Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years—Japanese proverb.
PROLOGUE
IKIGAI: A MYSTERIOUS WORD
1. Ikigai, this Japanese concept, which translates roughly as “the happiness of always being busy,” is like logotherapy, but it goes a step beyond. It also seems to be one way of explaining the extraordinary longevity of the Japanese, especially on the island of Okinawa, where there are 24.55 people over the age of 100 for every 100,000 inhabitants—far more than the global average.
2. It never ceased to surprise us that this haven of nearly eternal life was located precisely in Okinawa, where two hundred thousand innocent lives were lost at the end of World War II. Rather than harbor animosity toward outsiders, however, Okinawans live by the principle of ichariba chode, a local expression that means “treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before”. It turns out that one of the secrets to happiness of Ogimi’s residents is feeling like part of a community. From an early age they practice yuimaaru, or teamwork, and so are used to helping one another.
3. Nurturing friendships, eating light, getting enough rest, and doing regular, moderate exercise are all part of the equation of good health, but at the heart of the joie de vivre that inspires these centenarians to keep celebrating birthdays and cherishing each new day is their ikigai. The purpose of this book is to bring the secrets of Japan’s centenarians to you and give you the tools to find your own ikigai. Because those who discover their ikigai have everything they need for a long and joyful journey through life. Happy travels!
ONE: IKIGAI
(THE ART OF STAYING YOUNG WHEN GROWING OLD)
1. According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—what a French philosopher might call a raison d’être. Some people have found their ikigai, while others are still looking, though they carry it within them. Our ikigai is hidden deep inside each of us, and finding it requires a patient search. According to those born on Okinawa, the island with the most centenarians in the world, our ikigai is the reason we get up in the morning.
2. Having a clearly defined ikigai brings satisfaction, happiness, and meaning to our lives. 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.
3. In Japanese, ikigai is written as 生き甲斐, combining 生き, which means “life,” with 甲斐, which means “to be worthwhile”. 甲斐 can be broken down into the characters 甲, which means “armor,” “number one,” and “to be the first” (to head into battle, taking initiative as a leader), and 斐, which means “beautiful” or “elegant”.
The Okinawans’ focus on ikigai gives a sense of purpose to each and every day and plays an important role in their health and longevity.
4. 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. Members of these communities manage their time well in order to reduce stress, consume little meat or processed foods, and drink alcohol in moderation. They don’t do strenuous exercise, but they do move every day, taking walks and working in their vegetable gardens. People in the Blue Zones would rather walk than drive. Gardening, which involves daily low-intensity movement, is a practice almost all of them have in common.
5. 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. The extra side dish, the snack we eat when we know in our hearts we don’t really need it, the apple pie after lunch—all these will give us pleasure in the short term, but not having them will make us happier in the long term.
TWO: ANTI-AGING SECRET
(LITTLE THINGS THAT ADD UP TO A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE)
1. 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. Having a youthful mind also drives you toward a healthy lifestyle that will slow the aging process. This is why it’s so important to give your brain a workout.
2. 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. The effects of mental training have been scientifically demonstrated. Mental training is beneficial on many levels: “You begin exercising your brain by doing a certain task for the first time. And at first it seems very difficult, but as you learn how to do it, the training is already working. The second time, you realize that it’s easier, not harder, to do, because you’re getting better at it. This has a fantastic effect on a person’s mood. In and of itself, it is a transformation that affects not only the results obtained, but also his or her self-image”.
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.
3. Whether or not the threats we perceive are real, stress is an easily identifiable condition that not only causes anxiety but is also highly psychosomatic, affecting everything from our digestive system to our skin. 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. Achieving mindfulness involves a gradual process of training, but with a bit of practice we can learn to focus our mind completely, which reduces stress and helps us live longer.
4. Spending too much time seated at work or at home not only reduces muscular and respiratory fitness but also increases appetite and curbs the desire to participate in activities. Being sedentary can lead to hypertension, imbalanced eating, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and even certain kinds of cancer. Recent studies have shown a connection between a lack of physical activity and the progressive distortion of telomeres in the immune system, which ages those cells and, in turn, the organism as a whole. It’s easy to be less sedentary; it just takes a bit of effort and a few changes to your routine. We can access a more active lifestyle that makes us feel better inside and out—we just have to add a few ingredients to our everyday habits:
• Walk to work, or just go on a walk for at least twenty minutes each day
• Use your feet instead of an elevator or escalator. This is good for your posture, your muscles, and your respiratory system, among other things
• Participate in social or leisure activities so that you don’t spend too much time in front of the television
• Replace your junk food with fruit and you’ll have less of an urge to snack, and more nutrients in your system
• Get the right amount of sleep. Seven to nine hours is good, but any more than that makes us lethargic
• Play with children or pets, or join a sports team. This not only strengthens the body but also stimulates the mind and boosts self-esteem
• Be conscious of your daily routine in order to detect harmful habits and replace them with more positive ones
5. The mind has tremendous power over the body and how quickly it ages. Most doctors agree that the secret to keeping the body young is keeping the mind active—a key element of ikigai—and in not caving in when we face difficulties throughout our lives. 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.
