I first heard the word ikigai in a philosophy class in college. I was a business major with an Asian studies concentration, and one semester my professor introduced ikigai: the Japanese concept of your reason for being. I wrote it down, memorized the definition, aced the test, and then I moved on.
I had no idea I'd come back to it two years later as the thing that pulled me out of post-grad depression.
After I graduated into the void I've written about before, I was searching for something I couldn't name. Purpose. Meaning. A reason to get up. I tried everything: journaling, reading self-help books, watching podcasts. Nothing was sticking because I was absorbing more information when I needed to look within. Then, I remembered ikigai.
I sat down to actually work through it with intention this time. I was desperate,Ā listing everything I could think of in each of the four quadrants of the Venn diagram. I looked for the overlaps, and then I saw it.
What I love: uplifting other women. What I'm good at: teaching, motivating, speaking. What the world needs: a way for women to close the gap between the life they're living and the life they're capable of. What I can be paid for: social media, content monetization, The Prettier Richer Smarter Method and its products.
The PRS Method is my ikigai. It's the entire reason I'm sitting here writing this article instead of wandering aimlessly through life.
Finding your ikigai is one of the most important things you'll ever do for yourself. Here's exactly how to do it.
What Ikigai Actually Is
Ikigai is a Japanese word that loosely translates to "reason for being" or "that which makes life worth living."
In Japan, ikigai is a deeply personal concept that can apply to almost anything that gives life meaning, like family, a morning ritual, a craft you love, or a garden. The word existed in Japanese culture for centuries before it ever became a Western self-help concept.
The version most of us know is the Western adaptation. It's the four-circle Venn diagram you've probably seen on Pinterest: what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Your ikigai, according to this framework, is the intersection of all four.
The Western version is a simplification. The original concept is broader and more spiritual than a productivity diagram. But the Venn diagram is useful, and it's what I used to find mine, so it's what I'm going to walk you through. Just know going in that this is the actionable, modern adaptation of an older idea. If you want to go deeper into the original philosophy, the books Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy LifeĀ by HĆ©ctor GarcĆa and Francesc Miralles and The Little Book of Ikigai by Ken Mogi are both good starting points.
For now, the four circles.
The Four Circles
To find your ikigai, you have to answer four questions honestly. Most women answer one or two and assume that's enough. But the whole point of the framework is that your ikigai lives at the intersection of all four.
Circle One: What Do You Love?
First and foremost, what do you love? This is what genuinely lights you up.
You can find this by looking backwards. What did you love before the world told you what you should love? What were you doing as a kid when you lost track of time? What do you talk about when you're three drinks in with your closest friend and your guard is down? What do you secretly hope to be doing five years from now, even if it sounds unrealistic when you say it out loud?
When I did this for myself, the answer that kept surfacing was helping other women. I'd been doing it informally for years. Coaching friends through breakups. Helping cousins build resumes. Convincing women in my life that they were capable of more than they were settling for. I didn't have a name for it yet, but the through-line was always uplifting other women.
Write it all down.
Circle Two: What Are You Good At?
Next up, what are you good at? This is what comes naturally to you.
When you're brainstorming this circle, think about what people compliment you on. Think about what coworkers, family, and friends come to you for help with. Think about what you do at work that feels easier to you than it seems to be for others. Think about the things people have actually paid you for or asked you to teach.
For me, the answers were teaching, motivating, speaking, and self-improving. I'd been the kid in school who explained the homework to everyone else. I'd been the friend who could talk anyone into believing in herself. I'd been quietly studying my own development my whole life. These were skills I'd downplayed because they felt natural to me, which is exactly the trap. The things that come easiest to you are usually the things you're most uniquely good at.
Don't be modest. Make the list.
Circle Three: What Does the World Need?
This is the circle most women skip selfishly, and it's the one that separates a passion from a purpose.
A passion that nobody else needs is a hobby. A purpose has to serve something beyond yourself.
This is about identifying where you can plug your love and your skills into something that actually matters to other people. It doesn't have to help the world at large, just your specific corner of it. A community, a demographic, or a problem that's been quietly bothering you because it feels solvable.
For me, the world needed a way for women to close the gap between the life they were living and the life they were capable of. I'd watched too many women shrink themselves, including myself. I knew there was an audience of women who were searching for the same thing I'd been searching for, and I knew almost nothing on the market was actually meeting them where they were because I hadnāt found it.
Look around your own life and ask what's broken that you could help fix. Who's not being served. What problem keeps showing up in conversations that you find yourself naturally weighing in on.
Write down what you see.
Circle Four: What Can You Be Paid For?
This is the one that makes a lot of women uncomfortable, and it's exactly why most "find your passion" advice fails.
You can't live your ikigai if you can't afford to live. A purpose without a payment model becomes a side project you eventually abandon because you have to pay rent. The whole point of the framework is sustainability. Ikigai is what you do every day for the rest of your life, which means it has to fund it.
You need to think honestly about how your love + skills + the world's needs = a way to make a living.
This could be a job, a business, a product, a service, a platform, and so on.Ā
For me, this was content and products. Social media is a real industry. Planners and physical products are real businesses. The PRS Method has multiple monetization pathways built into it because I was honest with myself early about needing this to be sustainable. If I'd treated this as a hobby, I would have abandoned it by now. Instead, Iām writing this article.
