Ikigai: the Japanese secret to a long and happy life - By Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

22 Apr 2022

Date Finished: 20th April 2022
How strongly I recommend it: 9/10

Ikigai means the reason why you wake up everyday, your goal in life, the meaning of your existence. In this book, we take a look at the secret to the unusually long lives of the people of Okinawa, Japan. It is an easy-to-read book with some insightful takeaways.

Details and review: Amazon Page

My Notes:

Whatever you do, don’t retire!

One surprising thing you notice, living in Japan, is how active people remain after they retire. In fact, many Japanese people never really retire—they keep doing what they love for as long as their health allows. The 80 percent secret

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.”

Moai: Connected for life

It 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.

Active mind, youthful body

It has been shown that maintaining an active, adaptable mind is one of the key factors in staying young.

Our neurons start to age while we are still in our twenties. This process is slowed, however, by intellectual activity, curiosity, and a desire to learn. Dealing with new situations, learning something new every day, playing games, and interacting with other people seem to be essential antiaging strategies for the mind. Furthermore, a more positive outlook in this regard will yield greater mental benefits.

How does stress work?

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.

Be mindful about reducing stress

One way to reach a state of mindfulness is through meditation, which helps filter the information that reaches us from the outside world.

Antiaging attitudes

One study, conducted at Yeshiva University, found that the people who live the longest have two dispositional traits in common: a positive attitude and a high degree of emotional awareness. In other words, those who face challenges with a positive outlook and are able to manage their emotions are already well on their way toward longevity.

A stoic attitude—serenity in the face of a setback—can also help keep you young, as it lowers anxiety and stress levels and stabilizes behavior. This can be seen in the greater life expectancies of certain cultures with unhurried, deliberate lifestyles.

Better living through logotherapy: A few key ideas

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.

Morita therapy

The basic principles of Morita therapy Accept your feelings.

Do what you should be doing.

Discover your life’s purpose.

And now, ikigai

you have to accept that the world—like the people who live in it—is imperfect, but that it is still full of opportunities for growth and achievement.

The power of flow

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.

Strategy 1: Choose a difficult task (but not too difficult!)

Strategy 1: Choose a difficult task (but not too difficult!) Schaffer’s model encourages us to take on tasks that we have a chance of completing but that are slightly outside our comfort zone.

Strategy 2: Have a clear, concrete objective

It is much more important to have a compass pointing to a concrete objective than to have a map. Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, encourages us to use the principle of “compass over maps” as a tool to navigate our world of uncertainty. In the book Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future, he and Jeff Howe write, “In an increasingly unpredictable world moving ever more quickly, a detailed map may lead you deep into the woods at an unnecessarily high cost. A good compass, though, will always take you where you need to go. It doesn’t mean that you should start your journey without any idea where you’re going. What it does mean is understanding that while the path to your goal may not be straight, you’ll finish faster and more efficiently than you would have if you had trudged along a preplanned route.”

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.

Strategy 3: Concentrate on a single task

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.

Other studies indicate that working on several things at once lowers our productivity by at least 60 percent and our IQ by more than ten points.

Here are a few ideas for creating a space and time free of distractions, to increase our chances of reaching a state of flow and thereby getting in touch with our ikigai: Don’t look at any kind of screen for the first hour you’re awake and the last hour before you go to sleep. Turn off your phone before you achieve flow. There is nothing more important than the task you have chosen to do during this time. If this seems too extreme, enable the “do not disturb” function so only the people closest to you can contact you in case of emergency. Designate one day of the week, perhaps a Saturday or Sunday, a day of technological “fasting,” making exceptions only for e-readers (without Wi-Fi) or MP3 players. Go to a café that doesn’t have Wi-Fi. Read and respond to e-mail only once or twice per day. Define those times clearly and stick to them. 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. Find the pace that’s best for you; the most important thing is to be disciplined in completing each cycle. Start your work session with a ritual you enjoy and end it with a reward. Train your mind to return to the present when you find yourself getting distracted. Practice mindfulness or another form of meditation, go for a walk or a swim—whatever will help you get centered again. Work in a space where you will not be distracted. If you can’t do this at home, go to a library, a café, or, if your task involves playing the saxophone, a music studio. If you find that your surroundings continue to distract you, keep looking until you find the right place. Divide each activity into groups of related tasks, and assign each group its own place and time. For example, if you’re writing a magazine article, you could do research and take notes at home in the morning, write in the library in the afternoon, and edit on the couch at night. Bundle routine tasks—such as sending out invoices, making phone calls, and so on—and do them all at once.

Sophisticated simplicity

As Csikszentmihalyi would say, the key is always having a meaningful challenge to overcome in order to maintain flow.

The recluses

Artists know how important it is to protect their space, control their environment, and be free of distractions if they want to flow with their ikigai.

Microflow: Enjoying mundane tasks

Our ability to turn routine tasks into moments of microflow, into something we enjoy, is key to our being happy, since we all have to do such tasks.

Instant vacations: Getting there through meditation

If we want to get better at reaching a state of flow, meditation is an excellent antidote to our smartphones and their notifications constantly clamoring for our attention.

Using flow to find your ikigai

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.

Ikigai artists

Art, in all its forms, is an ikigai that can bring happiness and purpose to our days. Enjoying or creating beauty is free, and something all human beings have access to.

Ellsworth Kelly, an artist who passed away in 2015 at the age of ninety-two, assured us that the idea that we lose our faculties with age is, in part, a myth, because instead we develop a greater clarity and capacity for observation.

The sense of community, and the fact that Japanese people make an effort to stay active until the very end, are key elements of their secret to long life.

If you want to stay busy even when there’s no need to work, there has to be an ikigai on your horizon, a purpose that guides you throughout your life and pushes you to make things of beauty and utility for the community and yourself.

The interviews

Don’t worry “The secret to a long life is not to worry. And to keep your heart young—don’t let it grow old. Open your heart to people with a nice smile on your face. If you smile and open your heart, your grandchildren and everyone else will want to see you.”
Cultivate good habits

“The key to staying sharp in old age is in your fingers. From your fingers to your brain, and back again. If you keep your fingers busy, you’ll live to see one hundred.”

Nurture your friendships every day
Live an unhurried life “My secret to a long life is always saying to myself, ‘Slow down,’ and ‘Relax.’ You live much longer if you’re not in a hurry.”
Be optimistic “Every day I say to myself, ‘Today will be full of health and energy. Live it to the fullest.’” “I’m ninety-eight, but consider myself young. I still have so much to do.”

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.

So, eat less to live longer?

Without taking it to the extreme of malnutrition, of course, eating fewer calories than our bodies ask for seems to increase longevity.

If the body regularly consumes enough, or too many, calories, it gets lethargic and starts to wear down, expending significant energy on digestion alone.

The secrets of green tea

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

VIII: GENTLE MOVEMENTS, LONGER LIFE

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.

What is resilience?

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.

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.

The here and now, and the impermanence of things

Both Buddhism and Stoicism remind us that the present is all that exists, and it is the only thing we can control.

Being aware of the impermanence of things does not have to make us sad; it should help us love the present moment and those who surround us.

Wabi-sabi and ichi‑go ichi‑e

Only things that are imperfect, incomplete, and ephemeral can truly be beautiful, because only those things resemble the natural world.

The key is to accept that there are certain things over which we have no control, like the passage of time and the ephemeral nature of the world around us.

Beyond resilience: Antifragility

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

How can we be more antifragile?

Step 1: Create redundancies

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

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

Conclusion

There is no perfect strategy to connecting with our ikigai. But what we learned from the Okinawans is that we should not worry too much about finding it. 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.

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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