REFLECTION
Ikigai roughly translates to “reason for being”. It is the idea of figuring out what you’re good at, what you love, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs, and then pursuing whatever sits at the intersection of those four things as a major source of value in your life. If you’re like me, and you’ve found that your career path fits where all four of these elements meet, it’s hard not to feel like the luckiest person on earth.
It reminds me of when I watched the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about an 85-year-old sushi master named Jiro Ono who ran a three-Michelin star sushi restaurant in Tokyo. At the time of the documentary, Jiro had been a certified sushi chef for sixty years. The first three of those years he spent mastering the preparation of rice—just rice!---before he even touched a piece of fish in a restaurant setting. He spent the rest of his career, he has said, perfecting his skills and working to get better. Sushi was his calling. It was his ikigai.
For most of my life, football was my ikigai. I loved football. I was good at it. I got paid for it. And I sincerely believe that the world benefited from it. I have always believed the world needs entertainment. People need those three or four hours of distraction from the difficult, stressful hardships of daily life. People love to be entertained after working hard all week at home, on the construction site, in the restaurant, at the office. Having something like a sports team to root for and rally around with your friends and your community puts all that stuff on the backburner for a bit of time and allows you to take a breath and live in the moment. In that way, I believe football, and sports in general, can be an incredibly powerful and positive force.
I always felt that way as I took the field. So many people were committing their time and energy to me and our team, I never wanted to let them down.
LESSON
Football and entertaining people is still at the heart of things for me now. My work with FOX is giving fans a great experience watching and learning about the game through my eyes. But I feel my purpose has also evolved.
By looking at the core of what I loved most about playing football, beyond just the tactical X’s and O’s and the wins and losses, I recognized that I had a great passion for, and expertise in, team-building and leadership. Our world is always in need of more leaders and better teamwork. And fortunately, through my life, I’ve been around some of the best leaders and strongest teams, and the lessons I’ve learned from them have made me one of the best leaders and teammates, as a result.
Leading by example. Showing discipline. Clear, current communication. Caring about people and teammates. Prioritizing the common goal of the team and aligning all my actions with those priorities.
These things are just as useful and valuable with my FOX team as they are with my kids, with my direct circle, with the companies I invest in and advise, with the audiences I speak to, even with this newsletter.
There is something both freeing and energizing about knowing that ikigai isn’t a one-shot deal. It is a living and evolving and growing thing…as long as you are also living and evolving and growing as a person.
APPLICATION
So what does anyone who has never heard of ikigai do with all this? It can be daunting at first, especially if you’ve never had a job or a hobby you love, or a sense that you were meant to contribute something meaningful to this world.
The first thing you should do is shift the focus of your attention. For example, after retirement I could have very easily gotten lost in the playing of football as the thing that was my purpose. But sometimes you need to take a step back and look at the broader picture. I didn’t just think football was football. I thought it was a platform for 3-4 hours of entertainment that was a real-life documentary, playing out in the moment, unscripted on live television, that allowed people to really live in the present. Yes, the medium was football, but entertainment is ultimately what it was all about.
What the world needs. What you do well. What you love. What your work is worth. You can always figure out what those things are, if you shift your focus and widen your lens. If you look beyond the superficial and the immediate to the bigger, deeper messages that the world is sending you in response to what you do and how you live your life, you will learn everything you need to know.
There are a lot of amazing people who succeeded a lot later in life or had great second acts: Martha Stewart didn’t write her first cookbook until she was 41; the same age as Eric Yuan when he founded Zoom. Stan Lee didn’t create the Marvel Universe until he was in his forties. Henry Ford was 45 years old when he created the famous Model T. Vera Wang was a figure skater and a writer before she became a fashion designer at 40.
The list is almost endless. If you want a shot to join it, you just have to start asking the right questions.
Is there something you love that you’re also good at? Perfect, you’ve got a passion. For me, that’s golf.
What about something you’re good at that you get paid for? Boom, that’s a profession. For me, that was football. Now it’s just talking about football. (Sure is nice to not get hit anymore.)
Is there something you love that the world needs? Great, that’s your mission. For me, that’s been entertainment.
What about something the world needs that you’re good at? That’s a vocation. For me, that’s always been leadership.
Make no mistake, looking at yourself and your world like this is not just for beginners. You can ask these questions of yourself at any time—as a gut check, as a reset, or as the start of a new chapter.
I did it a few years after retirement, right around the same time that Jiro stepped away from day to day operations of his restaurant, at the age of 97. And it made me wonder: in what way exactly was sushi his ikigai? Having sat across from multiple masters of their craft during my meals in Japan this past week, you get the sense that there’s more to it than just the food. Maybe sushi for Jiro was like football for me–it was the medium–and what it was really all about was entertaining and nourishing people. Whatever the case, Jiro lived in that intersection where ikigai exists for more than seventy years. And if he can do it, we can all do it. It just won’t taste nearly as good.
