Ikigai Spotlight Series: Tom Frengos, Writer and Coach Based in Fukuoka, Japan

On the Power of Ma

Ikigai is a concept that is very much integral to Japanese culture. The word 'Ikigai' can be roughly translated to your 'reason for being', or purpose and is not confined to the ‘Venn Diagram’. More on its authentic definition can be explored here.

While Ikigai is essential to one's well-being, the true beauty is that it does not have a fixed equation and can change over time.

At Mogami, we would like to highlight this nuance with our 'Ikigai Spotlight Series'.

This month’s featured guest is Tom Frengos, a writer and coach — though that’s only one facet of his identity. In our conversation, we explore cross-cultural identities, the pursuit of authenticity, and the role of Ma in cultivating both calm and innovation — and how each of these can open pathways to new or even multiple ikigai.

Could you start by telling us about yourself?

I'm a Canadian based in Fukuoka, which is on the island of Kyushu, in Japan. Not many people really know much about where Fukuoka is. It's very famous for its food, like motsunabe (a traditional hot pot dish), Hakata ramen, strawberries, and its nature. It's a very comfortable place to live in. There is a lot of space here in Fukuoka, which I love.

Currently, I am coaching people in the areas of wellbeing and cultural intelligence. I am also writing books related to wellbeing from a Japanese culture perspective. I recently published a book called Fifteen Pauses: The Life-Changing Silence and Stillness of Japanese Ma¹, which explores the concept of Ma and how we need the pause for our relationships, our work, and wellbeing. I also wrote a chapter in 2018 called Mirror Mirror: What Culture Am I?² (in the academic book Intercultural Mirrors by Patron, M., & Kraven, J), which explores how we navigate our cross-cultural identities by drawing from philosophy like existentialism, yin-yang, and wabi sabi.

So when I talk about the work I do, people might assume that I am just a writer and a coach. But I feel I am more than that. It's because I’ve done many different things in my life. I worked six years in the advertising industry, and later started teaching and running job search training programmes in Canada and Australia. After that, I moved into coaching, consulting, and training course design work. I even worked on Mount Fuji in 2018 during my summer break. All of these experiences are still in my current work, no matter how long ago I did these jobs. So, it’s always been hard for me to pin myself down to a single career or identity. I like to think of myself as Tom, and my jobs are "what I do”, not “who I am.”

What has been your personal journey with your Ikigai(s)? 

Note: Tom shares his thoughts on the connection between identity, ikigai, and purpose. While ikigai is not the same as purpose, Tom sees a sense of purpose as one part of his ikigai.

Probably my biggest personal journey was my time living abroad in Australia and Asia. During my time abroad, I discovered how our sense of identity grows, evolves when we adapt to new cultures. My sense of identity and how I define myself is quite fluid. I have a cultural identity from each of my backgrounds I was born into. I have a Greek, Macedonian, and Canadian identity, and also an identity from my adopted cultures in South Korea, Australia, and now in Japan. 

From a young age, I have been curious about culture and this motivated me to understand new cultures on a deeper level and learn how to internalise different aspects from each culture I live in. The best way to do this is to find some kind of cohesion between these new cultures and to let them coexist within me. If you only focus on one culture, your purpose might connect to that single identity. But when you hold multiple cultures, you ideally want to have harmony between all cultures and have a higher-order purpose that unites all of them. For example, one way to unite your multiple cultures is to become a cultural bridger or ambassador for those cultures, either formally or informally. Finding that higher-order purpose might take time for it to emerge naturally. We can set the conscious intention to find this identity, ask questions, plan for that arrival to our new identity but, in the end, our higher-order purpose and identity emerges naturally, often when we aren't consciously searching for it.

Writing about culture and living abroad, it became clearer to me that it's not just about cultural identity. It is also our personal identity and social and work identity, where we have a responsibility to more than just ourselves. This prompts us to pause and ask ourselves, “Who are we as social citizens?” “Who are we as workers?” Each of those identities carries its own purpose or sense of ikigai. Trying to find a way to unite all of them while trying to keep your own personal identity is important because we have this need to be an individual and also a member of a group, and underlying these needs is a purpose. I believe that you have an individual purpose and a shared purpose. We have multiple ikigai.

Having undergone this journey living abroad, integrating new cultural identities, studying Zen Buddhism, and most of all reflecting on this journey, how I have come to be, I have learned that our identities and purposes, as well as our ikigai can also evolve and change over time. What we once believed would stay with us forever can vanish quickly. For example, if you're a carer, the person you're caring for may pass away — and suddenly that sense of purpose is gone. Or you lose your job. Or a company gets a new owner or president who suddenly changes the mission. So, I believe it’s important not to get too attached to an identity or a purpose. This stems from a broader Japanese philosophy of impermanence like wabi sabi and mono-no-aware, which is about letting go and not holding on too tightly to our purpose and identities, because like life itself, everything is impermanent.

