A Life That Works, or a Life That Feels Worth Living: Ikigai, Positive Psychology, and the Question Life Keeps Asking Us.

I’ve really started to realise that there’s two versions of life that you can aim for. A version of life that just works or a version of life that actually feels worth showing up for. To me, they’re not the same thing. A life can be busy, structured and productive, but it can also still feel oddly thin. Not empty, just more like it’s being run rather than lived.

When life runs smoothly but feels distant

I was sitting writing an email today. The day was moving forward, the boxes were getting ticked but I had this sense of, “why this effort and why in this direction?” that started to make me question, how do I measure the meaning in today?

What I keep coming back to is that this isn’t a motivation problem. It’s not a lack of ambition or discipline. It’s more a question of orientation. Like whether life feels as if it’s addressing me personally, or am I just managing it efficiently.

A question of orientation, not effort

This is where the Japanese concept of ikigai came to mind, once you strip away the diagrams and lifestyle slogans. Ikigai is often translated as a “reason for being,” but I think that makes it sound much bigger than it actually is. In practice, it’s much simpler.

Ikigai points to the things that make life feel liveable. The reasons you get up, and not because you have to, but because something feels worth engaging with. Sometimes that’s our work. Sometimes it’s the people in our lives. It could be a need for creation, routine, service or contribution. I believe that it’s actually a combination that only really makes sense from the inside.

What keeps life liveable

What matters is that ikigai isn’t something you discover in a moment of clarity. It emerges from how we live. It’s the meaning we assess in our lives from the needs and values we hold highest. And the repeated participation in things that feel meaningful enough to keep returning to.

Meaning that emerges through repetition

That idea sits comfortably alongside what positive psychology has been pointing to for years, when it’s taken seriously rather than reduced to feel-good advice. People tend to flourish when a few basic conditions are present:

1.) When they firstly experience agency over their choices.

2.) When they feel competent at things that matter to them.

3.) When they’re connected to others in ways that don’t require constant performance.

4.) When what they do contributes, even modestly, beyond the self.

The conditions that support vitality

The thing is, when these conditions are met consistently, life tends to feel worthwhile without us needing too much convincing. Engagement replaces effort. But when they’re missing, people often substitute. They start chasing productivity instead of usefulness, approval instead of connection and control instead of agency.

These substitutes can work for a while. Sometimes they actually work extremely well. But they don’t give us the steady sense of aliveness that ikigai describes. They just keep life moving without necessarily feeding it.

What we substitute when something essential is missing

This is where I think Viktor Frankl’s work becomes the frame around the ikigai picture. Frankl wasn’t interested in happiness as a goal. He was interested in meaning as something we respond to. His central idea wasn’t “What do I want from life?” but “What does life ask of me?” Meaning, in his view, arises through responsibility, contribution and the attitude we take toward what cannot be changed. He believed that individualistic meaning can be discovered through our capacity to orient ourselves toward something beyond our own comfort.

Meaning as something we answer

This is where the Logos philosophy lives. Ikigai gives us the felt sense of a life that wants us back. Positive psychology helps us understand the conditions that support vitality and engagement and Frankl reminds us that meaning isn’t something we optimise for, but something we answer. Put together, they point toward a life that isn’t just pleasant or successful, but one with meaning we inhabit.

Tending to what keeps us alive inside

But let’s not get this confused. There’s a big difference between chasing goals and tending to our Ikigai (our reason for being). A lot of modern purpose culture encourages big goals, breakthroughs, discipline and huge moments of insight. Those types of goals are exciting and don’t get me wrong, they are important. But tending to the thing that lights us up is what keeps us alive inside. Because it belongs outside the rhythm of ordinary life, even though it’s sustained through small, innocuous, seemingly inconsequential, yet meaningful commitments. In work that feels genuinely meaningful. In relationships that ask something of you, but also give something back and in responsibilities that feel dignifying rather than draining.

Meaning as continuity, not revelation

From this perspective, meaning doesn’t arrive all at once. It accumulates and grows through continuity and choosing again and again what truly matters.

When competence isn’t the same as authorship

So if you ever find yourself, like me, sometimes feeling oddly disconnected, even when life looks good. It could be not because we’re ungrateful, but because our lives aren’t structured in a way that meets the needs that generate vitality for us. Maybe we’re living competently, but not in a way that feels personally authored.

Maybe it’s time to reconnect with what feels alive, with contribution and responsibility that feels chosen rather than imposed. When that contact is present, something shifts and it’s cultivated not by asking bigger questions, but by asking better ones.

Questions that keep meaning alive

When do I feel genuinely useful and why?

If everything was stripped away tomorrow, what would I truly miss?

Which relationships give as much back to me as I give to them?

These types of questions don’t promise fireworks or huge insights. In fact, we already know the answers to them. I think the trick though, is to question our Ikigai consistently. Because in doing so, we may just offer ourselves something truly meaningful. A life that feels worth stepping into.