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22.11.2022

A life with ikigai is a longer life

If you do things in life that you are good at and at same time enjoy, with which you can earn an income and with which you also do a service to humanity, count your blessings. There are so many that you will live longer because of it.

Ikigai
In Japanese culture, a life with ikigai is perhaps the best possible life for a human being on this planet. It is a life in which you at the same time can do something in which you are good at, earn a good income, do something that benefits the world and that you also gives you joy.

If there are activities in your life in which all those four aspects come together, your life has ikigai.

Study
In 2008, epidemiologists at Tohoku University in Japan published a study in which they analyzed data from 43,391 adult and healthy Japanese aged 40-79 years.

In the nineties, the study participants were asked if they had ikigai in their lives. Almost 60 percent had answered 'yes', 37 did not know and almost 5 percent had indicated that they did not experience anything of 'ikigai'.

Subsequently, the researchers had followed the study participants for 7 years. In that period, 3048 study participants died.

Results
The study participants who claimed to have ikigai in their lives were less likely to die than the study participants who had given other answers.

Study participants who did not have ikigai were about 40 percent more likely to suffer than those who did have ikigai. This difference was statistically significant.

The researchers found evidence that ikigai protected against mortality due to cardiovascular causes. Ikigai didn't seem to protect against cancer.

Source:
Psychosom Med. 2008 Jul;70(6):709-15.

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