What are your thoughts on striving to be authentic or aligned with who you are?

I believe an authentic self means showing our true selves to the world, and what makes this challenging to be authentic are the multiple identities and purposes that we have. For example, we might find ourselves in an organisation or environment where we are expressing values or demonstrating behaviours that don't reflect what our values are. 

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory³ suggests, we go against our values, beliefs, and even identity because it gives us money and rewards, it gives us jobs, and advances our careers. This contradiction in our actions can create cognitive dissonance⁴ a state of discomfort, regret, or even resentment because we feel forced to go against what we believe in. One way to reduce this discomfort is to justify our actions and preserve our values and identity. We tell ourselves: “This is not really me. I am doing it for the money”. Over time, this justification no longer serves us. We start thinking we should express these values for our team, our family. But this still leaves us feeling uncomfortable because we are doing it for others and not for ourselves. 

One step towards rediscovering our authentic self and staying true to ourselves is to search for an alignment between what we want and what a company wants. For example, we could ask ourselves: “How do these values, which I see as very different, somehow relate to what I believe in?” That process can take time. It's essentially a journey, a space and time to pause and reflect.

This is where the concept of Ma might help us. Ma is a Japanese word for pausing in silence, stillness, or emptiness. It's also a journey between point A and point B or being one type of person and becoming a new type of person. Ma can also represent two gates facing each other — opposing values that we think are disconnected. But in the middle, between those two gates as shown in the Japanese character “間”, there is the smaller character “日” (pronounced hee), which represents the sun and also insight or enlightenment in between those gates. 

Photo Credit: Tom Frengos

In chapter 12 of my book Fifteen Pauses, I briefly talk about that enlightenment and how we may discover that in a pause — when we hold the space, reflect, and search for commonalities between the values we once thought were completely disconnected. Further into this journey through Ma, towards being more authentic, we could take on a softer, more curious stance about these values we once resisted. We could pause and ask ourselves, “What is it about these company values that I enjoy expressing?” “Which one of the values do I believe in, with all of my heart?” Here, when we stop seeing all values as completely incompatible; we find an opening, a value that can anchor us into this company's values and culture and still be true to who we are and what our personal purpose is. 

How does your life today reflect your authentic self and life priorities?

My priority has always been to be kind and authentic in my personal life and my work. I believe there is a misconception that being authentic means we don't want to be part of a group. We don't want to conform to the group's behaviours and ways of thinking. I have always been quite proud that I have a strong inclination to be more of an individual than a group member. I don't know if this has to do with my experiences living abroad or my personality. Even before I came to Japan, some Japanese people used to call me kui (meaning nail, or stake in the English context) which comes from the saying “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” (“Deru kui wa utareru” in Japanese). I used to reply, “Yeah, you can keep hammering, but I’ll always come back up.” 

Our need to be authentic does carry some risks. It leaves us vulnerable. We get criticised for not fitting in or for not showing a united front. But I think what drives us, including me, is less of a desire to be an individual or to show you’re better, but a desire to suggest a new idea that others may not have thought of, and see what is really needed by others or the greater community that they might not see. I think this need can also depend on what stage of development you are in.

Robert Kegan’s book The Evolving Self⁵ is a great book that talks about our different stages of self and why some of us prefer being a member of a group and why others strive for that authentic self, that sense of individualism that comes with that self. One of the reasons why young people immediately support a company’s shared purpose is because it taps into what Robert Kegan calls the social self — our need to bond and belong to a group. But as we grow older, like myself, you reach the authentic self stage where there is a growing need to be authentic and be more of an individual and carve our own life path. For example, if the company's shared purpose does not align in some way with my values, my beliefs, and who I am, then I may distance myself from that shared purpose. We’re all navigating this balance for our wellbeing. 

As another example of authenticity, Sir John Whitmore,⁶ known to most coaches as being the pioneer of performance coaching and the GROW model, talked about the importance of being authentic, how we are trying to find a way to be ourselves, and not being constrained by the need to conform. He believed that true happiness came from summoning up the courage to be your own person and carve out your own sense of purpose.

Do you have any tools that helped you through periods of uncertainty? And if so, are you able to share about a particular time you can remember — and what helped you through it?

