Begin the New Year by Reflecting on These 3 Life-Changing Questions [Rebroadcast]
Episode Stats
Summary
As one year ends and another begins, it's natural to reflect on both the past and the future. In this episode, my guest, Greg Creech, offers three questions that can help make self-reflection truly fruitful, insightful, and possibly even life-changing.
Transcript
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Hey, this is Brett. We're taking a break from new episodes of the holidays. In the meantime,
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we're going to rebroadcast episode number 671, Begin the New Year, by reflecting on these three
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life-changing questions with Greg Creech. Great episode to listen to as we're ending this year
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and going into a new one. I hope you enjoy it, and we'll see you next time.
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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As one year ends and another begins, it's natural to reflect on both the past and the
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future, who we were, who we are, and who we want to become. My guest today offers three
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questions that can help make that self-reflection truly fruitful, insightful, and possibly even
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life-changing. His name is Greg Creech. He's executive director of the Toto Institute, which
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promotes principal psychology based on Eastern traditions, and the author of Nikon, Gratitude,
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Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection. Greg and I begin our conversation with what
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Nikon is and how this structured method of self-reflection can hold a mirror to your life,
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helping you gain greater self-awareness and see reality and the way people perceive you
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more clearly. Greg then walks us through Nikon's three rich, incisive questions and how to use
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them to help you discover how you really show up and operate in the world. We end a conversation
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with how to incorporate these reflections into your daily routine and even make it a special ritual
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with which to ring in the new year. After the show's over, check out our show notes at
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All right, Greg Creech, welcome back to the show.
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Well, it's good to be back, Brett. Thanks very much.
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So we had you on the show, I think a year ago, or maybe it might've been two years ago. It's time
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has flown. I've lost my sense of time in 2020 is completely messed up. But anyways, we had you on
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to talk about Morita therapy and your work with it, which is a type of Japanese psychology. And today
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I want to talk about something that's adjacent to that, which is a practice that you work with and
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help people work with. It's called Nikon, another Japanese practice. So let's start off. What is
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Nikon? Who developed it and what's its backstory? Well, Nikon is a method of self-reflection that was
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developed in Japan. It was developed by a man by the name of Yoshimoto Ishin. Back in the 1930s,
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1940s was really kind of the time when it first started to arise, but it was preceded by a kind
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of ancient tradition of self-reflection called Mishirabe, which went back hundreds of years prior
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to that and was affiliated originally with a form of Buddhism called Shin Buddhism, which is actually
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the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan today. And it's an interesting form of Buddhism. Not a lot
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of Americans know about it, but it's based or grounded in a concept called Tariki. And Tariki means
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something like other power. So we can look at, for instance, in the personal development arena, you hear a
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lot of things that are based on Jiriki, which means self-power, as opposed to Tariki, which means other
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power. And self-power is kind of the message that we give to people, you know, look, if you want to
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change your life, you've got to do it yourself. Nobody's going to do it for you. And it's a healthy
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message in a lot of situations. Tariki is the message that you can't do anything by yourself. You
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cannot do anything by yourself because anything that you try to do requires the support of other people,
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other objects, forms of energy, money. And so you're really dependent on other things in the world for
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being able to just live, for example, or make any changes in your life. So it's a very different
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kind of conceptual foundation that you find in Nikon than the other form of Japanese therapy that we
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talked about last time, which is Morita therapy. So for those who haven't heard that episode, just
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high level, what is Morita therapy? What's the basic story behind it? Well, Morita therapy is often
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called the psychology of action, and it's also from Japan, but it really is a very purpose-oriented
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type of approach to psychology, which has people focus primarily on what they can do and what they
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can't do and accepting what they cannot do, but really putting their energy into what's controllable
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and what they can do. And I think it's, it's probably the most popular approach that we teach
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in the book that I've written about. It is the most popular bestselling of the books because most
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people, particularly going into a new year are thinking, you know, I want to be able to accomplish
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my goals this year. I want to get more done. And so Morita therapy is a really good tool for helping
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us to deal with the psychological obstacles of accomplishing what we want to do and getting things
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done in our life. And how is Nikon related to Morita therapy? Is there a connection there sometime
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in the development of Nikon? You know, there, there really isn't historically much of a connection.
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They were really kind of developed from separate paths. Morita is, is also connected in a informal
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way to Buddhism through Zen. It's a different form of Buddhism, but they kind of came together in Japan
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and a man that I trained with David Reynolds really pulled them together. And I think they
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complement each other very well. One being kind of the action oriented side of this material and the
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other being the reflective side of this material. And I think we need to have both in our lives.
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Right. That's, that's also, you see that in the West through the dichotomy between contemplation and
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action. Like Aristotle talked about that too. So let's talk about Nikon. What is the goal of
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Nikon and the self-reflection that you're doing there? Well, I think that the goal is simply to
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really see reality more clearly. And it sounds like something that we, we wouldn't have to make
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any effort to do because most of us go through life feeling like we've already, are already able to kind
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of see reality and specifically see our conduct in terms of how we're living very clearly. But I like
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to think about Nikon as a kind of tool that's like a mirror. So if you're getting ready to go out,
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either to work or for the evening, most people probably spend at least a moment in front of a
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mirror just to kind of see what they look like, to see if their hair looks okay, or if their clothes
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are presentable, you kind of glance at things, you might spend more time than that. But that gives you
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a reflection. So you actually can see yourself because without a mirror, we're actually very limited. I can,
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I can see a good part of the front of my body up to maybe about just below my neck, but I can't see
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my face. I can't see my head and I can't see almost any part of the back of my body. So I really need
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a mirror to be able to get a fuller look. In fact, if you go to a barbershop or a hairstylist,
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they'll often use a second mirror, right? So you can kind of see how your hair looks in the back
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after it's been cut. And I think Nikon is a kind of mirror. It allows us to really see more clearly
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what other people see. And often, what we think of ourselves, how we think we're looking in the
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world, how people are perceiving us, is not the same as how other people are actually thinking of
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us. So Nikon actually is a way of using this method, this method of self-reflection, to kind of
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get a sense of what it's like for other people to actually have to deal with us, whether it's at work
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or members of our family or in a professional capacity. And that's not a perspective that we
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naturally have. It's a perspective that we actually, in order to take, we have to actually step back
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from our normal perspective to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes and say, what is it like
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to deal with Greg as, for instance, his wife or his daughter?
