Ikigai
Ikigai: a reason for being.
Three circles: what you love, what you’re good at and what others need. Where all three overlap, that’s it. The best thing you can do is help others with what you want to do anyway. Let them find you.
You’ve probably seen the four-circle version, the career-slide mandala with “what you can be paid for” drawn in as a fourth petal. A British blogger put it together in 2014 by pasting the word ikigai onto someone else’s diagram. In Japan, ikigai is what gets you up in the morning, and money has nothing to do with it. Erase that circle. Get the first three right and money arrives on its own schedule, as a side effect.
You already half-know where yours is. It’s usually the thing you’d keep doing even if no one paid you.
So why aren’t you doing it? Research, usually. You open the laptop to check whether your thing is viable, find a thousand people already doing it, and quietly put it back on the shelf.
Do what you like. No, like harder.
If you think you ran out of time in this life, I have bad news for you. Rebirth is now.