Finding Purpose In Life – It’s Not The Venn Diagram
Purpose plays a central role in creating a meaningful and sustainable career strategy. It acts as the north star for your compass, guiding your decisions, motivating your actions, and helping you navigate both opportunities and setbacks.
Your purpose can change over time, and there is nothing wrong with that. It can grow in vision, pivot slightly, or change direction completely. I’ve worked with lawyers who have become teachers. Athletes who pivoted to business roles.
Let’s look at the role of purpose in shaping a meaningful and sustainable career.
Direction and focus
At its core, purpose provides direction and focus. When you’re clear about your purpose, it helps define what success truly looks like, not merely in terms of job titles or income, but in terms of fulfilment and impact. This clarity influences your decision-making, allowing you to filter opportunities and confidently say no to paths that don’t align with your deeper values. It helps you understand what you stand for and, therefore what you are against. This supports the creation of everyday boundaries and important lines in the sand, where you could compromise and red ones you won’t cross.
Motivation and resilience.
When your daily professional life is grounded in what matters most to you, it’s easier to stay engaged, even through difficult or uncertain times. Purpose anchors you when things go off track, maybe with burnout or a setback, because it connects your day-to-day actions to something greater. This connection helps you weather challenges with a sense of meaning and endurance.
From a long-term perspective, knowing your purpose helps you align your strategic choices, whether that’s in skill development, networking, or career shifts. It encourages forward-thinking decisions that support where you truly want to go. Purpose also acts as a growth path, prompting you to build expertise, take meaningful risks, and maintain a vision that evolves with you.
Authenticity
This is another powerful benefit of a clear sense of purpose. It allows you to present yourself consistently and sincerely in professional contexts such as CVs interviews, or relationships. When others perceive you as purpose-driven, it builds trust and opens doors to meaningful opportunities. In essence, purpose strengthens your personal brand and supports your professional reputation. It can be closely associated with integrity, although people can be committed to goals which are less ethical!
Perhaps most importantly, purpose brings impact and fulfilment. It ensures that your career isn’t just about personal advancement but about contributing to something greater. This sense of contribution is deeply rewarding and tightly linked to overall career satisfaction. It bridges the gap between what you do and why it matters, creating a powerful sense of alignment and meaning in your work.
It needn’t even be a “save the planet” type of purpose but something that is meaningful to you. Building a safe life for you and your family is a solid purpose especially in today’s BANI world.
Role of Ikigai
This idea of purpose aligns closely with the Japanese concept of Ikigai, which translates roughly to “that which makes life worth living.” Unlike Western notions of success focused on money or status, Ikigai encompasses joy, meaning, and contribution in life. As I learned from Nick Kemp, Founder of Ikigai Tribe, It’s NOT the Venn diagram you seen posted by Europeans and Americans. It’s not limited to a career, it can be found in raising a child, creating something beautiful, enjoying a sunset, helping a friend, or simply pursuing a personal calling. As Mieko Kamiya, who is considered to be the Mother of Ikigai, emphasised, it often involves a sense of forward-looking hope and emotional resilience, even amid suffering.
⏯️Listen to our Podcast: Let’s talk about Ikigai with Nicholas Kemp and Dorothy Dalton
Core elements of Ikigai.
Ikigai focuses on bringing life satisfaction and a future orientation. People with have found Ikigai often have a personal narrative or reason to look forward to tomorrow, even when their current experience seems hard. This is because it is not just a driving motivation, but is also found in small joys and daily rituals, mundane yet meaningful acts such as enjoying a coffee or taking a walk.
Ikigai often arises from commitment to values or growth; it can come from doing something with care and dedication, regardless of recognition. Finally, contribution to others is central. Whether through relationships, service, or simply fulfilling a role, Ikigai often includes the sense that your actions matter to someone else.
When building a career strategy around authentic Ikigai, it’s important to shift the focus away from purely market-driven goals like “what the world will pay you for” and instead prioritise meaning. Ask yourself:
What kinds of work align with my values, curiosity, or sense of purpose? What small, joyful practices can I embed into my daily routine? Where am I headed that gives life a hopeful sense of direction? And who am I helping through my work, and how can I deepen that impact?
Ultimately, as Mieko Kamiya so beautifully put it:
“Having Ikigai means that one has a reason to get up in the morning, a reason to enjoy life.”
And in a world of constant noise and shifting demands, few things are more powerful than knowing why you do what you do.
Download this FREE worksheet: Find your Purpose – 10 Key self-reflection questions to ask yourself
