I survived 6 jobs and 2 career pivots and always considered myself lucky with work. Hard work and dedication helped with that luck, but I am forever grateful for the mentors and expanders along the way. Personal connections always led me on the right path, the beautiful connected dots and career constellations that created my professional universe. Each paycheck got bigger and each role got larger in scope, but my happiness continued to slowly dim. I couldn’t figure out why. Shouldn’t I be happier with more money? Shouldn’t I be delighted with more responsibility? I wasn’t. I always felt limited, like I was meant to do something bigger and something bold. Something so bold that even if I failed, at least I would leave a dent in the universe.
It took a year long sabbatical when my Dad received his terminal cancer diagnosis shortly after my Mom passed away and I knew then, I couldn’t stay limited because life was too damn short. I drowned myself in a path of self discovery and self growth. Spiritual gurus, entrepreneurial trailblazers, manifestation experts, and psychology leaders, I consumed the content like candy. Each piece interconnected, but so unique and profound that I felt I was building a ladder to my life’s why. Every lesson was a step on that ladder and led me to working with one of my close friends, Sarah, and we built Rocketry. I didn’t want to just cash paychecks working for another person’s dream. I wanted to build something that made an impact. Now, we’re on a mission to share what we’ve learned so you can build your ladder. One of the models that was particularly interesting was Ikigai.
Ikigai
Introducing the Harmony Model
How to Achieve Life Harmony
Ikigai
Ikgai (prounounced ee-key-guy) is a Japanese concept that means ‘reason for being.’ ‘Iki’ means ‘life’ and ‘gai’ represents your value or worth. Your personal Ikigai is your life purpose or your life’s why. It’s what motivates you every day and what brings you ultimate bliss by bringing your life into alignment. This philosophy was translated in the West as a way to find your dream career. It’s the cross section of:
What you’re passionate about.
What you’re skilled at.
What you can get paid for.
What the world or society needs.
Introducing The Harmony Model
I loved this philosophy, but I felt something was missing. The introspective piece that was leading the way for my personal journey and self growth; growth seemed like an important element in achieving your life’s purpose. It’s the self reflection that we all need, the shadows that many times we don’t want to confront but they are steel doors that block us from achieving our harmony. So we added it to the traditional Ikigai, instead of 4, we focus on 5 reflection areas that reveal our reason for being. Fittingly, we’re calling it the Harmony Model. This is the model we used to figure out what we wanted to focus on.
How to Achieve Life Harmony
We created a Harmony Workbook to help you answer that question and uncover your life’s why. The workbook is a free resource that we want to provide to others. Through guided prompts, we break down each section of the Harmony Model:
Inspire: What you love and value. You’ll outline your passions and what energizes you.
Uplift: What the word or others need. You’ll have the chance to think about your legacy.
Grow: What you want to improve. This is the unique section added outside of the Ikigai. Having a growth mindset is an important part of achieving your bliss.
Motivate: What you want to get paid. You’ll determine what you want to get paid if anything at all. This doesn’t necessarily need to be monetary, but these are your motivators.
Impact: What you’re good at. These are your superpowers or skills that you can leverage to get you where you want to be.
Lucky for you, we've included the workbook free to download below. Pending preference, the PDF also includes a link to a Canva template where you can edit the exercises.
Achieving Life Harmony © Rocketry Group
.pdf
Download PDF • 1.54MB
Harmony is achievable and it doesn’t have to feel as though you need to sacrifice something for happiness. We believe without any hesitation that harmony can be achieved and balance can be found both personally and professionally. It’s just a matter of finding your unique motivations and finding how to elegantly integrate the two. The first step is finding your why.
What does your model look like?
