Book review : Ikigai - The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

The book is all about exploring the purpose of one’s life and how to find happiness. While reading the book I felt that some of the things are very known to us yet it was such a pleasure to read. The time I spent reading this book felt very calm and peaceful. The book is divided in 9 sections and each section deals with a topic which will make you think twice about the meaning of life

The book clearly defines that “Ikigai” or purpose or happiness of life is completely different to different people. When you will be able to identify what you love , what you are good at, what you can be paid for and what the world needs - it will be easier for you to find your “Ikigai”.

If I summarize the whole book into some points , those will be -

1. Having an active mind and youthful body is important to lead a happy life. If you keep your mind and body busy, you will be around a long time.

2. A key element of ikigai - not caving in when we face difficulties throughout our life.

3. Find reasons to live - everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

4. It’s important to let go of negative feelings. People with obsessive thinking become more trapped in their own suffering when they try to escape from their fears and discomfort.

5. If you are angry and want to fight, think about it for three days before coming to blows. After three days, the intense desire to fight will pass on its own.

6. We often think that combining tasks will save us time, but scientific evidence shows that it has the opposite effect. Our brain can take in millions of bits of information but can only process a few dozen per second.

7. Technology is great, if we are in control of it. It’s not so great if it takes control of us.

8. We are all going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you are born to die.

9. The secret to a happy life is to smile more and surround with good people. The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for. Give more thanks to people than to expect from them.

10. Stop eating when you are 80% full. Add varieties of fruits and vegetables in your daily diet. There is a concept known as “Hara hachi bu” - when you notice you are almost full but could have a little more, just stop eating.

11. People who live longest are not the ones who do the most exercise but rather the ones who move the most. Just breathe better, live longer.

12. We need to go beyond resilience to cultivate antifragility. It is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same, the antifragile gets better. To become antifragile remember : to create more options in life, bet conservatively in certain areas and take many small risks in others, get rid of the things that make you fragile.

13. A wise person should not ignore life’s pleasure. A wise person can live with these pleasures but should always remain conscious of how easy it is to be enslaved by them. He needs to be prepared for those pleasures to disappear.

14. It’s important to know what we can control and what we can’t. Worrying about things that are beyond our control accomplishes nothing. We should have a clear sense of what we can change and what we can’t, which in turn will allow us to resist giving in to negative emotions.

15. The present is all that exists and it is the only thing we can control. Instead of worrying about the past or the future we should appreciate things just as they are in the moment, in the now.

16.The things we love are like the leaves of a tree: They can fall at any moment with a gust of wind. Ichi go ichi-e which could be translated as “This moment exists only now and won’t come again”.?