Notes from the book-The IKIGAI Journey

The shinkansen effect:

You go through a lot of personal changes. Some involve small improvements such as getting rid of bad habits. Others are so radical that they practically change your life completely. From the Shinkansen effect, you can learn how to make small changes in your life in order to improve it. But if you want a more radical change, you must change everything from beginning to end. Easier said than done, right? It’s hard to change what we’re already doing. It’s even harder when those actions produce even the smallest positive result. Applying the Shinkansen effect can be difficult. It involves a mental shift that forces you to accept change. There are a few steps that can help you apply it more easily. First, identify an area in your life that needs some improvement. Then, examine the problem and figure out what habits you need to change in order to achieve the desired outcome.?

It is essential to accept the passage of time as an opportunity if we want to be happy and pursue our goals.

It is important to understand that Our reason for being is not the same at the age of fifteen as it is at seventy.?

Essentially we all drive with words, it is important to practice a few words in life in order to thrive. One such word is Ganbarimasu which could mean “Come on!”, “Let’s GO!”, “Go for it!”, “Never Give Up”,”I will do my best”?

The path of least resistance- having objectives that are easily achievable.

If we want to Better ourselves we have to fight against complacency and lack of vision.

Mikawa's secret- If you want to make an incremental change, you need not think revolutionary. You just need to improve on what you have. But if you want to make a revolutionary change, you need to build from scratch, start afresh and think in a new way.

If you ever feel getting comfortable with change and your goals. Aim twice and increase your objective to a potential where you need to start afresh and think in a new way.

"If you have an objective you think you are going to reach in ten years, the best strategy to make it happen is to think about how you can manage to reach the same objective in one year."

What would be a goal that seems impossible to achieve?

The first step to achieving a personal milestone is as simple as writing it down

Write, What will you do, how you will do it when you will do it.

Life above imagination:

Our life is full of mountains we believe to be forbidden or that we feel incapable of climbing, but the fog that prevents us from seeing the ahead is usually on the lens through which we are viewing it.

We have to wipe our gaze clean of "impossibilities," as we would a steamed-up window, before setting off on our way to the summit. Because the impossible is, in reality, a mental label, a deceptive filter before our eyes.

Over the course of a lifetime, there are many things we irrationally feel unable to carry out since just thinking about them makes us feel terrifyingly dizzy. We go along mentally building many of these walls and when they finally tumble, we cannot believe they ever caused us so much fear, paralysis, and frustration in our life. Make a note of things you think you can't do.

Persevering even in simple goals leads to achieving great personal milestones. Stretch and expand my stubbornness/objective as far as possible. Before accelerating our journey, it is important to be clear on what our final destination is and at which station we will need to call.

"Patience without action leads to a passive life. Patience with perseverance leads us to fulfil our goals."

Intensive practice may not lead to success if we do not develop an opportunity recognizing process, once we have achieved mastery.

Habits and life:

Habits help us to automatize tasks without constantly having to make decisions. If we had to think about every single move we make during the day, we would end up exhausted. Automate your life and save space in your brain for recreation.

"Happiness is the desire to repeat."

"Habits are the subconscious options and invisible decisions that surround us on a daily basis". Any new habit begins as a choice, and at the end of this period of repetition, the new habit becomes an automatic pattern.

Up to forty percent of the decisions we make throughout the day are routines that our brain recreates repeatedly, and in some cases have been doing for years. They have not meditated acts. If we identify the ones that harm us, replace them with positive ones and make an effort to instill the new habit for twenty-one days, our life will take an almost miraculously qualitative leap forward.

Wise with advice:

Often, when we see something in another person's life that's not working, we feel tempted to give our opinion, even though we haven't been asked for it. In most cases, all our initiative does is cause the other person stress, since if they had wanted our advice, they would have asked for it. What's more, this unsolicited feedback may be perceived as criticism, putting the other person on the defensive and possibly generating resentment.

Take negative feedback from the right people. The key to getting useful feedback is to ask specific questions.

The following three questions can be an excellent way of asking others for feedback. The objective of these questions invite a fearless, honest response. They are: what should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? What should I start doing?

To get the most out of practicing any discipline, we need to explore territories outside of our comfort zone.

The best creations emerge when you stop the constant analysis and self-criticism.?

The thirteen virtues of Benjamin Franklin-?

Temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility.

Shinkansen session:

Time is devoted exclusively to a well-defined, ambitious objective for a continuous period of time, consisting of many hours or even several days avoiding all distractions. Ideally, it will be carried out in a place removed from typical everyday lapses of concentration and distractions. The objective is to achieve a qualitative leap forward.

