Finding Your Big Ikigai: A Reason That Evolves With You...

I recently watched a video that stopped me in my tracks. Around the 12-minute mark of "Ikigai Is Not What You Think - Here's How To Find It!" by Samurai Matcha, (Youtube link ) the conversation shifted from the familiar Western four-circle diagram to something quieter and more Japanese: Big Ikigai. It wasn’t just another “find your purpose” pep talk. It named something I had lived but never quite articulated.

Little Ikigai and Big Ikigai...Most of us know ikigai as “a reason for being.” In Japan it often shows up in small, daily ways—the first sip of tea, a conversation with a neighbour, the satisfaction of finishing a simple task.

Those are Little Ikigai: the sparks that make an ordinary morning feel worth waking up for.

Big Ikigai is different. It is the larger dream or purpose you want to accomplish in a lifetime. It is not required to be profitable from day one. You live it first; people and resources often follow later. 

The video’s researchers, working with Japanese ikigai experts, distilled it into four elements that feel more true to the original spirit than the popular Venn diagram:

1. What you love — the subjects and activities you enjoy learning about and returning to.
2. Your strengths — the things that come naturally or that you have steadily built, so the work does not feel forced.
3. Your values — your inner compass (freedom, connection, simplicity, service, creativity…). People who stay with a Big Ikigai tend to live in alignment with these.
4. For whom — “Who needs your existence?” This question, drawn from psychiatrist Mieko Kamiya (often called the mother of ikigai research), is described as the heart of the matter. When you know who you are doing it for, the work gains a deeper layer of meaning. 

The last piece changed how I looked at my own path.Moments When It Clicked...Writing my first book felt like Big Ikigai. I loved the process of putting thoughts into words. I had a strength for storytelling and teaching. It aligned with my values around sharing inner experience. And I knew who it was for: readers who were quietly searching for language around their own spiritual lives.Being invited onto a local TV show to talk about that book was another layer. Suddenly the “for whom” became visible in real time—people who might never have picked up the book but could hear the ideas spoken.

Starting a blog about my spiritual beliefs and practices was the same current continuing. It was not a career strategy. It was simply the next honest expression of what I loved, what I could do, what I valued, and who I hoped it would reach.

Then came the talks on the Tarot and teaching people to use it intuitively. That season felt especially alive. I loved the cards and the conversations they opened. I had developed a strength for making the symbolic feel practical and personal. It matched my values of intuition, empowerment, and gentle guidance. And the “who” was clear: people who wanted a more soulful, less rigid relationship with the cards.

Each of those chapters carried the four elements. None of them required me to have it all figured out in advance.

The Part We Don’t Talk About Enough: Flexibility...Here is what the video and my own life both confirmed: Big Ikigai is not a single destination you reach and then defend forever.

What brings you deep joy and meaning today may later step aside—not because it was wrong, but because you have grown. It is not abandoned. It is set down for a while so something new can be explored. The book, the TV appearance, the spiritual blog, the Tarot teaching—they are all still part of me. They live in the background, available to return to or to inform whatever comes next.

Some people do find one calling they polish for decades. That is beautiful and valid. Others of us move through seasons. Both are legitimate expressions of ikigai. The Japanese understanding leaves room for this. Ikigai is not a rigid identity; it is a living relationship between what you love, what you can offer, what you stand for, and who you serve.

The danger is treating any single expression as the only one you will ever have. That pressure can make us cling to something that has already completed its chapter, or dismiss a new interest because it does not look like the old one.So, I realize now I must keep asking myself:

• What do I keep returning to with genuine curiosity and pleasure?
• What feels relatively easy or natural for me that also seems to help others?
• Which values do I refuse to betray?
• Who, specifically, feels brighter or more seen when I show up in this way?

I need to notice which ones have already appeared in different forms across my life; also, notice which ones might be ready to rest for a season so something else can breathe.

One's Big Ikigai does not have to stay the same shape. It only has to stay true.

The book, the television lights, the blog posts, the Tarot circles—they were all real. What comes next will be real too. We are allowed to keep becoming.

~ in quiet inclination ML