chankeypathak/ikigai.md

## ikigai.md

      
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              ikigai.md
            
          
Keywords: #books #mentalhealth #life


Age limit: 120 (cell regeneration stops)


5 Blue Zones in the World (the geographic regions where people live longest)


There's no word that means "retire" in Japanese


Diet, exercise, finding a purpose in life, forming strong social ties


1800-1900 calories per day (eat only 80%)


The secrets to slowing down aging process


An active mind


physical and mental excericse
lack of mental exercise causes neurons to deteriorate


Youthful body


Healthy dose of stress


modern man is in constant state of competition and emergency

this affects neurons associated with memory


stress also inhibits release of certain hormones which are supposed to counteract depression, irritability, insomnia, anxiety and high BP
Prevention

practice mindfulness

meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, body scans


Sedentary behavior


leads to hypertension, imbalanced eating, cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis
There's a connection b/w lack of physical activity and progressive distortion of telomeres in immune system, which ages those cells and, in turn, the organism as whole


People who live longest have two dispositional traits in common: a positive attitude and a high degree of emotional awareness.


He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how


Logotherapy


Helps people find meaning -- something to live for
Requires patients to sit up and listen to things that are sometimes hard to hear.
In modern times, most people do not do what they want but what they are told to do or what others do. This behavior leads to an existential crisis. Logotherapy offers an opportunity for better living with some key ideas.

Discover the meaning of your life instead of trying to create a meaning for your life.
Each person has a unique reason for being, which can adjust many times over the years.
Worry attracts the things you fear and hyper-intention keeps the things you desire from being fulfilled.
Humor reduces anxiety and breaks negative cycles.
Our decisions and not external conditions determine whether we do noble or terrible things.


Morita therapy


People heal not by relieving the past, but by looking to the future and discovering their life’s purpose.
Morita therapy encourages embracing all your emotions without seeking to control them.
Add new emotions to your existing emotions and take actions that will eventually change your feelings. Morita believes that actions change feelings and not the other way round.

Accept your feelings
Do what you should be doing
Discover your life’s purpose


You lose sense of time when you engage in activities that you enjoy


Identify moments when you are happiest and the things that make you forget your worries. Call it "flow".
Call it "flow". Flow is the pleasure, delight, creativity, and process when we are completely immersed in life.
Flow enables us to focus on a concrete task without distractions. It brings order to the mind.

How to achieve Flow?


Know what to do
Know how to do it
Know how well you are doing
Know where to go (where navigation is involved)
Perceive significant challenges
Perceive significant skills
Be free from distractions


Strategy to increase chances of achieving Flow


Strategy 1: Choose a difficult task (but not too difficult!)
Strategy 2: Have a clear, concrete objective
Strategy 3: Concentrate on a single task


Pursue simplicity and pay attention to detail. The people of Japan have a unique talent for creating new technologies while preserving artisanal traditions and techniques.Whether an artist, an engineer, or a chef, Japanese use nature to give life to their responsibility. They bring nature and technology together. 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.


Words from supercentenarians


“Eat and sleep, and you’ll live a long time. You have to learn to relax.”
“We’re all going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you’re born to die.”
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 for yourself.
Don’t worry
Cultivate good habits
Nurture your friendships every day
Live an unhurried life
Be optimistic


Okinawa diet


Locals eat a wide variety of foods, especially vegetables.
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 practically half as much salt as the rest of Japan.
They consume fewer calories.

There are fifteen foods that are considered keys to Okinawan vitality: Tofu, Miso, Tuna, Carrots, Goya (bitter melon), Kombu (sea kelp), Cabbage, Nori (seaweed), Onion, Soy sprouts, Hechima (cucumber-like gourd), Soybeans (boiled or raw), Sweet potato, Peppers, Sanpin-cha (jasmine tea)


Exercises that promote health and longevity


Studies from the Blue Zones suggest that the people who live longest are not the ones who do the most exercise but rather the ones who move the most.

Radio Taiso


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=175&v=XrEH5JLljDI&feature=emb_title


Yoga


Tai chi


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEOS2zoyQw4&feature=emb_title


Qigong


Shiatsu


Resilience and antifragility are effective ways of facing life’s challenges without letting stress and worry age you


Resilience isn’t just the ability to persevere. It is also an outlook we can cultivate to stay focused on the important things in life rather than what is most urgent, and to keep ourselves from being carried away by negative emotions.
Sooner or later, we all have to face difficult moments, and the way we do this can make a huge difference to our quality of life. Proper training for our mind, body, and emotional resilience is essential for confronting life’s ups and downs.
Fall seven times, rise eight.
Resilience is our ability to deal with setbacks. The more resilient we are, the easier it will be to pick ourselves up and get back to what gives meaning to our lives.
Resilient people know how to stay focused on their objectives, on what matters, without giving in to discouragement. Their flexibility is the source of their strength: They know how to adapt to change and to reversals of fortune. They concentrate on the things they can control and don’t worry about those they can’t.

Emotional resilience through Buddhism and Stoicism


Stoicism, which centers on the idea that there is nothing wrong with enjoying life’s pleasures as long as they do not take control of your life as you enjoy them. You have to be prepared for those pleasures to disappear.
The goal is not to eliminate all feelings and pleasures from our lives, as in Cynicism, but to eliminate negative emotions.
Since their inception, one of the objectives of both Buddhism and Stoicism has been to control pleasure, emotions, and desires. Though the philosophies are very different, both aim to curb our ego and control our negative emotions.
Both Stoicism and Buddhism are, at their roots, methods for practicing well-being.


