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

IX

RESILIENCE AND WABI-SABI

How to face life’s challenges without letting stress and worry age you

What is resilience?
One thing that everyone with a clearly defined ikigai has in common is that they pursue their passion no matter what. They never give up, even when the cards seem stacked against them or they face one hurdle after another.
We’re talking about resilience, a concept that has become influential among psychologists.
But resilience isn’t just the ability to persevere. As we’ll see in this chapter, it is also an outlook we can cultivate to stay focused on the important things in life rather than what is most urgent, and to keep ourselves from being carried away by negative emotions.
In the final section of the chapter, we’ll explore techniques that go beyond resilience to cultivate antifragility.
Sooner or later, we all have to face difficult moments, and the way we do this can make a huge difference to our quality of life. Proper training for our mind, body, and emotional resilience is essential for confronting life’s ups and downs.
Nana korobi ya oki 七転び八起き
Fall seven times, rise eight.
—Japanese proverb
Resilience is our ability to deal with setbacks. The more resilient we are, the easier it will be to pick ourselves up and get back to what gives meaning to our lives.
Resilient people know how to stay focused on their objectives, on what matters, without giving in to discouragement. Their flexibility is the source of their strength: They know how to adapt to change and to reversals of fortune. They concentrate on the things they can control and don’t worry about those they can’t.
In the words of the famous Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr:
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
the one from the other.