‘Ikigai’ replacing ‘hygge’ as popular lifestyle trend
For the past couple of years, the Danish lifestyle trend of hygge — which generally gets translated into English as “coziness” — was touted as the lifestyle trend to follow.
But the idea of wrapping oneself up in big knit blankets and bingeeating pastries might not fix all the woes in the world.
As another alternative, the secret to happiness may lie in what the Japanese call “ikigai,” reports Country Living.
The concept — merging two Japanese words: iki, which means “life” and gai, or “value or worth” — essentially stands for finding one’s purpose in life.
“Ikigai can be translated as ‘a reason for being’ — the thing that gets you out of bed each morning,” Héctor García, co-author of Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, wrote in The Guardian.
Outlining this in diagram form, ikigai is reached at the intersection of these four ideas:
What you love
What you’re good at
What the world needs What you can be paid for (For people who have retired, “what you can be paid for” can be removed and ikigai achieved from the remaining three elements.)
Recognizing one’s ikigai can also be as simple as taking moments throughout the day to ponder: “Why are you doing this?”
As Garcia told The Independent: “Have you ever been so absorbed in a task that you forget to drink and eat? What type of task was it?
“Notice those moments when you enter (a state of ) ‘flow,’ and your ikigai might be embedded in those moments. When we enter (flow), we lose the sense of time passing.”