The Japanese have a term ikigai (pronounced Ick-ee-guy) that translates to your “life purpose,” or as I prefer, your “reason to jump out of bed in the morning.”

What’s your reason to jump out of bed in the morning?

For most people, it’s that pesky alarm clock. Perhaps they’ve hit the snooze button a few times, after tossing and turning all night from the stress of the day before. They dread getting up in the morning.

But as an Easy Entrepreneur, you get to create the life you want to live! So, let’s try this again.

If you could have the life you always wanted, what would give you a reason to jump out of bed in the morning, excited to start a new day? And no, don’t say “sitting on a beach” because that gets old quickly. What would give your life more purpose and keep you energized every day?

One common way to approach finding your ikigai in the modern world is to make four lists: What you love doing, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for. Your ikigai is the cross section of these lists.

Your goal as an Easy Entrepreneur is to mold your business into something that gets you excited to jump out of bed every morning.

For example, here are some things from my lists:

  • Things I love: adventure, outdoors, travel, learning, feeling healthy, eating, building things, helping people, being happy, ice cream.
  • What I’m good at: computers, finance, learning, organizing things, solving complex problems, math, eating ice cream.
  • What the world needs: teachers, leaders, world peace, more empowerment, more opportunities for people, ice cream that is actually healthy.
  • What I can get paid for: teaching, business consulting, running a business, engineering.

Putting this all together, my reason to jump out of bed in the morning is to “distill the principles and practices of the Easy Entrepreneur, and teach others how to run a successful business and live a great life!” It’s something that I’ve been excited about for several years, and gets me up every morning without needing an alarm!

That’s my ikigai, what’s yours?