I wanted to live a life that was rich in experience, depth, and meaning.
And, years later, after much trial and error…
I’m happy to say I’m finally doing that.
Table of Contents
From Economics Student to Sex Columnist to Purpose Coach
I studied economics in college. I loved the subject and ended up graduating as one of the top students in my major.
However, during the first semester of my senior year, I took an internship and quickly learned that staring at spreadsheets in a cramped office wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
So, the following semester, I called up my boss and told him I was going to quit to become the university newspaper’s sex columnist.
(Yes, you read that right.)
My boss’s response:
“What?! No two-week notice?”
Nope! Sorry! You can keep your spreadsheets. I’m off to write about what happens in between the bedsheets 😉
After graduating, while all of my friends pursued corporate jobs, I started an online business with the goal of moving to Thailand and traveling around Southeast Asia.
I accomplished that dream four years later and lived in Southeast Asia for ten months.
Now I’m doing something I’ve dreamt of doing for years. I’m following my calling by writing for this blog, sharing everything I’ve learned (and continue to learn) about how to live a more purposeful and empowered life.
Call Me Crazy (But I’m Really Just Passionate)
I’ve made many decisions in my life that could be called “out of the box.” I’ve made the types of decisions that most people don’t make or don’t even think of making.
No matter how crazy they may have seemed on the surface, I always made these decisions to lead myself in one direction:
Away from what I don’t want and towards what I do want.
I didn’t want to work in an office staring at spreadsheets all day with a boss breathing down my neck. I wanted to do something fun, different, unique, and interesting.
So I wrote for the school newspaper instead, which prepared me to start my online business as a freelance writer later that year.
I wanted to share advice that could empower others, so I wrote books and started an Instagram account (and this blog) to share that advice.
I’ve continued to align more with who I really am and what I really want out of life.
And, in this article, I’m going to show you how to do the same thing in your life using what I call The 5 Core Layers of Purpose.
Where My Self-Discovery Journey Began
While I was in Asia, I went on a deep journey of self-discovery. I started to gain more clarity around myself and my life purpose than I ever had before.
I figured out what my purpose really was. I figured out what I was most passionate about, and I started sharing content and coaching people to help them figure it out as well.
Over the years, I refined what purpose really means and how people can gain a deep sense of clarity they can use to guide and direct their lives.
I learned that purpose is not just one thing. It’s made up of many layers of things across the different areas of our lives.
And…
I learned that there are five core layers of purpose that everyone can use tomove away from what they don’t want and towards what they do want.
These are the five layers of purpose I recommend everyone discover, no matter where you are in your journey.
I will teach you what these layers are and how to find them so you can use this clarity to navigate your life with more purpose, passion, and joy than you ever have before.
Embedded into these five layers is almost all of the purpose most people are searching for when trying to find their purpose, find their passion, or find “themselves.”
And, as you will see later on, The 5 Core Layers of Purpose build upon each other to give you a deep understanding of who you are, where you are going, and what you’re doing in the world.
To kick things off, let’s start with where these layers come from.
You may have seen this diagram before:
Credit: Andrés Zuzunaga, 2011
This Venn diagram was created by Spanish author and psychological astrologer, Andrés Zuzunaga, in 2011.1
Overall, it’s a powerful tool when used correctly.
It went viral around the internet years ago. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone understood what purpose was.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t really the case.
The diagram helped people visualize something that was previously unclear, and Andrés did the world a huge service by helping us identify, understand, and visualize the different layers of purposeful work.
However, most people don’t know how to identify these things or what to do with that knowledge afterward.
Here are all of the sections and sub-sections in the diagram:
What I love
What I’m good at
What I can be paid for
What the world needs
Passion
Profession
Vocation
Mission
Calling
Career
Cause
Potential
That’s enough to confuse most people.
To make matters worse, someone later put ikigai (a Japanese concept of purpose and one of the core layers of purpose) in the middle of the diagram. Everyone started to think this diagram was about ikigai!
Faux pas I say! Faux pas!
(That’s French for, “Bro, what’re you doing!?”)
This diagram is for figuring out what your purposeful (paid) work is. That’s what the big ‘P’ is in the middle.
One of the circles in the Venn diagram is “What I can be paid for.” Your work can be your ikigai, but ikigai is not something you need to be paid for. Therefore, ikigai doesn’t belong in the center.
