Francesc Miralles, ikigai expert: “I give you 4 steps to discover your purpose and fill your life with happiness”

The writer and personal development and spirituality expert Francesc Miralles participated on Friday in the TELVA International Congress: the challenge of living 100 years. She is one of the people who knows the most about the ikigaithat Japanese word that contains the secret of long, young and happy life. According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai, a reason for existing. The inhabitants of the okinawa island, one of the blue zones on the planet with the most centenarians in the world, are a reference to understand what ikigai is. After traveling to Japan a year ago to understand it first-hand, Francesc Miralles and Héctor García wrote the book Ikigai (Uranus, 2016). In addition to being received by the mayor of Ogimi (Okinawa), they interviewed more than a hundred of its inhabitants. This is what he told us in his speech in Congress.

4 steps to find your purpose in life or ikigai according to Francesc Miralles

“Ikigai means life purposereason for being or, what is the same, having a reason to get out of bed“. Francecs Miralles explained that “having a clear and defined ikigai gives you satisfaction, happiness and meaning to life“. Furthermore, it is an important indicator of the longevity, hence the importance of finding ours. As? “It’s about finding something that makes us feel proud of ourselves and meaning to our lives,” he explains. On the one hand, “everyone has something you are passionate about in life. You just have to pay attention to the signs, listen to yourself, do a little introspection and follow the path,” explains Francesc Miralles. A simple way to do it is work with the 4 circles of ikigai. Each one answers a vital question:

1. What do you love to do? What you would like to do always responds to your passion. Ask yourself: what do you like to do? “It is usually an activity in which you usually experience the flow state“, he adds. “If what you love to do is the same as what you are good at, you already have a passion.”
2. What are you good at and easy to do? talk about you vocation. What you are good at doing, your talent, your gift. “In Spain we are very modest and it is difficult for us to recognize what we do well.” And he adds: “If you don’t know what you’re good at, ask your childhood friends to help you discover it,” says Miralles.
3. What do you think the world needs from you? Respond to your mission. If what you can contribute to the world coincides with what you are good at and what you are passionate about, we are closer to ikigai.
4. Why would other people pay you? It will be you profession. Lastly, power make a living doing that, is the piece that closes the perfect circle of ikigai. “If you add that you can make a living from it and the world needs it, we have ikigai,” says Francesc Miralles.