Active mind, youthful body

Another lesson that I had learnt from Ikigai was that if our mind remains active, then our body would react to the activities of our brain and it would remain healthy, youthful, and beautiful.

In my professional life I had met several people who had been doing the same job for a several years which they did not enjoy. Being stuck in a monotonous job did not give them any inspiration or enthusiasm. Being stuck in such a boring job led to unhappines in their lives. This unhappines was stealing them of their health, beauty, and youth. If we apply the principles of Ikigai here we can say that their minds remained in active leading to their unhealthy bodies.

Now let's see if we can apply the principles of Ikigai in our real life. Can we always get a job which we love everyday? Not really. Can we find a way to keep our minds active? Absolutely.

How to keep our minds active? There are multiple ways for it.
Are you interested in drawing and painting? Then go ahead, grab a paper, draw, paint, and do it to keep your mind active.
Do you like to play a musical instrument? It is one of the best ways to keep our minds active. Playing a musical instrument does also improve our motor coordination. Also music is a complete sensory experience which will please not only you but people around you (provided you know how to play the instrument). It could also be therapeutic.
Another way to keep our minds active could be found the most easily - puzzles. Crossword, Sudoku, number game, word search, Mahjong - these are some of the examples of games for puzzles that use creativity and thinking. These puzzles make us think and keep our mind active.

A lot of people say that though they intend to solve Sudoku or crossword or paint, they are not good at it. The reality is no one is good at them at the beginning. As we keep doing these activities again and again, we start getting better at games or activities. I know the cliché of 'practice makes a man perfect', yet we cannot deny that it is real.

Let me share something from my own personal life. Once I downloaded a word game on my phone. I used to play it while commuting to my work. This game required forming different words from the alphabets that had been provided. After completion of every world we would get to the next level of words where making word would be more difficult.

I would not say that I had been obsessed with this game however I used to play it everyday for almost a month. I used to play it roughly for a 20 or 30 minutes. Towards the end of 20 day of playing the game I had become a pro at it. I would see the alphabets and I would get the word within seconds. The challenge had started becoming easier for me. Yet even today in any newspaper or magazine if I see a crossword or a word game I go ahead and play it. The dopamine boost after completion of the game is worth the efforts.

Recently I have taken up a new hobby of doodling and I am trying to master it. I have not yet learned various techniques of doodling but I am still learning them and this is how I am keeping my mind active.

I hope this chapter inspires you to resume or learn hobbies that would keep your mind active.