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Design the Long Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship
Design a long life full of love, purpose, well-being, and friendship, at any age, using the creative tools of award-winning product designer, author, and world's #1 life coach Ayse Birsel.
What does it mean to craft the life you want, as you grow older? For industrial designer and author Ayse Birsel, the answer draws on key principles of design—like optimism, empathy, collaboration, open-mindedness, and holistic thinking—as well as the experiences of older people on the pioneering frontiers of long life. Longer life is a thrilling, modern opportunity, and like so many parts of life it needs to be thoughtfully designed. Thinking about a long life is very exciting indeed. It’s also a new phenomenon. Fifty years ago, living into one’s seventies was considered the mark of a long life. Today, seventy feels young, eighty feels normal, and ninety is within reach. Birsel believes this new horizon of life is as important and exciting as the invention of moving pictures. Or that of automobiles, or even space travel. Her point is, when a change this big happens, innovation follows. This book is for everyone who is interested in defining their long life, using design thinking tools. It’s an interactive book with exercises that will help you think creatively by asking you to visualize your life. It is full of insights learned from wise people who have lived the longest. It is organized into the four themes of Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship, and contains insights that will help you love better, find purpose, practice well-being, and make friends. Drawing on Birsel’s year-long codesign research with older people, Design the Long Life You Love offers readers of all ages—from those in their twenties and thirties just starting out, to those in mid-life looking for a change, to those in later life who are the experts for us all—thought-provoking questions, exercises for self-exploration, and interviews with innovative entrepreneurs and thought-leaders to guide them on their own journeys of crafting the next phase of life. Focusing on four keys areas—Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship—this book pairs life lessons from people who've lived the longest with design tools to help you plan your own long life, whether you're looking ahead to retirement, a home post-children, or starting a new project that makes you come alive.
Playfulness is key to creating a long life, and readers will find that reflected in this joy-filled book. Whimsical, two-color drawings, illustrated interviews with thought-leaders, and interactive exercises will put you in the mindset of a designer as you foster creativity and explore what your own long life can look like. When it comes to our lives, we are our own innovators—so let's begin to learn how to do just that.
Welcome to Design the Long Life You Love !
What does it mean to craft the life you want, as you grow older? For industrial designer and author Ayse Birsel, the answer draws on key principles of design—like optimism, empathy, collaboration, open-mindedness, and holistic thinking—as well as the experiences of older people on the pioneering frontiers of long life. Longer life is a thrilling, modern opportunity, and like so many parts of life it needs to be thoughtfully designed. Thinking about a long life is very exciting indeed. It’s also a new phenomenon. Fifty years ago, living into one’s seventies was considered the mark of a long life. Today, seventy feels young, eighty feels normal, and ninety is within reach. Birsel believes this new horizon of life is as important and exciting as the invention of moving pictures. Or that of automobiles, or even space travel. Her point is, when a change this big happens, innovation follows. This book is for everyone who is interested in defining their long life, using design thinking tools. It’s an interactive book with exercises that will help you think creatively by asking you to visualize your life. It is full of insights learned from wise people who have lived the longest. It is organized into the four themes of Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship, and contains insights that will help you love better, find purpose, practice well-being, and make friends. Drawing on Birsel’s year-long codesign research with older people, Design the Long Life You Love offers readers of all ages—from those in their twenties and thirties just starting out, to those in mid-life looking for a change, to those in later life who are the experts for us all—thought-provoking questions, exercises for self-exploration, and interviews with innovative entrepreneurs and thought-leaders to guide them on their own journeys of crafting the next phase of life. Focusing on four keys areas—Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship—this book pairs life lessons from people who've lived the longest with design tools to help you plan your own long life, whether you're looking ahead to retirement, a home post-children, or starting a new project that makes you come alive.
Playfulness is key to creating a long life, and readers will find that reflected in this joy-filled book. Whimsical, two-color drawings, illustrated interviews with thought-leaders, and interactive exercises will put you in the mindset of a designer as you foster creativity and explore what your own long life can look like. When it comes to our lives, we are our own innovators—so let's begin to learn how to do just that.
Welcome to Design the Long Life You Love !
- GenresSelf HelpNonfiction
224 pages, Hardcover
Published December 6, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 4, 2022
After reading Design the Life You Love and attending one of Ayse Birsel’s workshops, I completely re-designed my life to create a highly satisfying Literary Life that I love. I went from reading 100 books a year to over 300 books a year. I did this by focusing on one day at a time but did face difficulties when obstacles got in my way. I also was not connecting mind, body, and spirit. In her most recent book, Ayse Birsel teaches us how to re-start our day and make every minute count so that you Design the Long Life You Love. This book addresses every aspect of mind, body, and spirit and provides solid methods to design a life that is perfectly aligned to your authentic self. My favorite exercise is utilizing metaphors to design your life. This really drives creative thinking and enables you to visualize yourself outside of the box you are currently living in.
The major premise of this book is “IT IS NEVER TOO LATE OR TOO EARLY TO DESIGN YOUR LONG LIFE!”. This book is organized into the four themes of love, purpose, well-being, and friendship. The insights gained from the wisdom shared as well as the creative exercises included in this book are invaluable to anyone who wants to take ownership of their Long Life and live their best life.
I am a better person after reading this book. I have empathy for myself and others. I can now convert my challenges and obstacles into opportunities. I have the design thinking tools and interactive exercises to collaborate with others and dig deep into my mind, body, and spirit to Design the Long Life I Love. I plan to send this book to the people in my network as the best way to pay it forward is to gift this book to friends, family members, and work colleagues at any age and stage in life and collaborate with them to leverage the learnings from this book to enhance their daily lives.