(However, ikigai is one of The 5 Core Layers of Purpose, so I will teach you what it is and how to find it later on.)
Now that that’s cleared up, what should we focus on in this diagram?
In my opinion, there are only three things we should focus our energy on in this diagram, along with two that aren’t present.
They are circled below:
Why Focus on These Layers?
By understanding just these five layers, you will have enough clarity to live purposefully in your daily life and for years to come.
You will know:
What you are here for (purpose).
What you love (passion).
What you were born to do (calling).
What you are doing for the world (mission).
And what your daily sense of purpose is (ikigai).
In addition, once you understand what your purpose, passion, calling, mission, and ikigai are, your ability to make big life decisions (like which line of work to follow) will skyrocket.
One of the things I like to teach is this:
Get to know yourself so well, and make your purpose so clear, that you can’t not follow it.
When you identify your five core layers of purpose, it will be almost impossible for you not to follow them. It will be so obvious to you.
Even though I knew I wanted to be a writer/blogger and I wanted to write about personal development, I didn’t do it for years because I hadn’t clarified it enough.
It wasn’t obvious to me that the path of my highest happiness was to follow my passion for personal development and writing ASAP.
So I bounced around doing a bunch of other things that weren’t related to personal development until I got absolutely clear that this was a core part of my purpose, passion, calling, mission, and ikigai.
(Note: For me, personal development/writing happens to fall under all five of my core layers of purpose, but what you do doesn’t necessarily need to.)
Now it’s easy for me to do what I really want to do and what I know in my heart I was born to do because I understand my five core layers of purpose (and the rest of my purpose) so well.
That’s the type of self-understanding you will come to as you continue your journey of self-discovery, and it’s one of the most empowering places you can be in your life.
An Inside Look at My 5 Core Layers of Purpose
Before we dive into The 5 Core Layers of Purpose and how to find them, I want to share my five layers with you quickly so you can get an idea of how they look.
Here are my five core layers of purpose:
1. Purpose (higher purpose) – To experience joy and serve the world by helping people achieve their dreams lovingly, joyfully, and happily.
2. Passion – Personal development, writing, and creating resources that can empower others.
3. Mission – Build a business that inspires people, empowers people, and helps people achieve their dreams.
4. Calling – To be a writer, author, coach, and public speaker.
5. Ikigai – To create.
(I will share how I discovered all of these later on.)
Pretty cool, right?
Empowered with this self-knowledge, I am now doing exactly what I’ve wanted to do with my life ever since the idea first sprung into my mind in college.
And I can’t tell you how grateful I am to finally be doing it.
It’s been a spiritually healing experience for me, and I know it can also be for millions of people around the world who feel the call from within to find their way and do something more aligned with who they truly are.
Now, let’s identify your five core layers of purpose and use them to navigate your life with more purpose, passion, and power.\
The 5 Core Layers of Purpose (And How to Find Them)
1. Purpose
What I’m Here For
Discovering your purpose will help you understand what you are here for at this point in time.
By “here” I mean on this planet, in this life, at this time, as this person, but from a higher-level perspective.
This layer is about a specific type of purpose called your “higher purpose.”
What is a Higher Purpose?
A higher purpose is an overarching purpose that can guide a large portion of your life and contributes to a deep sense of meaning and fulfillment for you.
Often, when most people say, “I’m trying to find my purpose,” what they’re really saying is, “I’m trying to find my higher purpose.”
The higher purpose isn’t the only layer of purpose. It’s just a layer that comes from a higher perspective of self.
Because it comes from such a high place, the higher purpose tends to feel spiritually deeper, like it comes from a deeper part of you.
It can feel like a soul-level intention for the type of life you want to live and how you want to impact the world.
The higher purpose is sometimes associated with coming from a spiritual source, such as God, your higher self, the Universe, etc.
My belief is that, while it can be revealed to you, you can choose your higher purpose just as much as it can be revealed to you from a spiritual source.
Ultimately, it’s still self-knowledge.
Whether you choose it or a spiritual source makes you aware of it, it’s still knowledge that’s within you.
The main point I want to make here is this:
Don’t wait for a spiritual source to reveal your higher purpose to you. You could end up waiting a long time when the answer was right in front of you all along.
You can choose your higher purpose and start following it.
