Week’s Action Steps 🐾
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?).
Anyway, here are your action steps for this week:
Write down a list of everything you’re good at
Write down a list of everything you love doing
Find the intersection of the two and write it down
Never stop experimenting and trying new things :)
That’s all for this one. I’ll see ya next week!
✌🏼
Connor “never stop trying new things” Flynn
This Week’s Top Quote 🗯
“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.”
This Week’s Top Hits 🤙🏼
Breakdown: How to make your first $1 online
Article: I wrote everyday for 270 days… it was a waste of time
Song: Love Letter – Knox (I might have already shared this one, but in celebration of it being my top song of the year on Spotify Wrapped, here’s this banger of a song once again)
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