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ikigai – a reason to jump out of bed each morning.
This Japanese concept, which translates roughly as “the happiness of always being busy,”
Okinawans live by the principle of ichariba chode, a local expression that means “treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.”
For many, helping others might be an ikigai strong enough to keep them alive.
According to scientists who have studied the five Blue Zones, the keys to longevity are diet, exercise, finding a purpose in life (an ikigai), and forming strong social ties—that is, having a broad circle of friends and good family relations.
Gardening, which involves daily low-intensity movement, is a practice almost all of them have in common.
One of the most common sayings in Japan is “Hara hachi bu,” which is repeated before or after eating and means something like “Fill your belly to 80 percent.”
all these will give us pleasure in the short term, but not having them will make us happier in the long term.
A typical meal in a restaurant in Japan is served in five plates on a tray, four of them very small and the main dish slightly bigger.
A moai is an informal group of people with common interests who look out for one another. For many, serving the community becomes part of their ikigai.
Presented with new information, the brain creates new connections and is revitalized. This is why it is so important to expose yourself to change, even if stepping outside your comfort zone means feeling a bit of anxiety.
The central premise of this stress-reduction method is focusing on the self: noticing our responses, even if they are conditioned by habit, in order to be fully conscious of them. In this way, we connect with the here and now and limit thoughts that tend to spiral out of control.
“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
Existential crisis, on the other hand, is typical of modern societies in which people do what they are told to do, or what others do, rather than what they want to do. They often try to fill the gap between what is expected of them and what they want for themselves with economic power or physical pleasure, or by numbing their senses. It can even lead to suicide.
We all have the capacity to do noble or terrible things. The side of the equation we end up on depends on our decisions, not on the condition in which we find ourselves.
Morita explained the idea of letting go of negative feelings with the following fable: A donkey that is tied to a post by a rope will keep walking around the post in an attempt to free itself, only to become more immobilized and attached to the post. The same thing applies to people with obsessive thinking who become more trapped in their own suffering when they try to escape from their fears and discomfort.5
Regarding human emotions, the Zen master would say, “If we try to get rid of one wave with another, we end up with an infinite sea.” We don’t create our feelings; they simply come to us, and we have to accept them. The trick is welcoming them.
Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who would say, “Hello, solitude. How are you today? Come, sit with me, and I will care for you.”
We can’t control our emotions, but we can take charge of our actions every day. This is why we should have a clear sense of our purpose,
Through these reflections, we stop identifying others as the cause of our problems and deepen our own sense of responsibility. As Morita said, “If you are angry and want to fight, think about it for three days before coming to blows. After three days, the intense desire to fight will pass on its own.”7
As the quip attributed to Einstein goes, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That is relativity.”
There is no magic recipe for finding happiness, for living according to your ikigai, but one key ingredient is the ability to reach this state of flow and, through this state, to have an “optimal experience.”
Bertrand Russell expressed a similar idea when he said, “To be able to concentrate for a considerable amount of time is essential to difficult achievement.”
This pleasure and satisfaction are evidence that we are in tune with our ikigai.
MIT Media Lab, encourages us to use the principle of “compass over maps” as a tool to navigate our world of uncertainty.
When Olympic athletes compete for a gold medal, they can’t stop to think how pretty the medal is. They have to be present in the moment—they have to flow. If they lose focus for a second, thinking how proud they’ll be to show the medal to their parents, they’ll almost certainly commit an error at a critical moment and will not win the competition.
Albert Einstein, “a happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell on the future.”4
We often think that combining tasks will save us time, but scientific evidence shows that it has the opposite effect. Even those who claim to be good at multitasking are not very productive. In fact, they are some of the least productive people.
Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow.
When doing business in Japan, process, manners, and how you work on something is more important than the final results. Whether this is good or bad for the economy is beyond the scope of this book. What is indisputable, though, is that finding flow in a “ritualistic workplace” is much easier than in one in which we are continually stressed out trying to achieve unclear goals set by our bosses.
Rituals give us clear rules and objectives, which help us enter a state of flow.
Happiness is in the doing, not in the result. As a rule of thumb, remind yourself: “Rituals over goals.”
The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow.
If you don’t, then keep searching by going deeper into what you like by spending more of your time in the activities that make you flow. Also, try new things that are not on the list of what makes you flow but that are similar and that you are curious about.
Flow is mysterious. It is like a muscle: the more you train it, the more you will flow, and the closer you will be to your ikigai.
Burnap stated two hundred years ago: “The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”2
Perhaps Buddhism recognized the benefits of limiting caloric intake more than nine centuries ago.
One thing that everyone with a clearly defined ikigai has in common is that they pursue their passion no matter what. They never give up, even when the cards seem stacked against them or they face one hurdle after another.
Fall seven times, rise eight.
Instead of searching for beauty in perfection, we should look for it in things that are flawed, incomplete.
This is why the Japanese place such value, for example, on an irregular or cracked teacup. Only things that are imperfect, incomplete, and ephemeral can truly be beautiful, because only those things resemble the natural world.
extraordinary things don’t ordinarily happen.
Life is not a problem to be solved. Just remember to have something that keeps you busy doing what you love while being surrounded by the people who love you.
Water moves; it is at its best when it flows fresh and doesn’t stagnate. The body you move through life in needs a bit of daily maintenance to keep it running for a long time.