The major premise of this book is “IT IS NEVER TOO LATE OR TOO EARLY TO DESIGN YOUR LONG LIFE!”. This book is organized into the four themes of love, purpose, well-being, and friendship. The insights gained from the wisdom shared as well as the creative exercises included in this book are invaluable to anyone who wants to take ownership of their Long Life and live their best life.
I am a better person after reading this book. I have empathy for myself and others. I can now convert my challenges and obstacles into opportunities. I have the design thinking tools and interactive exercises to collaborate with others and dig deep into my mind, body, and spirit to Design the Long Life I Love. I plan to send this book to the people in my network as the best way to pay it forward is to gift this book to friends, family members, and work colleagues at any age and stage in life and collaborate with them to leverage the learnings from this book to enhance their daily lives.
January 3, 2023
In her beautiful, thought-provoking, and inspirational (red-colored) first book, Design the Life You Love, award-winning designer Ayse Birsel teaches us how to use her design thinking principles to deconstruct and then reconstruct a life that we will love to live. And now, in her amazing and wonderful new (blue-colored) book, Design the LONG Life You Love, Ayse continues to lead us on a journey of exploration, discovery, and transformation to create a world – and a (long) life – filled with passion, purpose, and possibilities. Leveraging her distinct and immediately-identifiable drawing style, thought-provoking models and metaphors, masterful storytelling skills, and playful humor, Ayse has gifted us an engaging and enlightening visual roadmap for the ages…one that will help to guide us to a better, happier, more colorful, more creative, and more fulfilling life for years to come.
December 7, 2022
Living the long life you love - sounds like a great plan! It is a great plan!!!!
A friend brought me to the work of highly successful designer Ayse Birsel who believes in the creativity of human being. I was fortunate to read the new book of Ayse Birsel and I can definitely recommend reading "Design the long life you love" and applying the insights you take away from the book for yourself.
BTW it is a great present for yourself and your beloved ones.
Buy it - read it - live it AND teach it.
A friend brought me to the work of highly successful designer Ayse Birsel who believes in the creativity of human being. I was fortunate to read the new book of Ayse Birsel and I can definitely recommend reading "Design the long life you love" and applying the insights you take away from the book for yourself.
BTW it is a great present for yourself and your beloved ones.
Buy it - read it - live it AND teach it.
March 25, 2024
I do not recommend this book to literature(good ones like Mann, Cehov, Dostoevsky etc.), psychology or philosophy readers. The target of this book is especially people who have never reflected on life, personality or human in general. It is for people who do not think because they do not know “how” and never thought about this.
I had much higher expectations since I am a Turkish Designer however it looks like the author wanted to create a book that sells instead of adding even a minimal value.
Any 2-3 therapy session with a mediocre psychotherapist will do the job better people. Cheers!
I had much higher expectations since I am a Turkish Designer however it looks like the author wanted to create a book that sells instead of adding even a minimal value.
Any 2-3 therapy session with a mediocre psychotherapist will do the job better people. Cheers!
December 7, 2022
Most of us would say we are not designers but Ayse Birsel makes design accessible for the most important thing - our lives. With real life examples and wonderful illustrations Ayse takes us through four essential areas of life and gives us engaging exercises to find out what is important and what we should leave behind. This book is truly empowering for anyone at any age. It shows us that it is never too late to take control and design your life.
February 9, 2023
Love this and will keep to re-read. This involved personal prompts will be different each time I read it, possibly at different stages of life to see how I change or what/if I’ve accomplished what I’d like to. I believe this book is for everyone but more specifically - If you are a designer or have a background/appreciation for design and design research, this is your book.
December 1, 2023
First off, this book is very enjoyable for the eyes, interesting and fun to look at. But more importantly, I appreciate the positive spin on aging. There is plenty here to contemplate for your own aging journey and lots of practical information on which to follow up should one choose. Mapping out the design plan may not speak to you, but there are still plenty of take aways.
January 10, 2023
Just finished this book on Designing Your Long Life. It is a very positive book about taking control and creating the future you want to live. Inspiring and thoughtprovoking. Also playful and fun.
February 17, 2024
Very straightforward, extremely easy and palatable read for modern midlifers seeking a plan for their next phase. Left me feeling optimistic and with lots of good for thought.
May 13, 2025
This book was a joke and rambled from topic to topic.
June 23, 2023
5/26/2023 在santa cruz的书店又看到了这本书
延续The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't和The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt的另一本self-help书籍。即和繁重的工作一起修行之后又一次意识到mantra的影响。
“Did I try my best to be happy?” The key is trying your best and knowing that every breath, every day, is a restart.
Bill Carrier’s tips for teaching your brain to love yourself: • Stand in front of the mirror right before you go to bed. • Look yourself in the eyes and say, "I love you." • List all the little and big things you’ve accomplished today. • Say, "Good job!" • Say, "I love you, [insert your name here]." • Repeat for a minimum of twenty-one days.
延续The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't和The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt的另一本self-help书籍。即和繁重的工作一起修行之后又一次意识到mantra的影响。
“Did I try my best to be happy?” The key is trying your best and knowing that every breath, every day, is a restart.
Bill Carrier’s tips for teaching your brain to love yourself: • Stand in front of the mirror right before you go to bed. • Look yourself in the eyes and say, "I love you." • List all the little and big things you’ve accomplished today. • Say, "Good job!" • Say, "I love you, [insert your name here]." • Repeat for a minimum of twenty-one days.
January 9, 2023
I was honored to read an advance copy of Design the Long Life You Love. I loved it so much I promptly preordered a dozen copies to share with friends and family - which brings me to the four themes that Ayse shares in this wonderful book, Love, Purpose, Well-being and Relationships (this last one particularly resonates for me!). Ayse outlines a powerful step by step process for designing a life we can all love, our own lives, our one life, and make it the best we can imagine. I strongly recommend it, this a book you'll revisit many times.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews