The Orgin of the Venn Diagram Symbolizing Ikigai and its Meaning is the topic of today’s post.
In the last post, I ended my article as the following.
By the way, where did this concept of ikigai described in the diagram come from? I had never heard of it, and neither have most Japanese. You can ask your Japanese friend to check if you like.
I don’t think it said anything about it in the book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, or maybe I missed it.
I have read over a half of The Little Book of Ikigai: The Japanese Guide to Finding Your Purpose in Life, and yet, I haven’t come across a sentence explaining the origin of the diagram so far. Again I might have missed it or it may come up later on.
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So I read Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life again and found a small letter under the diagram saying based on a diagram by Mark Winn. I did miss it after all, but it was very small.
Then I googled this guy Mark Winn and found this
What is your Ikigai?
By Marc Winn
http://theviewinside.me/what-is-your-ikigai/
Apparently, his name is spelled with c.
In the article, he refers to another article he had written that explained the story behind the diagram.
So, I clicked on the link and went to
Meme Seeding
By Marc Winn
http://theviewinside.me/meme-seeding/
In this post, he confesses that he merged two concepts to create something new. He merged a venn diagram on ‘purpose’ with Dan Buettner’s Ikigai concept.
That makes Marc Winn is the creator of the famous diagram, and Dan Buettner is the founder of this concept.
So I went ahead and watched his famous Ted talk video, which I now recall that Ken Mogi mentioned it in The Little Book of Ikigai: The Japanese Guide to Finding Your Purpose in Life.
Nevertheless, he didn’t mention those 4 qualities: What you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
Instead, he mentioned the following 4 elements common to the Blue Zones.
move naturally
right outlook
eat wisely
connect
Looks like I have to read his book The Blue Zones, but I don’t want to go through that much trouble.
So I went back to the article my friend had originally sent to me.
Is this Japanese concept the secret to a long, happy, meaningful life?
by Laura Oliver
There was a sentence which might be relevant.
according to Akihiro Hasegawa, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Toyo Eiwa University,
I clicked on it and found this article.
Ikigai:A Japanese concept to improve work and life
By Yukari Mitsuhashi
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170807-ikigai-a-japanese-concept-to-improve-work-and-life
Finally I found a sentence that Dan Buettner was referring to those three qualities:your values, things you like to do, and things you are good at.
That means, it looks like the rest was added by Marc Winn.
IKIGAI BUSINESS: The Secret of Japanese Omi Merchants to Find a Profitable, Meaningful, and Socially friendly Business is available on Amazon. This is my second English book. I would love to have some feedback from you. I will appreciate it very much if you leave a review on the Amazon book page.
I was asking the same question while i was reading it. “When it would come to the explain the diagram?”. So thank you so much for your research and sharing. I checked the links and understand it. I’m also very inspired by Mark Winn’s articles. Thank you
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