Book review: Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

My Wednesday review of this week is going to be a most enthusiastic one.

Just finished reading IKIGAI, The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life  by  Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles (Penguin UK Books), and I totally recommend everyone has a go at this.

It`s a neat but not dumbed down  simplification of a complex precept, that of finding your existential fuel, your reason to get up every morning, and to hone that precept to a workable fineness.

Within the Ikigai framework, we learn of the Morita therapy where we are taught to accept our desires, anxieties, fears and worries, and let them go; how to find our ikigai down the middle path, something aligned with our abilities but still a bit of a stretch, so we experience it as a challenge; how multitasking actually lowers our productivity by at least a whopping 60% and our IQ by 10 points; how the best ikigai is a purpose that guides you throughout your life and pushes you to make things of beauty and utility for the community and yourself; how you must have an ikigai but not take it too seriously; how resilience, an outlook that focuses on important things in life rather than the most urgent,  is the underpinning required; how life is not a problem to be solved but something that keeps you busy doing what you love while being surrounded by the people who love you.

Came late to the book but what an enriching read it was.