What’s your ikigai?
I’m a sucker for many things Japanese. I did a Japanese degree, lived out there for a long time, even met my wife there (she’s Dutch but that’s another story). Everything just talks to me more succinctly in Japanese. Continuous improvement? Kaizen. Management by walking around? Gemba. Finding beauty in the impermanent? Wabi-sabi. Or how [&helli
We could be heroes
For the last few years, health workers around the world have been celebrated as heroes. I know it sits uneasily with many. It can be hard to feel heroic when you’re burnt out, stressed from overwork and workplace issues, and regularly faced with incomprehensible pain and loss. Yet healthcare for most is a vocation, a […]
Who’s writing your story?
I love opening lines. From the famous (“Call me Ishmael”, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”, “He was the most extraordinary man I ever knew”) to the less well-known. Ursula Le Guin called them doors to worlds. The cultural variations with folk tale openers are fascinating. The […]
Do we really need a purpose?
Isn’t that the question? There are so many of us in this space saying everyone should have a #purpose, something bigger than us to guide our way forward. Admirable, I’m sure, but maybe we’re also creating unnecessary pressure on ourselves with all this talk about meaning and direction. Isn’t life difficult enough without having to […]