You can also change it later if it doesn’t resonate with you anymore, so there’s no need to feel like you’ve got to find the one purpose that will guide you for the rest of your life.
For me, joy is one of the highest spiritual states I can experience. Anytime I’m experiencing joy, I’m living in alignment with my higher purpose in life.
This means that anything that makes me happy is aligned with my purpose.
Next, I’m a big believer that I’m here to serve the world in many ways, and one of the highest-level ways in which I’m here to serve the world is to inspire people, empower people, and help people achieve their dreams.
Part of that is helping people figure out what their dreams actually are. That’s where a lot of my purpose and passion content comes in.
Finally, I added “lovingly, joyfully, and happily” because I’ve attempted to achieve my dreams by sacrificing different areas of my life, and it’s not healthy.
I believe in The Whole Pie – balance in abundance. I believe you can get it all and achieve it all without sacrificing everything else.
You can achieve your dreams in a state of love, joy, and happiness, and that is what I intend to help people do.
How to Find Your Higher Purpose
To identify your higher purpose, the first thing I want you to ask yourself is this:
Who do I believe I am here to serve, and how do I believe I am here to serve them?
The higher purpose is often associated with serving others in some way.
It doesn’t have to be people. It can be animals, the environment, or something else. But it tends to be about helping to create a better world in some way.
It also doesn’t have to be about serving a lot of people. For many, their higher purpose rests with their family, especially with their kids.
Serving the few can be just as purposeful as serving the many.
This isn’t about numbers or size. This is about what resonates the most with you. This is your higher purpose.
At the same time, for many others, their higher purpose is about creating positive change in thousands, millions, or billions of lives across the world. This is what excites me the most.
So again, it depends on what resonates with you personally.
If you can’t answer that question, then I recommend setting this intention:
I ask that my higher purpose be revealed to me. I intend to discover who I am here to serve and how I am here to serve them. I intend to uncover what I am really here for and what my higher purpose really is.
To set the intention, all you have to do is sit for a second and think your intention.
Set and reset the intention every day to discover what you are really here for from a higher-level perspective. Then pay attention to what shows up for you in your life.
Often, your higher purpose was sitting right in front of you the whole time, or you already knew it deep down. You just didn’t realize it was your higher purpose.
As soon as you realize it, you will know it clearly, and it will light you up inside.
2. Passion
What I Love
Next, let’s ground things down a bit and take a look at passion.
Even if you don’t resonate with finding your higher purpose, most people are interested in figuring out what their passion is.
What is a Passion?
A passion is a combination of what you love and what you are good at or want to get good at.
Take a look at The Purpose Venn Diagram again and see where passion intersects:
Passion intersects between “What I love” and “What I’m good at.”
I added “or what you want to get good at” because a passion can also be something you haven’t worked on getting good at yet but would like to.
Many people want to find and follow their passion, but what does this mean?
When you are following your passion, you are following:
Your excitement.
Your enthusiasm.
Your interest.
Your inspiration.
Your joy.
Your happiness.
Your love.
And whatever feels best to you.
A passion often puts you into a flow state, where you’re so immersed in the activity you lose track of time.
It’s something that makes you happy. It’s often something that you’d do whether you were getting paid to or not, but if you do get paid to do it, that’s even better.
(Personally, I believe the future of all work involves following our passions and getting paid for them.)
Another important characteristic of a passion is that it is energizing.It gives you energy when you engage in it.
It’s easy to tell when something isn’t a passion for you because it probably drains your energy. Anyone who’s worked a job they don’t like understands how this feels.
Passion is motivating. It’s energizing. It’s exciting. It’s fun. It’s playful. It can bring out your inner child.
The secret to limitless motivation is to find and follow something you’re truly passionate about. Passion is the fire that ignites motivation.
The secret to limitless motivation is to find and follow something you’re truly passionate about. Passion is the fire that ignites motivation.
One of the reasons so many people want to find their passion is because they’ve experienced the opposite of it.
They’ve experienced boring, ener-draining work. They’ve experienced the lack of motivation and tried to make up for it with productivity hacks (to no avail). They’ve experienced the lack of fulfillment, and it sucks.
There has never been a better time in history than now to find and do what you love to do, or to at least make the attempt to do what you love.
So, let’s talk about how I found my passion and how you can find yours, as well.
