Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

You seek the worldly rewards of success, you achieve some (or a lot) of them, and you may be deeply attached to these rewards. But you must be prepared to walk away from these achievements and rewards before you feel ready. The decline in your fluid intelligence is a sign that it is time not to rage, which just doubles down on your unsatisfying att

Too often so-called insights into the nature of our illness or a reconstruction of childhood trauma may simply be a crutch that confirm a belief in our intrinsic infirmity rather than give rise to the strength to trust our own resiliency in the face of our life as it is. Zen offers us a counterbalancing insight into our essential wholeness, a whole

But when we think of our own mortality, we realize that it is the important things we are most likely to regret not doing when we finally run out of time (for good!). So it’s crucial to find a way to set aside time regularly for the important activities that aren’t necessarily urgent. We can usually do this by giving up some of our less purposeful

We can escape the self-destructive cycle of pursuit, resolution, and renewal, of attainments archived or unachieved. The way out is to find sufficient value in atelic activities, activities that have no point of conclusion or limit, ones whose fulfillment lies in the moment of action itself.