Small, matter of fact book, that explores the Japanese concept of ikigai and the Okinawan lifestyle, follows up with concepts from Antifragile (Nassim Taleb), Blue Zones (Dan Buettner) and Man’s Seach for Meaning (Victor Frankl). A little bit of everything. Excerpts:
Ogimi, a rural town on the north end of the island with a population of three thousand, boasts the highest life expectancy in the world—a fact that has earned it the nickname the Village of Longevity.
Ichariba chode – “treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.”
Our ikigai is the reason we get up in the morning.
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.” The colleague had just described psychoanalysis to him in the following terms: “In psychoanalysis, the patient lies down on a couch and tells you things that are, on occasion, hard to say.” Frankl explains that one of the first questions he would ask his patients was “Why do you not commit suicide?” Usually the patient found good reasons not to, and was able to carry on. What, then, does logotherapy do? The answer is pretty clear: It helps you find reasons to live.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Existential frustration arises when our life is without purpose, or when that purpose is skewed. In Frankl’s view, however, there is no need to see this frustration as an anomaly or a symptom of neurosis; instead, it can be a positive thing—a catalyst for change. Logotherapy does not see this frustration as mental illness, the way other forms of therapy do, but rather as spiritual anguish—a natural and beneficial phenomenon that drives those who suffer from it to seek a cure, whether on their own or with the help of others, and in so doing to find greater satisfaction in life. It helps them change their own destiny.
“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” – Victor Frankl
Existential crisis, on the other hand, is typical of modern societies in which people do what they are told to do, or what others do, rather than what they want to do.
Sunday neurosis, for example, is what happens when, without the obligations and commitments of the workweek, the individual realizes how empty he is inside. He has to find a solution. Above all, he has to find his purpose, his reason for getting out of bed—his ikigai.
We each have a unique reason for being, which can be adjusted or transformed many times over the years.
A donkey that is tied to a post by a rope will keep walking around the post in an attempt to free itself, only to become more immobilized and attached to the post. The same thing applies to people with obsessive thinking who become more trapped in their own suffering when they try to escape from their fears and discomfort.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Take on tasks that we have a chance of completing but that are slightly outside our comfort zone.
It is much more important to have a compass pointing to a concrete objective than to have a map.
Albert Einstein, “a happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell on the future.”
Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow.
Many artists might seem misanthropic or reclusive, but what they are really doing is protecting the time that brings them happiness, sometimes at the expense of other aspects of their lives.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.
The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow.
His longevity stemmed from, among other things, his habit of eating only two meals per day and working for as many years as he could.
“Everybody complains about their aches and pains and all that, but my friends are either dead or are still working,”
“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.” —T. H. White, The Once and Future King
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 “Okinawa Diet” – locals eat a wide variety of foods, they ate an average of eighteen different foods each day. They eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Grains are the foundation of their diet. They rarely eat sugar, and if they do, it’s cane sugar. They eat less salt than rest of Japan. Okinawans eat fish an average of three times per week. They consume fewer calories: an average of 1,785 per day, compared to 2,068 in the rest of Japan.
Hara hachi bu – 80% rule – when you notice you’re almost full but could have a little more . . . just stop eating! The idea is to still be a little bit hungry when you finish. In Japan, 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.
Whether calorie restriction will extend lifespan in humans is not yet known, but data increasingly indicate that moderate calorie restriction with adequate nutrition has a powerful protective effect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease and reduces metabolic risk factors associated with cancer.
Okinawans drink more Sanpin-cha—a mix of green tea and jasmine flowers—than any other kind of tea.
The people who live longest are not the ones who do the most exercise but rather the ones who move the most. When we visited Ogimi, the Village of Longevity, we discovered that even people over eighty and ninety years old are still highly active. They don’t stay at home looking out the window or reading the newspaper. Ogimi’s residents walk a lot, do karaoke with their neighbors, get up early in the morning, and, as soon as they’ve had breakfast—or even before—head outside to weed their gardens. They don’t go to the gym or exercise intensely, but they almost never stop moving in the course of their daily routines.
Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting.
Marcus Aurelius said that the things we love are like the leaves of a tree: They can fall at any moment with a gust of wind.
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept – Instead of searching for beauty in perfection, we should look for it in things that are flawed, incomplete.
Ichi-go ichi-e – This moment exists only now and won’t come again. structures made by human hands.
The ten rules of ikigai
- Stay active; don’t retire.
- Take it slow.
- Don’t fill your stomach.
- Surround yourself with good friends.
- Get in shape for your next birthday.
- Smile.
- Reconnect with nature.
- Give thanks.
- Live in the moment.
- Follow your ikigai.
If you don’t know what your ikigai is yet, as Viktor Frankl says, your mission is to discover it.