How I Found My Passion
I have many passions, but my passion when it comes to my life’s work is personal development and writing.
I got into personal development in 2019 as a sophomore in college after my roommate gave me a book on getting better with women.
It was mostly about developing yourself into an attractive man. The book was mostly about self-improvement, and I fell in love with it.
Not a day has gone by since then that I haven’t worked on myself in one way or another. Personal development is an absolute core part of who I am and who I will always be.
I’ve also always been a talented writer. My dad is a good writer as well, and my grandfather was a writer.
When I was in elementary school and high school, my dad would edit my essays for me and help me with word choice, sentence structure, etc.
In high school, I took Honors and AP English classes that challenged me to develop my writing skills further.
Then, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I joined my university’s newspaper as the sex columnist, where I learned even more about how to write content for a specific audience.
I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve loved personal development since it was first introduced to me over a decade ago.
By combining the two, I found my passion when it comes to my life’s work:
To write about personal development and create resources that can empower others, like books, articles, videos, courses, and podcast episodes.
(Courses coming soon.)
I love this stuff. I’m incredibly passionate about it.
Personal development has changed my life, and I intend to help as many people as I can around the world to change theirs for the better through my writing and the empowering resources I create.
That’s my passion when it comes to my life’s work.
How to Find Your Passion
When most people say, “I’m trying to find my passion,” what they’re really saying is, “I’m trying to find my work passion or career passion.”
So that’s what I’m going to focus on here.
You can be passionate about a lot of things. You can love a lot of things. You can be interested in a lot of things.
But not all of them will be passions you’ll want to turn into a paycheck/profit or do for a living (i.e. a job or business).
At the same time, you’ll be surprised by just how many different passions you can earn either a side income or full-time income from.
For example, take a look at any successful blog, podcast, streamer, or YouTube channel that’s monetized either through ads, affiliate promotions, and/or their own digital products (such as courses, books, memberships, etc.).
Many of them also make money through brand deals, merch, donations, Patreon, client services, coaching, and speaking gigs.
Almost none of these people are doing something related to the things people typically get a college degree for. They’re making money talking about something, doing something, or teaching something they’re passionate about!
They’re monetized around things like fantasy football, woodworking, gaming, and surfing.
Heck, I’ve made money every month since 2016 from a sex book! I definitely didn’t go to school for that!
I wrote the book because it’s something I was passionate about and had a lot of knowledge on. I published it, and now I’ve made money from that passion for years.
In fact, over the last 9 years, I’ve ONLY done work I have had some type of passion for and gotten paid for it:
I’ve been paid for my passion for writing as a freelance writer, self-published author, and a blogger.
I’ve been paid for my passion for personal development as a writer, an online course instructor, and a coach.
I’ve been paid for my passion for online business and marketing by selling search engine optimization and digital marketing services.
So I can tell you it’s absolutely possible and worthwhile to find a passion or multiple passions you can get paid for.
Do you have to be a content creator to get paid for your passion?
Nope! I had a client who discovered that her passion was helping people with their personal finances, so she decided to get her Certified Financial Planner certification. No content required.
One of my closest friends has a passion for cooking. He went to college for occupational therapy, but ended up becoming a chef, instead.
He has now worked in Michelin-star restaurants in Denmark, Japan, and the US and wants to open his own restaurant one day. After a few years of bouncing around and trying different things after college, he’s following his work passion fully now.
There’s never been a better time than now to carve your own place in the world by finding and following your passion.
So, let’s talk about how you can find a passion you can turn into a paycheck or profit.
The first thing I want you to ask yourself is this:
What am I interested in?
Your passions are always things you are interested in to some degree.
Pull out a piece of paper, a word document, or a note on your phone and list out everything that interests you.
Next, ask yourself this question:
What do I love doing? What do I absolutely love doing in life?
A passion is something you love. It’s this love energy that actually drives your passion for it.
Again, list out everything you love doing in life.
Next, ask yourself:
What am I good at? And what do I want to get good at?
List out all of your skills, gifts, talents, and abilities. Also, list out the things you’re not good at yet but would like to get good at.
Finally, ask yourself:
Where do these things intersect? What am I interested in, what do I love doing, and what am I good at or want to get good at?
Remember, a passion, especially when it comes to a career/work passion, is a combination of what you love and are good at or want to get good at.
