Ikigai examples: what it looks like in real life

The ikigai examples going around tend to be grandiose and hard to believe. The real ones are smaller, more everyday and, for that very reason, more useful.

Manel Rueda Author and creator of IKIGAIER

Searching for “ikigai examples” usually brings up textbook stories: the person who quit a corporate job to open a bakery and found happiness. They inspire for a while, but don’t help much, because they suggest ikigai is always a spectacular turn. In Japan, and in real life, it almost never is.

These examples are illustrative —not specific people— meant to help you recognise yours, which is probably already there.

Everyday examples (the most real ones)

  • The grandmother and her vegetable garden. It isn’t her profession and nobody pays her, but every morning she has a concrete reason to get up: tending something that grows. Pure ikigai, without any of the diagram’s four circles.
  • The teacher who stays after class. Their ikigai isn’t “teaching” in the abstract, but the exact moment they see someone understand something for the first time.
  • Whoever cooks for their people. A repeated, unglamorous task that, seen up close, is where that person feels most in their place.
  • The amateur repairer. Bringing a broken object back to life. It earns no money, nobody sees it, and it holds up their week.

Most ikigai examples don’t fit in a headline. They fit in an ordinary Tuesday.

Examples at work (without dropping everything)

Ikigai doesn’t force you to give up your life either. Sometimes it’s inside what you already do, in one specific part:

  • The executive who discovers that what gives him meaning isn’t the position, but training the people on his team.
  • The doctor whose ikigai isn’t “medicine”, but the five minutes in which she manages to calm a frightened patient.
  • The salesperson who realises they enjoy solving the customer’s real problem, not closing the sale.

The pattern repeats: ikigai is almost never the big label (“my job”, “my purpose”) but a concrete, recognisable piece within it.

What these examples teach us

Three things, if you look closely: that ikigai tends to be small, that it often doesn’t make money and doesn’t need to, and that it is almost always already present in your life, waiting for you to look at it. That’s why the work is less about searching than recognising. If you want to do it with a method, the steps are in how to find your ikigai.

And if you’d rather start with the full framework —what it is, where it comes from and why the diagram falls short— this is the guide: what ikigai is.