To find this reason or purpose, experts recommend starting with four questions:
- What do you love?
- What are you good at?
- What does the world need from you?
- What can you get paid for?
Finding the answers and a balance between these four areas could be a route to ikigai for Westerners looking for a quick interpretation of this philosophy. But in Japan, ikigai is a slower process and often has nothing to do with work or income.
In a 2010 survey of 2,000 Japanese men and women, just 31% of participants cited work as their ikigai."
| | Is this Japanese concept the secret to a long, happy, meaningful life?Finding your everyday reason for living, or ikigai, could lead to a longer and better life. |
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Seneca on Grief and the Key to Resilience in the Face of Loss: An Extraordinary Letter to His Mother
"Fortune … falls heavily on those to whom she is unexpected; the man who is always expecting her easily withstands her. For an enemy’s arrival too scatters those whom it catches off guard; but those who have prepared in advance for the coming conflict, being properly drawn up and equipped, easily withstand the first onslaught, which is the most violent. Never have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me — money, public office, influence — I relegated to a place whence she could claim them back without bothering me. I kept a wide gap between them and me, with the result that she has taken them away, not torn them away."
| | Seneca on Grief and the Key to Resilience in the Face of Loss: An Extrao...Maria Popova “All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched.” |
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End of Apartheid in South Africa? Not in Economic Terms
"Political liberation has yet to translate into material gains for
blacks. As one woman said, “I’ve gone from a shack to a shack.”
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