For me, uncertainty is not something that’s overcome. It’s experienced even if it's uncomfortable. That’s also the concept of Ma. For example, when you’re in a conversation and suddenly someone goes silent, there’s that element of uncertainty. In that uncertainty, many questions pop into our head: “What is this person thinking?” “What do they mean?” “Do they like me?” In that space between the beginning and end of silence, it can feel like there’s just a void. And we often fill that void with questions or reassurance, our own voice. We may ask questions like: “Do you agree with me?” We’re trying to make uncertainty certain in this empty pause. But there’s value in not knowing. It creates opportunity. It invites us to dream and create. Japanese architect Tadao Ando, whose work focused on the void once said, “If you give people nothingness, they can imagine what can be achieved from that nothingness.”⁷ 

Last year, when I walked the El Camino de Santiago from Southwestern France to Santiago in Spain, and then continued further to the sea town of Finisterre, which is called the “end of the world”, there was uncertainty about whether I would finish it or when, and who I would meet. I walked into that uncertainty. I remember, after walking the first seven stages of the Camino — 25 to 30 kilometres a day — I was thinking: “I have to do this again. And again. And again.” “Can I really do it?” That’s when faith comes in. If you’ve done the training and the work, it helps push back against that creeping uncertainty, especially during a long journey that goes beyond 800 km. What I also did was to focus on the next three days ahead of me and nothing more. Rather than looking too far ahead and thinking "When I get to the end”, I would think, “What can I do today, tomorrow, and the next day?" 

Walking this path got me thinking that even though we have a clear goal to get to Santiago and we have an idea of what it looks like from the pictures we have seen, there’s always an element of the unknown. We don't know how we will feel when we get there or how the destination will look in our eyes, and how our body and heart will respond to it. Japanese temple architecture captures this idea very nicely. When you start from the torii (entrance gate to the shrine) and look down the sando called the worshipper's path, you might partially see the shrine or not see it at all. As we walk towards it, the shrine slowly reveals itself to us. It reflects life. The destination we envision may not be the one we arrive at. So it's okay to have that mystery because that’s one of the great beauties of life: not knowing what’s going to happen. 

Photo Credit: Tom Frengos

One of the biggest, beautiful mysteries I experienced on the Camino was about what I was going to find. “What calling am I going to discover?” “Will I find my ikigai in this place?” The answers to these questions depend on the person and why they are walking the El Camino, of course. A lot of people walk it after retiring. They walk it after losing a loved one or when they are between jobs, or trying to move forward after a divorce. There was an expectation that everyone would find something on the Camino that was just for them. The most common phrase I heard on the Camino was: “This is your Camino”. A common belief here was that a lot of them expected to find their personal Camino, their purpose, their calling very early, sometimes within the first week. I remember a few people asked me, “So what did you find on the Camino?” Often I’d say, “I don’t know. I’m still looking.” 

Walking the Camino, searching for and discovering that purpose is like a journey through Ma. Our purpose doesn't appear right away, but it is slowly forming as we cross that void, that empty space between towns, that silence between civilisation, those open fields we cross alone during the morning sunrise. In this space, our mind is focused on nature, the here and now, not the purpose we find in the future. When we aren't thinking about it in this journey, in this pause from our normal lives, this is where these discoveries emerge naturally. I believe that without Ma, we can't find our ikigai.

Photo Credit: Tom Frengos

How can we incorporate more calm and Ma into our lives? And why should we? 

Add more silence

The most important one is to add more silence to your life. We need a balance between sound and silence because silence is actually important for our blood pressure. In my book, I write about a study from the University of Pavia in Italy and Oxford University in the UK, which investigated how our heart and breathing responds to music with and to a pause in music.⁸ What they found was that when you’re listening to music, your heart rate is elevated, your blood pressure is stimulated, aroused, depending on the music. But when you pause, that silence actually lowers your blood pressure and heart rate because you’re not as stimulated. So silence provides us a rest from that stimulation. But we also need sound as well. Life is a dance between these partners, a poetic rhythm between silence and sound.

A lot of people have, I think, a misunderstanding or even fear of what silence means. Silence can mean loneliness, disappointment or even anger. However, as The Brain at Rest by Dr Joseph Jebelli explores, when we go into silence, our default mode network (DMN) is activated.⁹ When our DMN is activated, our mind tends to wander; it starts making new connections we didn't have before. It creates a space to think of things that we don't often think of when we are busy with work, or when we socialise with colleagues, friends, and family. Personal space and silence are essential to our wellbeing. In my workshops, I encourage people to have more silent time when they get home, instead of turning on the TV or looking at their phone before they go to sleep.