Figure out what the intersection of these things is and you’ll have found a passion (or multiple passions) that you can earn an income from.
3. Calling
What I Was Born To Do
The third core layer of purpose most people are searching for (even if they don’t know it) is their calling.
The calling is one of the most beautiful layers of purpose because it is truly a call from within.
When you finally hear the call and answer it, it’s like picking up the phone and hearing who you were always meant to be talking right back at you.
When you finally hear the call and answer it, it’s like picking up the phone and hearing who you were always meant to be talking right back at you.
Let’s talk about what a calling is, how I found my calling, and how you can find yours.
What is a Calling?
A calling is a combination of three parts of The Purpose Venn Diagram:
What I love.
What I’m good at.
What the world needs.
The calling is interesting because it combines a spiritual component (what I love) with your gifts, talents, and abilities (what I’m good at), and something greater than yourself (what the world needs).
This is one of the reasons so many are searching for their calling.
The level of alignment with your inner truth and inner joy, combined with the satisfaction of doing something suited to your talents, and doing something that can serve others, makes the calling a highly purposeful layer of one’s life.
A calling can be described as a strong urge from within to use your talents, skills, and abilities to do something you love that’s also greater than yourself.
Put simply, a calling is something you were born to do. It’s something you feel like you were meant to do. In a way, it is you.
A calling is something you were born to do. It’s something you feel like you were meant to do. In a way, it is you.
A person’s calling is often innate, meaning they often have a built-in affinity for it. They’re often already good at it in some way as soon as they discover it.
For example, a person might find that playing a certain sport is their calling.
From childhood, they’re naturally gifted and they love playing this sport. It’s also something that the world needs.
Athletes, especially the ones who have found their calling, help show people what’s possible. People love watching sports and athletes provide a source of both entertainment and inspiration for others.
Finding one’s calling can be a life-changing moment.
Here’s how I found mine:
How I Found My Calling
Finding my calling was simply about recognizing what I already loved to do, what I was already good at, and thinking about how I could combine both of those things to do something the world needs.
My calling is to be a writer, author, coach, and public speaker. How did I figure this out?
First, I figured out what I loved to do. I loved to write, and I loved creating resources that could empower others.
Then, I figured out what I was good at. Lo and behold, I’m also good at writing and creating resources that can empower others.
Next, I figured out how I could use writing to do something the world needs. The world needs empowerment, and I spent the last decade empowering myself and imagining myself writing articles and books that could inspire and empower others.
Then I looked at other people who were following a similar calling. How were they doing it? How were they identifying themselves?
They were identifying themselves as writers, authors, coaches, and public speakers!
On top of writing, I’ve been hugely inspired to be a coach and serve a smaller amount of people in deeper ways.
I got inspired to become a public speaker by Gary Vaynerchuk when I first started following him in 2015. After watching him on stage, I started imagining myself on stage inspiring thousands of people.
To summarize:
To find my calling, I first went within and found the intersection between what I loved, what I’m good at (or want to get good at), and what the world needs.
Then I looked outside myself to identify other people who were following that calling so I could model myself off of what they were doing.
Now I’m following my calling daily. This is what I feel I was born to do.
Even though I had adesire to be a writer for years and to do what I’m doing now, I never clearly identified it as my calling.
That self-knowledge was resting just below the level of my current awareness at the time.
But as soon as I identified it and wrote it down, it became obvious that this was what I was meant to do.
And it became easy for me to follow it.
So, let’s talk about how to find your calling.
How to Find Your Calling
Remember, your calling is a combination of what you love, what you’re good at (or want to get good at), and what the world needs.
If you’ve already found your passion(s) in the previous section, then you know what you love and what you’re good at or want to get good at.
All you need to do now is identify which passion the world also needs, and you’ll have the recipe for a powerful calling.
I also encourage you to tap into your inner wisdom here. Try to listen to what your heart is telling you.
My heart was telling me for years that writing was my calling. People in my life were telling it to me as well.
And, in a way, I knew it. I knew it the whole time. I just wasn’t listening (or wasn’t ready to listen).
Listen for the call from within you. Then pick up the phone and answer it.
Talk to who you were always meant to be and see what they have to say.
Your calling is on the other side of that phone call with your inner self.
Your calling is on the other side of that phone call with your inner self.
Now it’s time to ground things even further and discuss the mission.
