Ikigai by Héctor García & Francesc Miralles

It’s the Japanese word for a reason to live or a reason to jump out of bed in the morning . Finding your ikigai is easier than you might think. This book will help you work out what your own ikigai really is, and equip you to change your life. You have a purpose in this world: your skills, your interests, your desires and your history have made you the perfect candidate for something. All you have to do is find it. Do that, and you can make every single day of your life joyful and meaningful.

Notes from “García, Héctor; Miralles, Francesc. Ikigai. Random House. Kindle Edition.”

1. Ikigai – The art of staying young while growing old

This Japanese concept, which translates roughly as “the happiness of always being busy,” is like logotherapy, but it goes a step beyond. – García, Héctor; Miralles, Francesc. Ikigai (p. 8).

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. (p. 14)

• Okinawa, Japan
• Sardinia, Italy
• Loma Linda, California
• The Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica
• Ikaria, Greece

2. Antiaging Secrets – Little things that add up to a long and happy life

There is much wisdom in the classic saying “mens sana in corpore sano” (“a sound mind in a sound body”): It reminds us that both mind and body are important, and that the health of one is connected to that of the other. It has been shown that maintaining an active, adaptable mind is one of the key factors in staying young.

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. (p. 19)

Stress: Accused of killing longevity

Stress has a degenerative effect over time. A sustained state of emergency affects the neurons associated with memory, as well as inhibiting the release of certain hormones, the absence of which can cause depression. Its secondary effects include irritability, insomnia, anxiety, and high blood pressure. (p. 22)

Be mindful about reducing stress

This is why prevention is so important in avoiding the toll that stress takes on us—and why many experts recommend practicing mindfulness. One way to reach a state of mindfulness is through meditation, which helps filter the information that reaches us from the outside world. It can also be achieved through breathing exercises, yoga, and body scans. (p. 22)

3. From Logotherapy to Ikigai – How to live longer and better by finding your purpose

1. A colleague once asked Viktor Frankl to define his school of psychology in a single phrase, to which Frankl replied, “Well, in logotherapy the patient sits up straight and has to listen to things that are, on occasion, hard to hear.” (p. 27)

The process of logotherapy can be summarized in these five steps:

1. A person feels empty, frustrated, or anxious.
2. The therapist shows him that what he is feeling is the desire to have a meaningful life.
3. The patient discovers his life’s purpose (at that particular point in time).
4. Of his own free will, the patient decides to accept or reject that destiny.
5. This newfound passion for life helps him overcome obstacles and sorrows. (p. 28)

Better living through logotherapy: A few key ideas

• We don’t create the meaning of our life, as Sartre claimed—we discover it.
• We each have a unique reason for being, which can be adjusted or transformed many times over the years.
• Just as worry often brings about precisely the thing that was feared, excessive attention to a desire (or “hyper-intention”) can keep that desire from being fulfilled.
• Humor can help break negative cycles and reduce anxiety.
• 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. (p. 32)

Morita therapy

In the same decade that logotherapy came into being—a few years earlier, in fact—Shoma Morita created his own purpose-centered therapy, in Japan. Morita therapy focuses on teaching patients to accept their emotions without trying to control them, since their feelings will change as a result of their actions. (p. 34)

The basic principles of Morita therapy

1. Accept your feelings.
2. Do what you should be doing.
3. Discover your life’s purpose.

4. Find flow in everything you do – How to turn work and free time into spaces for growth

As Csikszentmihalyi asserts in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 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 you often find yourself losing focus while working on something you consider important, there are several strategies you can employ to increase your chances of achieving flow. (p. 40)

Strategy 1: Choose a difficult task (bit not too difficult)

Strategy 2: Have a clear, concrete objective

Strategy 3: Concentrate on a single task

5. Masters Longevity – Words of wisdom from the longest-living people in the world

Misao Okawa (117) “Eat and sleep, and you’ll live a long time. You have to learn to relax.” (p. 59)

María Capovilla (116) “I’ve never eaten meat in my life.” (p. 60)

Walter Breuning (114) “If you keep your mind and body busy, you’ll be around a long time.” (p. 61)

6. Lessons from Japan’s Centenarians – Traditions and proverbs for happiness and longevity

Over the course of a week we conducted a total of one hundred interviews, asking the eldest members of the community about their life philosophy, their ikigai, and the secrets to longevity. We filmed these conversations with two cameras for use in a little documentary and chose a few especially meaningful and inspiring statements to include in this section of the book. (p. 71)

1. Don’t worry
2. Cultivate good habits
3. Nurture your friendships everyday
4. Live an unhurried life
5. Be optimistic

Keys to the Ogimi Lifestyle

• One hundred percent of the people we interviewed keep a vegetable garden, and most of them also have fields of tea, mangoes, shikuwasa, and so on.
• All belong to some form of neighborhood association, where they feel cared for as though by family.
• They celebrate all the time, even little things. Music, song, and dance are essential parts of daily life.
• They have an important purpose in life, or several. They have an ikigai, but they don’t take it too seriously. They are relaxed and enjoy all that they do.
• They are very proud of their traditions and local culture.
• They are passionate about everything they do, however insignificant it might seem.
• Locals have a strong sense of yuimaaru—recognizing the connection between people. They help each other with everything from work in the fields (harvesting sugarcane or planting rice) to building houses and municipal projects. Our friend Miyagi, who ate dinner with us on our last night in town, told us that he was building a new home with the help of all his friends, and that we could stay there the next time we were in Ogimi.
• They are always busy, but they occupy themselves with tasks that allow them to relax. We didn’t see a single old grandpa sitting on a bench doing nothing. They’re always coming and going—to sing karaoke, visit with neighbors, or play a game of gateball. (p. 74)

