I absolutely love the content written in this book. For some time, I’ve been fascinated by reading self-improvement books for they contain the information that all of us need to read. Prior to discovering these books, I used to go for novels. My favorite genres were fantasy, thriller, and historical novels. I loved reading novels because I used to live with the characters and plot. They opened up my mind to creativity. So I used to write novels myself. So far I only published one but I’ll work on publishing the other novels whenever I had the time to edit them.
Now, back to the book I’m reviewing in this blog post.
I’m always fascinated by the Japanese culture. So when I first read the title of the book I was determined to at least read the table of contents or the introduction. It was at the last minute I discovered this book before going to the cashier to pay for the ones I already had in my basket. So far, it’s one of the many books that I want to read related to Japanese way of life.
The full title of this book is: Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life.
In short, Ikigai refers to the Japanese way of life and lifestyle that the authors of this book concentrated on when interviewing native Japanese people. The book contains 9 short chapters with valuable information regarding this concept. Changing our lifestyle twill lead to a healthy life. Sometimes we neglect few things that we do in our lives thinking they have no major impact like overeating the wrong food and such whereas a healthy lifestyle starts from there. It has to do with balancing ourselves and maintaining a healthy body. A body full of diseases cannot contribute as much as a healthy body. If all of us concentrate on the patterns that we go through during our lives, we ought to know that these occur at the times when we’re either taking a wrong path or doing things the wrong way. Life is full of lessons that we should learn to walk on the right path without getting as many signs for us to stop acting the way we are acting.
The first section talks about how to stay young as you grow up.
The second section talks about the secrets of antiaging factors that contribute to a long and happy life.
The third section talks about finding your purpose in life.
The fourth section talks about finding flow in whatever you do.
The fifth section talks about words from long living people.
The sixth section talks about some Japanese proverbs on happiness and longevity.
The seventh section talks about diet.
The eighth section talks about some of the exercises to promote a better health.
The ninth section talks about facing life’s difficulties without letting stress overwhelm you.
It sounds a lot but it isn’t. The book was so light and content was so good that I kept reading section after the other. It took me over a week to finish reading it because I didn’t read it continuously. But I was determined to finish reading it soon to review it.
So if you’re like me, wanting to change your life to a better one, I highly recommend you read self-improvement books. In the past, I always thought that I needn’t learn from these books for I can handle life issues. But I was wrong. At least you become more attentive to your life than ever. You know better the meaning of whatever patterns you’re going through in your life. And you can find a valuable purpose to live with instead of randomly making decision here and there.
I don’t want to mention all of the details so that I keep your excitement going on. But I will share one quote that I liked before ending this post:
‘When we spend our days feeling connected to what is meaningful to us, we live more fully; when we lost the connection, we feel despair.’
Anwaar 