Ikigai for Teens is an insightful and engaging guide that introduces teenagers to the Japanese concept of ikigai, which translates to “reason for being”.

The authors, Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, emphasize the importance of finding one’s passion, purpose, and joy in everyday life. It encourages teens to explore their interests, talents, and values to discover what makes their lives truly meaningful. The authors combine practical advice, personal anecdotes, and wisdom from Japanese culture, creating a comprehensive guide that is both informative and inspirational.

One of the standout features of Ikigai for Teens is its actionable exercises and reflections at the end of each chapter. These activities help readers apply the concepts to their own lives, fostering self-awareness and growth. The book also touches on various aspects of teen life, including relationships, education, and future career choices, making it a holistic approach to personal development.

Overall, Ikigai for Teens is a valuable resource for young readers looking to find direction and fulfilment.

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This book from best-selling author Morgan Housel is a powerful tool to help you navigate the uncertainty of the future. Knowledge of the things that never change is more useful than an uncertain prediction of an unknowable future. Through 23 engaging stories and concise examples, Housel gives a master class on optimizing risk, seizing opportunity, and living your best life to achieve the greatest success — not merely financial comforts, but most importantly, a life well lived.

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As the clock strikes 12, the calendar resets and a new chapter is unveiled. Here are 12 resolutions that can help you revamp your life this New Year.

January 2024: The Healthy Wealthy Way

“Eat healthy, think healthy, and walk healthy.” Start right by speaking kind words that make you love yourself and others. Live the healthy way, work out and practise gratitude.

February 2024: Go Spick-and-Span!

Declutter your home and workspace, especially the digital space. Tidy your email inbox, organize files, and unsubscribe to unnecessary notifications.

March 2024: Penny Peaks

Identify your wants and needs. Take control of your finances, save more, and eliminate debts to become independent, secure and stable. This will widen opportunities for future endeavours.

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In our daily lives, our decisions are affected by our respectability, our accountability to others and society, our materialistic needs, and fulfilling standards set by a group of humans who have no sense of intelligence and wisdom.

What would happen if, for one day, you chose to be yourself? You chose to be that chef or writer or researcher or business tycoon maybe … Who knows where you would have been if you, just for once, would have decided to step up and had the clarity of what you really want.

But it’s difficult, right?

To walk on a path with no emotional, financial, or physical support is indeed a herculean task. But what about the satisfaction that you would get after having it done? What about that one single life, one single chance to change it all?

Before starting any journey, ask yourself whether you want it or not, without any distortion. Don’t fight the odds beforehand. Let your mind figure out the ways once you have the ace in the deck.

And trust me, the ace is always there. You just have to let other cards settle down and pick yours.

“What ‘is’ is actual, not the desirable, but the fact.”

It’s the ultimate truth. Your crystal-clear mind is the truth. Don’t clutter it with bondages or assumptions. That thing that you want is a fact. Your fact! It isn’t just a desire. It’s who you are …

Krishnamurti writes, “I must be clear in myself, without the persuasion of respectability, without self-interested calculation, without the spirit of bargaining.”

And the bonus point? You don’t have to maintain the clarity, it’s always there.

Don’t oppose the confusion. Just stay calm, untouched by bias and persuasion. Let that electricity in your neurons flow and click when required!

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The two paramount days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out what your purpose is. Understanding your life’s purpose, then taking action to execute the kind of life you really want to live, can be a thought-provoking self-examination. Just like all business entities should have a valid purpose statement, each person must have a crystal-clear purpose in life. Finding your life purpose starts with uncovering what fascinates your heart and runs like a golden strand through your life. Having a clear idea of your life purpose keeps you inspired, attentive and competent to tap into a pond of energy or potency when you need to face confrontations and challenges.

A group of fifty people was attending a seminar. Suddenly the speaker stopped and gave each person a balloon. Each one was asked to write his/her name on it. Then all the balloons were collected and put in another room. Now these delegates were let in that room and asked to find the balloon which had their name written on it in five minutes. Everyone was frantically searching for their name, pushing, colliding with each other, and there was utter chaos. At the end of five minutes, no one could find their own balloon. Then each one was asked to randomly collect a balloon and give it to the person whose name was written on it. Within minutes everyone had their own balloon.

The speaker said: “This is exactly what happens in our lives. Everyone is frantically looking for happiness all around, not knowing where it is. Our happiness lies in the happiness of other people. Give them their happiness, you will get your own happiness. And this is the purpose of human life.”

