Happiness

Ikigai

Walk slowly, and you’ll go far.

—Okinawan Proverb

Friends,

Although we’ve discussed it before, we can’t talk about happiness without talking about Ikigai.

At its core, Ikigai is about finding joy. It’s about peeling back the potentially distracting or pointless elements of life, and finding your deepest happiness.

It’s easy to get lost in the idea that happiness is discovered in finding your one true purpose—like if we find our true calling we’ll finally be happy. There can be a lot of disappointment waiting for us in that line of thinking, according to Ikigai.

Rather, happiness through the lens of Ikigai is about finding things that we love so much, we can do them endlessly and they’ll give us more energy.

When we find a way to support ourselves off of this work, we’re able to fill our day with tasks we enjoy and which have personal meaning. More than anything else, this sense of purpose leads to an alignment of life that effects all other aspects.

What I mean is, when you have somethin…