I have just finished reading the book The Ikigai Method by the Spaniards Héctor Rodriguez and Francesc Miralles. This is a book that I would have loved to have read years ago since it summarizes, in a super entertaining and educational way, the best practices to achieve a life purpose according to Japanese culture.
THE 35 SEASONS
To achieve Ikigai or life purpose, the authors recommend starting with one of the following steps, each linked to some aspect of Japanese culture and tradition.
- If you aspire to improve 10%, consider what you need to do to improve 100% (gambarimasu)
- Include at least one impossible in your daily agenda (Shinkansen effect or bullet train)
- Practice patience and perseverance in what you have set out to do.
- Dedicate 21 days to implementing a new positive habit.
- Ask people you trust for feedback about what you are doing.
- Find a mentor who can guide you in your passion.
- Imitate and improve what you like for your own project.
- Identify what you don't like to discover, by elimination, what you like.
- Each week develop a virtue that you want to enhance.
- Share your passion with like-minded people to learn and improve together.
- Get out of your comfort zone and explore new territories.
- Prioritize what is important ahead of what is urgent.
- Set aside what is neither essential nor profitable in your life.
- Name your project with a name that moves you to action.
- Recover the values and dreams of your childhood.
- Evoke the “greatest successes” of your life to motivate yourself.
- Recognize your top-level friends and give them the attention they deserve.
- Connect the dots of your past to understand your present.
- Establish a schedule free of screens and virtual life.
- Bring the “slow life” to your meals and leisure time.
- Do one thing at a time, without dispersing yourself.
- Write something personal for at least 5 minutes every day.
- Get started in the art of haiku to know your emotions.
- Make the crucial decisions you need at this moment in your existence.
- 'Consult with your pillow', the questions for which you still do not have answers.
- It flows drawing the ENSO circle.
- Solve one koan each week.
- Exercise in mindfulness in your daily activities.
- Let yourself be carried away by serendipity and other coincidences of life.
- Perform one act of free kindness each day.
- Hug your loved ones often.
- Travel without a destination from time to time and let yourself be surprised.
- Incorporate kaizen into your ikigai development.
- Always direct the arrow of improvement at yourself.
- Stay away from sources of negativity.