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Awareness is having a clear view of your personality. It is about truly understanding you. It is a stepping stone to leading a life full of purpose as it gives you a perfect picture of your potencies, powers, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation and emotions. You have to develop your self-awareness to learn more about yourself and your capacities. This is the beginning point of every improvement and plays the role of a self-help sage. Awareness is a foundational skill indispensable to anyone interested in personal development.

Awareness allows you to:

• Identify your limitations and frame decisions based on your talent.
• Permits you to understand other people and their perceptions about you.
• Be introspective, but not self-absorbed.
• Be conscious of your needs, desires, dreams and work on them to support you to excel.

The more you know about yourself the better you respond to life changes. Awareness assists you in becoming proactive rather than reactive. This leads to spectacular and constructive effects in your life. Awareness is important because “accurate self-awareness is essential for optimal daily life activities, as it allows adapting individual behaviour to different situations according to one’s actual abilities. Accurate self-awareness thus prevents from risky or withdrawal behaviour.”

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“The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.”
— Michel de Montaigne

Just as we cannot survive without food and water, we humans cannot survive without a sense of the ultimate purpose or meaning of life — of life in general, and of our own life in particular. We want to transcend death by attaching ourselves to something permanent that will outlast us: art, science, our families and so forth. We all know, and as Vladimir Nabokov believed, “our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness”.

What is essential is an engagement with something that gives meaning and purpose to one’s life. Having a clear sense of purpose can help you navigate moments of certainty when you feel unsure of your next steps. The work of defining purpose is the work of becoming fully conscious of what you love and what is most alive within you and then acting accordingly. You should align your life’s goal with your mind, heart and body, your purpose connecting with the sources of meaning, joy and inspiration that reside deep within you. Life develops meaning because someone identifies with God’s purpose.

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The idea of finding your purpose in life has always been beguiling. We all have to travel that road to find our purpose in life some day or the other. Some of us have already begun, some are just getting started and some might feel that they have already found the purpose of their lives, but little do they realize that life is not bound to have only one purpose. Just at the end of one road is the beginning of another; finding one’s purpose in life is the beginning of a chain which will ultimately lead us to the meaning of life.

We are all living in a labyrinth called life and once we find our way out of it we will understand what life is, but most of us lack the courage to leave our happy little space inside the labyrinth and venture out in search of the unknown.

Life is a miracle, a miracle of which we are all part of. Without us, life could have not been possible, but without life we could have not been here. We are all interdependent and it is this inter-dependency which binds us, which gives us a sense of exhilaration when we help others, because by helping them it is us that we help.

Everybody looks at life from a different perspective and every perspective is important, because they belong to individuals who create life and are created by life.

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What gives you a spring in your step when you get out of bed in the morning? If you’re really fortunate, it might be because you have found your ikigai.

Ikigai is a Japanese word made from two words: iki meaning “life” or “being alive” and gai, meaning “what is worthwhile and has value”. So the literal translation would be “that which makes life worth living” or “a reason for being”. It is a Japanese secret to a long and happy life. 

On the island of Okinawa in Japan, the inhabitants hold the record for having the longest lifespan on earth. Ikigai might be part of the reason. Finding your ikigai can entail a deep and often lengthy search of self, which ultimately leads to a life that is worth living. It’s about having meaning and purpose in life, where your dreams, aspirations and fulfilment all come together.

Ikigai is your purpose in life. It is the meaning of life, the thing that makes you get out of bed each day in eager anticipation. The Japanese believe that we all have an ikigai or even several inside us, even if we don’t know it yet.

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Four years ago, when my nine-year-old proclaimed she was going to be a doctor like her Masi, my sister, I was thrilled, until I took her to the hospital for her next shot. It took forty minutes and four adults to pin her down for it! It struck me hard… this girl is not made to be a doctor! The girl is smart, above-average, ahead of her peers according to teachers, resourceful, wise, mature and street-smart. I decided to help her delve deep inside herself and answer to me, what makes her soul come alive? As a mother, I knew I could love her, nurture her, but cannot tell her what to do with her life!

I gently started prodding her. What makes you supremely happy? What can you do for twenty hours a day and only get physically tired? Sometimes she avoided answering me, sometimes distracted me, but she did not answer. So I began telling her, “Can you be like Masi in every way… strong, powerful, achiever, popular, successful, a multitasker… without needing to be a doctor, you know?” That statement struck home. 

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