Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles Nine out of 10

 Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

Nine out of 10

 

 

Ikigai means reason for being, perhaps meaning of life would stretch it too far, but positive psychology studies have shown that pursuing your goals brings happiness, as explained by the How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky   - Happiness Activity No 10: Committing to Your Goals-picking one, two or three significant goals that are meaningful to you and devoting time and effort to pursue them…

 

The ten rules of Ikigai would be one, to keep busy, indeed, the Japanese do not have the word retirement apparently, two, take it slow – when they talk about exercises, the experts in this art insist on the fact that it not the intense activities that others seem to recommend (I know of a BBC documentary in which they insisted that one minute of extreme exertion, very intense, near maximum effort would bring in immense rewards) but moving all the time, small, but continuous moves are needed and yes, ‘the chair kills’ is the conclusion of other research, which highlighted that even if they exercise in the evening, those who spend long hours on chairs are doomed, and the solutions vary from not siting but standing on high chairs to standing up every hour or more- ‘when we leave urgency being, time and life take a new meaning’, number three , is equally important ‘do not fill your stomach’ – the Japanese are known for rising from the table when they are only about eighty percent full…

Rule number four ‘surround yourself with good friends’ has been proved by positive psychology research, which has looked at the happiest people and found that they do not have a great wealth in common (albeit that is a subjective definition and we should add material possessions, they are definitely spiritually affluent) but what they share is a strong connection with family and friends, rule number five appears a bit more outré, for it says ‘get in shape for your next birthday…water flows’ it refers to exercise and indeed, research has also showed that when we exercise the best cocktail of endorphins is released into the brain and it boosts our happiness levels, six is short ‘smile’, and tested in practices as well, The Duchenne smile has been studied and psychologists took the [photos from the book at the end of college and then saw that those who had a smile (authentic, not otherwise) will be those who five, eight, ten and more years later will have been more successful in their private and professional lives

 

Smiling helps us to get more friends and we need to remember how great it is to be in the here and now (‘there is no other more important moment than now, more important person than the one in front of you’)…seven, reconnect with nature seems self-explanatory and as we experience dramatic Climate Change, it is surely not necessary to insist, eight, ‘Give Thanks’ has also been demonstrated in practice, where positive psychology research has proved that those who ‘count their blessings’, participate in Gratitude exercises – here there is a difference between schools, Tal Ben-Shahar of Harvard is for the daily routine, while Sonja Lyubomirsky from the University of California would opt for a weekly practice – arrive at higher levels of wellbeing after about four or six weeks and this is fundamental and has various alternatives, like calling someone to express gratitude for an act that had been ignored, writing a letter – or maybe even putting down a note like this one, dealing with the matter indirectly…by the way, in terms of smiles, they have seen that even forcing a smile, with a pen between the lips has some effects, though not on the scale of the Duchenne aka authentic smiles…

 

Live in the moment , rule nine, sends this reader to the Flow classic http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/02/from-flow-by-mihalyi-csikszentmihalyi.html, which analyzes the Zenith, Ecstasy, Flow, Being in the Zone, Optimum Experience and how we achieve it, one of the conditions being to immerse in the activity and forget everything else – together with other elements, such as challenges that are balanced with skills, time is fluid, for a ballerina on stage, one minute is an eon, for a surgeon out of a complex operation twelve hours have looked like minutes, one is in control, there is constant feedback and it is autotelic, something we would love to do forever and it represents calling…in every domain, there are a third of employees or employers that do it for the money, another third wants a career, but the last third is the one we would love to be in, for these are those who do the task because they feel it is their vocation…thus, a janitor in a hospital in the last category is blissful, and a doctor in the first is rather blasé

Ten, follow your Ikigai, may in fact be explained by the calling, which they call in the book follow your passion…’if you do not know what your Ikigai is, your mission is to discover it’ and then reference is made to Victor Frankl, author of the quintessential Man’s Search for Meaning http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/mans-search-for-meaning-by-victor-frankl.html who has had to struggle to survive in the Nazi concentration camps – albeit he had been offered to escape, only without his family and thus he refused the offer to save only himself – and he has noticed that those who had a meaning, a reason to live would have a chance to live through the ordeal, whereas whenever somebody lost the interest, the sense of a meaning – giving up their cigarettes was a sign, for this was currency in the death camps – would soon die…

 

Diet is important on the island of Okinawa, in Japan and clearly the world over, and given the clear connection between body and soul (men sana in corpore sano) what we eat will affect our mind, the thinking and we will not only live longer if we eat less (indeed, tests have demonstrated that fasting works and furthermore, statistics also make this strong point – after the depression of the late nineteen twenties, people would live longer and that was surely in large part to the need they had to eat much less, given the Great Crisis the world experienced) but we would also show benefits in positivity…

People living on Okinawa eat a variety of foods, rainbow would apply here, and we should try as many colors as possible (if due to the war they do not reach astronomical prices and they fall out of reach that is, which they are anyway for many of the Ukrainians that are bombed, killed, terrorized, traumatized by the Z ghouls (Putin’s monsters have taken for some reason to use this letter, which used to be the coat of arms for Zorro, but hey, Nazis have their swastika, these other villains have to use something as well, they are more or less brainless and thus use few words, maybe one letter does it for them) we have to spare some thoughts for the refugees, victims, those killed and the others hurting right now…more than two and a half million have fled the War (which is called special operation in the New Soviet Union and it is special indeed, but in the most vile, horrific sense) and the number will rise…