2025 was not the year I expected it to be.
I began the year in a brand-new job; an entirely new role that felt well aligned with my values, my career, and where I thought my life was heading. I ended the year not only out of that job, but in a completely different organisation. The work is still aligned, but it is not at all what I imagined myself doing. I had expected to be in that role for at least five years: setting things up, building a team, and doing the hard work that needed doing.
What I didn’t anticipate was that the challenge wouldn’t be the work itself, but leadership.
At a lunch near the end of the year, after I had resigned and accepted a new position elsewhere, two wonderful colleagues from that workplace gave me Ikigai. It was a thoughtful gift from people who truly understood the challenges I had faced, and in many ways, the challenges I had decided not to overcome. Leaving something unfinished is not something I’m comfortable with. Cutting and running is not my style. But for the first time, I chose to step away.
That wasn’t the only first this year. I also ran a marathon. It was brutally hard and well beyond what I believed my body was capable of. But I’m stubborn. Once I secured a last-minute entry, I stuck to the training plan and finished the race.
It was far harder for me to leave a role I had imagined myself growing into for years than it was to finish that grueling marathon.
Ikigai explores a Japanese philosophy often described as the secret to a long and happy life. The book touches—fairly lightly—on research into Japan’s “blue zones,” where people tend to live longer than average, and weaves this together with advice on exercise, food, social connection, work, and daily living. Much of it will be familiar. The ten lessons summarised at the end are unlikely to change your life, and there is nothing particularly radical or surprising in them.
But timing matters.
These ideas arrived when I needed them most… not as revelations, but as permission. Permission to accept that sometimes the hard path is not the right path. That it is okay to step away from something that no longer brings joy or sufficient reward. That slowing down is valid. That choosing happiness over sheer perseverance is not failure.
If those are the lessons I take from 2025 into the future, then I’m comfortable carrying them forward. And if Ikigai sitting on my bookshelf serves as a quiet reminder in moments when I question my choices, then it has done its job.
Overall, I’d give this book three cups of Moringa tea out of five.