The Art of Manliness - The Japanese Practice That Can Give More Meaning to an American Holiday

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.160 the focus on gratitude is typical this time of year but more often than not the cognitive or

00:00:16.180 behavioral nods we give gratitude around thanksgiving can feel a little limp rote and

00:00:21.140 unedifying if you feel like this american holiday has been lacking in meaning maybe what you need

00:00:26.460 is to infuse it with a japanese practice the nikon method of self-reflection grew out of buddhist

00:00:31.640 spirituality has been recognized by psychologists as a way to develop greater self-awareness

00:00:36.140 gratitude empathy and direction nikon involves asking yourself three questions what have i

00:00:42.260 received from others what have i given others what troubles and difficulties have i caused others

00:00:47.360 greg creech who's the executive director of the toto institute which promotes principles of

00:00:51.800 psychology based on eastern traditions has created a thanksgiving specific version of nikon

00:00:56.440 that helps practitioners dig further into its first question today on the show we talk about

00:01:01.240 the way nikon differs from mainstream gratitude practices and is based less on feeling and more

00:01:06.120 on seeing the world objectively greg shares six prompts that can help you recognize the reality

00:01:10.820 of how you're being supported in the world cultivate the art of noticing and embrace life's grace

00:01:15.540 after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash nikon

00:01:19.480 all right greg creech welcome back to the show well thank you brett it's great to be here again

00:01:34.200 so we had you on the podcast a few years ago to talk about the japanese practice of nikon and i wanted

00:01:40.900 to bring you back on the show to discuss how we americans we're about to celebrate thanksgiving here

00:01:46.680 how we can use this japanese practice of nikon to infuse our thanksgiving with more gratitude

00:01:52.960 so let's start off with a recap of nikon for those who haven't heard about that previous episode

00:01:58.320 what is it how did it develop and what's its purpose

00:02:01.520 well in the simplest form nikon is simply a method of self-reflection

00:02:07.300 and it's a very structured method of self-reflection when i was researching my first book on nikon

00:02:13.520 i remember finding that virtually every religious and spiritual tradition encourages people to engage

00:02:21.340 in self-reflection but in most cases there's no structure or guidance in terms of how to do that

00:02:28.020 right so normally we just think about kind of finding a quiet place to sit and reflect and nikon provides

00:02:34.720 a nice structure that basically shows us how we might do that and that structure consists of

00:02:40.540 essentially three questions the first question all of which are very simple simple enough for children

00:02:45.380 that the first question is what have i received from others or from a particular person the second

00:02:51.680 question is what have i given so it's kind of turning that question around and the third question was what

00:02:57.220 troubles and difficulties have i caused to others so those three questions really provide the foundation

00:03:03.700 of this method of self-reflection and what's its purpose what's the end of doing this self-reflection

00:03:10.420 what what do we hope happens well there's i think a variety of different purposes and i'd say that

00:03:17.520 probably one of the most practical is trying to make a shift and i talk about this when i try to

00:03:23.960 introduce people to japanese psychology in a concise way that there's three shifts that i think it

00:03:29.380 encourages people to make and one of those shifts is a shift from what i call a complaint-based life

00:03:34.820 to a life of genuine appreciation and gratitude and so that nikon self-reflection is basically a tool

00:03:43.100 for helping us to make that shift and i think one of the things that has developed in our society over

00:03:49.500 a long period of time is that i think to a great extent we have become a culture of complaint

00:03:54.680 to the point where complaining is actually the norm right so a person comes home from work and

00:04:01.660 their partner's there and they walk in the door and the partner says oh honey how was your day

00:04:05.760 and the person now says oh let me tell you about my day and they go through a litany of problems that

00:04:10.920 the copier broke and they were late for the meeting and there was construction you know on the way to

00:04:15.660 work and they got all these emails that they couldn't catch up with and and on and on and on right and then

00:04:21.820 the response to that may be something like to real person realizes that they've been doing all the

00:04:27.120 talking so they say and how about your day honey and the other person says oh let me tell you about

00:04:31.080 my day you think you had a bad day and we almost compete to see basically who can who can come up

