Finding Career Fulfillment
Carp flags at Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, Japan, May 2024.
Feeling stuck in your creative career?
Multi-colored, festive carp flags lined the streets as our tour bus whizzed by during Golden Week. Learning about business and culture alongside my fellow BYU MBA classmates on a 17-day, 5-country Asia excursion was finally fulfilling my lifelong dream of visiting Japan.
Torii Gates in Kyoto, scramble crossing in Shibuya, Tokyo, and a zen garden near the palace in Osaka.
My face was still a bit red with shame after making our entire group wait an extra hour at the Tokyo airport. I had been detained at the customs counter, told “You RUDE!” by the official, and had all of my beef jerky confiscated (apparently bringing meat into Japan is grounds for imprisonment/a thousands-of-dollars fine. Luckily I got off with just a stern scolding.) I gained a bit more appreciation for the importance of understanding and respecting the rules and sensitivities of unfamiliar countries and cultures.
Ikigai
In Japanese, there is a term called “Ikigai,” which essentially means “what makes life worth living.” It has been adapted into a business framework to help people find passion and purpose in their career.
Experiencing Japanese culture and doing some research helped me realize that boiling down something so significant into a cut-and-dry business teaching tool feels a bit like sacrilege. The concept of finding true fulfillment and balance is solid, but naming it after a more nuanced and personal Japanese term felt wrong, and as a seasoned branding/communications professional, I am deeply aware that the words you choose matter.
The 4Ps of Career Fulfillment
My solution was to create an updated and expanded version that is similar to the more well-know Ikigai framework. It is the 4Ps of career fulfillment: Passion, Purpose, Profit, and Proficiency. What do you want to do? What does the world need? What would people pay you for? And what are you good at? The intersection of these 4Ps can help you find the “sweet spot” where you can experience the most career/life fulfillment.
Jess Dansie's 4Ps of Career Fulfillment Model
The purpose of this tool is to facilitate self-discovery and help you make choices in your life and career that will bring you closer to that sweet spot. Take a moment to look at the model and do a quick self-evaluation. Where do you feel you currently fall?
Striking the Right Balance
As you’re thinking about this, consider taking into account a few different areas/ opportunities in your life, not just your job. Think of how you spend all of your time. There are a lot of combinations that could lead to more fulfillment in your life. You could have a job that you are incredibly skilled at and that pays you a lot of money, but you’re not very passionate about it, so you use it to fund your passion of world travel.
Or you could be all-in on your creative passion project, but then you decide to teach English online early in the mornings to get some additional income. This isn’t about finding “the perfect job” that fulfills everything for you. Work is work, and every choice you make will come with its own version of hard.
Finding Your Passion
Are you feeling anxiety about finding your ultimate passion? Start by looking at what you are curious about and where you feel a lot of energy. My husband LOVES audio gear and audio production, and it's tricky because he gets so excited and wants to tell me all about it, and it literally puts me to sleep. On the other hand, I get super energized and passionate about performing and speaking on stage, which is literally some people's worst nightmare.
We are all different, and different things light us up and bring us energy. Which is good, because we NEED to be different. We need creatives AND engineers AND project managers AND healthcare professionals, and every other profession to have a fully-functioning society. So stop judging yourself for the thing that YOU want to do, and start doing it!
Access My FREE Self-Discovery Resource for Finding Career Fulfillment
Need more help figuring out where you're at right now with your career? Find out what you're missing and spark ideas for moving forward with my free self-discovery workbook to help you spend some time in self-reflection mode. It's worth it to reevaluate where you're at right now and what it would take to get you where you want to be. The only one who can get you unstuck is YOU. You've got this!
Finding Creative Career Fulfillment Workbook
Download the FREE Printable Self-Discovery Workbook Here: https://www.jessdansie.com/finding-creative-career-fulfillment
P.S. This also makes a great professional development exercise to do with you team or in 1-on-1s at work!
