This blog post is about the book “Ikigai” written by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles.

This book was something that has been on my book shelf for many years. This book was gifted by my friend who was visiting our house after many years. Last week, I happened to read a book titled, “The book of Ichigo Ichie” from the same authors and then realized that this earlier book that was on my reading shelf all along.

The book is mainly about authors' findings of studying the people of Okinawa, Japan, that boasts a high number of centenarians in the world. In their process of researching, they stumble on to the word “ikigai” that seems to be driving the people of Okinawa.

Ikigai is the reason we get up in the morning

Came across this lovely visual from the book

By sampling various tasks, one might be able to figure out “What one is good at?”. “What you can be paid for”? is determined by internal and external forces. You might be able to influence the market by creating a compelling offering that world will pay for. Or sometimes the tide is against you and you might not get paid for the work you are good at. But stick around a few years or decades in any job, you will get good at it and you will of course get paid for it. However that doesn’t mean it is a good state to be in. You might not love your work or You might not even produce or offer something that the world needs. Another common situation is you might know what you love and but you might not put in effort in becoming good at it because you might think world might not pay for such an effort or the world does not need what you love doing.

For the various states mentioned in the Venn diagram, you might relate the situation to yourself or your friends or your colleagues or your family members.Of course, the best would be in a state of ikigai. The book is all about that.

The following are some of the points mentioned in the book:

  • 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. There is, in fact, no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense of “leaving the workforce for good” as in English. According to Dan Buettner, a National Geographic reporter who knows the country well, having a purpose in life is so important in Japanese culture that our idea of retirement simply doesn’t exist there.
  • 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.” Ancient wisdom advises against eating until we are full. This is why Okinawans stop eating when they feel their stomachs reach 80 percent of their capacity, rather than overeating and wearing down their bodies with long digestive processes that accelerate cellular oxidation.
  • Maintaining an active, adaptable mind is one of the key factors in staying young
  • How to achieve flow in life
    • Choose a difficult talk, but not too difficult
    • Have a clear, concrete objective
    • Concentrate on a single task
  • Requirements of flow
    • Knowing what to do
    • Knowing how to do it
    • Knowing how well you are doing
    • Knowing where to go
    • Perceiving significant challenges
    • Perceiving significant skills
    • Being free from distractions
  • Microflow means enjoying mundane tasks
  • Focus on enjoying your daily rituals, using them as tools to enter a state of flow. Don’t worry about the outcome - it will come naturally. Happiness is in the doing, not in the result.
  • Rituals over goals
  • Eat and sleep, and you’ll live a long time. You have to learn to relax
  • Never stop learning seems to be mantra for Okinawans
  • Live an unhurried life
  • 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.
    • Stoics and their technique of negative visualization
      • Knowing what you can control and what you can’t
    • Wabi-sabi - Shows us the beauty of fleeting, changeable and imperfect nature of the world around us. Instead of searching for beauty in perfection,we should look for it in things that are flawed, incomplete
    • ichigo ichie - Enjoy the moment for the moment is only now and won’t come again
    • Antifragility
      • Create redundancies
      • Bet conservatively in certain areas and take many small risks in others
      • Get rid of the things that make you fragile

Hara hachi bu:

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.

This is why portion size tends to be much smaller in Japan than in the West. Food isn’t served as appetizers, main courses, and dessert. Instead, it’s much more common to see everything presented at once on small plates: one with rice, another with vegetables, a bowl of miso soup, and something to snack on. Serving food on many small plates makes it easier to avoid eating too much, and facilitates the varied diet discussed at the beginning of this chapter.

Hara hachi bu is an ancient practice. The twelfth-century book on Zen Buddhism Zazen Youjinki recommends eating two-thirds as much as you might want to. Eating less than one might want is common among all Buddhist temples in the East. Perhaps Buddhism recognized the benefits of limiting caloric intake more than nine centuries ago.

10 Rules of Ikigai

  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.

Here are a sample of interesting YT links I found on “ikigai”

Takeaway

The book forces you rethink your life and reexamine various aspects of your life that you might be doing in an auto-pilot mode. By looking at some of the factors that works for Okinawans, it might help the reader make incremental or drastic changes to one’s life. Irrespective of whether you are sold on the philosophy of the book or not, merely reading Okinawans and their way of life might be worth your time. Old people are a wonderful lot to hang around with as they have a beautiful way to succinctly state the essentials of leading a good life; and this book is mainly about the findings from studying centenarians.