I liked a few chapters, more like 50-60% of the book to which I would happily give 5 stars, explaining how to live a fulfilling life. You have a purpose in this world: your skills, your interests, your desires and your history have made you the perfect candidate for something. People with clear purpose never retire and continue in their area of passion till their last breath. Ikigai offers a genuine recipe for living a meaningful life if you are prepared to give it some time and thought. The book further tells the exercises and techniques these long living and happiest people used in their daily routines/tasks to keep them stay active for a long time even in very old age.

Telling the world why according to statistics they live to be more than 100 years old and yet be healthy. And according to the residents of the Japanese island of Okinawa - the world's longest-living people - finding it is the key to a longer and more fulfilled life. To achieve flow: a) Choose a moderately difficult task, b) Have a clear objective, c) Concentrate on a single task at a time. I was intrigued by the simplicity and calming tone it offers, and it captured my attention till the end.

For me, it is the concept of resilience, and how we handle any challenges and focus on the meaning or purpose we give to our lives.

The lessons of how to not worry in situations, how to take each task at a time and do it your own pace carefully enjoying it, how to be resilient, how to be antifragile. It is, like the centenarians that it attempts to capture the essence of, langorous, circuitous, and occasionally seems to lose the thread of what it was talking about. It’s important to eat a diet high in antioxidants as they play an essential role in reducing the types of cell damage that contribute to aging, disease, and declining health. My general review is that each book offers tips and suggestions on how to cope if one is struggling with various mental health issues and how to overcome and/or change them; something that you can find in most any other book dealing with this subject matter; eating healthy, staying active, proper sleep, socializing, work/life balance, etc.The one thing that struck me positively about the book (and hence the two stars, instead of one) was the pace of it - of lack thereof. Heather Cleary’s translations include Betina González’s American Delirium, Roque Larraquy’s Comemadre (nominee, National Book Award 2018), and Sergio Chejfec’s The Dark (nominee, National Translation Award 2014) and The Planets (finalist, BTBA 2013). It is widely believed that the word comes from the Viking term 'laget om', for when a mug of mead was passed around a circle and there was just enough for everyone to get a sip. The book does not succeed in providing more than observations around behaviour and seems to jump feet first into the "correlation equals causality"-trap. One of the things it taught me was that Japan has the highest average life expectancy in the world, and the importance of the simple lessons of the citizens of Okinawa, a place in Japan that exceeds the national average and has the most centenarians in the world (people aged over 100), and the secrets to their longevity.