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And what is it that we usually miss that other people are seeing but we're not seeing?
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Well, it really varies from person to person. But I think one of the things that we miss is often
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how much other people are doing for us because we're often not paying very much attention to that.
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And that has to do, when we talk a little bit about the reflective questions, we can discuss that
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further. But one of the things we miss is really the level of support and care people are providing
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for us. But another thing that we miss, and that's really very hard to get in touch with, is how what
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we're doing is causing trouble and difficulty to others, how we're inconveniencing others, how we're
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causing problems for others. That's often something that we overlook. We focus a lot on how other people
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cause us problems. And if we're driving to work on the highway, you know, somebody kind of cuts us off and
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goes in front of us and almost causes an accident. And of course, our adrenaline gets peaked and we walk into
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the office and we, you know, tell everybody in the office, boy, I almost had an accident on the way
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to work because this jerk kind of cut right in front of me. But if we cut in front of somebody else,
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which we probably did accidentally at some point, we don't usually tell anybody about it. And we'll
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usually just dismiss it in our minds by saying, oh, I didn't see that car there, right? And then we're
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kind of done with it. So one of the things that we can look at becoming more aware of is essentially how
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we're causing trouble and difficulties to others, which is a much more constructive type of
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information than looking at how other people are causing us trouble.
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And what's the end goal? So the whole goal of Nikon is to get a better idea of what reality
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really looks like, how other people perceive us, not just what we see. And what happens once we do
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that? What's the end? Like, what is supposed to happen?
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Well, I think that I would say that one of the foundation or main goals of this process of
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self-reflection is really to shift from a complaint-based life to a life of genuine appreciation.
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So a complaint-based life is something that many of us are familiar with, probably because we've seen
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other people live that kind of way. And we know what it's like to be around somebody who's constantly
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complaining. But of course, there are times when we're that person and we're constantly complaining.
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And even when we don't complain out loud, we may be just going through a litany of complaints about
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what a terrible day this was. I'm so glad this day is over. Or in this case, what a terrible year this
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was, right? Can't wait to have this year end and get on to the next year. And I think as we reflect
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on our life and the world around us and the people around us, and we get a clearer sense of what's
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really going on that we're able to see, we're much more likely to develop a really genuine or
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authentic sense of appreciation for our life. So it's therapeutic. It sounds like what some people
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try to do with cognitive behavioral therapy. And one of the issues that that's trying to solve in
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the West is wrong thinking or just thinking that doesn't see reality. And most times what you do is
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you only see the negative. And cognitive behavioral therapy uses logic to be like, well, no,
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things aren't as bad as you think they are. Sounds like Nikon, the self-reflection Nikon.
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Yeah. I think that we're not actually trying in Nikon to change our thinking. We're actually
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trying to change our seeing more specifically, trying to change where we're putting our attention.
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And there's a maxim that we've developed that says your experience of life is not based on your
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And so if you just think about being at the end of a day, or again, let's use the example since
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the timing is that we're approaching the new year, the end of the year, if what we're paying
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attention to most of the time is the infection counts and the virus statistics and the political
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turmoil and our personal troubles and difficulties, then our experience of life is really painted by
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that kind of information, the kind of things that we're attending to. But when we actually pay
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attention to the other parts of life, which is that in my case, that I, for instance, have not
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gotten sick. I have a car that drives me around and that works fine. I have food in my refrigerator.
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My daughter graduated from college this year, even though there wasn't a ceremony. When we start
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looking at life in a more complete way, we're much more likely, I think, to develop a genuine sense
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Well, let's dig into the self-reflection icon. And it's really, it's just three questions,
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but you can go deep with each of these questions. So the first one is, when you do an icon
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self-reflection, you ask, what have I received from blank? So why begin with this question?
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Well, I think the question of looking at what you've received, and there's a movement in
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positive psychology towards looking at how to develop more gratitude. And so you'll see this
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whole idea, for instance, of gratitude journaling, putting down the things that you feel grateful
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for. This question is very carefully worded, because it's not asking you what you feel grateful
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for. It's asking you to identify in a more factual way, what have you received? So if I just use that
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question right now, I'm receiving the use of this microphone that I'm speaking into,
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the use of the technology that you're using on your show to record our conversation. I'm receiving
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your attention and your invitation for me to be your guest on the show today. I'm also receiving
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electricity and Wi-Fi, nice quiet room to basically sit and talk to you in. I've got a window in the
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room, so there's some sunlight coming in. My eyesight is working pretty well. And I could go on and on
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with a list of what I'm receiving just right at this very moment. And the reality is that most of
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the time, for instance, as I go through the day, I'm not aware of most of those things. I'm not aware
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that, for instance, I'm receiving fresh air and oxygen that's infusing my lungs and allowing me to
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breathe properly. And so when we pause and we do this kind of reflection, we essentially expand our
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awareness of how the world is supporting us and caring for us. And there's a neuroscientist by the
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name of Rick Hansen. And he developed, I think, a great metaphor for why this question is important,
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because he talks about our natural tendency. In fact, he attributes it to the way our brain is
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actually wired together from a neuroscientific standpoint. And he talks about the natural tendency
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we have to really notice problems, challenges, threats, difficulties in our life. And that those
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things tend to stick with us in a way that he connects with the image of Velcro, you know, the
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way a piece of Velcro sticks to the other side of it itself. But when things are going on, like we have
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fresh air to breathe, or we have a cup of coffee to drink, or we have hot water in the shower, or our car
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starts in the morning, we tend not to notice those things. And so that's more like Teflon. So we can
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think of this tendency that we have, which goes really into the way our brains are wired, as the
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difference between Velcro, of noticing troubles and problems in our life, and Teflon, which is the way
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that the things that are actually supporting and caring for us, tend to just kind of get noticed
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incidentally, and then kind of slide right back off to become invisible.
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So I want to reiterate, you're not, this isn't based on feelings. This is kind of like Marita
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therapy. With Marita, you're not really focused on your feelings, you're focused on action you can
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take. Same with Nikon, you're not thinking about what you feel grateful for, you're just thinking
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about, factually, what are the things that I receive from, you know, different people, or
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organizations, or even just the earth itself, the universe itself, on a daily basis?
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Yes, it's actually very objective. And it's one of the things that I think is a common
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denominator in Marita and Nikon, is they're both what I would call reality-based therapies.
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In both cases, you're trying to see reality clearly. And the fact that I'm receiving oxygen
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to breathe right now is just simply an objective fact of my existence. And the fact that I have
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Wi-Fi that I'm using in order to have this conversation with you is just a fact of my
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existence. And so those facts remain whether I feel grateful for those things or I don't feel
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grateful for them. And so when you're reflecting on this question, how do you go about it? Do you
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just think about things in general that you receive that day? Or do you focus on a relationship? Or do
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you focus on, I mean, what's the best way to go about this when you reflect upon this question?
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Because I mean, there's so many things, like you could spend hours thinking about all the things
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you receive on a daily basis. Yeah, which is actually a great thing to do every once in a while,
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particularly if you're feeling a lot of self-pity or depression, is to really spend a couple of
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hours and see how long of a list you can make. But there are different ways to use this question.
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And you can direct the question towards kind of the world as a whole, which is to some extent what
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I've been doing in the examples I'm giving. Or you can direct it towards a specific person. And
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my wife, Linda, and I, who've been working together for 25 years or more, we use this as part of our
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morning routine. And the whole thing, this part of it takes probably about five or six minutes.
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And what we do is we sit down and we say, let's just reflect on each other for the previous day.
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So we have probably three minutes of silence. And I'm thinking of, in part, the first question,
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what did I receive from Linda yesterday? And I'm thinking, well, you know, she got me a hot cup of
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coffee. And she made a really nice, healthy salad for dinner. She kept me company on a walk that we
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took at lunchtime so I could get some exercise. And she picked up the mail from the post office.
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And she listened to some music that I was trying to compose and gave me some feedback.
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So I'm just coming up with a very practical list of what I received from her the day before.
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And she's doing the same thing in her three minutes. And we're using these other questions
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as well. And then we actually just share that with each other for a couple of minutes.
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And we find that it's a really great way to start the day that we look back at the previous 24 hours.
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And most importantly, we found that using this process keeps us connected to what the other
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person in the marriage is actually giving to us. And I would say without exaggerating that if it
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wasn't for this process over the past 25 years, I'm not sure it would still be married. This really
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has kept us from falling into the trap that I think is very easy in a relationship or marriage,
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where you start getting focused on what the other person isn't doing that you really want them to
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do, or what they are doing that really aggravates you. And that's where your attention goes.
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And that's what your experience of the marriage starts to become. So this is kind of an antidote
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to that. And even by just taking a few minutes in the morning, we're able to kind of rekindle a sense
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And you can do this with relationships that aren't intimate. I mean, you can do this with
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anonymous relationships or sort of transactional relationships, right? Like the example I came
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with. So here's, we're in the pandemic. You order food from DoorDash from Payway, right? It gets,
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magically arrives at your door. Well, there's like a lot of people involved that made that happen.
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There's the DoorDash driver. There's the people at Payway that cook the food. There's the systems
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that were developed, allowed you to order online, order with a click of a thing on your screen with
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your smartphone, people who grew the food, pick the food. I mean, you can really just keep going
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back and back and back and seeing, boy, a lot of people made this pad thai possible.
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That's right. And I think what you just shared with us in terms of starting that list is just
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an example of taking a particular incident or event, right? Just receiving food being delivered
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from a restaurant and you begin to see the endless roots of what it took for you to get that meal.
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And if we don't do that, then we can get pulled in the direction of the only thing that we notice
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is that the food isn't as hot as we wanted it, right? And that becomes our experience. It's like,
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what's wrong with these DoorDash people? You know, it took them so long to get here and now the food's
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cold and now I have to heat it up. And so again, you look at this idea of how do you make that shift
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from a complaint-based life to a life of, you know, genuine sense of appreciation. And I think
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reflection and attention are kind of the two basic ingredients in that recipe.
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And when I've done, I've, you know, I've done this reflection and, you know, I followed the
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instructions, like, don't think about things that you feel grateful for. I just sort of focused on the
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objective, like things I received. What I found was the natural result with that is I started to
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feel grateful. Yeah. It's just, I think that, and again, that may not always happen and that's okay
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too, because that's not what we're, that's not the goal in a sense. It's kind of like the, it's a
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benefit that just arises naturally. And so ironically, we actually can get to the point where we realize
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that actually just feeling grateful is something that we can be grateful for because it's not something
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we're controlling, right? It's kind of happening to us. But the idea that we go through that process
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of, of looking at how we're supported, whether it be by food delivery or whether it be by our
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partner in our relationship, and then we just allow gratitude to rise naturally or not to rise
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naturally. There's no effort that's involved in order to try to get us to feel a particular way.
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Yeah. I really liked that because when I've tried the gratitude journal and that the question,
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like, what do you, what do you feel grateful for? Like the first time you do it, it's like,
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I can come up with a whole bunch of stuff, but then after a while you're like, man, I can't,
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I don't feel like I, I can't feel anything anymore. I've just, it's not there anymore. But when you
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just think about, okay, what have you received? I mean, I can just every day, I can just keep
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list and stuff 365 days of the year. And, and I think that it's a great practice because
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for instance, I'm wearing a, a Timex watch right now that was my dad, dad's watched. He died about
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six years ago and passed this watch onto me and I wear it almost every day. And anytime that I'm
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reflecting, I almost always remember to, to think about how many times a day I've looked to see what
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time it was. And I've looked at this watch I received from him. So in a way, this gift remains
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alive for me and his kindness and my memory of him remain alive because I'm doing that kind of
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reflection and noticing it by just being able to say, yeah, I received the use of this watch,
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which allows me very easily to tell what time it is at any, any given moment in the day.
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And beyond just recognizing and sort of seeing reality for it was by recognizing the things that
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you receive from different people throughout the day. Should you go and tell people like recognize,
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like go people publicly and say, Hey, you did this for me. Thanks so much.
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Yeah. I mean, I think that's a great question. And I think, again, there's nothing in Nikon
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that suggests that once you see that somebody's done something for you or helped you or supported you,
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that you have to do something for them or say, thank you.
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But in many cases, it just arises as a natural response. So if we compare it to the 12 step
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program, there's a whole process, for instance, of making amends. It's one of the steps that after
00:23:28.080
you've done this inventory of yourself, and I mentioned the 12 step program, because it's very
00:23:31.980
consistent, even though it's a different process, it's very consistent with Nikon. And there's a number
00:23:38.140
of people who have been involved in the 12 step program, who have then also been working with Nikon and
00:23:43.580
found the two to be very complimentary. But in Nikon, you've reached the end point when you've
00:23:48.620
actually seen the answers to these questions. And then whatever feelings arise is just what arises
00:23:56.100
naturally and whatever actions you decide to take. And I can give you a quick little example, which is
00:24:01.520
I live in this rural community, Moncton, Vermont, and they, they just put up a community dog park,
00:24:07.260
a fenced in area at this field, just about two miles from where we live. And I happen to be living
00:24:13.160
with my daughter who just graduated from the university, who just got a puppy. And so the
00:24:19.520
timing of this was great. And we take her over there and she can kind of run around in this huge
00:24:23.680
fenced in area, other dogs come and they play. And, and so in recognizing that in reflecting on how
00:24:30.620
valuable that's been, I just decided to write a letter to the, I found out who was on the committee
00:24:38.000
that got this dog park built and just wrote a letter, both congratulating and thanking them
00:24:42.580
and offering to bake a loaf of bread for each member of the committee. And it's not because
00:24:47.080
there's some, something in the process that says, oh, I should do something in return. It's just because
00:24:54.040
I just have this natural feeling, this natural response of wanting to do something in return in
00:25:00.700
order to give something back to these people who put in a lot of time and energy to get this thing
00:25:05.540
developed. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:25:11.920
And now back to the show. All right. So that first question, what have I received from? I mean,
00:25:16.880
that if someone just did that question for their self-recollection today, like I think they'd get a lot
00:25:20.620
out of it, but it doesn't stop there. The second question. Yeah. And I agree with you. If I think
00:25:25.460
that, you know, sometimes people, they say, oh, I don't have time. And you just, if you just spend
00:25:29.740
five minutes and just do that first question, I think you do get a lot out of it. But as we'll see,
00:25:35.120
I think if you, if you take some time to do the other two questions, it actually begins to build on
00:25:40.300
the first question. All right. So the second question is, what have I given to fill in the blank?
00:25:46.000
So what's the purpose of this question? What are we trying to do?
00:25:48.460
So this is just the reverse, right? We're just looking at the, we're just changing the direction.
