If you feel something is missing or your life is not moving forward, you're probably lacking ikigai. Ikigai is what keeps us going and motivated in life. But how can we feel it?
Nick shares five ways on how people can feel ikigai.
Hey, it’s Nick Kemp here from ikigaitribe.com
Now, ikigai is something you feel, it’s not something you find, or earn, or search for. It’s something you feel. So here are five ways to feel ikigai:
Life Satisfaction
Seek sensory pleasure in the many activities you do each day. So that could be your morning cup of tea or coffee, or a meal – really be present and enjoy the sensations of eating, drinking, going outside, and feeling the sunrise on your skin.
Or even feeling the drops of rain hit your body could be one way to experience the feeling of ikigai.
Connect with others
You often feel ikigai through intimacy. There are many types of intimacy: emotional, intellectual, experiential, spiritual, creative, and physical. So connect with someone you love, talk to them, listen to them, share your thoughts, hug them, and help them – you’re sure to feel ikigai.
Purpose
Work with a sense of purpose. That can be in a professional context or even through your hobbies. So take great care in what you do. Probably the secret to ikigai is to focus on the small stuff and do it with great care.
Flow
Try to reach a flow state. Now, flow gets thrown around quite a bit but a flow state is where there is a challenge to be met and you have the skills to make that challenge. So you will need to define the challenge, make time for it, and then really focus on it and use your skills to make that challenge.
Then when you do reach that flow, of course we all know what that feels like – you lose track of time, you feel like you’re doing your best work, and that is an ikigai-kan state.
Self-actualise
How do you do that? It really is just expressing your unique self – so it’s expressing your creativity. Of course there are many ways to do that: you can do it in a creative pursuit, you could do it in a professional context, or you can just do that in your roles.Your roles as a parent, a partner, a friend. So express your unique self.
So that’s it – five ways for you to feel ikigai: life satisfaction, connecting with others, having a sense of purpose, reaching a state of flow, and self actualizing by expressing your unique, creative self.