Discomforting comfort zone:

We must be aware that we will leave our comfort zone, which will cause us uncertainty, but the new horizons that await us are worth being brave about.

Our comfort zone is the place or situation where we feel comfortable because we find ourselves in a well-known environment where we can use our habitual responses, with no need to improvise new solutions or face up to the anxiety of change.

Challenging our comfort zone is something that comes naturally and instinctively from the moment of birth. It allows us to grow, learn and mature. Children are always venturing into the unknown until they become adults.

The trouble is that at that point we discover we are vulnerable. We become aware that we have things to lose and that we can get hurt. We stay where we are comfortable. We become like the fabled frog who stays in the pot because, as he becomes accustomed to the slowly rising temperatures, he remains unaware of the danger he's in, and is boiled to death.

Time management:

If you don't have good time management. It would lead to inefficient management of finances since time and money are closely linked. To give a very simple example, if you do not do the shopping in time at the supermarket which has the best offers, you will have to go to the convenience store the last thing at night and pay much more.

We often have so many things to do that we do not know where to start, and this results in our having a mental block and not carrying out any task at all. Either that or we devote ourselves to something that really is not important because we think it is urgent.

To better organize our weekly schedule, we need to have a clear idea of which tasks are pressing and, once dealt with, will allow us to enjoy the weekend without feeling guilty and to sleep at night without getting up stressed in the morning.

The objective is to avoid always being behind schedule, so we can act a little like humans from time to time go to the movies, read a novel purely for pleasure and enjoy otherworldly entertainments.

"Divide your life into ten-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible to meaningless activity"- Ingvar Kamprad.

The Pomodoro Technique:

A very efficient way of improving your performance and finishing things on time is the so-called POMODORO TECHNIQUE:

1. Divide the time allocated to work into unbroken (distraction-free) 25-minute periods. 2. Take a 5-minute break after every 25 minutes of work.

3. After four "Pomodoros" are reached, we may reward ourselves with a longer break of 15 minutes.

Pareto rule and Parkinson's law.

Pareto rule:

A simple concept that 80% of the positive effects in life/business are the result of 20% of highly effective actions and that 80% of the problems you deal with are due to 20% of your bad habits or painful people/clients you're working with.

"Do more of what works and less of what doesn't work."

Parkinson’s law:?

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Words are miraculous:

Our memories are stored in some corner of our inner being, we have to use the right words to evoke hidden memories and connect ideas, they are like springs opening up new universes.?

Words are spells with the power to Activate memories and neural patterns to make us more creative. Thay makes it more important to become aware of the power of words.

In much the same way that history is written by the victors, each person may interpret their own past positively if they master themselves. Diving into our origins enables us to bring our essence and our creativity to the present to build a future that is full of possibilities.

Beauty always wins. It survives the passing of time. That is why it is worthwhile hanging onto the beautiful things in our life.

Roots in the past:

For complete self-fulfillment, it is also important to be on good terms with our past. We have all come out of bad relationships, or misguided work situations or projects that were of no use to us, feeling they had been a waste of time. But we may also choose to think that they did in fact have meaning and that these apparently negative experiences taught us important lessons for our personal growth.

What we were passionate about as children contains a lot of clues about who we really are, about our ikigai, and our potential as human beings.

A child's mind is free of the bonds imposed by the pressure we see ourselves subjected to once we join the adult society. This free spirit is a Powerful trigger for creativity.

"If we want things to stay as they are, things have to change"

Time has its own course:

Human beings are always caught up in the balancing act of the inner conflict of wanting both freedom and control at the same time. If there is great uncertainty, we get stressed, but when faced with an excess of control, we feel oppressed and want to escape from our routine.

Traveling with a perfect plan is like seeing a movie when you have already read about exactly what is going to happen in each scene. If you wish to embrace adventure and discover new things, buy your plane tickets, book a room for the first night and let yourself be led by your instinct.

Be patient and allow things to happen in their own good time, without forcing them: "The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will."

? Persevere and work every day so that what requires a big

effort of us today will later become fluid and natural response. Practicing kaizen makes that possible. Be humble and learn that in order to improve, you must first fail.

? Be flexible and allow your hands to grasp without strangling and your mind to think without getting obsessed.

All learning and evolution bring with it a change that will force us to see the world from a point of view.

If it's neither truthful, kind nor necessary, it would be best if we consign it to oblivion.

Thanks for reading!