THREE: FROM LOGOTHERAPY TO IKIGAI
(HOW TO LIVE LONGER AND BETTER BY FINDING YOUR PURPOSE)
1. What, does logotherapy do? It helps you find reasons to live. Logotherapy pushes patients to consciously discover their life’s purpose in order to confront their neuroses. Their quest to fulfill their destiny then motivates them to press forward, breaking the mental chains of the past and overcoming whatever obstacles they encounter along the way.
2. The process of logotherapy can be summarized in these five steps:
• A person feels empty, frustrated, or anxious
• The therapist shows him that what he is feeling is the desire to have a meaningful life
• The patient discovers his life’s purpose (at that particular point in time)
• Of his own free will, the patient decides to accept or reject that destiny
• This newfound passion for life helps him overcome obstacles and sorrows
3. 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. Logotherapy enters the picture if the person needs help doing this, if he needs guidance in discovering his life’s purpose and later in overcoming conflicts so he can keep moving toward his objective.
4. 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
5. The basic principles of Morita therapy:
a. Accept your feelings
We don’t create our feelings; they simply come to us, and we have to accept them. The trick is welcoming them.
b. Do what you should be doing
We should focus instead on the present moment, and if we are suffering, on accepting that suffering. Above all, we should avoid intellectualizing the situation. The therapist’s mission is to develop the patient’s character so he or she can face any situation, and character is grounded in
the things we do.
c. Discover your life’s purpose
“What do we need to be doing right now? What action should we be taking?” The key to achieving this is having dared to look inside yourself to find your ikigai.
6. The four phases of Morita therapy:
• Isolation and rest (five to seven days)
During the first week of treatment, the patient rests in a room without any external stimuli. All the patient has is his thoughts. When the patient gets bored and wants to start doing things again, he is ready to move on to the next stage of therapy.
• Light occupational therapy (five to seven days)
In this stage, the patient performs repetitive tasks in silence. One of these is keeping a diary about his thoughts and feelings. The patient goes outside after a week of being shut in, takes walks in nature, and does breathing exercises.
• Occupational therapy (five to seven days) In this stage, the patient performs tasks that require physical movement. The patient can speak with others at this stage, but only about the tasks at hand.
• The return to social life and the “real” world
The idea is to reenter society as a new person, with a sense of purpose, and without being controlled by social or emotional pressures.
7. Logotherapy and Morita therapy are both grounded in a personal, unique experience that you can access without therapists or spiritual retreats: the mission of finding your ikigai, your existential fuel. Once you find it, it is only a matter of having the courage and making the effort to stay on the right path.
FOUR: FIND FLOW IN EVERYTHING YOU DO
(HOW TO TURN WORK AND FREE TIME INTO A SPACE TO GROWTH)
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit —Aristotle
1. We’ve all felt our sense of time vanish when we lose ourselves in an activity we enjoy. We start cooking and before we know it, several hours have passed. What makes us enjoy doing something so much that we forget about whatever worries we might have while we do it? When are we happiest? These questions can help us discover our ikigai.
2. 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!)
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.
~ 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. Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow.
3. According to researcher Owen Schaffer of DePaul University, the requirements for achieving flow are:
• Knowing what to do
• Knowing how to do it
• Knowing how well you are doing
• Knowing where to go (where navigation is involved)
• Perceiving significant challenges
• Perceiving significant skills
• Being free from distractions
Can someone really retire if he is passionate about what he does?
4. We’ve all been bored in a class or at a conference and started doodling to keep ourselves entertained. Or whistled while painting a wall. If we’re not truly being challenged, we get bored and add a layer of complexity to amuse ourselves. 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.
Training the mind can get us to a place of flow more quickly. Meditation is one way to exercise our mental muscles. There are many types of meditation, but they all have the same objective: calming the mind, observing our thoughts and emotions, and centering our focus on a single object.
5. 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. As a rule of thumb, remind yourself: “Rituals over goals”. 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.
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.
FIVE: MASTERS OF LONGEVITY
(WORDS OF WISDOM FROM THE LONGEST-LIVING PEOPLE IN THE WORLD)
1. The secret to long life, however, is not held by supercentenarians alone. There are many people of advanced age who, though they haven’t made it into Guinness World Records, offer us inspiration and ideas for bringing energy and meaning to our lives. Artists, for example, who carry the torch of their ikigai instead of retiring, have this power. 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.
2. “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 honour 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.
“You stay in your time. You don’t go backward. I think if you relate to the time you’re in, you keep your eyes and ears open, read the paper, see what’s going on, stay curious about everything, you will automatically be in your time” (Frank Gehry).
3. 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment