A week ago, the new book was published by the great Spanish tandem Francesc Miralles and Héctor Garcia, who after selling more than 1,500,000 copies worldwide with their book IKIGAI, translated into 44 languages, have created ICHIGO-ICHIE. It was hard for me to learn this Japanese name, but after reading the book, I can assure you that I repeat it mentally many times a day. IGHIGO-ICHIE is an expression that can be found in most Japanese tea shops, and it means something like: MAKE EVERY INSTANT SOMETHING UNIQUE. The time to drink tea should be a moment of relaxation, of calm, of being able to taste it without haste, without our mobile phones nearby. Maybe in the East they can easily do it, but here in the West I think we hardly try to create a moment like this. More and more people are becoming aware of this, but there are still few who get to have that moment every  day, which can be with or without tea. I suppose you have to build a certain personality to be able to sit down and to think that we can free ourselves from the past and the future, to enjoy every moment, in the present, because if we let it go, we will have lost the chance to live that instant again.

However, I put myself in the shoes of those who are not going through a good time, and I am sure that your mind frequently travels to the past to remember the good old days, and to the future to wish this streak to be over soon. According to the authors, we translate emotions into time, and this does not allow us to live in the NOW, where serenity and joy reside, despite the bad moments. There are always bad times, moments that we would prefer not to live, but we must go through them, accept them and learn from them, because the here and now is what makes us alive. The present is a gift that must be opened, and although sometimes the day can be hard, is where the key to happiness lays. By incorporating the ICHIGO ICHIE to our routine we will learn to create unforgettable encounters in professional and personal life, improve our personal relationships and live every moment as if it were the last.

At the end of the book, the authors indicate the principles of ICHIGO-ICHIE and I must confess that it is not easy to apply them all, but I am trying. I must thank Francesc and Héctor again because it is a book whose purpose is the same as IKIGAI: to help us to live better, because there is only one life. We know it but we are not aware of it.  For this reason, it is worth living every second as something unique, and squeezing it like a lemon. It’s another wonderful book from which we can learn a lot. Happiness depends only on us and we can make this a pleasant path for ourselves and for those around us.