00:04:37.160 with the most complaints about their day and the reason that i say that's the norm is that if you

00:04:41.980 walked into the house in most cases and someone said how would your day how was your day and your

00:04:47.040 response was well let me tell you about my day this morning i got in the car and i turned the

00:04:52.240 key and the car just started on the first crank just no problems whatsoever and i was driving to

00:04:57.620 work and i got behind this truck that was painting those lines in the road and i realized how great

00:05:02.940 it is that we've got those lines that distinguish between lanes so that we basically can stay in our

00:05:07.760 own lane we don't constantly crash into other people and i got to work and i got a parking place

00:05:12.140 the coffee was nice and hot and all ready for me i had a comfortable chair to sit in and after a while

00:05:17.800 you know people are saying okay okay okay there's no drama to that right um i think we kind of like

00:05:23.180 drama and complaining somehow seems to be associated with drama so if somebody actually was to give you a

00:05:29.580 list of all the things that worked well for them or that supported them that day most of us would

00:05:34.940 either find that boring and or think that person was kind of weird right and so what the the nikon

00:05:41.500 practice does it's a structured way it's helping you see reality as it really is because as you said

00:05:49.180 we tend to focus on the negative but there is all this good stuff that happens in our life

00:05:53.220 yeah and i think and this isn't a new idea that we take most of that for granted you know we'll

00:05:59.260 we'll go into the bathroom or to the kitchen and we'll flip on the light switch and that light switch

00:06:04.420 will go on two or three or four hundred times in a row with no problem but one of those times that

00:06:10.960 light's not going to go on because maybe the bulb is burned out and then we notice it right so those

00:06:17.320 four hundred times when the light just went on we don't really pay much attention to it but as soon

00:06:21.400 as it doesn't work we notice it and i think we do the same kind of thing with people with our partners

00:06:26.200 with our children with our colleagues and friends you know we tend to get focused on when something

00:06:33.040 happens that doesn't work or that doesn't meet our expectations or approval and so this kind of

00:06:39.120 self-reflection when you ask what the purpose is part of it is to just give us some time

00:06:43.420 to really reflect on our lives and our conduct how we're living our life which most of us don't do

00:06:49.780 because we're so busy and by the time we're finished with our busyness we're tired and we're exhausted and

00:06:55.500 we kind of zone out in front of the internet or a movie but the other thing that this does is in

00:07:01.540 addition to the self-reflection we're doing it begins to affect the way that we see the world when

00:07:06.740 we're not reflecting on our life so we get up the next day and we start noticing things that we

00:07:12.760 hadn't noticed or thought about before particularly things that ways in which the world is supporting

00:07:17.980 us or caring for us so it begins to not just give us a different way of looking at reality when we're

00:07:24.640 doing that reflection it actually gives us another way of looking at reality as we start to go through

00:07:29.980 our day okay so it's the traditional nikon questions there's three of them it's what have

00:07:34.900 i received from a particular person or from the world and then the second question is what have i

00:07:40.760 given and then that third question is what troubles and difficulties did i cause and again i think the

00:07:46.920 thing with nikon you're trying to be as objective as possible you're just the goal is to notice notice

00:07:52.740 things and not necessarily you know notice the things that make you feel bad or good

00:07:57.200 yes i think that we're not uh i have come to see this after working with this material and teaching

00:08:05.180 it for 30 years i've come to see this process as kind of a research experiment in the same way

00:08:10.640 that you would do research in the field of science and that is that you know you start with

00:08:14.760 data collection so if you're trying to do an experiment or research a particular hypothesis you start by

00:08:21.800 collecting data and when you collect that data i think in most research you're trying not to be

00:08:26.900 biased towards a particular outcome and so i i see it the same way we're not trying to find things

00:08:33.040 that we're grateful for we're just simply noticing that as a result of the microphone that i'm using or

00:08:39.920 the wi-fi in my house or some satellite someplace that you and i can actually have this conversation

00:08:46.220 and that's just really a statement of fact right so because my auditory sense my my hearing is good

00:08:53.720 i can actually hear you very very well in terms of us communicating online that's just a statement

00:08:59.200 of fact so if i ask the question and this is where i think nikon differs from a lot of gratitude

00:09:05.660 practices in positive psychology because we're not really asking a question what am i grateful for

00:09:11.400 because what am i grateful for will vary depending on my mood at any given moment right if i've just

00:09:17.200 had a big argument with my wife or with a colleague there may be lots of things going on that are

00:09:22.740 supporting me but i'm not going to feel grateful for those because i'm just in a crappy mood

00:09:26.900 but if i just simply list the fact that you know i've got electricity that's supporting me and i've got

00:09:32.720 it's cold outside today it's below freezing and we've got heat in the house if i start listing

00:09:37.720 those things as just ways that i'm being supported by reality it becomes actually much more of a

00:09:43.520 research project and as you were saying much more objective and i think therefore meaningful

00:09:48.340 yeah i've had that experience with i've done gratitude practices in the past and i always find

00:09:55.680 that i'm able to list some stuff but then i run out of things to list because i'm like well i don't

00:10:01.040 i'm not feeling the gratefulness for that particular item and because i'm not feeling gratefulness for it

00:10:08.480 i'll overlook it and so what nikon does it takes the you don't need to feel gratitude to list it is 0.61

00:10:15.560 just think of all the good things in your life don't even have to be grateful for it or feel any

00:10:20.400 positive things towards it necessarily but just list those and then what happens though when you do this

00:10:25.960 i've done this before as you start doing that you start feeling gratitude as a result i think that

00:10:33.820 that's a common response when we start looking at our life and we start seeing if we start seeing

00:10:40.620 this and i always like to phrase it that way because i do think of it as a research project

00:10:44.580 but if we start seeing that we have a long list of ways that life and the world around us and the

00:10:50.500 people and the objects and the forms of energy are supporting us then i think it is a natural response

00:10:56.240 in those cases most often that we do respond internally with a sense of appreciation or a feeling of

00:11:03.220 gratitude and it's a very natural response and i think when we do some of the gratitude practices

00:11:08.760 as you were saying it's almost like there's a moral imperative for you to feel grateful for something

00:11:14.380 and when i work with people doing nikon reflection if they read off a list of 20 things and they'll say

00:11:20.440 you know what to be honest i don't actually feel grateful for any of those things i'll just say

00:11:24.260 that's okay that's fine there's there's no it's not based on a an outcome that we're trying to get

00:11:31.400 in which we feel grateful so when when that does happen it's really just a natural response that

00:11:36.700 we have and curiously enough and there is some research to support this the more that we are

00:11:43.120 aware of the way that the world in our life and others are supporting us and the more that we have

00:11:49.200 that response of feeling grateful for that the more likely we are to want to give back to want to do

00:11:55.200 something in return for the people we're closest to for the world for people who are struggling in

00:12:02.140 other countries in other words it seems to stimulate a sense of wanting to give back because we feel very

00:12:08.900 fortunate in terms of our own situation so what you've done in the past few years you've developed

00:12:14.920 a thanksgiving nikon this is something a practice that you developed in your family and then you've

00:12:20.020 shared it with others and what you've done is you've developed some more questions that dig deeper

00:12:25.600 into that first question of nikon is what have i received from blank so let's start off with this

00:12:32.460 question like how how can people incorporate a nikon reflection into their thanksgiving holiday i mean

00:12:39.200 how can we make the experience a part of the ritual like what have you done in your family

00:12:43.540 to make nikon a part of your thanksgiving well it's thanksgiving has always been my favorite

00:12:49.680 holiday specifically because it's a holiday in which we try to step back from our lives

00:12:54.240 and really appreciate a lot of the elements of our life and so you know we we raised two young girls

00:13:00.520 and i think probably they were about a year and a half apart and probably when my oldest was about

00:13:06.260 five years old maybe six i just developed a one-page sheet they didn't know how to write

00:13:12.800 or read yet but they could understand the question of you know what is it in life that you're thankful

00:13:18.660 for or what is it in life that's making you happy or providing care for you and so we just asked them

00:13:25.840 to draw pictures in boxes we would say here's some boxes for people so like for instance grandma and