00:25:54.200
If we use your example of DoorDash, we're thinking, well, what did I give? You know, so I paid for the
00:26:00.840
meal that was given to me. There was a fee added. I gave a tip to the driver, maybe. So we're looking
00:26:07.280
at what you gave in the situation. And so when we look at these two questions side by side,
00:26:13.620
we've, we now see the give and take of our lives either during this period of time or in relation
00:26:20.280
to this particular relationship. So if I was to do this, you know, somewhat thoroughly, if I could,
00:26:26.680
in relation to my wife for a 24 hour period for yesterday, and she was to do the same thing,
00:26:32.080
I would basically see all the things I received from her and I would identify what I had given to
00:26:36.680
her. And that is a wonderful reconciliation to look at because you see the debits and credits and
00:26:43.860
the man who developed Nikon, Yoshimoto Isshin, he was a very devout religious person, but he was also
00:26:50.500
a very successful business person. And he wrote that he developed these first two questions, kind of
00:26:57.220
working from a accounting or business framework, you know, because his company, which made artificial
00:27:03.180
leather for Japanese cars back in the 60s and 70s, that his company would send out a statement to
00:27:10.960
their clients saying, here's how much product we shipped to you. And here's how much money you
00:27:16.340
basically paid. And either you have a credit, or you owe us some money, right? And he saw this as kind
00:27:23.040
of more of a spiritual reconciliation based on our life, you know. So I went through the day yesterday,
00:27:28.460
this is what I received from the world, food from the refrigerator, air to breathe, my car worked,
00:27:34.460
my wife made a nice salad, this whole list of things, a hot shower. And here's what I gave,
00:27:39.020
I walked the dog, I fed the dog, I helped, you know, my daughter with a particular question she had
00:27:44.520
about the computer. And now I look at these things side by side. And for me personally, and I always
00:27:51.340
encourage people to deal with this freshly. But for me personally, almost all the time, what I find,
00:27:57.660
no matter what I'm looking at, is that I've received more than I gave. When I first went to
00:28:02.540
Japan to do my first training in this material, I spent two weeks going through my entire life,
00:28:09.180
16 hours a day, just reflecting on my life using these three questions and looking at every
00:28:15.280
relationship in the same way. What did I receive from this girl I dated when I was in high school
00:28:20.780
for those two years? What did I give to her? And in every single case, I found that I had received
00:28:26.200
more than I had given. So one of the things that happened is I changed my self-image kind of
00:28:33.280
changed because it had to change because I'd always thought of myself as a very giving person.
00:28:38.240
But in reality, it was more accurate to say that I was a receiving person.
00:28:42.640
Or some people would say I'm a taking person. But I received much more than I was giving in all
00:28:48.180
these relationships. And that astounded me. And it made me, on the one hand, feel kind of guilty
00:28:54.440
that I wasn't giving more or doing more. But on the other hand, it made me feel more cared for and
00:29:01.180
supported than I had ever felt in my entire life. This is when I was back in my early 30s. It's over 30
00:29:06.760
years ago now. And I think when we look at these two questions side by side, we begin to get a sense of
00:29:13.800
the balance or imbalance in our receiving and giving. And in situations where we're receiving
00:29:20.460
more, again, there's often this natural sense that I want to do something more for my wife. I want to do
00:29:28.060
something more for the community. I want to do something more for the planet, whatever it is that we're
00:29:33.020
kind of looking at. And it's not based on some commandment that I should be a better person and be
00:29:40.860
kinder to people. It's based on just a natural sense that arises in me that I want to do more
00:29:47.020
for others because I feel like my life has been so blessed. In conjunction, when you were talking
00:29:52.380
about this question, what have I given to, you quoted this article from like the 1940s, like Forbes
00:29:58.100
article. It's called Try Giving Yourself Away. And it's really, I've been thinking about it a lot since
00:30:02.880
I read about it. What's the big idea there? And how is it connected to this question of what have I
00:30:07.740
given to you? Well, it's an interesting article by this man kind of going back into the 40s where
00:30:15.000
he just really tries to look for opportunities for how he can do things when he's out and about,
00:30:22.600
how he can give things to other people, including just feedback or advice in situations where that's
00:30:28.380
called for. And he tells a lot of stories in that book. And I think that one of the things for me that
00:30:34.000
that really has gotten me to see is that even in situations where I'm making a special effort,
00:30:40.600
and I'll use the example of baking bread, even though I haven't done this for these people yet.
00:30:45.300
But let's say I, tomorrow I bake a loaf of sourdough bread for one of the people on the
00:30:50.080
dog park committee, and I deliver it over there. And I think, you know, that was kind of a nice
00:30:55.400
thing that I did. You know, they made this dog park, but at least I did something in return.
00:31:00.360
But here's this question of like, what did I receive in order to do that? Right? So I'm trying
00:31:07.140
to actually do something that's nice. I'm trying to respond to my natural sense that I want to
00:31:11.640
do something to help repay these people for what they did that has benefited me. But in order to do
00:31:17.960
that, I needed to get flour, I needed to have a baking board, I needed to have a good oven,
00:31:23.300
and I needed to have water, good fresh water for the bread and some salt, all those ingredients,
00:31:29.640
I actually needed to have sourdough starter, which was now that I think of it, as we're talking,
00:31:35.060
was a Christmas gift from my daughter from two years ago, I still have the same sourdough starter
00:31:39.900
that I've kept up for the past two years in the refrigerator. So that went into the bread.
00:31:43.920
And I began to see that even in my efforts to try to give something or do something for others to try
00:31:50.700
to give myself away, I'm dependent on all of these other people and things and forms of energy,
00:31:57.920
just to be able to do that. So I'm very humbled by that process. It really makes me feel very humbled
00:32:05.020
to think about that even in a situation where I'm doing something that seems kind and giving,
00:32:10.200
I have to receive so much to be able to do that. Yeah, it really shows the interdependence of
00:32:15.580
relationships. Yeah, and I think that interdependence, that principle, which is very
00:32:21.900
easy to comprehend intellectually, and exists, I think, in virtually every spiritual tradition in
00:32:29.500
the world. But when you actually do this kind of reflection, you start learning about how that's
00:32:35.460
working in a very mechanical way, in a very practical way in your day-to-day life.
00:32:39.980
And it's a very different thing, I think, to experience it practically than it is to just
00:32:45.220
consider it to be like, oh, this is a beautiful spiritual principle.
