Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

by Héctor García

Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.

Our ikigai is hidden deep inside each of us, and finding it requires a patient search.

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.

“Hara hachi bu,” which is repeated before or after eating and means something like “Fill your belly to 80 percent.”

The lesson to learn from this saying is that we should stop eating when we are starting to feel full. The extra side dish, the snack we

eat when we know in our hearts we don’t really need it,

The way food is served is also important. By presenting their meals on many small plates, the Japanese tend to eat less.

The Okinawan diet is rich in tofu, sweet potatoes,

and vegetables (roughly 11 ounces per day).

is customary in Okinawa to form close bonds within local communities. 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.

There is much wisdom in the classic saying “mens sana in corpore sano” (“a sound mind in a sound body”):

Just as a lack of physical exercise has negative effects on our bodies and mood, a lack of mental exercise is bad for us because it causes our neurons and neural connections to deteriorate—and, as a result, reduces our ability to react to our surroundings.

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.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

What makes us enjoy doing something so much that we forget about whatever worries we might have while we do it? When are we happiest? These questions can help us discover our ikigai.

In order to achieve this optimal experience, we have to focus on increasing the time we spend on activities that bring us to this state of flow, rather than allowing ourselves to get caught up in activities that offer immediate pleasure—like eating too much, abusing drugs or alcohol, or stuffing ourselves with chocolate in front of the TV.

flow is “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

if the book is appropriate to our knowledge and abilities, and builds on what we already know, we’ll immerse ourselves in our reading, and time will flow. This pleasure and satisfaction are evidence that we are in tune with our ikigai.

Having a clear objective is important in achieving flow, but we also have to know how to leave it behind when we get down to business.

Once the journey has begun, we should keep this objective in mind without obsessing over it.

“a happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell on the future.”

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.

It has been scientifically shown that if we continually ask our brains to switch back and forth between tasks, we waste time, make more mistakes, and remember less of what we’ve done.

Try the Pomodoro Technique: Get yourself a kitchen timer (some are made to look like a pomodoro, or tomato) and commit to working on a single task as long as it’s running. The Pomodoro Technique recommends 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of rest for each cycle, but you can also do 50 minutes of work and 10 minutes of rest.

This brings us back to the 80 percent rule we mentioned in the first chapter, a concept known in Japanese as hara hachi bu. It’s easy to do: When you notice you’re almost full but could have a little more … just stop eating!

One easy way to start applying the concept of hara hachi bu is to skip dessert. Or to reduce portion size. The idea is to still be a little bit hungry when you finish.

The key to staying healthy while consuming fewer calories is eating foods with a high nutritional value (especially “superfoods”) and avoiding those that add to our overall caloric intake but offer little to no nutritional value.

An alternative to following the 80 percent rule on a daily basis is to fast for one or two days each week. The 5:2 (or fasting) diet recommends two days of fasting (consuming fewer than five hundred calories) every week and eating normally on the other five days.

these fifteen foods are considered keys to Okinawan vitality:

Okinawans drink more Sanpin-cha—a mix of green tea and jasmine flowers—than any other kind of tea.

In addition to all the antioxidant benefits of green tea, it boasts the benefits of jasmine, which include: ▪ Reducing the risk of heart attack ▪ Strengthening the immune system ▪ Helping relieve stress ▪ Lowering cholesterol

Drinking green or white tea every day can help us reduce the free radicals in our bodies, keeping us young longer.

All citrus fruits—grapefruits, oranges, lemons—are high in nobiletin, but Okinawa’s shikuwasas have forty times as much as oranges.

Vegetables such as broccoli and chard, for their high concentration of water, minerals, and fiber

Fruits such as citrus, strawberries, and apricots; they are an excellent source of vitamins and help eliminate toxins from the body

Berries such as blueberries and goji berries; they are rich in phytochemical antioxidants ▪ Dried fruits, which contain vitamins and antioxidants, and give you energy

Grains such as oats and wheat, which give you energy and contain minerals ▪ Olive oil, for its antioxidant...

Red wine, in moderation, for its antioxidant and vasod...

Studies from the Blue Zones suggest that the people who live longest are not the ones who do the most exercise but rather the ones who move the most.

“Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting. The enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, slow down. And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 percent.

Just getting up for five minutes is going to get things going again.

You don’t need to go to the gym for an hour every day or run marathons. As Japanese centenarians show us, all you need is to add movement to your day. Practicing any of these Eastern disciplines on a regular basis is a great way to do so.

They focus on dynamic stretching and increasing joint mobility. One of the most iconic radio taiso exercises consists of simply raising your arms above your head and then bringing them down in a circular motion.

It is a tool to wake up the body, an easy mobility workout that is low in intensity and that focuses on exercising as many joints as possible.

The word yoga itself comes from the Sanskrit term for “yoke,” which refers to the crosspiece that binds draft animals to one another and to the cart they’re pulling. Yoga strives to unite body and mind in the same way, guiding us toward a healthy lifestyle in harmony with the world around us.

The Sun Salutation is one of the most iconic exercises in hatha yoga. To do it, you simply have to follow these twelve basic movements:

Resilience is our ability to deal with setbacks. The more resilient we are, the easier it will be to pick ourselves up and get back to what gives meaning to our lives.

Resilient people know how to stay focused on their objectives, on what matters, without giving in to discouragement. Their flexibility is the source of their strength: They know how to adapt to change and to reversals of fortune. They concentrate on the things they can control and don’t worry about those they can’t.

A wise person can live with these pleasures but should always remain conscious of how easy it is to be enslaved by them.