00:13:32.860 here's some boxes for animals maybe maybe our dog barley and you know they would have questions here and

00:13:39.020 there but the amazing thing was you know i would give them this piece of paper and even at that age

00:13:44.040 we would take about 45 minutes everybody went to a separate room or corner of the house

00:13:48.980 the idea was to be quiet for 45 minutes and just work with your sheet of paper and they were actually

00:13:55.100 incredibly focused on this when we did it and then the wonderful thing was really getting back together

00:14:00.880 after that 45 minute period with some tea or coffee or juice for the kids

00:14:05.360 and going through you know and this started out just as one page but going through that

00:14:11.200 and having everybody share you know we're here's some of the people that are really

00:14:14.840 have played an important role in terms of supporting me or contributing to to my life during this past year

00:14:21.300 and and the girls would do that and they were very capable of doing that at least as well as the adults were

00:14:26.660 and that's also my experience when i did my training in japan that i would hear recordings of

00:14:31.660 children doing nikon at the centers that i trained at that i did retreats at and i would often think

00:14:37.900 they're better at this than i am even though i'm in my 30s at the time but that's how we kind of started

00:14:43.420 this process and then every year it expanded and then sometimes we had people from outside guests

00:14:49.120 often family sometimes non-family and we would invite them to participate in that so the mornings

00:14:54.760 at least a portion of the morning was always dedicated to just quiet self-reflection but

00:14:59.800 but using some kind of structure and then this wonderful experience of just sitting around

00:15:05.260 and just sharing the ways in which life is supporting us from these various different perspectives and

00:15:11.100 that's how we started our day and i think it it just created a completely different atmosphere

00:15:17.460 in the home to start the day that way as we moved forward then into cooking and eating

00:15:22.700 and a lot of times when people would join us for the first time they had never done this before

00:15:26.740 and it was just great to kind of involve them in the process so that over years that's grown to this

00:15:32.500 little booklet that you mentioned and and so now there's these different categories one category is

00:15:38.280 who are people in the present of my life you know in this past year or so that have been supportive

00:15:44.300 to me and how have they been supportive one of the most important things that people do if they try

00:15:49.240 this process is to be specific because if if you were to ask me like well who's been supportive of

00:15:56.720 you in the past you know a couple of weeks and i could say to oh my my wife linda she's been very

00:16:03.020 supportive and i can say that without even thinking about what she did but if you followed up and said

00:16:08.260 oh that's great that she's been supportive what did she actually do to be supportive well now i have

00:16:13.240 to sit back and think well what did she actually do well you know she she brought me home a nice 0.99

00:16:18.780 little chocolate tart when she went shopping yesterday which was really great to have for

00:16:23.300 dessert and she gave me a foot massage the other day and she made a really nice pasta dinner a couple

00:16:30.400 of nights ago and but to do that it takes some mental energy for me to remember back to do those things

00:16:36.620 but if i say as a concept oh linda's so supportive or she's so helpful or she's such a loving wife i can

00:16:43.580 say that as a phrase without it having any kind of content to it right and it doesn't take any mental

00:16:50.100 energy so when we go through this process we don't want to just think of like oh this friend of mine you

00:16:56.140 know has been really supportive we want to actually make a note how have they been supportive you know

00:17:00.480 well they this uh couple lent us a a walker for my wife's surgery last year or something like that

00:17:07.400 and that's a very specific thing and to do that it actually takes some quiet and it takes some time

00:17:13.860 and it takes some mental energy but it's those details that really make this self-reflection a

00:17:19.280 powerful process okay so we're going to talk about some of these questions but before we do let's just do

00:17:23.640 the brass tacks practicalities i love this sort of thing so i love this idea to start off your

00:17:28.220 thanksgiving with a nikon session and this can be done again it's just you need time by yourself

00:17:35.300 i can see people making this like a ritual where they're getting around the fireplace

00:17:39.060 and then they just have pen and paper should you write this thing down or is it just a mental practice

00:17:45.400 yeah i always encourage people when they're doing it like this on a holiday or if they're just

00:17:51.020 doing it as you know even a a daily practice to to actually write if you're using the thanks

00:17:56.540 giving approach then you just basically in our booklet you know you would just you already have