00:32:49.660
All right. So reflecting upon what have I received from and also in conjunction with what have I given
00:32:54.020
to, there's no endgame with this. With Nikon therapy, there's no goal that you're supposed to
00:33:01.520
do something. But one of the natural results is that you're maybe going to want to do more. You
00:33:05.000
maybe want to serve more or maybe just be more helpful, more useful to people. And I love in the
00:33:09.700
book, you give different suggestions on how you can do that. It doesn't have to be big,
00:33:13.400
an email of encouragement, a text of encouragement, picking up litter. I mean,
00:33:21.100
You know, sometimes I'll get an email, and you probably have had this experience,
00:33:26.160
you get an email or even a short message just saying, you know, I really love what you're doing,
00:33:30.700
or I loved your show, or I loved your book, and it goes into a little bit of detail. And it makes
00:33:35.920
your day to get that kind of feedback. And you think about what was the cost of that to the
00:33:40.920
person who wrote it, you know, about maybe two minutes or three minutes of their time and pressing
00:33:45.700
the send button on their phone or computer. So, you know, we're capable of actually spreading a lot
00:33:51.420
of joy and happiness and gratitude in the world with, in many cases, a very small investment of our
00:33:59.340
Okay. So we talked about what have I received from? What have I given to? Let's talk about this
00:34:04.140
third question, which is, what troubles and difficulties did I cause blank? So what are
00:34:11.180
Well, this is the hardest question. And this is the question that people question most often,
00:34:17.380
because it's not a question that makes us usually feel good. And I often tell people that the process
00:34:23.040
of doing this kind of reflection is not a process that's designed to make us feel good. It's a process
00:34:29.620
designed to help us see the reality of our lives. And so we're looking at this question, you know,
00:34:35.540
how did I cause inconvenience, problems, troubles to my wife, to my daughter, to just other people
00:34:42.680
that I've been around for a certain period for the past day or the past month. And it's a difficult
00:34:47.980
question to look at. But the best example of why I think this is effective is I can go back to
00:34:54.340
studies that they did in Japan in the 1960s, where they use Nikon in the prison system over a period
00:35:00.520
of years. And they did research. And they had people who were in prison, who were convicted of
00:35:07.100
crimes, in some cases, serious crimes. They had people spend one week, just like you would in a
00:35:12.540
retreat, doing Nikon on their lives and going through their lives with all three of these questions,
00:35:17.540
including what trouble and difficulty did I cause? And you can imagine somebody, particularly if
00:35:22.220
they're a career or a lifelong criminal, what it would be like for them to actually just sit and
00:35:27.580
do nothing but think about all of the people who suffered as a result of the crimes and the criminal
00:35:34.360
activities that they had involved in their life. And what they found is they then looked at the
00:35:40.220
recidivism rate. And they found that in every prison that was doing this, the number of people after they
00:35:46.360
left prison that were rearrested was dramatically lower than with the people who hadn't gone through
00:35:53.040
this process of Nikon reflection. So again, it wasn't like it was attached to any moral commandment
00:35:59.400
that says when you get out of prison, we want you to be a good citizen. But this process itself just
00:36:05.000
influenced people to essentially make changes, significant changes in their lifestyle, once they had
00:36:11.060
really seen the difficulty and suffering that they've caused. And this the same kind of research exists
00:36:16.740
with people in Japan who are alcoholics, in terms of looking at how their drinking caused suffering and
00:36:22.200
difficulty to other people. So if we're willing to be honest and open to how we're causing problems and
00:36:29.600
difficulties, and it doesn't have to be the kind of things that you you would see if you were in the
00:36:35.160
Japanese mafia, it could just simply be I left my dirty dishes in the sink. And my wife, you know, ended up
00:36:40.740
washing them, or I left my socks on the floor in the bedroom, or I was, you know, half an hour late
00:36:46.560
for a lunch appointment, and the person had to wait for me. But when we see those things, we begin to put
00:36:52.400
ourselves in another person's shoes. What is it like for someone to be my colleague and have to work with
00:36:58.740
me? You know, what is it like for my wife to actually have to deal with me as her husband, or for my
00:37:04.720
daughter to have to be able to deal with me as her father? And some of the most, I would say, profound and
00:37:10.660
emotional reflections I've had, have really been doing this third question, and looking at people
00:37:17.480
I was very close to my family and close friends for years, and seeing essentially some of the,
00:37:24.640
you know, really selfish things that I have had done to cause trouble and difficulty to those people.
00:37:30.320
But I would argue that that's incredibly important. Because whether you see it or not,
00:37:36.080
it's part of a page of the book of your life that's already been written, right? So your choice
00:37:41.980
is really, do you want to be conscious about how you've lived your life? Or do you want to essentially
00:37:47.580
be blind to these elements of how you've lived your life? And I think we should, in the interest of
00:37:53.600
living a good life, and in the interest of our own kind of spiritual aspirations, we should try to be
00:38:01.200
Yeah, and this question is useful, because as you said earlier, we tend to overlook the things that
00:38:05.340
we do. We tend to focus on what other people do that inconvenience us, right? The guy that cuts us
00:38:10.240
off, man, we're talking about it to our wife when we get home. This guy is such a jerk. But we tend to
00:38:14.720
overlook when we've done that in the past. And this question says, no, you do this stuff too. You got to
00:38:20.280
see reality for what it is. You cause inconvenience just like that guy who cuts you off.
00:38:24.220
Yeah, I think most of us have gotten a lot of practice and therefore developed a habit of
00:38:33.180
complaining about other people. And in some cases, whenever I think about it this way, I'm always
00:38:40.060
kind of surprised, but it's almost more natural when you get together, whether it's just with your
00:38:45.520
partner or your roommate or a group of friends for dinner, it's almost more natural to complain about
00:38:52.620
all the problems in your life than it is to talk about all the things that are going well,
00:38:57.380
or all the ways in which life is actually helping or supporting you. And so people often find that
00:39:04.720
if you work in an office setting with other people, that complaining is actually the norm
00:39:11.940
in that social experience. And if you were to go into the office and say, well, let me tell you what
00:39:17.620
happened to me on the way to work this morning. You know, first of all, my car started like the first
00:39:21.660
time. It's just, just amazing. I turned the key. It started right up and I looked at the gas gauge
00:39:26.780
and it was full. And apparently my husband must've filled it up with gas yesterday. And then I'm
00:39:31.700
driving down the road and traffic is backed up and there's this truck painting these yellow lines,
00:39:39.420
you know, on the road so that you know which lane you're in so that people don't crash into each other.