The mission is where the purpose, passion, and calling become focused on a set goal, dream, aim, or intention.
The mission is where the purpose, passion, and calling become focused on a set goal, dream, aim, or intention.
The mission has a lot of energy behind it, a lot of focus, and a lot of purpose fueling it.
Let’s break it down:
What is a Mission?
Going back to The Purpose Venn Diagram, your mission is a combination of what you love and what the world needs.
However, I think that definition is a little lacking. There’s more to a mission than simply what you love and what the world needs.
A mission requires a powerful statement of intention to solidify it. This is why companies and organizations always have a mission statement.
It focuses the energy of an entire organization under one clear statement of intention. The mission statement says:
This is who we are.
This is why we do what we do.
And this is who we’re doing it for.
Your mission can guide your life in exactly the same way a mission statement does for an organization.
The nice thing about a mission is that it can also be tied to a goal, meaning you can accomplish the mission. You can succeed at it. You can fulfill it. It’s measurable.
You can also rally your own energy, and the energy of others, around fulfilling the mission you’ve chosen.
A mission is highly action-oriented. You’re saying, “This is my goal, this is what I want to achieve, and I’m working towards it.”
It’s also focused on creating something or doing something that the world needs. There’s a service aspect to it, much like the higher purpose (but more grounded).
Here’s how I found my mission:
How I Found My Mission
My mission right now is to build a business that inspires people, empowers people, and helps people achieve their dreams.
How did I choose this mission?
Well, it stems from my higher purpose. My mission is the more grounded, goal-oriented version of my higher purpose.
My higher purpose is to experience joy and serve the world by helping people achieve their dreams lovingly, joyfully, and happily.
To figure out my mission, I took one part of my higher purpose (to help people achieve their dreams) and grounded it down into something more actionable (to build a business that helps people achieve their dreams).
And how am I building this business?
I’m doing it by following my passion and mycalling.
(This is how The 5 Core Layers of Purpose come together.)
My passion when it comes to my life’s work is personal development and writing.
My calling is to be a writer, author, coach, and public speaker.
So the way I’m taking action on my mission is by building a business that involves creating content, writing books, selling courses, and coaching people to help them find their purpose, follow their passion, and achieve their dreams.
To choose my mission, I used the first three core layers of purpose (higher purpose, passion, and calling) and grounded them into something actionable.
Now I know what I’m doing for the world. I’m building a business that inspires people, empowers people, and helps people achieve their dreams.
So, let’s talk about how to find your mission.
How to Find Your Mission
Your mission is a combination of what you love and what the world needs, but it’s really just a more grounded, goal-oriented combination of your higher purpose, your passion, and your calling.
To find your mission, take a look at your higher purpose, passion, and calling and figure out how you can turn them into a definite goal or chief aim.
Then, write it out as a clear mission statement so that it’s obvious to you, and start taking action on it.
5. Ikigai
My Daily Sense of Purpose
Finally, we come to one of my favorite layers of purpose: ikigai.
Ikigai has gained a lot of popularity thanks to articles, books, and documentaries spreading the word about this concept.
However, there are also a lot of misconceptions flying around about what ikigai is and how it can be applied to one’s life.
So, let’s talk about what ikigai really is.
Then we’ll get into how I found my ikigai and how you can find yours.
What is an Ikigai?
The concept of ikigai was first discovered on the island of Okinawa in Japan. It was made aware to the rest of the world by a team of researchers studying the world’s blue zones.
The blue zones are five areas around the world where the highest concentration of centenarians live (people over 100 years old).2
These areas produce some of the longest-living people on the planet, so the researchers wanted to know how these people were living so long and so happily.
When studying Okinawa, the researchers learned that just about everyone has something they call an ikigai.3
Both young and old people have an ikigai that acts as a daily sense of purpose. It’s something that brings them a daily sense of fulfillment and meaning.
Typically, their ikigai is something they love to do that they’re good at and helps them feel valued in society, such as being a toy maker, a woodworker, a fisherman/fisherwoman, etc.
In the book, How to Ikigai, Tim Tamashiro describes ikigai as “‘…the reason you get out of bed in the morning.’ It’s what you do, every day, that’s meaningful to you and to others.”4
You can absolutely get paid for your ikigai, but you don’t have to. It can just be something that brings you a sense of daily fulfillment.
