A review by sylvilel
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Francesc Miralles, Héctor García Puigcerver

2.0

The notion of IKIGAI is that everyone has one or several purposes in life, and that the key to your best life is to bring IKIGAI into everything you do.

Through “study cases” (honestly, the cases are like two paragraphs long), this book tries to give examples of how certain people achieve 100 year long (or longer) lives.

And while a lot of the factors surrounding IKIGAI are indeed both interesting and relatable (not to mention a relevant alternative to Western living), I feel that this book delves a little too much into the selfhelp recipie shelf. Personally, I was hoping for more enlightenment. On the positive side, it refrains from getting TOO preachy.

Not that it tries (very hard) to be anything else than commercial, but if you’re looking for ACTUAL helpful information on the subject, this book might not be your go-to.

As an initiation to the notion of IKIGAI and a different mindset/way of living however, this serves as a quick, easily consumed message.