Find Your Ikigai: The Key to Purpose, Flow, and Long-Lasting Happiness
The happiest, longest-living people all share one thing: they know their ikigai
What gets you out of bed in the morning? Not because you have to but because you want to. In Japan, they have a word for this: ikigai. It’s not just about passion or purpose. It’s deeper than that. It’s the thing that makes life worth living. It’s what gives your days meaning. And if we believe the research, it might just be the key to a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life.
Héctor García and Francesc Miralles spent years studying ikigai and found that the longest-living people in the world—many from the Okinawan village of Ogimi—have one thing in common: they all know their ikigai. They wake up every morning with a reason to keep going. For some, it’s their garden. For others, it’s their art or their community. They are engaged in life, and that engagement keeps them moving forward. As Garcia puts it, “Our ikigai is different for all of us, but one thing we have in common is that we are all searching for meaning.”
This is not just an idea for the elderly. It applies to all of us. Studies show that people who work for something beyond a paycheck—something that gives them a sense of purpose—are healthier, more resilient, and even live longer. Viktor Frankl, the renowned psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, put it this way: “Man is originally characterized by his ‘search for meaning’ rather than his ‘search for himself.’ The more he forgets himself—giving himself to a cause or another person—the more human he is.”
Think about that. The happiest, most fulfilled people are not those who obsess over themselves but those who give themselves fully to something bigger. They don’t just do work; they become the work. They don’t just exist; they engage with life. They are not chasing happiness—it is a byproduct of their devotion to something meaningful.
A story from Ikigai illustrates this perfectly. In Ogimi, an elderly fisherman wakes up every morning before sunrise to go out to sea. He does not do this for money; he does it because it is his way of life. The rhythm of the ocean, the pull of the net, the satisfaction of the work—it all connects him to something deeper. He is in what psychologists call a flow state—that place where time disappears, and you are completely immersed in what you are doing. As Garcia says, “The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow.”
Most of us don’t live in a quiet Japanese village. We are bombarded by distractions, overwhelmed by obligations, and exhausted by the demands of modern life. But ikigai is still within reach. It’s not about making a radical change overnight. It starts with small steps—paying attention to what excites you, what absorbs you, and what makes you forget time. It’s about leaning into those things and making them a bigger part of your life.
Frankl once said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.” You don’t have to move to Okinawa or abandon your job to find meaning. You just have to look closer at what brings you joy, at what makes time disappear. Then, do more of it.
So ask yourself: What is your ikigai? What makes you feel alive? And if you don’t know the answer yet, start looking. Share this with someone who might need it. Because in a world full of distractions and anxieties, the search for meaning is one of the few things truly worth pursuing.