Find a sukiMa

Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, that is immersing ourselves into nature, is another form of Ma, more specifically a sukiMa. This means a crack or pause in our busy lives, a temporary escape from the mental demands of work. A sukiMa can be as brief as one minute, like pausing before we speak in a presentation to gather our thoughts or taking a deep breath in a vacant hallway or a stairwell, even in a car. In that space, we can escape the restrictions of our normal lives, give ourselves more space and time to recharge, dream, and in some cases discover what we want out of life. 

Nature also acts as a sukiMa. It gives our brain a rest from that sharp focus we consciously put into our work, like planning, analysing, brainstorming, and participating in meetings or coaching someone. In a forest, which is a longer sukiMa, your mind initially wanders but eventually it focuses on nature like the sounds, the smells, like cicadas in summer. Attention Restoration Theory¹⁰ suggests that focusing on nature requires less attention. It rests our minds and allows us to have creative breakthroughs, discoveries, and innovations while walking in the forest. I often get these innovations while walking in the forest.

If you don't have time to go out into the forest, you can seek out these sukiMas, those in-between spaces at home, work, or the outside world. These are spaces away from the public space, spaces where we have time for ourselves, spaces where we can escape the pressures and expectations of modern life. Dr. Harriet Shortt, a professor in the UK, studied the benefits of being in those “liminal spaces”¹¹ — those in-between spaces in a hair salon like hallways, bathrooms, stairwells. Dr. Shortt discovered that these spaces, these pauses from the hectic highway of life are essential for improving our wellbeing, creativity, and our relationships. So seek out these spaces every day. Who knows, we might even discover our life purpose while in these spaces — when we least expect it. 

What would be your advice to anyone struggling to live a life of ikigai — in regard to your interpretation of it? If someone feels like they’re not being authentic or living in truth, what would you say?

Set your intention with a question

Finding our ikigai does require intentional planning. It is important we create a space to ask ourselves what we really want to do for the rest of our lives. Do we want to live long, be healthy, or do we want to make a difference in the world? Professor Peter Hawkins¹², who is a coaching and leadership thought leader, Emeritus professor at Henley Business School in the UK and also Chairman of Renewal Associates, suggests that powerful questions can help us find our purpose. In the recent book Team of Teams of Coaching, which he wrote with Catherine Carr, he lists some powerful questions that we can ask a team or an individual about their purpose that transcends our own personal interests. One question could be: “Who does my work serve?” Another question is: “What can you uniquely do that the world of tomorrow needs?” One way to entertain these questions is to give yourself private time and space like going out into nature when our mind is free to wander and reflect.

Set your intention to autopilot

In my upcoming book about wabi sabi, which is due to be released in late 2026, I suggest that we should resist the temptation to force our goals, to force our achievements to happen. We need to let them emerge spontaneously. So I would suggest that you put your search for your ikigai on autopilot from time to time. Your ikigai will come in time, when we aren't intentionally thinking about it. It is great to set an intention to find our purpose, our ikigai, to think deeply about it but we have to let it go, because discoveries come when we’re not consciously thinking about what we are trying to discover. When our mind is in that default mode network, our mind relaxes and it is free to wander without the burden of having to find our ikigai today. 

In his book Before You Know It¹³, social psychologist John Bargh suggests that we need to give our conscious brain a rest from thinking about our goals. His work suggests that when we are not thinking about a goal consciously, our unconscious mind is still searching for it while we sleep; our subconscious mind is still searching for it when we are awake. They are working behind the scenes, scanning our dreams, our environment for things that are related to our goals; they are filtering out irrelevant information, and when they find something that is related to our ikigai, they bring it to our conscious awareness. We have those “aha”, “eureka” moments, or what Japanese Buddhism refers to as satori (enlightenment) moments. Some people find these discoveries while walking in forests, or walking the Camino. It’s often said that Einstein came up with his best ideas while shaving. For me, I found them in the most unlikely places while traveling.

I remember when I was writing my book, I was constantly, feverishly searching for something unique, perhaps poetic, that I could put into my book Fifteen Pauses. One idea for my book didn't happen when I was sitting at my desk, looking at the computer. It happened in a place called Nada-Gogō, an area of Kobe which is termed the centre of the sake universe. While visiting Kiku-Masamune Brewery, I came across a bottle labeled “hyaku moku”, which means “100 silences”. The Japanese kanji for it, its meaning and the label on the bottle — all of this told me I was on to something. I looked up this sake bottle on the website for that brewery and it told me this name comes from the Japanese proverb “hyaku moku ichi gen”, which means “one hundred silences one word”. My wife looked this up on a Japanese website and it turned out this proverb meant that a person who speaks less is more respected. 

