Ikigai & Kaizen: The Japanese Strategy to Achieve Personal Happiness and Professional Success (How to set goals, stop procrastinating, be more productive, build good habits, focus, & thrive)

by Anthony Raymond

Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration.

Mastery usually only comes after we have suffered through the pains of learning our craft.

only by walking the path that new paths will emerge.

Managing risk and fear is a skill that must be honed throughout your life.

Just as the force of gravity is an immutable property of the cosmos that we must learn to coexist with, so too must be our relationship with change.

You must learn to see obstacles as opportunities for learning, rather than as excuses for capitulation.

Mastery follows consistency.

Your wings may even be clipped by those closest to you.

An ideal workday is one in which you complete all of the objectives that are under your control.

Many fortuitous opportunities sit abandoned, not because the task was necessarily difficult, but because the person doing the task didn’t have the tenacity to keep at it each day.

Productivity is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.

a good chef understands that “less is more.”

success is achieved after years of mistakes, missteps, and blind stumblings across an antagonistic landscape laden with sinkholes and booby-traps.

ritualizing and gamifying the process helps us to stick to the process. Your fitness log is your trophy case—a visual reminder of your past workout successes. Every dumbbell rep is a victory. Every completed routine is a prize. By religiously logging your stats, you should be able to see a steady incremental increase in your levels of

Nurturing a relationship entails committing to the development of your interpersonal communication skillset, as well as a willingness to take into account the desires of your partner before those of your own.

In our quest for self-actualization, the most complex relationship we’ll have to manage is the one with ourselves.

relationship difficulties arise because couples are unable to see the world through the eyes of the other.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and cannot control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.

Humans are temporal beings—granted a finite amount of time in an aging body. For each mile you traverse, life will be ever-willing to introduce new and increasingly diverse obstacles into your path.

The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps.

a successful day is one in which we succeeded in mustering the tenacity needed to keep marching forward.

Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

The imperfections and irregularities that comprise the beautiful mosaic of your life are not to be feared or hidden. Instead, it is through these cracks that you should allow the light of wisdom to shine the brightest.

You take responsibility for yourself… If you’re good at it, you have some excess left over to take care of your family. If you’re good at both of those, then you have some excess left over to take care of your community.

the road itself is the only thing that is guaranteed to accompany you on your journey. Along this road, there will be transient moments of happiness and grand victories that will conjure the emotions of fulfillment and pride.