00:18:02.220 these boxes laid out you know there's a box for nature here's a box for forms of energy here's a box

00:18:07.980 for people you know here's a box for things people who taught you things that you know how to do

00:18:13.400 so the structure is already kind of laid out for you but you can just take a piece of paper but writing

00:18:19.120 i think is a good way to stay focused if you go to japan or if you come here to vermont to do an

00:18:25.740 actual retreat where for a week you spend about a hundred hours reflecting on your whole life

00:18:30.840 that retreat you don't write it's actually something that is more in the direction of a

00:18:37.480 meditation type of reflection so you're actually holding those memories in your mind or your heart

00:18:44.020 in japanese there's a word kokoro which is the both mind and heart together so you're holding

00:18:49.880 those there instead of actually writing them down but for thanksgiving i encourage people to write

00:18:54.920 them down because then you have a chance to step back and look at what you've written and also it

00:18:59.240 makes it easier to to share with other people and how long should a nikon session last it sounds

00:19:05.140 like it needs to be kind of long because again you're not just being vague with your ideas

00:19:10.980 you're trying to get specific so that takes time it's good to give it i think more time rather than

00:19:16.320 less but i always tell people it's better to to just spend five minutes doing this than no time at

00:19:21.580 all if you can spend on thanksgiving if you can spend 45 minutes or an hour or 40 minutes i think

00:19:28.140 it's a nice block of time but if you have a half an hour you can do that's fine if you only have 20

00:19:33.020 minutes that will work the key is to really try to stay focused so don't do this while you're cooking

00:19:38.980 and you've got things on the stove and you have to constantly be running into the kitchen

00:19:42.080 try to actually do it where you can sit quietly it's not something a lot of us do where we actually

00:19:47.260 just sit quietly so it feels a little awkward at first but it's it's a great practice and i think

00:19:53.060 if you've got other people i never we would never like force our kids to do this we would say this

00:19:57.100 what we're going to do if you want to do it with us you can join us and in some cases when uh one of

00:20:02.940 my daughters got into her teen years there there was a thanksgiving where she just didn't want to do it 0.99

00:20:07.240 and that was fine but you can actually do this by yourself if you're spending thanksgiving day by

00:20:12.140 yourself or if you're by yourself because people are coming over later in the day and they're not

00:20:17.220 necessarily interested or you're going to just jump into eating you can also do it just by buddying up

00:20:22.580 with somebody who's at a distance and you can both decide you're going to do it in the morning

00:20:27.200 and then you get together at some appointed time online and you just kind of share your reflections

00:20:32.000 with that person so so there's lots of of ways to make the mechanics of this work but i do think

00:20:38.060 having a as good a block of time as you can where you can be free from distractions and really have

00:20:43.900 some quiet reflective time that's that's really important so an important concept to keep in mind

00:20:50.400 as you do this reflection of your blessings that's what they call it in nikon these good things

00:20:55.520 is this idea of okagesama did i say that right you're close it's okagesama what what is that and

00:21:04.240 how can it guide our thanksgiving reflections well it's a japanese phrase okagesama and and the

00:21:10.720 foundation of that phrase okage actually translates into something like shadow but the phrase is actually

00:21:17.300 used in japanese to just say thanks to you if somebody said i'm a musician and i play in a band

00:21:24.100 and at the end of the concert you know if one of my band members comes up and says you know you did a

00:21:30.580 great job on the lead on that song or you did a great job playing keyboards today and if in japan i

00:21:36.560 might say okagesama which means thanks to you it means i'm recognizing that you contributed to the

00:21:42.300 opportunity that i had you know to in this case play music in that band and so the term shadow means that

00:21:49.240 we're trying to shed a light on things in our life which normally are in the shadows and in the shadows

00:21:56.640 intentionally so in the shadows in the sense that we just don't notice them or we take them for granted

00:22:02.060 or we don't really appreciate them and so this idea of okagesama day really means that we're stepping

00:22:08.560 back to try to shine a light on these things in our life that have gone unnoticed and unappreciated

00:22:15.460 all right so let's dig into the prompts you mentioned one earlier the first one is to list

