IKIGAI — Is it hyped up concept or is it really worth it?

Random thoughts in tough situations

When will life be less stressful?
How to be happy the rest of my life?
Should I Invest in Crypto and become a millionaire, will that make me happy?
And more thoughts were running in my mind while I was trying to be productive at working from home. COVID and lockdown has completely changed the way everything works. Whole new level of complexities bringing in new problems to each and everyones life. Mine was quite different, I was trying to find what makes life happy and how to be less stressed.

A year ago I remember Chris Do in one of his videos spoke about how we can find our purpose for life in the things we do and how to find our Ikigai. I was curious on what this term actually mean and tried to learn more about it and I found this book written by Hector Gracia & Francesc Miralles ‘IKIGAI — The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life’. Hoping I could find some answers and peace to my thought thats been running in my mind. All the below mentioned facts are from the book.

My respect for Japanese grew higher

I have always heard that Japanese people are hard workers and they work more than 10 hours a day. But never heard that a small place in Japan has inhabitants who lives longer than anywhere else in the world. These people also suffer from less chronic diseases and a surprising fact is that this place called ‘Okinawa’ houses 24.55 people over the age of 100 for every 100,000 inhabitants which is way more than the global average.

Interesting facts that holds this book since most of the book revolves around people from that particular region. The collective research done by this team and compiled in this book are all true wisdom speeches from the actual people who have achieved their ikigai and had been happy throughout their life even as they grow old.

Fighting stress helps us to be young

My first takeaway from this book to keep your mind young. In order to keep your neurons from ageing its essential to be curious and be with a desire to learn and interact with other people. This hopefully helps us to keep pushing us to new situations and gives a more positive outlook.

Stress is the major issue that everyone is trying to get rig of hoping it will give us happiness. The key pointers thats laid out in this book to reduce stress and increase happiness thus making us live for a longer period of time are

• Learn something new everyday
• Interact with people
• Turn off unnecessary notifications
• Keeping yourself in movement and don’t be seated always
• Replacing junk food with fruits

These are some points that I wanna try and follow, hoping that it reduces my stress and gives some happiness.

Finding your Purpose

We all want to find our purpose in life. It’s like we are in a race to find the answer. Reading articles or watching youtube videos doesn’t help you to find your purpose. My best recommendation to find your purpose is just stop reading this and go do something, anything that you like that makes you happy, things that brings calmness in you, anything that doesn’t become boring after a point. Something that you can keep doing for hours straight.

I know its hard to find your purpose or your thing, but it’s fine it’s not a necessary that you should find this today or the next month. As beautifully said in this book

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 people who love you

The Okinawa Diet

One of the reason the people of Okinawa live for a longer period of time is because of their diet. What they call as Hara hachi bu is a concept known in japanes the 80% rule which they follow which is to stop eating when you feel you are almost full but could have a little more.

This is probably the most difficult for any person. To stop when your tummy is 80% full. This is gonna be tricky and a difficult one to follow. This is something I might give a try to see how I am able to cope up with this concept.

Other things that I wanna try that mentioned here are

• Avoid sugar (Not a difficult one)
• Include at least 5 food variety in your meal (gonna be challenging)
• Eat fish at least three times a week (If only my mom is willing to cook)
• Green tea three time a day (gonna give a try)

Giving movement to your life

It’s not something that we don’t know already. Considering the fact that people are sitting at home all day long in lockdown in front of computers everybody are into some sort of exercise. Hope we all be consistent and get back to shape.

One thing that I might consider is to get back at yoga, since my gym is shut dow and its hard to go high intensity weights at home. I always wanted to bend my back and achieve a perfect curve. Hope I do that one day.

Conclusion

Ikigai, yeah a fancy term but the book really tells how the Japanese culture is so rich in the well being of the people. The book gives a good motivation to put you in right thoughts and to lead a better life if followed with discipline. At last it’s not what the book offers its what we take and follow from them.