You Know Your Role. Do You Know Your Purpose?

You Know Your Role. Do You Know Your Purpose?

You Know Your Role. Do You Know Your Purpose?

By Adam Tully, COO of Better Talent

When was the last time you sat down and seriously studied yourself? Not your resume. Not your LinkedIn profile. Not the credentials in your briefcase or the title on your business card. You. Your strengths. What brings you joy, and what drains you? Most people go years, sometimes entire careers, without ever doing that work. They know their role inside and out. They barely know themselves. The job gets all the attention. The person doing it gets almost none.

And it catches up with us. At some point in a career, or in building a business, most people hit a wall. The drive that once came naturally starts to fade. The work that used to feel meaningful starts to feel like motion. They are still showing up, still performing, but something is missing. That something is purpose.

It does not get easier at retirement. For many people, the moment they step away from their role, they lose the last thing that was giving them structure and identity. Without a reason to get up, everything starts to drift. Research on longevity points to this again and again. The people who thrive into their later years are not the ones who have stopped. They are the ones who never lost their reason for being.

Most people can describe their job in thirty seconds. Very few can tell you why they do it at all.

What Is Ikigai

The word ikigai (pronounced ee-kee-guy) has been part of Japanese culture for centuries. It simply means “that which makes life worth living.” Your reason for being. Your reason to get up.

In Japan, there is no word for retirement as we think of it in the West. The closest word, taishoku, simply means stepping away from a role. Not from purpose. That distinction matters more than it sounds.

In the West, we are conditioned to set a ceiling. A target age, a target number, a finish line. Get there, stop, coast. In Japan, that thinking barely exists. The role may change, but the purpose does not. Okinawa has one of the highest concentrations of centenarians anywhere on the planet, people living past 100 not in decline but still engaged, still purposeful, still connected to their reason for being. Researchers keep pointing to the same thread. They never stopped having a reason to get up in the morning.

The four-circle framework most people associate with ikigai is a Western adaptation, not the traditional definition. But it is a powerful tool for anyone trying to align their work with who they actually are. The four circles: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Your ikigai lives where all four overlap.

How to Do Your Own Analysis

This does not have to take weeks. Here is the process I used and now teach to others.

Step 1: Use your assessments as your starting point

Think of each assessment you have taken as a data point. The more data points you give the AI, the more accurately it can reflect back who you truly are. Some of the most powerful ones include StrengthsFinder, DISC, Working Genius, Predictive Index, Myers-Briggs, and Big Five. But any survey or assessment you have taken, whether through an employer, a coach, or on your own, adds another layer. Do not overthink it. If you have taken it, include it. Together, they start to paint a remarkably accurate picture of how you are wired, what drives you, and where you do your best work.

Step 2: Use AI to help you go deeper

Take your assessment results and paste them into your favorite AI, whether that is ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whichever tool you already use, and ask it to help you complete an ikigai analysis. The prompt is simple:

"Run a full Ikigai analysis on me based on these results. Walk through each of the four circles, identify where they overlap, and finish with a single-sentence Ikigai statement."

Let the AI ask you follow-up questions. Push back on its answers. Refine until the language actually sounds like you.

One thing worth trying that most people skip: ask the same question to multiple AI models and compare the answers. Each model reflects information back differently. The themes that show up consistently across two or three of them are the ones worth paying attention to.

Step 3: Go deeper with the 7 Whys

Most people stop too soon. They write down what they do and call it purpose. But what you do is not your ikigai. Why do you do it?

Take your initial answer and ask why it matters. Then ask why that matters. Keep going seven levels deep. Most people find that by the fifth or sixth why, something shifts. The surface-level answer falls away, leaving something much more honest. That is the layer your ikigai lives in.

You might start with “I love building teams.” Ask why. “Because I want people to succeed.” Ask why. “Because I believe everyone deserves the chance to do meaningful work.” Keep going. By the seventh, you are no longer talking about a job function. You are talking about a conviction. That conviction is your ikigai.

Step 4: Ask the People Who Know You Best

Before you write your sentence, pressure-test your analysis with the people who have watched you work.

Most of us have blind spots. We underestimate the things that come so naturally that we forget others struggle with them. We overvalue skills we worked hard to develop, but that do not actually light us up. The people closest to you have seen patterns in you that your assessments may not fully capture.

Send a simple message to three to five people. Tell them you are doing a purpose exercise and you need their honest input. Ask them two questions:

When do you see me most energized and alive in my work? And what do you think I do better than almost anyone you know?

Do not coach them. Do not give them context that steers their answers. Just ask and listen.

Then compare what they say to what your AI analysis surfaced. The themes that show up in both places, confirmed by data and by people who know you, are the closest thing to ground truth you are going to find. If something surprises you, do not dismiss it. Sit with it. The things that catch you off guard are often the most revealing.

The people closest to us often see what we cannot. That kind of honesty can be humbling. But humility is not weakness. It is how we grow.

Step 5: Write one sentence

Your ikigai should fit in a single sentence. Not a paragraph. Not a mission statement. One sentence that could survive a career change, a new season of life, or even retirement.

Here is mine:

“Building and leading people and organizations toward their full potential, with conviction, strategy, and truth, in a way that creates lasting impact for the leaders, teams, and companies I serve.”

That sentence has nothing to do with a job title. It has no expiration date. It is mine regardless of what role I am in.

That is the goal.

Do the analysis. Go seven levels deep. Ask the people who know you. Write the sentence. Then go build something purposeful. That gets you up every morning.