00:22:20.900 people who are blessings in our life in the present and i think most people when they do this exercise

00:22:28.220 the first thing you're thinking of of course is your family or friends but with nikon again you're 0.99

00:22:33.300 wanting to look into the shadows you wanted to look at who are the people that i i'm maybe overlooking

00:22:38.200 you're encouraged to think more broadly about people who bless you so what are some of the people

00:22:44.160 who bless us on the regular that people might not think of as blessing givers yeah i think it's it's

00:22:52.480 really interesting to kind of try to step back from our life and think about people who play a

00:22:57.500 particular role and how our life might be different if that person wasn't present in our life or if they

00:23:02.960 didn't play that role and and so i remember for many years both my daughters took piano lessons for

00:23:09.340 about six years they took used a an approach called suzuki music education and there was this

00:23:14.460 wonderful suzuki piano teacher named jody and she was always on my list for all those years because

00:23:20.180 she was doing such a great service not just for my daughters but for our whole family they became

00:23:25.040 really you know just wonderful pianists and it was great listening to them in the house so she was

00:23:29.880 always one of the people that i saw as being a blessing in the present of my life and even though

00:23:34.680 it's been many years since my daughters had piano lessons with her i still when i look in it who

00:23:41.140 have been blessings in my life from a standpoint of the past i always list her because she played such

00:23:46.180 an instrumental role and so sometimes there are people who years ago were blessings in the present

00:23:51.780 time of my life and they no longer are there they may not be alive they may not be part of my life

00:23:56.940 in the same kind of way people drift off in different directions but if i think about what they did

00:24:02.420 for me in the past even 10 or 20 or 30 years ago i can still see them as blessings and even in the

00:24:10.140 my current life like we have a local auto repair garage we live in a pretty rural area and we have a

00:24:16.700 local auto repair garage that's about two miles from here and they have been an incredible blessing

00:24:21.900 in our lives even though we may only have contact with them a few times a year but for instance

00:24:26.940 last year my my daughter who who lives in an apartment happened to be visiting and she was

00:24:31.760 driving home in the winter and a truck ran her off the road into a huge snowbank this was at seven

00:24:38.140 o'clock at night she couldn't get out and i picked up the phone and i called this garage they have a

00:24:43.500 towing service number and they know me and i know that guy and he was going out for dinner and he was

00:24:48.700 there in five minutes with a chain and a tow truck pulled her out and went off to his dinner and i'm just

00:24:53.700 thinking like to have someone like that in your life it's not just that particular incidence it's the

00:24:59.260 confidence that there's somebody there who's got your back in a situation like that where you have

00:25:04.380 a problem with a car right so he he's on my list this year his name is matt if he's listening he's

00:25:09.700 on my list this year as a real blessing in my life we're going to take a quick break for your word from

00:25:14.860 our sponsors and now back to the show we've been saying this word blessing and i think people when

00:25:22.380 people hear blessing it has religious connotations but for the japanese in this nikon practice what does

00:25:27.400 blessing mean yeah i think um it is a term that pretty much is associated with christianity and

00:25:34.640 i don't think it's necessarily used certainly the english word blessing isn't necessarily used

00:25:38.860 in japan or japanese but i like to distinguish between these terms of gratitude and grace and

00:25:46.280 gratitude i think is wonderful and i think as you mentioned earlier if we reflect on our lives in

00:25:51.840 this way often gratitude is just a natural response that gets stimulated but we can be

00:25:57.280 grateful for something and at the same time have a sense that we earned it or that we deserve it right

00:26:03.280 so i couldn't you know look around the house where i'm at and i can see all these nice little

00:26:09.500 furniture and books and calligraphy on the walls and photos and decorations and i can think you know

00:26:16.120 i'm really grateful to be able to have lived here all these years but i can also be thinking but you

00:26:21.700 know i worked really hard for this and i put in a lot of time and energy and kind of developing this

00:26:27.500 work and so so i think i earned this right and i'm not saying that you didn't i think everybody has

00:26:33.600 to look at that themselves but so we can be grateful but we could also have this kind of ego

