10 Creative Lifestyle Books from Around the World
What’s the secret to a happy, creative lifestyle? Discover new perspectives on creative living from these inspiring lifestyle books from around the world.
How to live a good and creative life differs around the world. Every culture has different points of view and lessons to support a happier and more creative lifestyle. Besides learning these different and helpful perspectives reading books from around the world strengthens one’s openness to new experiences and builds unique connections in the brain to further support creative thinking.
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles dives into the Japanese lifestyle concept of Ikigai, a reason for living. According to the Japanese, everyone has an Ikigai. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life.
Having a strong sense of Ikigai — where what you love, what you’re good at, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs all overlap—means that each day is infused with meaning. It’s the reason we get up in the morning.
In researching this book, the authors interviewed the residents of the Japanese village with the highest percentage of 100-year-olds—one of the world’s Blue Zones. Ikigai reveals the secrets to their longevity and happiness: how they eat, how they move, how they work, how they foster collaboration and community, and—their best-kept secret—how they find the Ikigai that brings satisfaction to their lives. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own Ikigai. Because who doesn’t want to find happiness every day?
The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking explores the question of what makes Danes one of the happiest people in the world. The answer is Hygge (pronounced hoo-ga), a Danish philosophy of comfort, togetherness, and well-being.
Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, explores this lifestyle concept. He explains it as “being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe,” but it’s more than this.
Hygge is the sensation you get when you’re cuddled up on a sofa, in cozy socks under a soft throw, during a storm. It’s that feeling when you’re sharing comfort food and easy conversation with loved ones at a candlelit table. It is the warmth of morning light shining just right on a crisp blue-sky day.
The Little Book of Hygge introduces you to this cornerstone of Danish life and offers advice and ideas on incorporating it into your own life, such as:
- Get comfy. Take a break.
- Be here now. Turn off the phones.
- Turn down the lights. Bring out the candles.
- Build relationships. Spend time with your tribe.
- Give yourself a break from the demands of healthy living. Cake is most definitely Hygge.
- Live life today, like there is no coffee tomorrow.
The Art of Flaneuring: How to Wander with Intention and Discover a Better Life by Erika Owen is a fun and practical guide to the French lifestyle concept of flaneuring, an act of mindful wandering. This simple act of walking can help you cultivate a more creative, fulfilling, and mindful life.
Have you ever been walking home from work and unexpectedly took a different path just to learn more about your neighborhood? Or have you been on a vacation and walked around a new city just to take it all in? Then chances are, you’re a flaneur and you didn’t even know it! Originally used to describe well-to-do French men who would stroll city streets in the nineteenth century, flaneur has evolved to generally mean someone who wanders with intention. Even if you’ve already embraced being a flaneur, did you know that flaneuring has benefits beyond satisfying your craving for wanderlust?
In The Art of Flaneuring, discover the many ways flaneuring can spark creativity, support a more mindful mentality, and improve your overall well-being, including:
- How flaneuring your mundane daily routine can boost your mental health.
- Why flaneuring isn’t just for jet-setters—you can flaneur anywhere!
- How to manage your stress at the office by doing fun flaneur-inspired activities.
- How to use flaneuring to connect on a deeper level with your friends and partner.
The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Wellness, and Happiness Through the Power of Sisu by Katja Pantzar is a book about the Finish lifestyle concept of Sisu or everyday courage.
Despite the covid pandemic Findland still ranks as the happiest country in the world. Sisu also known as everyday courage may what to thank among other lifestyle habits and philosophies.
This engaging and practical guide introduces a Finnish way to transform mind, body, and spirit with simple and sensible daily practices that make Finns one of the happiest populations in the world, year after year.
Topics include:
- Movement as medicine: How walking, biking, and swimming every day are good for what ails us–and best done outside the confines of a gym.
- Natural mood boosters: Coldwater swimming, steamy saunas, and other ways to alleviate stress, anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
- Forest therapy: Why there’s no substitute for getting out into nature on a regular basis.
- Healthy eating: What the Nordic diet can teach us all about feeding body, mind, and soul.
- The gift of sisu: Why Finns embrace a special form of courage, grit, and determination as a national virtue – and how anyone can dig deeper to survive and thrive through tough times.
The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner is a lifestyle concept you’ve probably heard of as it’s become the go-to term to describe the cultures around the world with extraordinarily long-lived communities.
Bestselling author, longevity expert, and National Geographic Explorer Dan Buettner has led teams of researchers around the world to uncover the secrets of Blue Zones. He found that the recipe for longevity is deeply intertwined with community, lifestyle, and spirituality. Region by region, Buettner reveals the “secrets” of longevity through stories of his travels and interviews with some of the most remarkable and happily long-living people on the planet.
By embracing a few simple but powerful habits and creating the right community to support these habits, people can live longer, healthier, and happier lives. His prescriptions for lifestyle, nutrition, outlook, and stress-coping practices will add years to your life and life to your years.
Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing Hardcover by Olga Mecking is a book that explores the Dutch lifestyle concept of Niksen, or the art of doing nothing.
Much like the Taoist principle of Wu Wei, Niksen is a lifestyle habit of letting go and can have many creative benefits, from managing stress to recovering from burnout. It’s not a traditional form of meditation, nor is it a state of laziness or boredom. It’s not scrolling through social media or wondering what you’re going to cook for dinner. Niksen is to make a conscious choice to sit back, let go, and do nothing at all.
Learn how the Dutch practice doing nothing to live happier lives, such as:
- At Home: Find a comfy nook and sit. No technology or other distractions.
- At Work: Stare at your computer. Take in the view from your office. Close your eyes.
- In Public: Forget waiting for the bus. Enjoy some relaxing Niksen time.
Backed with advice from the world’s leading experts on happiness and productivity, this book examines the underlying science behind Niksen and how doing less can often yield so much more. Perfect for anyone who feels overwhelmed, burnt out, or exhausted, NIKSEN does not tell you to work harder. Instead, it shows you how to take a break from all the busyness while giving you sincere, heartfelt permission to do nothing.
The Little Book of Lykke: Secrets of the World’s Happiest People by Meik Wiking is about pursuing and finding the good that exists in the world around us every day.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Little Book of Hygge, which is also on this list, The Little Book of Lykee offers more inspiration and lifestyle tips to be happier.
In The Little Book of Lykke, Meik identifies the six factors that explain the majority of differences in happiness across the world—togetherness, money, health, freedom, trust, and kindness—and explores what actions we can take to become happier. As he reveals, we can deepen our blissfulness and contentment with little adjustments in our behavior, whether it’s eating like the French (sitting around a table and savoring our time) or dancing the tango like Argentinians in Buenos Aires.
The Little Book of Lykke is a global roadmap for joy that offers a new approach to achieving everyday happiness that not only improves our own lives but also helps us build better communities and a better world.
Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living by Linnea Dunne explores the Swedish lifestyle concept of Lagom (pronounced “lah-gom”), which roughly translates to “not too little, not too much, just right.”
Discover the Swedish ethos of balanced living that promises happiness and sustainability in work and life. Lagom provides simple solutions to juggle everyday priorities, reduce stress, eat well, and save money, with lessons on the importance of downtime, being outdoors, and Sweden’s coffee break culture. Learn tips on removing clutter and creating a capsule wardrobe to help achieve Sweden’s famously clean and functional design aesthetic, while advice on going green and growing food gets their hands dirty.
With seemingly endless financial, emotional, and environmental benefits, Lagom presents an accessible and all-encompassing lifestyle that is sure to inspire mindfulness, wellbeing, and contentment.
Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony by Jason Gregory is a guide for achieving an enlightened mind through the Taoist art of non-doing.
Wu-Wei, or the art of non-doing, non-forcing, is a Taoist lifestyle concept of cultivating intelligent spontaneity and effortless action to allow the natural harmony of the cosmos to prevail. Attributed to the great sage Lao Zi, the philosophy of Wu-Wei teaches you how to develop a natural state of consciousness not bound by thought or preconceived limitations.
Merging Taoist philosophy, Hindu principles, and Confucianism along with scientific findings, Jason Gregory outlines the practice of Wu-Wei as a vehicle to realize our innate freedom, revealing that when we release our ego and allow life to unfold as it will, we align ourselves more closely with our goals and cultivate skill and mastery along the way.
The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles is a definitive guide to finding happiness by living fully in the present.
From the bestselling authors of Ikigai, The Book of Ichigo Ichie teaches a new kind of mindfulness on how every moment in our life happens only once, and if we let it slip away, we lose it forever.
Pronounced itchy-GO itchy-A, ichigo ichie is a Japanese lifestyle concept that’s often spoken when greeting someone or saying goodbye to convey that the encounter is unique and special, but it is also a tenet of Zen Buddhism attributed to a sixteenth-century master of the Japanese tea ceremony, or “ceremony of attention,” whose intricate rituals compel us to focus on the present moment.
Learn how to appreciate the beauty of the fleeting moment, how to use all five senses to anchor yourself in the present, and be alert to the magic of coincidences. This type of mindfulness can help you let go of fear, sadness, anger, and other negative emotions fueled by fixating on the past or the future.
Everyone contains a key that can open the door to attention, harmony with others, and love of life. And that key is ichigo ichie.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