00:39:44.860
Isn't that fortunate that somebody's out there doing that? And if you said that people would look at you
00:39:49.960
like you're nuts, but if you go in and you just run off a litany of complaints about the traffic and
00:39:57.600
the news and the political situation, people just shake their head and agree with you. And then
00:40:02.440
they basically share their own experiences about those same things. So complaining has become much
00:40:11.080
Right. This question helps you be less of a complainer. I mean, you even recommend that people
00:40:15.120
spend about 60% of the reflection when they're doing Nikon on this question.
00:40:19.780
Yeah. And that's really what was, I think, recommended to me in my own training in Japan
00:40:24.020
is that this is really of the three questions. This is really an important question because
00:40:29.100
it allows us to see ourselves, again, this idea of using a mirror in a way that we wouldn't
00:40:35.240
otherwise see. And when I, when I talk about the idea of putting ourselves in the other person's
00:40:40.860
shoes, this question, you know, what is it like for Linda to be married to me, that that process
00:40:45.600
of, of doing that psychologically is really the foundation of empathy. It's the foundation of
00:40:52.260
compassion. It's the foundation of understanding. So our ability to see things from the other person's
00:40:58.120
perspective, including ourselves is really one of the essential elements. I think of a healthy
00:41:04.080
relationship with anybody. So when we're working with or members of our family. So if we can do that,
00:41:09.560
we really increase the chances that we can, we can basically have healthy relationships
00:41:14.320
in our life as opposed to a conflict and, and kind of resentment towards others.
00:41:21.200
And how do we not let this exercise delve into self-loathing? Do you think, man,
00:41:24.820
I just, I'm, I inconvenience. I caused so many people, so many problems.
00:41:28.940
This, I'm a terrible person. Like, how do you avoid that?
00:41:32.180
Yeah. I think that it comes up a lot where I, particularly from therapists will say, well,
00:41:36.580
do we really want to have people who are already struggling, for instance, with depression or
00:41:41.860
anxiety, you know, looking at themselves and looking at like, in a way that just makes them
00:41:47.540
feel bad about themselves. But if we think about it, it's feeling guilty about specific actions or
00:41:55.000
specific conduct. Is that really a bad thing? I think it's a very, it's an actually a natural response
00:42:01.300
of compassion. When we look at something that we've done that has caused trouble to someone
00:42:06.720
to feel bad about that. I think that actually comes from a compassionate part of us. And I think
00:42:13.320
to not, to do something that has caused suffering and not feel bad about it is, is to some extent,
00:42:20.280
pathological. It's not really healthy. So the key thing is kind of in your question is,
00:42:26.360
we don't want to get caught up in that kind of self-loathing. What we want to do is use it as
00:42:32.460
information, as feedback from reality, for maybe how we can change our lives or make some changes in how
00:42:39.000
we're treating other people or in the way that we're living. And also, it's very humbling. You know,
00:42:44.060
I think that people who are successful, people who have written bestselling books and have successful
00:42:50.100
businesses and are CEOs, it's very hard for people who have any success in their life,
00:42:54.880
not to begin to feel a little bit arrogant or self-righteous or kind of above others.
00:43:01.380
And I think for people who are successful, looking at how they've caused trouble and difficulty and
00:43:06.680
problems to others on that path to success is actually very humbling and probably very good in
00:43:13.540
terms of helping them to stay away from going in the other direction, which is to get caught up in a
00:43:20.480
sense of self-righteousness and arrogance, right? It's the opposite of what you had mentioned
00:43:25.840
originally, which is getting caught in a state of looking at other people and thinking,
00:43:30.340
why can't that person just get their act together? Why are they messing up their lives like that?
00:43:35.320
So I think being humbled for many of us is actually a very healthy experience.
00:43:40.040
So the three questions again, what have I given to, what have I received from,
00:43:45.000
and what troubles and difficulties did I cause, fill in the blank? Can you imagine you just do
00:43:49.240
this on a daily basis? You can do this morning before you set out the door or at night before
00:43:54.580
Yes. I think that, you know, I mentioned just taking, again, six or seven minutes with my wife,
00:43:59.400
Linda, in the morning where we do this is just kind of part of our morning routine.
00:44:02.500
I think you can dedicate blocks of time to this in the same way that you dedicate time
00:44:08.580
to getting physical exercise by going running or going to the gym or working out in some way.
00:44:14.520
I think we have to dedicate time to self-reflection. If we don't do that,
00:44:18.900
it's very hard to have, I think, any balance in our life. Most people are very active and we're busy
00:44:24.840
people. Most of us are busy. You ask people, how are you? And they say, oh, I'm so busy. And we go from
00:44:29.240
one thing to another and we get to a point in our day where we say, okay, that's it. I'm done.