00:26:39.420 sense of i really did earn this or i deserve it but with grace grace has a different kind of

00:26:46.260 implication i think grace is really something that we're given or something that happens to us

00:26:52.580 that we very clearly didn't earn and don't deserve and that's what i see is the difference between

00:26:58.660 gratitude and grace and grace i associate with the concept of a blessing so when i look at it's

00:27:04.960 something that like the thing i described for instance the incident with calling matt to have

00:27:09.520 him tell my daughter out from a snowbank that was grace you know it was grace that he answered the

00:27:15.260 phone it was grace that he was willing to come out and do this for us i think our insurance actually

00:27:21.800 paid for that so i don't even think we paid a penny directly for that service i don't have any sense

00:27:27.200 that i earned or deserved that service from him at that particular time of the evening in the

00:27:32.640 middle of the winter when it was dark so i see that much more as a blessing and i think the more

00:27:38.180 that we reflect on our lives i think part of what happens with me is that it tends to nurture a sense

00:27:45.080 of humility which is not natural for me at all i should say but when i look at how much i've received

00:27:51.180 and then i look at these other two questions what i've given in return and the troubles i've caused

00:27:56.000 it humbles me and in that humility i'm much more likely to see the things that i'm receiving as

00:28:03.240 blessings than the things that i earned or deserve okay so this idea of list people who are blessings

00:28:09.800 in your life so think beyond just friends and family it could be the tow truck guy it could be

00:28:15.200 a co-worker who always checks in with you and sees how you're doing how your kids are doing

00:28:20.540 it kind of brightens your day it could be the people who you know i think this past year we had

00:28:26.100 a big storm here in oklahoma and the power went out and it was because you know trees fell on the

00:28:31.740 power lines and i i remember like there was people out there 24 7 for several days trying to get the

00:28:37.300 power back on and i think the tendency at the time for was for people to like complain about it oh my

00:28:42.240 gosh this pso what are they doing they can't do anything right but it's like no there's these people 0.90

00:28:46.800 out there away from their families for several days trying to give me back electricity so that

00:28:53.080 you can think about those sorts of people just not just friends and family right and and you know

00:28:58.640 some of those people on your list for instance i know the towing person matt i know his name but the

00:29:04.160 kind of people you're mentioning are people we kind of know that they're there and we know what

00:29:08.280 they're doing but we don't even know their name there may be people whose faces we know and we

00:29:12.820 don't know their name there may be people who we just even don't know who they are if we saw

00:29:16.780 if you saw that person from the electric company on the street you wouldn't even know that they

00:29:20.020 were part of that process of trying to get the electricity back on but i have that same experience

00:29:26.000 because we get a lot of storms out here particularly in the winter that knock out our power and they

00:29:30.640 send these people out in trucks in the wee hours of the morning when the temperature is 20 below zero

00:29:36.460 and it's 25 mile an hour winds and they're out there trying to repair an electrical line and i wish that

00:29:42.460 i actually knew specifically who there were they were but we had this great experience a number of

00:29:47.960 years ago actually this is probably about 25 years ago where it was during the summer but there was an

00:29:52.600 electrical outage because of a big storm right during the time that we were having a residential

00:29:57.360 a 10-day residential program at the toto institute where people learn this this work and the power was

00:30:04.320 out for about two days and then it went back on right before the end of the program and this woman

00:30:08.360 from florida victoria said you know i i would like to send a gift over to the people at the electric

00:30:15.680 company who who got that power on and we said well we don't really know who they were and she said well

00:30:20.880 you know i'm going to give you some money i want you to pick up a box of chocolates and then whenever

00:30:24.460 you're over by their office just drop it off and and so my wife did this she bought a box of chocolates

00:30:30.520 and she went to the electric company and she said she walked in and the person behind the desk

00:30:35.140 looked at her and kind of out of the corner of her eye said yes can i help you because they're

00:30:40.580 obviously used to someone walking in with a problem or a complaint and my wife basically pulls out this 1.00

00:30:45.940 box of chocolates and she says you know we were doing this program and the power was out for two

00:30:50.820 days and they finally got it back on and we just wanted you to let you know that how much we appreciated

