Posted by Click here to get a free newsletter Zen and a Way of sustainable prosperity: Balance, financial success, and sustainability with the secrets of the Japanese Omi-merchants.
Playing Shogi with my son is hygge and Ikigai for me. We have an antique Shogi board that the Omi-merchant who had lived here left us, and it adds the excitement.
In the last post, I discussed how the dedication seen in Japanese craftsmanship can be the cause of our workaholic culture, but I was going to talk about our mental strength to feel happy regardless of our circumstance could be the cause of unhappiness seen in Japan, wasn’t I? Although these two elements are related, I kind of drifted away from the topic. I am sorry.
Today, I will explain how it can be. First of all, I value this skill to feel happy regardless of the circumstance you are in. We do teach it in ZENWSP, too. We encourage you to appreciate what you have and feel happy about your present moment and that is the key to attracting abundance in your life. I wrote about it in Chapter 12: The Key to Manifestation Is Successfully Dealing With Your Past Experiences.
Therefore I support this concept if you want to apply it in a personal level. Nevertheless, in a social level, it is a different story. Japan is a nation which takes advantage of this skill. The government doesn’t try to change anything because it relies on people to put up with the situation, companies don’t reform their system by relying on their employees to feel happy about it, cult organizations use this concept to brainwash the followers to accept contradictions existing in the organizations.
We don’t complain enough. It is good to be happy about the circumstance you are in, but we can assertively complain about the situation and express our wishes.
The concept of Sanpo-Yoshi is that you want to make yourself happy, too. It is okay for us to relax and not work so hard. It is okay for us to be lazy and get up late, provided that others are happy with it. And others will be happy even if we don’t work so hard to tape the bag when the customers buy things at stores and many other “services” which aren’t really necessary. I would rather see the same kind of dedication into changing the system and making sure whether everything we do is being Sanpo-Yoshi.
This is my Ikigai to change our country to be a happy place and the world to be a paradise, so I wrote a new book called IKIGAI BUSINESS: The Secret of Japanese Omi Merchants to Find a Profitable, Meaningful, and Socially friendly Business. It will be sold at Amazon later today.
By the way, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life was very good. I recommend it highly. Many things mentioned in the book are useful for your happiness and longevity. To be honest with you, I did try to connect these posts to my book so I deliberately became a little over critical of some points to draw attentions.
Omi-merchant's way of Sustainable Prosperity 