00:44:33.840
And then we shift from action to some kind of passivity, which could be looking at Facebook,
00:44:40.320
watching a movie, watching a sitcom, you know, surfing the internet, passive activities. And so
00:44:46.980
we have action and we have passiveness or passivity, but what's often missing from our life
00:44:53.380
is reflectivity, which is what we're really discussing today and actually building time into your day,
00:44:58.640
even if it's just for a few minutes before bed, first thing in the morning, to just be reflecting
00:45:03.940
on your life using this kind of method or even other methods that may lead you to the same type
00:45:10.820
of contemplative approach to your life. All right. So you can do Nikon daily. It doesn't take very long,
00:45:17.180
but you also in the book talk about, you can set aside periods, like special days where you just do
00:45:22.520
Nikon reflections, make it sort of a ritual. And one way you talked about, you can do that is using
00:45:28.880
the new year to do a sort of special Nikon reflection. So we're about to start a new year,
00:45:34.260
ending 2020, about to start 2021. How can folks modify Nikon so they can reflect on the year that's
00:45:41.820
passed and the one that's about to come? Well, it's a perfect time to actually be doing this
00:45:47.120
at the end of the year and going into a new year. And I encourage people to spend even a minimal
00:45:52.120
amount of time doing some type of reflection on the year before you get into setting your goals or
00:45:57.820
making resolutions. Because in every case, both personally and people I've worked with, when you
00:46:03.940
do that, it informs what you end up doing in terms of moving forward in your life. And I think that's
00:46:09.060
one of the real values of self-reflection is that doing this reflection informs moving forward in
00:46:15.100
your life. So for years, there was a woman in upstate New York that used to actually host an
00:46:20.000
event where people came sometimes from several hundred miles around. And we spent the last
00:46:25.100
eight hours of the year doing quiet self-reflection up until midnight on New Year's Eve. And then we kind
00:46:31.300
of toasted and had a nice meal together. But it's a great way to end the year. And this year where
00:46:35.940
people are less likely to have social engagements and New Year's Eve parties, I would really encourage
00:46:42.380
people to think about using that evening, New Year's evening, and just sitting back and doing
00:46:47.540
some reflection. And we actually have a booklet that I developed and have updated every year for
00:46:54.160
about the past 10 years called A Guide to New Year's Reflection. And if you think it's okay, Brett,
00:47:00.680
I'd be happy to give people an email address and we'd be happy to send them a link so that they can
00:47:06.720
download that and use that if they want to do some reflection on New Year's Eve. But it's a great way to
00:47:11.920
end the year. And it also offers you a different perception of the year. Most of us think,
00:47:16.620
oh, this year 2020, what a crazy, terrible year. Can't wait till the year is over. Get a fresh start
00:47:22.880
in the new year. But if you reflected, or at least for me personally, I found that there were some
00:47:28.240
really great moments and experiences of joy, great times that I really connected, for instance,
00:47:34.420
with my daughter who's been living with us during the lockdown and the pandemic period of time.
00:47:39.580
And there's a lot of positive things that happened in the year for me, even though
00:47:43.060
there was also a lot of losses. And so it gives me a much more balanced view of the year to kind
00:47:48.460
of look at it specifically using this kind of reflective process than just kind of my gut
00:47:56.280
And then after you do that reflection, you can then start setting your goals for the new year
00:48:02.620
Yeah, I think. And again, I teach a course in the beginning of the year, if it's okay to mention
00:48:06.680
this, called Living on Purpose, which is really designed to get people started off in the right
00:48:10.780
direction of the year. And it's really the idea of looking at, you know, how can I be very clear
00:48:17.260
about what's going to give my life meaning this year? You know, those are the things that I want to
00:48:22.600
elevate in terms of the energy that I'm going to put in. We have a certain amount of energy
00:48:27.160
that we're going to have available to us if we live a whole year from now. And we want to have
00:48:32.800
those things that are really going to be meaningful and important to us to get a lot of that energy.
00:48:38.200
And I think if we start thinking about it that way, the hard thing, of course, is sticking to it
00:48:42.400
once we kind of get going. And that's where the Merida therapy piece of this material comes in.
00:48:46.980
Once we're actually in the process of doing things and the taking action, we can shift into this other
00:48:52.800
mode of psychological support. But I think the idea is that there's a very natural process of
00:48:58.400
reflection and contemplation that leads to then redirecting our energy, our goals, and the things
00:49:06.500
that we want to achieve in the coming year. Well, Greg, this has been a great conversation.
00:49:10.340
Where can people go to learn more about the book Nikon and the rest of your work?
00:49:13.480
Well, we have a website that has a lot of our material up there. It's just called
00:49:18.700
30,000days.org. And it's just spelled, it's the words 30,000 days all together. And if people want
00:49:27.460
to send an email to us at the address t-o-d-o-to-do at totoinstitute.org, then we'll be glad to respond
00:49:36.440
and give you a link so that you can download this New Year's booklet. But you'll find a lot of
00:49:41.460
resources on our website. And I've been doing this for 30 years. And the reason that I've kind of
00:49:47.580
continued doing this for 30 years is because I really believe it's a great alternative to some
00:49:52.060
of the more traditional Western therapy and Western psychology that is really common in the US. And I
00:49:59.060
think for people who are inclined to look at approaches from the East, whether it be, you know,
00:50:05.660
acupuncture or yoga or Chinese medicine or martial arts, I think there's some great wisdom that we
00:50:14.360
Well, Greg Creech, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure and have a happy new year.
00:50:17.120
Well, thank you, Brad. It's been a pleasure talking to you and I hope you have a wonderful
00:50:22.120
My guest today was Greg Creech. He's the author of the book Nikon. It's available on amazon.com.
00:50:27.240
You can find out more information about his work at his website, Todo Institute, that's T-O-D-O
00:50:31.860
institute.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash reflect, where you can find links
00:50:36.680
to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:50:45.880
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:50:49.500
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00:50:53.060
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