I then applied this to the coaching space, specifically how coaches need to ask fewer questions, speak less and give the coachee more space, more silence to reflect and feel safe. So I wrote about this at the end of chapter 12 in my book Fifteen Pauses, and it's been well received by coaches, psychologists, and leaders. The point I am trying to make is that some of the greatest discoveries in our lives, in the world, are not made when we are forcing something to happen. They happen in silence and in stillness, when life gives us what we need at the moment, when we are ready for it.

Do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share? 

Ikigai is deeply personal to us, even if we have shared multiple ikigai. Yet it transcends society's expectations that it is linked to our jobs and our social presence in the virtual and physical world. There are other, more everyday, behind-the-scenes tasks and actions that can also become our ikigai. For people who are not working or people grieving over the loss of their spouse, their brother, their parents, their child, who feel they have no purpose, no reason for living, they can find more pleasurable activities like writing, painting, drawing without feeling guilty for doing it. Expressing our creativity is very therapeutic for managing grief. Another example is to set the intention to seek beauty as your ikigai, like paying more attention to the sounds of the wind, looking carefully at a still pond, architecture, wildlife, or pausing to appreciate the dew drops clinging to a leaf after a morning rain. Ikigai is everywhere around us when we pause and listen to the message that life is generously offering us in this moment that is unique and will never be repeated.

What did this story bring up for you? Comment below.

---

Reflection by Emma Launder, Guest Contributor

Speaking with Tom gave me space to reflect not only on his insights on Ma, culture, and ikigai, but on my own approach to the interview itself — a live example of trying to make uncertainty certain. Wanting to do his ikigai story justice, I probed for more whenever his answers felt indirect to me.

Then, like a good coach, Tom later asked for my thoughts. We discussed expectations and the value of unexpected outcomes, and I realised I’d been hoping for certain answers. At times when they didn’t come, I felt momentarily lost.

Often, it’s not the answer we seek that arrives, and our first reaction can be, “This isn’t what I expected or asked for.” But embracing that uncertainty — the Ma — in conversation, in interaction, in life, can reveal entirely new connections or ideas.

So I let go of my preconceptions and flowed through the rest of the interview with an open mind, letting Ma create space for something new. Thank you Tom, for sharing your wisdom and for reminding us of the wonder of uncertainty. 

About Emma: Emma hails from the land of the rising sun and of the long white cloud (otherwise known as Japan and New Zealand). She’s often asked “Why?” and “What are we here for?”, and this has culminated in a deep desire to learn more about the big questions in life, especially surrounding purpose and ikigai. She is currently based in Tokyo and works at a counselling clinic. 

---

Do you want to learn more?

You can find out more about Tom Frengos' work here

---

References

1 Frengos, T. (2024) Fifteen pauses: The life-changing silence and stillness of Japanese Ma. Fukuoka, Japan. Available at: https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/Fifteen_Pauses.html?id=ja3e0AEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

2 Frengos, T. (2019) ‘Chapter 5 Mirror Mirror: What culture am I?: Using philosophy to reconstruct our images and cultural identities’, in Intercultural Mirrors. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004401303_005

3 Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2017) Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. New York: Guilford Press.

4 Maertz, C.P., Jr., Hassan, A. and Magnusson, P. (2009) ‘When learning is not enough: A process model of expatriate adjustment as cultural cognitive dissonance reduction’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(1), pp. 66–78. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.05.003

5 Kegan, R. (1982) The evolving self: Problems and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

6 Askew, N. (2005) Bravery & your own path [Video]. Available at: https://nicaskew.com/library/bravery-and-your-own-path/

7 Stewart, J. (2018) ‘The life and work of acclaimed Japanese architect Tadao Ando’, My Modern Net. Available at: https://mymodernmet.com/tadao-ando-architecture/

8 Bernardi, L., Porta, C. and Sleight, P. (2006) ‘Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and nonmusicians: The importance of silence’, Heart, 92, pp. 445–452. Available at: https://heart.bmj.com/content/92/4/445

9 Jebelli, J. (2025) The brain at rest: How the art and science of doing nothing can improve your life. London: Pan Macmillan.

10 Kaplan, S. (1995) ‘The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3), pp. 169–182.

11 Shortt, H. (2014) ‘Liminality, space and the importance of “transitory dwelling places” at work’, Human Relations, 68(4), pp. 633–658. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726714536938

12 Hawkins, P. and Carr, C. (2025) Team of teams coaching: Using a teaming approach to increase business impact. 1st edn. London: Kogan Page.

13 Bargh, J. (2017) Before you know it: The unconscious reasons we do what we do. New York: Touchstone.