Ikigai : the Japanese secret to a long and happy life pdfdrive com

An ode to longevity

During our stay in Ogimi, the village that holds the Guinness record for longevity, a woman who was about to turn 100 years old sang the following song for us in a mixture of Japanese and the local dialect:
To keep healthy and have a long life, eat just a little of everything with relish, go to bed early, get up early, and then go out for a walk. We live each day with serenity and we enjoy the journey. To keep healthy and have a long life, we get on well with all of our friends. Spring, summer, fall, winter, we happily enjoy all the seasons.
The secret is to not get distracted by how old the fingers are;
The secret is to not get distracted by how old the fingers are; from the fingers to the head and back once again.
If you keep moving with your fingers working, 100 years will come to you.*
We can now use our fingers to turn the page to the next chapter, where we will look at the close relationship between longevity and discovering our life’s mission.

III

FROM LOGOTHERAPY TO IKIGAI

How to live longer and better by finding your purpose

What is logotherapy?
A colleague once asked Viktor Frankl to define his school of psychology in a single phrase, to which Frankl replied, “Well, in logotherapy the patient sits up straight and has to listen to things that are, on occasion, hard to hear.” The colleague had just described psychoanalysis to him in the following terms: “In psychoanalysis, the patient lies down on a couch and tells you things that are, on occasion, hard to say.”
Frankl explains that one of the first questions he would ask his patients was “Why do you not commit suicide?” Usually the patient found good reasons not to, and was able to carry on. What, then, does logotherapy do? ¹
The answer is pretty clear: It helps you find reasons to live.
L ogotherapy pushes patients to consciously discover their life’s purpose in order to confront their neuroses. Their quest to fulfill their destiny then motivates them to press forward, breaking the mental chains of the past and overcoming whatever obstacles they encounter along the way.