Lost in Translation
I am a huge fan of personal development. There are several amazing concepts that can allow us to be a lot more whole in the way we approach life. Across the different cultures in this world there is so much that we can learn.
And yet so much of this can be done with well-intentioned people wanting to strip back the essence of something beautiful to make it fit into a mould of their choosing. One of the areas this really dawned on me was the number of posts I saw across my social feeds about ikigai.
By the time I first encountered ikigai, it had been filtered through a slick Western lens. It sat proudly in a glossy infographic of four tidy circles overlapping to form a supposed gateway to fulfilment.
“Find what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for,” it declared
The holy grail of purpose, repackaged for career coaches and digital nomads.
But here’s the problem, that’s not ikigai.
In its original Japanese context, ikigai is quieter, more intimate. A young Japanese lady once shared with me that rather than being seen as some kind of work mantra, ikigai can be the first sip of tea in the morning. Tending to a bonsai. A shared joke with an old friend. It’s not always grand or profitable. It doesn’t demand you monetise your joy or align it with some world-changing mission.
Rooted in Okinawan and wider Japanese cultural traditions, ikigai speaks to a life worth living. It’s about small joys, connection, and the pleasure of simply being. It’s interwoven with a culture that reveres longevity, simplicity, and community, things often missing or repackaged in our hustle-obsessed Western lives.
But like so many imported concepts, ikigai has been stripped of its nuance. We’ve projected our own values onto it. Productivity. Profit. Prestige. And in doing so, we’ve risked flattening something beautifully complex into a self-help cliché.
And ikigai isn’t alone.
Walk with me.
As ideas and traditions travel, they’re often reshaped to fit new worlds. But when the Global North embraces philosophies from elsewhere, it too often does so with selective understanding, turning spiritual tools into commercial products.
Here are a few examples worth exploring.
Yoga.
In its true form, yoga is a philosophy of living, not a boutique workout. Its origins stretch back thousands of years, rooted in Indian traditions that blend ethics, discipline, breath, and meditation into a path of liberation. The postures, aka asana, are just one limb of an eightfold path. The others include yamas (restraints like non-violence and truthfulness), niyamas (observances like contentment and self-discipline), and samadhi, the ultimate goal of spiritual absorption.
But in popular culture, yoga often gets stripped of its ethical spine. We forget that it was never about looking good in leggings or a hemp top. It was about showing up with humility, discipline, and a desire to transcend the ego. We trade sacred Sanskrit for Spotify playlists, ancient wisdom for hot studio marketing.
And yoga isn’t alone.
Mindfulness
It’s hard to escape mindfulness these days. It’s in boardrooms, classrooms, and even mental health apps promising calm in five minutes. But the original Buddhist understanding of mindfulness, or sati, is not just about noticing. It’s about seeing the world clearly, with compassion and detachment. It’s a tool to confront dukkha, the universal truth of suffering, and to understand that suffering arises from craving, clinging, and illusion.
In Buddhist practice, mindfulness helps us see impermanence, question the idea of a fixed self, and slowly loosen our grip on the stories we tell ourselves. It’s not a productivity hack, but rather it’s a pathway to liberation.
Like yoga, mindfulness has been reduced to a technique for stress relief. We've amputated it from its moral and philosophical roots, using it to cope with the very systems that cause suffering instead of questioning those systems at all.
Hygge
And then there’s hygge, that Danish buzzword that took over lifestyle blogs a few winters ago. Picture this: soft blankets, fairy lights, cinnamon buns, and a copy of The Little Book of Hygge tucked on a minimalist shelf.
But to the Danes, hygge is not about shopping for a feeling. It’s about cultivating warmth and connection in the darkest months. It’s about togetherness, shared meals, and conversations with no phones in sight. It’s an antidote to isolation, a quiet resilience, a way of saying, “We’ll get through this, together.”
It’s not a mood board, it’s a cultural practice of survival. And perhaps we could learn more from that than we can from yet another mug of artisan cocoa.
Feng Shui
I can’t be the only one who used to think Feng Shui was about furniture placement. You know move your bed, attract love. Place a plant, welcome money. And while that’s not entirely wrong, it’s a deeply simplified take.
Feng Shui, from ancient Chinese philosophy, is about harmonising human life with the flow of Qi (energy). It weaves together ideas of yin and yang, the five elements, and cosmic directions. It’s not just about where your sofa sits — it’s about how your space supports your spirit. It’s about orientation to nature, the seasons, even the stars.
Feng Shui became a quirky self-help trend. A kind of spiritual interior design, but at its core, it is Taoist cosmology in action, exploring how we live in rhythm with the forces greater than ourselves.
Diaspora Spirituality
Of all the borrowed spiritual systems, perhaps none have been more vilified than those rooted in the African diaspora.
Vodou, born in Haiti, is a sacred fusion of West African spirituality, Catholicism, and Indigenous Caribbean traditions. Practitioners honour lwa, spirits who serve as mediators between the human and the divine. Rituals involve music, possession, drumming, not as spectacle, but as a form of communion, of healing, of connection.
Santería, also known as La Regla de Ocha, combines Yoruba spiritual practices with Catholicism. It was shaped in Cuba and is similarly a syncretic faith that honours orishas, deities representing aspects of life and nature. It’s not superstition. It is structure, devotion and Harmony.
Hoodoo, unlike the other two, is not a religion but a folk practice. A system of root work and conjure developed by enslaved Africans in the American South. It’s about protection, survival, and reclaiming agency in a world designed to crush it.
Yet in films, books, and pop culture, these traditions are painted as dangerous, demonic, exoticised curiosities. Much like Carnivals and other expressions of culture that don’t fit a specific mould, people fear what they don’t understand, or worse, what they’ve chosen not to.
How Did We Get Here?
There are a couple of reasons that come to mind.
Let’s start with capitalism. There is something problematic about a socio-economic system that promotes the concept of every idea being monetised, rebranded and sold back to us. The latest iteration of this system is an emphasis on speed of consumption. Impatience with having to give attention and take time to learn things means we want meaning in bite-sized chunks, not lifelong relationships with practice.
Old imperialist and colonial habits die hard. The conqueror picks what’s useful and exotic and leaves behind the context. From this comes a kind of spiritual bypassing. A religious idealism is posited where people want peace without pain, rituals without roots. But that’s not how real life works.
Borrowing isn’t the problem, but how we borrow is.
When we engage with cultural philosophies, we owe it to the communities they come from and to ourselves to approach them with care. Whether it be the ideas already addressed, Buddhist artefacts around our homes or the latest Ayahuasca retreat. That means asking deeper questions.
What has been lost in translation?
Who benefits from this version of the idea?
How can I practise this with integrity, not entitlement?
Sometimes the most radical act isn’t adopting a practice rather it’s slowing down enough to understand it. Ikigai doesn’t need to be rebranded. It needs to be respected. And so do the many other ideas we borrow, bend, and broadcast in our endless quest for meaning.
If we’re truly seeking wisdom, perhaps we start not with diagrams or downloads, but with deep listening and a little humility. Letting those lessons seep into our personal and professional lives with intent rather than by force.
Further Reading & Listening
Articles by Nick Kemp at ikigaitribe.com
The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thích Nhất Hạnh
Yoga Rising: 30 Empowering Stories from Yoga Renegades for Every Body, edited by Melanie Klein
Embrace Yoga's Roots: Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice Kindle Edition by Susanna Barkataki
The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn by Karen McCarthy Brown
Mojo Workin’ by Katrina Hazzard-Donald
Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Who Owns Culture? by Susan Scafidi
