Business Book Review: Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles
Garcia and Miralles share the beautiful Japanese belief that everyone has an Ikigai - a reason to jump out of bed each morning.
My Rating: ★★★★
Length: 208 pages
Publisher: HUTCHINSON PUBLISHING - TRADE
Released: 2017
Key Takeaways for Personal Branding
Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles go behind the scenes of Japanese culture. Specifically Ikigai - which the people of Japan believe everyone has. It’s their reason to jump out of bed each morning. The duo are on a mission to bring this philosophy to the West.
Garcia and Miralles interviewed over a hundred villagers in Okinawa. The island’s people live for longer than any other place in the world. It has 25 people over the age of 100 for every 100,000 inhabitants.
Ikigai explores the secrets of a long and happy life.
Ikigai
Ikigai is the intersection of:
What you love
What the world needs
What you can be paid for
What you are good at
In Japan, no word means retire in the sense of leaving the workforce for good. Because having a purpose in life is so important in Japanese culture, the idea of retirement, as it’s known in the West, does not exist in Japan.
The 80 Percent Rule
It would be remiss to explore the Japanese people’s longevity without highlighting their exceptional diets. Their attention to their bodies and healthy food matches their focus on mind and spirit.
Hara hachi bu is repeated before and after eating. And translates to something like “Fill your belly to 80 percent”. The Ancient wisdom warns against eating until you’re full or overeating. This helps digestive processes. The small plates food presentation style also helps support the philosophy.
Finding Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research into the feeling of being completely immersed in an experience defined it as ‘flow’. He describes it as the feeling of being so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. It’s not just experienced by creatives, but across all types of professions.
Researcher Owen Schaffer expanded upon this further with seven conditions for achieving flow:
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
Favourite Quotes
What often happens, especially in big companies, is that the executives get lost in the details of obsessive planning, creating strategies to hide the fact that they don’t have a clear objective. It’s like heading out to sea with a map but no destination.
Japanese people often apply themselves to even the most basic tasks with an intensity that borders on obsession.
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 key to staying sharp in old age is in your fingers. From your fingers to your brain, and back again. If you keep your fingers busy, you’ll live to see one hundred.
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.
More than just lofty idealism, Ikigai is grounded in research and rooted in ancient wisdom. Centenarians help highlight the power of purposeful living. The authors help bring this profound Eastern philosophy to the West.
Finding your “passion” or “purpose” is nerve-racking for many. But, the duo make it peacefully possible through the everyday moments of community, mind, body and spirit. Showing that a long and happy life starts with your reason for getting up every morning.
Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles: Available on Amazon.
