🔎 Find Your “Why” with Ikigai

When I ask students, they’ll often tell me “I write music because I love it.” And I hear that.

But often as those composers try to turn their passion into a profession, they run into situations where they’re not writing music—at least not at the start. They may be doing copyist work, orchestration, or even non-musical work like administrative tasks.

So how can they sustain the energy to pursue their career when their passion lays dormant?

Enter Ikigai.

If you’re not familiar with the term “Ikigai”, it originated in Okinawa, Japan, and loosely translates to “life worth”.

(There’s a great book by Yukari Mitsuhashi on the subject if you’re interested, called Ikigai: Giving Every Day Meaning and Joy.)

More than that, though, is that Ikigai is designed to be a reason you get up every morning.

Students of my Composing Career Bootcamp will have the opportunity to explore their deeper ikigai through a powerful writing exercise—but here’s the short of it:

Step 1: Write down what you love (hobbies, activities, places, people)

Step 2: Write down what you’re good at (personal skills, professional skills)

Step 3: Write down what you can be paid to do (think broad)

Step 4: Write down what the world needs (things you can do on a day-to-day basis)

After you’ve done this, look for overarching themes or ideas. While you might find composing on this, chances are there’s more to your ikigai than just making music.

Whatever you find, lean into it. You can’t separate who you are from what you do, and finding alignment in all quadrants of your life means that you have a powerful motivator that keeps you working hard to pursue what you love (even on the days you don’t feel like it).