Be honest. The question of monetization has to be considered.
How the Circles Become Your Ikigai
The intersection of what you love and what the world needs is your mission. The intersection of what the world needs and what you can be paid for is your vocation. The intersection of what you can be paid for and what youāre good at is your profession. The intersection of what youāre good at and what you love is your passion.
Your ikigai lives at the intersection of your mission, vocation, profession, and passion. All four circles.
Here's the process I used to find mine:
Make four lists. One for each circle. Write everything you can think of for each one. I mean it. Everything. Exhaust your options. Don't tell yourself something is silly or unrealistic. You're collecting raw material right now, not making decisions.
Then look at the overlaps. What appears in more than one list? Where do your "what I love" answers connect to your "what I'm good at" answers? Where does "what the world needs" overlap with "what I can be paid for"? You can use different colored highlighters as a key to coordinate. The patterns will start to emerge.
Look for the place where all four overlap. That's your ikigai. It might be a specific career. It might be a business idea. It might be a way of being in the world that touches multiple jobs you could hold. It doesn't have to fit neatly into a job title. It just has to be specific enough that you can build toward it.
For me, the overlap became clear. I love uplifting women. I'm good at teaching, motivating, and speaking. The world needs a method for closing the gap between potential and reality. I can be paid through content and products. The intersection is the PRS Method. It's not just a business, it's my purpose.
How PRS Is Ikigai in Action
If you've been reading this far, you might already be noticing something.
I keep mentioning The PRS Method, not only because itās my ikigai or because itās the website youāre on right now, but because it helped me put structure to live my ikigai.
You may also be wondering how to put your ikigai into action.
The PRS Method is the answer. It is my 12-week guided planning method designed to help guide you toward living the life youāre capable of. It requires you to know yourself well enough to make intentional choices about your time. It rejects the idea that life is something that happens to you instead of something you build.
I built the PRS Method Planner because I needed a structured, weekly way to actually live the ikigai I found. The philosophy gave me the destination. PRS is the map.
The Mistakes Women Make
A few patterns I see over and over in women trying to find their ikigai.
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The biggest one is avoiding it entirely. Most women graduate, get a job, live mindlessly, and wake up one day not recognizing the woman in the mirror. They didn't choose against their ikigai. They just never sat down to do the work, so they ended up wherever the current took them.
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The second biggest mistake is answering one or two circles and stopping. They define their purpose as just what they love, or just what they're good at, without considering the rest. A passion without a market is a hobby. A skill without an audience is just a personal achievement. The whole point of the framework is the intersection. All four have to be present or the model collapses.
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The third is letting other people answer the circles for you. Your parents, your in-laws, your bestie, your spouse, your favorite influencer. Their opinions can be useful information, but they're not you. If everyone in your life is sounding alarm bells about your direction, maybe reassess whether what you're doing is ethical and sustainable. But beyond that, your ikigai is yours. Nobody else gets a vote. If I appealed to other peopleās opinions, I wouldnāt be writing this article, nor would you be reading it.
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The fourth is expecting it to arrive overnight. Maybe you have a lightbulb moment, but probably not. The truth is that finding your ikigai is more like archaeology than revelation. You dig, brush dust off, and look at what's underneath. You write more lists. You revisit. You spiral. You come back. You sit with it for months. Eventually you see the pattern.
Remember: this is the most important project you'll ever work on.
What If You Already Know and You're Just Avoiding It?
I want to plant this idea before I close out.
Sometimes the reason women can't find their ikigai is not that the answer is hidden. It's that they already know it and don't want to face it.
The answer might be inconvenient. It might require quitting a job, ending a relationship, moving, starting over, telling people in your life that the direction you've been moving in is the wrong one, or admitting that the path you're on is keeping you small.
A lot of women bury their ikigai because the truth is uncomfortable. They stay in jobs they hate because the salary is good. They stay in relationships that don't fit because leaving would be hard. They put off the thing they actually want to do because the thing they're already doing is paying the bills.
If you're reading this and you're already thinking of the thing you're supposed to be doing ā the thing you keep returning to in the shower or on long drives or in your private journal ā that's your ikigai trying to get your attention. It doesn't go away. It just gets louder. Trust me.
You can spend the next ten years avoiding it, or you can start moving toward it this week.
Start Today
Pick up a piece of paper or open a fresh page in your notes app. Draw four circles or just write four headings. Brain dump everything you can think of for each.
What do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need? What can you be paid for?
Look at the lists. See what overlaps. Notice what you keep circling back to. Your ikigai is sitting in your own answers. It always has been.
Mine pulled me out of the worst chapter of my life. It became a business, a brand, a community, and a method I now spend my days building. It can do the same and more for you.
It's only up from here.
ā Jules
Passion: Satisfaction, but feeling of uselessness
Mission: Delight and fullness, but no wealth
Profession: Comfortable, but feeling of emptiness
Vocation: Excitement and complacency, but sense of uncertainty
Ikigai: A life of purpose, satisfaction, and fulfillment
If this resonated, the PRS Method is the actionable framework I built to actually live my ikigai every day. Start with [the cornerstone article on the PRS Method] or read about [how to plan your life in 12-week quarters] to start putting your purpose into practice.
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