What's the worst thing that could happen?


We finally land our dream job, but after a little while we are already hunting for a better one. We win the lottery and buy a nice car but then decide we can’t live without a sailboat. We finally win the heart of the man or woman we’ve been pining for and suddenly find we have a wandering eye.
People can be insatiable.
The Stoics believed that these kinds of desires and ambitions are not worth pursuing. The objective of the virtuous person is to reach a state of tranquility (apatheia): the absence of negative feelings such as anxiety, fear, shame, vanity, and anger, and the presence of positive feelings such as happiness, love, serenity, and gratitude.
In order to keep their minds virtuous, the Stoics practiced something like negative visualization: They imagined the worst thing that could happen in order to be prepared if certain privileges and pleasures were taken from them.
To practice negative visualization, we have to reflect on negative events, but without worrying about them.


Meditating for healthier emotions


Worrying about things that are beyond our control accomplishes nothing. We should have a clear sense of what we can change and what we can’t, which in turn will allow us to resist giving in to negative emotions.
In Zen Buddhism, meditation is a way to become aware of our desires and emotions and thereby free ourselves from them. It is not simply a question of keeping the mind free of thoughts but instead involves observing our thoughts and emotions as they appear, without getting carried away by them. In this way, we train our minds not to get swept up in anger, jealousy, or resentment.


Here and Now


Another key to cultivating resilience is knowing in which time to live. Both Buddhism and Stoicism remind us that the present is all that exists, and it is the only thing we can control. Instead of worrying about the past or the future, we should appreciate things just as they are in the moment, in the now.
We should never forget that everything we have and all the people we love will disappear at some point. This is something we should keep in mind, but without giving in to pessimism. Keeping this always in mind helps us avoid excessive pain in times of loss.


Wabi-Sabi


Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept that shows us the beauty of the fleeting, changeable, and imperfect nature of the world around us. Instead of searching for beauty in perfection, we should look for it in things that are flawed, incomplete.
This is why the Japanese place such value, for example, on an irregular or cracked teacup. Only things that are imperfect, incomplete, and ephemeral can truly be beautiful, because only those things resemble the natural world.
A complementary Japanese concept is that of ichi-go ichi-e, which could be translated as “This moment exists only now and won’t come again.” It is heard most often in social gatherings as a reminder that each encounter — whether with friends, family, or strangers — is unique and will never be repeated, meaning that we should enjoy the moment and not lose ourselves in worries about the past or the future.


Antifragility


is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
How to be more antifragile?

**Step 1: Create redundancies. **

Instead of having a single salary, try to find a way to make money from your hobbies, at other jobs, or by starting your own business. If you have only one salary, you might be left with nothing should your employer run into trouble, leaving you in a position of fragility.
The same idea goes for friendships and personal interests. It’s just a matter, as the saying goes, of not putting all your eggs in one basket.
In the sphere of romantic relationships, there are those who focus all their energy on their partner and make him or her their whole world. Those people lose everything if the relationship doesn’t work out, whereas if they’ve cultivated strong friendships and a full life along the way, they’ll be in a better position to move on at the end of a relationship. They’ll be antifragile.
The unexpected always happens, sooner or later.


**Step 2: Bet conservatively in certain areas and take many small risks in others. **

The key to becoming antifragile is taking on small risks that might lead to great reward, without exposing ourselves to dangers that might sink us, such as investing $10,000 in a fund of questionable reputation that we saw advertised in the newspaper.


**Step 3: Get rid of the things that make you fragile. **

We’re taking the negative route for this exercise. Ask yourself: What makes me fragile? Certain people, things, and habits generate losses for us and make us vulnerable. Who and what are they?
To build resilience into our lives, we shouldn’t fear adversity, because each setback is an opportunity for growth. If we adopt an antifragile attitude, we’ll find a way to get stronger with every blow, refining our lifestyle and staying focused on our ikigai.
Taking a hit or two can be viewed as either a misfortune or an experience that we can apply to all areas of our lives, as we continually make corrections and set new and better goals.
Life is pure imperfection, as the philosophy of wabi-sabi teaches us, and the passage of time shows us that everything is fleeting, but if you have a clear sense of your ikigai, each moment will hold so many possibilities that it will seem almost like an eternity.


Conclusion


Once you discover your ikigai, pursuing it and nurturing it every day will bring meaning to your life. The moment your life has this purpose, you will achieve a happy state of flow in all you do, like the calligrapher at his canvas or the chef who, after half a century, still prepares sushi for his patrons with love.
Our ikigai is different for all of us, but one thing we have in common is that we are all searching for meaning. When we spend our days feeling connected to what is meaningful to us, we live more fully; when we lose the connection, we feel despair.
Modern life estranges us more and more from our true nature, making it very easy for us to lead lives lacking in meaning. Powerful forces and incentives (money, power, attention, success) distract us on a daily basis; don’t let them take over your life.
Our intuition and curiosity are very powerful internal compasses to help us connect with our ikigai. Follow those things you enjoy, and get away from or change those you dislike. Be led by your curiosity, and keep busy by doing things that fill you with meaning and happiness. It doesn’t need to be a big thing: we might find meaning in being good parents or in helping our neighbors.
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 the people who love you.