IDENTITY → PURPOSE → IKIGAI

How I Finally Understood the Path Most Men Never Realize They’re On

Most men spend their entire lives searching for purpose…

Never realizing they skipped the step that actually makes a purpose possible.

• They’re trying to build meaning on top of a stranger.
• Trying to build a future from a self they’ve never met.
• Trying to find a mission without first finding a man.

I lived that way for over five decades … high achievement, high output, high responsibility, low self-recognition. I had a résumé that looked impressive and an inner world held together with duct tape and grit.

And then something changed.

For the first time, I saw the sequence clearly:

Identity → Purpose → Ikigai.

(Ikigai is the intersection of what you are good at, what you love to do, what the world needs, what you can be paid for)

• Without identity, purpose collapses.
• Without purpose, ikigai never roots.
• Without ikigai, you drift into other people’s expectations or other people’s chaos.

Here’s the simple truth I had to accept:

You cannot build a meaningful life from the outside in.

You can only build it from the inside out.

Look at the trifecta that’s been guiding my mornings:

• Meditations - identity
  
• Man’s Search for Meaning - purpose
  
• The War of Art - daily resistance / ikigai in motion
  

Those aren’t random books.

They’re a roadmap.

• Marcus gave me a spine.
• Viktor gave me a direction.
• Pressfield gave me the discipline to actually walk in it.

The more I did the “identity excavation,” the more I realized why my life had been filled with mismatched relationships, overgiving, and trying to exist with people who were never going to meet me halfway.

The common denominator wasn’t that I was broken.

It was that I was unrooted.

I had built purpose without identity.

No wonder it toppled.

No wonder I exhausted myself carrying the weight of other peoples storms.

Once you anchor identity first, your entire life reorganizes itself:

• You stop chasing meaning in people who can’t give it.
  
• You stop outsourcing your worth to chaos.
  
• You stop mistaking intensity for intimacy.
  
• You stop performing and start being.
  
• You stop collapsing into other people’s emergencies.
  
• You stop thinking you need to be rescued… or that rescuing others will save you.
  

And your purpose - the real one - starts revealing itself without effort.

• It doesn’t come from a job title.
• It doesn’t come from a relationship.
• It doesn’t come from an achievement.
• It comes from alignment.

Ikigai is simply daily action in the direction of your aligned identity.

Here’s the part I wish someone had told me years ago:

You don’t find your purpose.

You remember it.

And you don’t earn your identity.

You return to it.

• Everything you think is wrong with you is usually just misalignment.
• Everything you think you need is usually just clarity.
• Everything you’re chasing outside yourself is already waiting inside yourself.

It took me 57 years to understand this sequence.

Maybe it finds you earlier.

Maybe it finds you now.

Either way …. the door only opens inward.

And once you walk through it, the rest of your life reorganizes accordingly.

Stay Lit

-Bob Manor

About Bob Manor 

Bob Manor is the founder of  South Ontario Auto Remarketing , Can-Am Dealer Services , and co-founder of Auto Auction Review. He’s also the creator of  Influence.vin, a branding and communication studio built for the car business. With over 30 years in the automotive world, Bob specializes in wholesale, dealer services, and identity-driven brand strategy. He’s a regular contributor to well-known automotive publications and uses his platforms to help industry pros re-align with who they are, not just what they do

Disclaimer:
These are my own observations and interpretations, based on lived experience inside this industry.
This is not financial, legal, or professional advice ... it is pattern recognition, shared for awareness and strategic consideration only