You will have a long and happy life if you find and live in your ikigai

Ikigai is a concept of Japanese origin that basically means finding happiness in being busy.

Ikigai is derived from two Japanese words: iki, meaning life or alive, and kai, meaning an effect, a fruit, or a result. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

residents of Ogimi village in Okinawa, Japan generally live longer than most people, they make teamwork a priority, and their activities revolve around the concept of ikigai.

Your ikigai refers to a union of the things you love, what the world needs in your generation, the things you're paid to do, and what you're good at.

The goal is to find a sweet spot between all four components because ikigai is all about helping you live a balanced life.

And this brings us to why there is no word in Japanese that means “retire:” When you find your ikigai, you won't want to stop working until you die, or your body gets too weak to work. Why? Because you love the work, and your motivation is not something external.

There are five zones in the world where people live the longest. These are called the “Blue Zones.” Okinawa ranks top on the list of Blue Zones in the world. Other regions include Italy's Sardinia, California's Loma Linda, Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula, and Ikaria in Greece.

The secret of the exceptional life in the Blue Zones is healthy eating, exercise, meditation, and finding and pursuing a life purpose.

You will slow down aging if you keep an active mind and minimize your stress level

Your best bet for a healthy and long life is by regularly engaging in mental and physical exercises. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

some of your vital neural connections will deteriorate when you don't engage them through mental exercises. The effect of this is seen in reduced reactions to the environment.

Many people are unaware of this, so they unknowingly allow it to happen. Some mental exercises to engage in to avoid being idle include:

Learning a skill.
Playing board games.
Taking a dance class.
Teaching.

Another thing that makes people get old too quickly is excessive stress. The main reason stress is bad for you is that it inhibits the activity of certain vital hormones that fight heart diseases, depression, and anxiety.

If you want to have greater control over your thoughts and be more present, learn to practice mindfulness

Regular practice of mindfulness will reduce stress, which, in turn, helps you become healthier and more productive. Some popular mindfulness activities include breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga.

Stress is not entirely bad; your body needs a low level of stress to keep fit. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

Most centenarians work well into old age. Being seated and inactive for a prolonged time often leads to hypertension, imbalanced eating, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and even certain kinds of cancer.

Some simple activities to incorporate into your daily life to help boost your immune system and make you healthier are:

Walk to work or go on a twenty–minute walk each day.
Take the stairs instead of an elevator.
Participate in social or leisure activities.
Replace your junk food with fruit.
Get the right amount of sleep.
Be intentional about your daily habits.
Replace negative patterns with positive ones.

A positive mental attitude and awareness of your emotional disposition will enhance your lifespan. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

When you know why you do something, you will be able to learn how to do it effectively

Roughly, the meaning of life embraces finding your purpose and taking steps towards it. Anything else you do will lead to frustration.

Gladly, there are many strategies you can use to find and live in your purpose. One of them is logotherapy, developed by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl.

here are some tips from logotherapy to overcome an existential crisis — feeling hopeless and drowning in guilt, fear, and anxiety from believing their lives have no meaning:

Observe and discover what you’re meant to do in life.
Be flexible about your reason for being.
Get rid of worry because it is counterproductive.
Learn to laugh and make people laugh.
Never forget that you have control over your actions.

Another therapy that can help you discover and advance your purpose is Morita therapy, created by Japanese psychiatrist and philosopher Dr. Shoma Morita. Morita therapy teaches to unbottle emotions instead of trying to control them.

Morita therapy recommends changing your feelings through actions. The concept is that instead of bottling up your emotions, you increase the range of emotions you feel until you can change how you feel. The basic principles of Morita therapy are:

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

Morita therapy lasts for about 21 days and is in four phases:

Phase 1: Isolation and rest (five to seven days)
Phase 2: Light occupational therapy (five to seven days)
Phase 3: Occupational therapy (five to seven days)
Phase 4: The return to social life and the “real” world

Don't store emotions in your body; allow them to course through you and be transformed into other forms of energy. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

You don’t get tired doing what you love, and time stops while you’re at it

Discovering your ikigai begins with identifying the times when you are happiest and the things that make you forget your worries. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

Flow is a state of 100% concentration when you’re doing something you love and are good at. Your mind is ordered, and you’re having fun.