Ikigais are also simple. They don’t require a deep purpose statement detailing every area of your life.
They can be stated simply as “To [something].”
Here are some examples of ikigais:
To create (my ikigai)
To love
To travel
To fish
To make wooden toys for kids
To take care of others
To help others
To perform
To enlighten
To educate
To have fun
To experience life to its fullest
To eat amazing food
To go with the flow
To build helpful computer programs
To teach martial arts and help people feel strong and empowered
To play
To remember
To be a channel for the wisdom of the universe
To make beautiful music
As you can see, there’s a lot of freedom here. Your ikigai is what you say it is. It’s whatever resonates with you at this point in time.
It’s simple, and it’s easy to follow.
Because once you’ve chosen your ikigai, to live it, all you have to do is more of it or to continue doing it.
And it will provide you with a simple, consistent sense of purpose in your daily life. This is one of the reasons I love it so much.
Here’s how I found my ikigai:
How I Found My Ikigai
As soon as I found/chose my ikigai, my daily sense of purpose immediately increased and has stayed high for years since.
I chose my ikigai after learning about the concept, reading How to Ikigai by Tim Tamashiro, and trying out a few ikigais to see how they felt.
Eventually, I settled on to create.
I’ve always loved creating things. I built my own longboard and shortboard when I was in high school, and I love creating content, music, etc.
I just love to create stuff (and especially things that other people can enjoy as well, like content or music).
I also believe that I am the creator of my life experience. I am creating my life every single day, and I love creating my life experience.
So, for me, to create is the perfect ikigai. It means that whenever I’m creating something, I’m fully aligned with my purpose, my joy, my love, and my fulfillment.
Whenever I’m writing, I’m living fully in my ikigai and in my daily sense of purpose.
Whenever I’m working on my purpose, my mission, my calling, my goals, my dreams – I’m living fully in my ikigai and my daily sense of purpose.
Whenever I do anything creative, like making music, I’m living fully in my ikigai and my daily sense of purpose.
This doesn’t mean I need to create stuff every day to feel a sense of purpose. It just means that I now know what brings me purpose on a very simple, basic, uncomplicated level.
All I need to do to engage in an important part of my daily sense of purpose is to create. That’s it.
And I will feel incredibly fulfilled by what I’m doing.
How to Find Your Ikigai
There is no magic formula to finding your ikigai. It’s really about trying some on for size, engaging in them more, and seeing how they feel.
What do you already love to do? What are you already passionate about? Is there an ikigai resting in one of those things?
If not, try out some broad ikigais, like to have fun, to feel strong, to help others, and to be at peace.
Then consciously engage yourself in them more often.
For example, if you try out the ikigai, “to have fun,” start having more fun!
Give yourself permission to do more fun things. Let go of any feelings of guilt you may have about enjoying your life, and do more things that make you happy!
Then see how you feel. Does it resonate with you? If not, choose something else and repeat the process.
There’s no pressure here. Ikigai is meant to be chill, it’s meant to be fun, and it’s meant to be simple.
If you’re overthinking it, you’re overcomplicating it.
Download my free Finding Your Ikigai Worksheet below for a full guide to finding your ikigai:
Summary of The 5 Core Layers of Purpose
Here’s a quick summary of The 5 Core Layers of Purpose for your reference:
1. Purpose (Higher Purpose)
A higher purpose is an overarching purpose that can guide a large portion of your life and contribute to a deep sense of meaning and fulfillment for you.
It’s a layer of purpose that comes from a higher perspective of self.
Because it comes from such a high place, the higher purpose tends to feel spiritually deeper, like it comes from a deeper part of you.
It can feel like a soul-level intention for the type of life you want to live and how you want to impact the world.
The higher purpose is sometimes associated with coming from a spiritual source, such as God, your higher self, the Universe, etc.
My belief is that, while it can be revealed to you, you can choose your higher purpose just as much as it can be revealed to you from a spiritual source.
To find your higher purpose, ask yourself this question:
Who do I believe I am here to serve, and how do I believe I am here to serve them?
And set this intention:
I ask that my higher purpose be revealed to me. I intend to discover who I am here to serve and how I am here to serve them. I intend to uncover what I am really here for and what my higher purpose really is.
2. Passion
A passion is a combination of what you love and what you are good at or want to get good at.
