BOOK: IKIGAI
AUTHOR: HECTOR GARCIA AND FRANCESC MIRALLES
PAGES: 196
BLURB:
The people of Japan believe that everyone has an ikigai- a reason to jump out of bed each morning.
Inspiring and comforting, this book will give you the life changing tools to uncover your personal ikigai. It will show you how to leave urgency behind, find your purpose, nurtutre friendships and throw yourself into your passions.
MY TAKE ON THIS BOOK:
“The things we love are like the leaves of tree: they can fall at any moment with a gust of wind.”
It is not a quote with which the book started off.
I discovered this lines when I was almost on the verge of completing the book and it literally went deep into me. So, I thought of starting with this lines :)
IKIGAI is a book that talks about how to find the flow or the purpose of life. This book being a best-seller serves its purpose right. And to my opinion, whenever you feel low, whenever you feel distracted or a void in yourself, I guess this book is the best choice.
This book talks about psychoanalysis, logotherapy, happiness, longitivity and more. Psychoanalysis dwelves into the past while logotherapy looks into the future.
The process of logotherapy can be summarized in five steps:
1. A person feels empty, frustrated, or anxious.
2. The therapist shows him that what he is feeling is the desire to have a meaningful life.
3. The patient discovers his life’s purpose (at that particular point in time)
4. Of his own free will, the patient decides to accept or reject that destiny.
5. This newfound passion for life helps him overcome obstacles and sorrows.
‘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’
If I ask you what is your IKIGAI? What will be your answer?
Existential crisis is typical of modern societies in which people do what they are told to do, or what others do, rather than what they want to do. They often try to fill the gap between what is expected of them and what they want for themselves by numbing their senses.
Existential frustration arises when our life is without purpose, or when that purpose is skewed. And that is what we should overcome. According to logotherapy, discovering one’s purpose in life helps an individual fill that existential void.
And if you are in crisis, I think you should find someone to share with. Because in that way, you can make the crisis shallow. And that is the only escape.
In this book, the authors went to Okinawa and Ogini where they have interviewed more than hundred old people about their secret to longitivity because these are the places in Japan where men and women have lived for more then a century and some of them even held world record for being the oldest one in the world.
This book talks about the positivity, finding the purpose of life, being happy, the secrets of longitivity and more.
Some of the lines that I loved from the book-
‘We should never forget that everything we have and all the people we love will disappear at some point. This is something we should keep in mind, but without giving in pessimism.’
‘All things human are short lived and perishable’
‘It’s not what happens to you, but how you react that matters’
‘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.’
Read this book and know the secrets which are shared by the authors.
P.S.- If you haven’t read this book, you should. I am sure you would love this piece of art.
Overall rating: 4.7/5
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