7. The Ikigai diet – What the world’s longest-living people eat and drink

Bradley J. Willcox and D. Craig Willcox joined Makoto Suzuki’s research team and published a book considered the bible on the subject, The Okinawa Program. They reached the following conclusions:

• Locals eat a wide variety of foods, especially vegetables. Variety seems to be key. A study of Okinawa’s centenarians showed that they ate 206 different foods, including spices, on a regular basis. They ate an average of eighteen different foods each day, a striking contrast to the nutritional poverty of our fast-food culture.
• They eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. At least seven types of fruits and vegetables are consumed by Okinawans on a daily basis. The easiest way to check if there is enough variety on your table is to make sure you’re “eating the rainbow.” A table featuring red peppers, carrots, spinach, cauliflower, and eggplant, for example, offers great color and variety. Vegetables, potatoes, legumes, and soy products such as tofu are the staples of an Okinawan’s diet. More than 30 percent of their daily calories comes from vegetables.
• Grains are the foundation of their diet. Japanese people eat white rice every day, sometimes adding noodles. Rice is the primary food in Okinawa, as well.
• They rarely eat sugar, and if they do, it’s cane sugar. We drove through several sugarcane fields every morning on our way to Ogimi, and even drank a glass of cane juice at Nakijin Castle. Beside the stall selling the juice was a sign describing the anticarcinogenic benefits of sugarcane. (pp. 77-78)

Hara Hachi Bu

This brings us back to the 80 percent rule, 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. (p. 78)

8. Gentle movements, longer life – Exercises from the East that promote health and longevity

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. – García, Héctor; Miralles, Francesc. (pp. 83-84)

Yoga—originally from India, though very popular in Japan—and China’s qigong and tai chi, among other disciplines, seek to create harmony between a person’s body and mind so they can face the world with strength, joy, and serenity. (p. 84)

Radio taiso

The exercises take five or ten minutes, depending on whether you do all or only some of them. They focus on dynamic stretching and increasing joint mobility. Radio taiso helps us to practice all the basic movements of the body. (p. 85)

9. Resilience and wabi-sabi – How to face life’s challenges without letting stress and worry age you

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. We’re talking about resilience, a concept that has become influential among psychologists. (p. 105)

In order to keep their minds virtuous, the Stoics practiced something like negative visualization: They imagined the worst thing that could happen in order to be prepared if certain privileges and pleasures were taken from them. – García, Héctor; Miralles, Francesc. (p. 107)

Wabi-sabi and ichi-go ichi-e

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept that shows us the beauty of the fleeting, changeable, and imperfect nature of the world around us. A complementary Japanese concept is that of ichi-go ichi-e, which could be translated as “This moment exists only now and won’t come again.” (p. 108)

Ichi-go ichi-e teaches us to focus on the present and enjoy each moment that life brings us. This is why it is so important to find and pursue our ikigai. Wabi-sabi teaches us to appreciate the beauty of imperfection as an opportunity for growth. (p. 109)

Beyond Resilience: Antifragility

Taleb proposes the term antifragile: “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” (p. 109)

Now let’s take a look at how we can apply this concept to our daily lives. How can we be more antifragile?

Step 1: Create more options

Step 2: Be conservatively in certain areas and take many small risks in others

Step 3: Get rid of the things that make you fragile

As Taleb writes in Antifragile, “We need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, hear traumatic episodes, all these things that make life worth living.” (p. 112)

The ten rules of ikigai

We’ll conclude this journey with ten rules we’ve distilled from the wisdom of the long-living residents of Ogimi:

1. Stay active; don’t retire. Those who give up the things they love doing and do well lose their purpose in life. That’s why it’s so important to keep doing things of value, making progress, bringing beauty or utility to others, helping out, and shaping the world around you, even after your “official” professional activity has ended.
2. Take it slow. Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of life. As the old saying goes, “Walk slowly and you’ll go far.” When we leave urgency behind, life and time take on new meaning.
3. Don’t fill your stomach. Less is more when it comes to eating for long life, too. According to the 80 percent rule, in order to stay healthier longer, we should eat a little less than our hunger demands instead of stuffing ourselves.
4. Surround yourself with good friends. Friends are the best medicine, there for confiding worries over a good chat, sharing stories that brighten your day, getting advice, having fun, dreaming … in other words, living.
5. Get in shape for your next birthday. 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. Plus, exercise releases hormones that make us feel happy.
6. Smile. A cheerful attitude is not only relaxing—it also helps make friends. It’s good to recognize the things that aren’t so great, but we should never forget what a privilege it is to be in the here and now in a world so full of possibilities.
7. Reconnect with nature. Though most people live in cities these days, human beings are made to be part of the natural world. We should return to it often to recharge our batteries.
8. Give thanks. To your ancestors, to nature, which provides you with the air you breathe and the food you eat, to your friends and family, to everything that brightens your days and makes you feel lucky to be alive. Spend a moment every day giving thanks, and you’ll watch your stockpile of happiness grow.
9. Live in the moment. Stop regretting the past and fearing the future. Today is all you have. Make the most of it. Make it worth remembering.
10. Follow your ikigai. There is a passion inside you, a unique talent that gives meaning to your days and drives you to share the best of yourself until the very end. If you don’t know what your ikigai is yet, as Viktor Frankl says, your mission is to discover it. (pp. 114-115)