Many years ago, more than I care to count, I looked out the second-floor kitchen window of my old workplace to the mountains in the distance and sent up a silent prayer – please don’t let this be as good as it gets, please.

At the time I was going through an incredible transition in my life, saying goodbye to a marriage that was no longer serving its purpose, watching a business that I had built from the ground up disintegrate and feeling my life slipping away minute by minute into the never-ending abyss of time I would never be able to claim back. In more ways than one it was time for a change and acting now was the ONLY thing that was going to make that change happen.

Upon selling my business and finally extricating myself personally as well as financially from my old life I knew that I needed to find a new path. As a single mother this was not something that I was going to be able to take my time doing as I had a son to care for and rent and bills to pay. I remember that part of my criteria for my new ‘profession’ was that I wanted no massive business overheads, but I still needed to earn decent money. I also wanted to do something useful that would feed my soul and help others to feel good, something that was going to make a difference to each life I came into contact with. There were quite a few options in the running and I eventually narrowed them down to midwifery, landscape gardening and massage therapy.

In the end massage won because as a martial artist with many years of training and a black belt I had used massage as a way to keep training, without manual therapy I would not have lasted in Karate. I went for the interview and surprisingly was accepted. Upon completion of my remedial diploma (which included a manual lymphatic drainage component that I walked out of after the first class with no intention of returning – lucky for me I did)

I started a small home-based practice which built up over time to be a thriving mostly full-time business with lots of fantastic clients. I was assisting those clients with their physical well-being and making enough money to pay the rent whilst feeling very satisfied with how things were proceeding in my life. For a time, I was content. I found myself offering all sorts of after care to clients and also being consulted by other massage therapists about certain aspects of the massage profession, particularly self-care. And then the unthinkable happened – I became injured from a weight training session that resulted in a frozen shoulder and major movement restrictions thrown in as well. I was constantly in pain and continuously seeking various forms of physical therapy to assist.

Over time this took its toll on me, physically, emotionally and financially. I went from being a busy massage therapist to hardly able to lift my arm. I was not sure how I was going to be able to keep paying rent and look after my son as well. Things were looking dire. Previous to becoming injured I had started writing a list of things that I was doing to make sure that my body was able to withstand the pressure that being a massage therapist put on it. I had a list of eight different concepts that were assisting me to stay mobile, healthy and strong, everything from working out what my weaknesses were and tailoring my training accordingly, to understanding how energy transference between client and practitioner works and how it can affect our own well-being.

I had ended up putting them down on paper and writing something of a short course which I called “Self-Care for Massage Therapists and Body Workers”. Basically, the purpose of the exercise was to share what worked for me with other therapists in the hope that it would help them extend their careers from a place of health and well-being and hopefully also help them to enjoy their work they were doing. During that time, I also did some further training with a view to potentially starting to teach in the remedial diploma of massage.

Even though I did not know it at the time I was setting the scene for future in teaching. Because my injury lasted a long time I had to seek employment in other avenues. The obvious one for me was to teach massage, I had been seeing amazing results in my clinics with the use of lymphatic drainage and had been keeping case studies along the way so that I could understand the effects and efficacy of this unique technique. At the same time, I felt like I would be able to write a course that would make it fun to learn and share with other MT’s. Eventually, I went to my old school and approached the program coordinator about some sessional work. He took me completely by surprise when he said to me, “I’m so glad you asked, I was wondering what was taking you so long” Those few words left an indelible impression on me, if he knew I could do it, and indeed had expected me to ask, what was I waiting for? Those first few classes were nerve-wracking – like all new things that you go out of your comfort zone to try. It wasn’t because I was scared I couldn’t do it, I knew that I could, but I wanted to make sure it was a great experience for my students as well. That weight of wanting to do my best actually motivated me to really make those classes a special experience for everyone present- me included.

Many years have passed since those first forays into the unknown.
Many subjects and countless classes and students have come into my care for brief periods to improve their skill sets and push themselves beyond their limits in the hope of discovering what they are really capable of. At times it has been exhausting, and yet always rewarding. It has always felt like I found the right path for this stage of my life, the thing that means that even though I go to work I don’t really think about it as a job – more of a thing that I do that I get paid for that makes me happy and that usually makes those students in my classes happy as well.
I guess over the years I have always wanted a way to sum this concept up and then a few years ago I came across a Japanese term that summed it up perfectly – Ikigai.

The Ikigai

Roughly translated it means finding your purpose in life. It is made up of the intersecting of four important elements:

  1. Doing something you are good at,
  2. Doing something that financially rewards you,
  3. Doing something that the world needs more of,
  4. Doing something that brings you joy.

I was stunned when I read that definition. I had been looking for a way to define what it was that I loved about teaching and here it was neatly summarised for me. Who is to say this will be the only one for me but right now at this moment I feel so satisfied that I can really say I found that one thing that pulls all of those elements of the definition together. It has not always an easy journey to this destination was and sometimes I felt so down and lost that it would have been easier to just get any job and feel comfortable. But at the end of the day despite the trials, the uncertainty, the physical pain, the financial worry, and the occasional emotional turmoil I am so glad I followed my heart and walked down the road less traveled. It is the most rewarding feeling I have ever known and so I continue along in the hopes that as I age and change it will also change and morph with me continuing to fulfill all those aspects of the definition that make it such a complete experience.

The truth is the only person who can walk that path is you and the reality is that everyone’s Ikigai is different. The challenge is to find it – are you going to choose comfort and complacency or are you going to boldly move forward on your journey seeking that which makes you smile knowing that you aren’t just going to work but you are going to your purpose? Maybe it is time to find your personal roadmap and get started, step by step to discovering what your true potential really is?

Seek your Ikigai people – it is yours for the taking if you are brave enough to seek it.