In this video, Jürgen Hoyer explores the similarities between Ikigai and Behavioral Activation, focusing on the importance of starting small. Both approaches emphasize beginning with small, achievable steps, which lead to success, increased motivation, and steady progress. Learn how taking these small actions can help you find purpose and improve your well-being over time.
Starting small sets you up for success
Nick: I guess now we could touch on perhaps some of the similarities you uncovered between behavioral activation and ikigai, and maybe even some of the differences might help. So who would like to touch on that?
Jürgen: It's really striking the idea with the small steps, and the idea of starting small. This is so central to behavioral therapy. It's the basic idea of behavior therapy since decades, and that comes out of this experience, because the logic is quite clear—if you start small, you will start successfully. You will start with a success. If you start large, you take the risk of failing, and it will not motivate you.
So the experience that something works and you can do it, that's really motivating, and that's even increasing motivation, and then you can start doing it better next time, or larger or whatever. But that's the way you get things, or brings things motivationally into life. And so that seems to be a basic principle.
And in my experience as a therapist, I've always been using this, and it's paradoxically, I mean, I remember having treated a manager from a German company, and his goal was to become the CEO of that company.
I guess the company is so large it's maybe even well known abroad. But then I told him the logic of starting small because he was depressed severely after having had to undergo brain tumor surgery, and it was not realistic to still come what he wanted before. And so I told him the logic of taking on small steps, and I was afraid that he would be like disappointed.
So the expectation to therapists is that they're more wise than you are, they have the overall sensational solution, maybe. And I'm a professor, so I told him, well, I don't have any sensational solution at all. I have the most mundane solution, which is, start small, start with small steps.
And, well, we had a sensational success in that kind of therapy. He stopped his career, actually. In other words, he found his ikigai. He moved completely out of office, changed the office, and began a different thing. I asked him, ‘What are the things that you really would like to do, given that you cannot become the CEO?’ And he said, ‘Well, actually, I really love hunting, being out, being out in the woods.’ He did, among other things.
And well, that's, I guess, is a similarity. And I guess that's something that is global wisdom. If you want to restart your life, you cannot start large. In rehabilitation treatment, I mean, you had a broken leg. And yeah, you start small, taking the first step again, it's a great experience.
It signals you're on the right track. And, I mean, that's something that people are checking constantly. That's how self regulation works: we're always checking, are we on the right track? And if you take on small steps, this checking process is easier, and the feedback from the checking process will more often be ‘Yes, you are. You can do that. You're not failing. Go on. How does that feel? It feels good.’ So that's one similarity.