#325: What Is Your Real Reason to Get Up in the Morning?

When researchers travel to Japan and ask those older Okinawans what it was that got them up in the morning, almost every single one of them could answer that question without hesitation, without pausing to think about it, immediately.

That is what Ikigai means, by the way, if this is your first time here.

It is a Japanese concept, and it is often translated as your reason for being or, quite simply, your reason to get up in the morning.

So here's a question I want to ask you today, and I want you to answer it as honestly as you can.

What is your reason to get up in the morning? Now, do not answer too quickly because most of us have an answer ready, and I want you to notice what kind of answer it is.

Because when I ask this of the women I work with, what usually comes back first is a list.

The children need to go to school.

There is a meeting at 9:00.

The dog needs walking.

My mother is expecting a call.

Someone has to do the groceries.

And every one of those things is real and needed, and every one of them matters.

I'm not diminishing them at all.

But do you hear what they all have in common? They are all reasons you have to get up.

They are obligations and duties and people relying on you, and they are the reason your feet hit the floor, whether you want them to or not.

That is not the same question.

The question is what your reason to get up is, not what pulls you out of bed by the collar, but what makes you want to be awake.

What is yours and yours alone that has nothing to do with anybody else needing anything from you? And I know that is a much harder question to answer, and I know because I have sat with many women in this exact place who, when asked that question, had very little idea what would help them jump out of bed in the morning with excitement.

They were able to list 20 obligations without pausing for a breath, but the more difficult question is the one I want to focus on today.

If that is you today, I want you to know that this is not a failure of imagination, and it is certainly not a character flaw.

It is what happens when a woman spends 20 or 30 years being available to everybody around her, and the obligations expand until they fill the whole morning, and the thing that was hers quietly gets edged out of the day altogether.

Here is the part I really love and the reason I really keep coming back to those Okinawans as well as other people in other Blue Zones around the world.

Their answers were much simpler, like tending a garden or teaching a craft to someone younger or caring for a grandchild, taking part in a community group circle.

Not one of them said they were building something enormous or changing the world or reinventing themselves at 90.

Their reasons to rise were small and ordinary and completely theirs.