To give meaning to our existence, there is no need to upset everything or to abandon everything. The secret: to harmonize our deepest aspirations and our potentials according to ikigai.
The Japanese peninsula of Okinawa is known to hold the world record for happy longevity. Western researchers have tried to unravel the secret of this Eden where 85-year-old women still dive into the ocean without snorkels, where 100-year-old men do aikido or their bike races every morning.
They first attributed it to the diet of the inhabitants only to realize that the diet of these centenarians stemmed from a more general ancestral principle: ikigai.
This Japanese word-concept, without equivalent, means: “reason to live”, “what makes you want to get up in the morning”, “the joy of always being busy”, or even, “the art of aging in staying young”.
For the Okinawaians, the ikigai is the compass of an existence and to do without it would be as absurd as embarking without a landmark on a raging ocean … Each has their own ikigai, which evolves with us.
Finding our ikigai, that is, our reason to live, is more than ever proving to be a protection against this loss of meaning, since it allows us to feel in the right place in our life. This art of living provides personal balance, contributes to the happiness of everyone and helps establish a harmonious relationship between oneself and the world.
From all the existing research and studies, it appears that ikigai promotes well-being and contributes to longevity, because this reason for living seems to protect against stress and diseases such as hypertension.
How to know our ikigai?
Ikigai states that, even if we are not aware of it, there is bound to be something in our life and in ourselves that values us, helps us strengthen our self-esteem, increase our potential of joy and which rubs off positively on our environment.
Our ikigai stands at the crossroads of all of this. Living according to it, at each stage of our existence, is a way to flourish in action, to look at the daily life from a new angle with a lively, curious and joyful gaze while taking full advantage of the present moment. And it’s up to everyone to bring out their ikigai. While for some people it is obvious from early childhood, it is not the case for most of us.
So finding it requires taking our time?
Yes. And besides, one of the principles of this art of living is precisely to regain possession of time. Because in this quest for ikigai, everyone moves at their own pace, no one is at the same stage. Some carry it within themselves naturally without knowing it, others have turned away from it because of life’s obligations, and still others are unaware that they may have one or have long repressed it.
And this is also what makes it precious: the quest, the path we have to travel to find it and give meaning to our lives while nourishing our energy. And whatever our age, even when we are retired, defining our ikigai allows us to keep activities that stimulate us and not to feel on the margins of society.
How to make our ikigai emerges!
To help us find it, there is a diagram on the internet made up of 4 interlocking circles. By using it, it will allow us to see more clearly in my aspirations.
Each of the 4 circles contains an item: 1/ What I like to do. 2/ What I’m good at (my acquired or “innate” skills). 3/ What I could get paid for 4/ What the world needs.
- We take all of our time to answer, refine, bring up memories: forgotten passions, what stopped us in our tracks, what we forbade ourselves when we loved something/someone or that we were gifted, or even that it counted in our ideals, etc.
- When our answers resonate deeply, when they vibrate in us, we write them down. Each item opens two more. There again, we think, even more, so that our answers to these double items sound as fair, really illuminate our horizon.
- “What we like to do” opens on the items passion and mission. “What we’re good at”, on the items passion and profession; “What we can be paid for”, on the occupation and vocation items. “What the world needs”, on the items vocation and mission.
As we can see, each circle is partly associated, by these double items, with the one that precedes and the one that follows. It’s never offline. It forms a whole which has found its coherence. By associating the 4 words born from the combination of the double items, we arrive at the center where a word waits to summarize the whole: it will be our Ikigai.
Reference: https://inside.6q.io/guide-to-ikigai/
https://www.ikigaiconnections.com/why-you-should-know-your-ikigai/