When you are following your passion, you are following:
Your excitement.
Your enthusiasm.
Your interest.
Your inspiration.
Your joy.
Your happiness.
Your love.
And whatever feels best to you.
A passion often puts you into a flow state, and it’s something that makes you happy.
It’s often something that you’d do whether you were getting paid to or not, and it’s energizing.
The secret to limitless motivation is to find and follow something you’re truly passionate about. Passion is the fire that ignites motivation.
To find your passion, ask yourself these questions:
What am I interested in?
What do I love doing in life?
What am I good at? And what do I want to get good at?
Where do these things intersect?
3. Calling
The calling is truly a call from within.
When you finally hear the call and answer it, it’s like picking up the phone and hearing who you were always meant to be talking right back at you.
A calling is a combination of:
What you love.
What you’re good at.
What the world needs.
It combines a spiritual component (what you love) with your gifts, talents, and abilities (what you’re good at), and something greater than yourself (what the world needs).
The level of alignment with your inner truth and inner joy, combined with the satisfaction of doing something suited to your talents, and doing something that can serve others, makes the calling a highly purposeful layer of one’s life.
A calling can be described as a strong urge from within to use your talents, skills, and abilities to do something you love that’s also greater than yourself.
A calling is something you were born to do. It’s something you feel like you were meant to do. In a way, it is you.
To find your calling, identify the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs, and tap into your inner wisdom.
Really try to listen to what your heart is trying to tell you.
4. Mission
The mission is where the purpose, passion, and calling become focused on a set goal, dream, aim, or intention.
Your mission is a combination of what you love and what the world needs. However, there’s a little more to it than that.
The mission requires a powerful statement of intention to solidify it, like the mission statement of an organization.
The mission statement says:
This is who we are.
This is why we do what we do.
And this is who we’re doing it for.
Your mission can guide your life in exactly the same way as the mission statement of an organization.
A mission is highly action-oriented. You’re saying, “This is my goal, this is what I want to achieve, and I’m working towards it.”
It’s also focused on creating something or doing something that the world needs. There’s a service aspect to it, much like the higher purpose (but more grounded).
To find your mission, take a look at your higher purpose, passion, and calling and figure out how you can turn it into a definite goal or chief aim.
Then write it out as a clear mission statement so that it’s obvious to you.
5. Ikigai
An ikigai is something simple that can give you a daily sense of purpose, fulfillment, and meaning.
Typically, an ikigai is something you love to do that you’re good at and helps you feel valued.
You can absolutely get paid for your ikigai, but you don’t have to. It can just be something that brings you a sense of daily joy and fulfillment.
Here are some examples:
To create (my ikigai)
To love
To travel
To fish
To make wooden toys for kids
To take care of others
To help others
To perform
To enlighten
To educate
To have fun
To experience life to its fullest
To build helpful computer programs
To teach martial arts and help people feel strong and empowered
To play
To make beautiful music
Once you’ve chosen your ikigai, to live it all you have to do is more of it or continue doing it, and it will provide you with a simple, consistent sense of purpose in your daily life.
To find your ikigai, try out a few ikigais, engage yourself in them more, and see how they feel.
If you like an ikigai, keep it. If not, choose another one until you find one that resonates with you.
Next Steps
The next step I suggest taking is to choose one of The 5 Core Layers of Purpose, the one that resonates with you the most right now, and work on clarifying it for yourself.
Sit down and write out your answers to the question prompt(s) from that section.
Just this action alone can skyrocket your clarity.
Remember:
Purpose is clarity, and clarity is power.
By sitting down and writing out your answers, you are tapping into your inner clarity and inner power.
Finally, if you want to take things further, I suggest downloading and going through my free Self-Discovery Workbook below.
It will help you get to know your true self and use it as a roadmap to your ideal future.
Michael Karp is a personal development blogger and self-published author. He started his personal development journey in 2011 as a sophomore in college.
Since then, he has self-published several books, started an online business and became a digital nomad, achieved his dream of moving to Thailand and traveling around Southeast Asia, built a following of 18,000 people on Instagram sharing personal development advice, became a life coach, found his life purpose, and healed his body with the power of his mind.
With a deep passion for serving others, Michael continues his hero's journey on a mission to help people around the world to empower themselves, realize their true potential, and achieve their dreams.
