Magnum Opus

The World Needs All of You

I’ve written a lot previously about living up to our potential and taking the leap of faith into the unknown. A lot of that relates to my own spiritual journey and how I have started to live from my soul and heart and away from the expectations that others have for me. The way I live currently is in alignment with who I am to my core. 

However, it goes deeper than that. Our lives are not just events and occurrences where we achieve and accomplish things. I have talked previously on how we need to live from an place of internal celebration rather than external and that needs to be reflected in our daily actions and interactions. It also means that we don’t just do things we are good at. We do things we love. We do things that the world needs. And we stop dimming our own life and talents by not asking what we are worth. 

Japanese culture has a concept called Ikigai. Ikigai is the culmination of everything that I just touched on. It is the combination of what we are good at, what we love, what the world needs, and what we can get paid for. So many of us do something we are good at that we can get paid for and aren’t truly connected to it. 

Yes, we are all good at our jobs and are able to perform them at a high level that gets us paid. But if it is not something we love we can become disconnected to it, we do it just for the getting paid part. We need to do things we love and live with joy. The world needs our gifts and our joy. 

When we do something from a place of joy everyone in our life benefits. We are meant to do things that we love and we are meant to be compensated for them. When we break free of the idea that we can’t get paid for what we love, it allows us permission to share with the world our gifts. And our sharing of our gifts is what the world needs. 

After understanding the concept of Ikigai we can dive into the Magnum Opus. Magnum Opus has a variety of different definitions, but the overarching theme is someone’s Great Work or contribution towards the world. Like I mentioned above, so many of us just do things because we are good at it and get paid. But finding what our Magnum Opus is, finding what our Ikigai is will allow us to live that elevated life we are all looking for. For some of us that may be raising a family and impacting their children on a high level and giving them the tools to be successful in whatever endeavor they choose to take on. 

Everyone’s own Magnum Opus looks different and that is by design, if we are all chasing after the same things there is nothing differentiating our great work from someone else’s. Or worse yet, we feel that our great work needs to be similar or adjacent to someone else’s in order for it to be truly great. Our great work is a calling from our soul. It is the fusion of love and joy and care, it is the full expression of ourselves to the world, and the world needs you to find it and chase it. The world becomes better when you share it and live it. 

So go out, change your mindset and what you are capable of and find your own great work, live you Ikigai and watch the world conspire for you. 

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Journal Prompts to help you tap in and find your Ikigai and what your great work is:

What is something you are good at?
What is something that you love? Something that makes you happy just to do it?
What are curious about?
What can you get paid for?
What does the WORLD need from you?
What is something that you would love to do just for fun?

Use these questions as a way to build a life. You can maybe put things into buckets. Things with overlapping buckets are needed more, but every bucket overlaps, that is your Ikigai. The world needs it. Ikigai helps us find fulfillment and joy in all aspects of our lives.