When you focus intensely on a task long enough, you will get into a state of flow where you feel fully immersed. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

seven conditions for achieving flow:

Have an objective.
Possess skillfulness.
Measure your level of skill.
Have a destination in mind.
Identify obstacles to surmount.
Identify special skills needed.
Block out distractions.

Several strategies can help you achieve flow more easily.

Strategy 1: Choose a task with a suitable difficulty level.

Strategy 2: Be clear about the goal you want to achieve.

Strategy 3: Focus on a task.

We often think that combining tasks will save us time, but scientific evidence shows that it has the opposite effect. ~ Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

We can learn valuable lessons on long and healthy living from supercentenarians

Don't live afraid of when you'll die, be too busy living a healthy and productive life to worry about that. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

As much as possible, try to avoid things that negatively affect your health. This will sometimes mean detaching yourself from some modern world practices and embracing ancient wisdom like the ikigai concept.

The Okinawa diet is rich in antioxidants, and the residents make regular body movements a priority

People rarely die of cardiovascular diseases in Okinawa, Japan, and diet plus regular exercises certainly have a lot to do with it:

They eat lots of vegetables.
Fruit and other greens are served at least five times daily.
Their diet fundamentally contains grain.
The only sugar they consume is cane sugar.
Their salt intake is very low, half of what those in other Japanese areas consume.
Their calorie consumption is low.

Here are some foods that Okinawans eat to stay healthy and live long: tofu, carrots, goya (bitter melon), cabbage, nori (seaweed), onion, soy sprouts, soybeans (boiled or raw), sweet potato, peppers, sanpin–cha (jasmine tea).

A diet that is rich in antioxidants contributes to the longevity of life. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

Yoga — originally from India, though very popular in Japan — and China’s qigong and tai chi, among other disciplines, aim to create harmony between a person’s body and mind so they can face the world with strength, serenity, and joy.

Tai chi increases blood circulation, slows the progression of some diseases, and helps make your muscles flexible. It helps you relieve stress and feel less depressed. It is suitable for people of all ages, especially older people who may not be able to lift weights anymore.

Learn how to bounce back and benefit from adversity to overcome the aging effects of stress and worry

Resilience is about bouncing back after a fall to do what makes your life meaningful. Never give in to challenges that seek to discourage you by staying flexible and focused on why you do the things you do. Change the things you can, but do not allow the things you can’t change to change you.

Train your mind, emotions, and body to be able to confront life’s hurdles. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

Here's a simple exercise to cultivate resilience: Ask yourself what the worst–case scenario is in any given situation, then train yourself to react to this worst–case scenario if it happens.

Meditation is another practice that will enable you to build resilience in your daily life. It will help you to live in the present and acknowledge the impermanence of things.

An antifragile person benefits from disorder instead of simply bouncing back to a former state. ~ Francesc Miralles, Hector Garcia

To become more antifragile, do the following:

Be proactive. Have multiple streams of income.
Make new friends and pick up new interests.
Don't let life take you by surprise if you can prevent it.
Go all–in with certain things and spread out your investment in others.
Do away with things that make you fragile.

Conclusion

Life is imperfect, but we can learn to do what we love, what we are good at, what the world needs, and what is rewarding as we work through the imperfection. Doing what is meaningful to us can be a great antidote to despair.

The ten rules of ikigai from the wisdom of the long–living residents of Ogimi summarize these clues:

Keep doing things of value that shape the world around you till you die.
Stop living on the fast lane to enjoy a better quality of life.
Eat a little less than your hunger demands.
Keep friends you can share your worries and good stories with.
Exercise to release hormones that make you happy.
Smile often. It wins you more friends and helps you see a world full of possibilities.
Connect with nature to recharge your batteries.
Maintain an attitude of gratitude.
Make every day count and leave the past in the past.
Discover the passion inside you, which gives meaning to your days.

Try this

Take some time to find and connect the things you love to do, the things you are good at, what the world needs, and what you are paid to do. Aligning your purpose is a good way to achieve a fulfilled life.