00:30:55.180 that and one of the people there wanted to send you a box of chocolates so i brought you a box of

00:30:59.320 chocolates and the woman almost like fainted she was she was so surprised you know to get that kind 0.97

00:31:06.580 of response and feedback instead of like why did it take you so long to to get the power back on you

00:31:12.500 know we didn't we weren't able to watch the football game kind of thing so i think it's actually a great

00:31:17.320 example of how in nikon there's no moral imperative to take any action as a result of your reflection in

00:31:26.040 other words our self-reflection ends when our self-reflection ends but often we're moved to

00:31:33.140 actually do something and i think this is a case of turning that self-reflective process actually into

00:31:39.380 real life action which in this case i think was the kind of action that makes in a little kind of

00:31:46.360 drop of water way makes the world a better place but again it's it's a very natural thing it's not

00:31:51.000 somebody who is being told like you should really do something nice for the electrical company

00:31:55.140 it's just a natural response that we might have when we begin to see these kinds of things

00:31:59.740 can the people who bless us also be people who hurt us

00:32:03.900 absolutely that's a great question and assumption i think that you know i think we've become very much

00:32:12.740 a society that tends to look at people as black and white not from a racial standpoint but from a

00:32:18.380 good and bad standpoint you know this has been reinforced by movies for you know decades and

00:32:24.040 television shows there's the hero and then there's the evil person in the in the show and so there are

00:32:30.540 people who hurt us you know who who genuinely do things that cause us trouble cause us problems they

00:32:36.920 neglect us they don't come through when we need them we all know who those people are anybody listening

00:32:42.120 to this could probably take two minutes and and start coming up with a list of names but those

00:32:47.000 people may also be they may also be people who provided us with a certain types of benefits or care or

00:32:54.280 support during our life and so one of the challenges of nikon is to be able to see that both of those

00:33:02.140 things are true this person actually caused me suffering or difficulty in my life and they also made it

00:33:10.380 possible for me to do this or to have this and they supported me when i was in this situation over

00:33:16.860 here when i really was desperate so you know in a sense it not just acknowledges that most of us have

00:33:24.440 the capacity to both be kind and to be selfish which i certainly do but it means that we recognize that

00:33:31.140 that's really kind of human nature and if we're connected with somebody whether it's a partner or a

00:33:37.260 friend from childhood or someone we've worked with for 20 years it's really just a matter of time

00:33:42.160 before people are going to disappoint us right and we don't want to let a single incident or even

00:33:48.580 several incidents dissolve a relationship that has lasted for decades and been based on a lot of

00:33:55.660 giving and taking between us because now suddenly there's this incident so i think it's it's one of the

00:34:02.900 great values of doing this kind of reflection is that we might come out come up with a conclusion

00:34:08.780 yeah that this person who actually caused me a lot of trouble also is someone who at a different time

00:34:14.400 gave me a lot and cared for me and supported me a lot and to be able to just live with that

00:34:20.240 paradox right that yeah that's both of those things are true yeah and to be clear you talk about

00:34:27.420 this in your book about nikon some people you've worked with have had people in their lives where

00:34:31.000 they're doing this reflection who has who's brought me blessings in my life or what have i've

00:34:35.300 gotten from somebody they have people who have been abusive but then at the same time they reflect

00:34:40.580 well also this abusive person has you know they did x for me i had a parent who was abusive but

00:34:45.560 my parent also signed me up for sports and i have this great memory of going on a trip with dad or

00:34:51.220 whatever and nikon isn't saying that oh you should just ignore the abuse and like you know maintain

00:34:56.480 that relationship despite that it's not saying that all it's you actually say no if you're in a

00:35:01.220 bad situation get out of that bad situation but the idea is just you have to look at the whole thing

00:35:05.500 it's trying to be objective as possible even with the bad stuff yeah and i would never suggest nikon

00:35:12.920 to someone at least nikon on a person who was actively abusing them i would in the same sense that

00:35:19.140 you just said i would first encourage that person to get to a safe situation so they're no longer

00:35:24.260 being abused but if somebody comes in who was abused you know years ago or decades ago or as a child

00:35:31.700 i think it can be very healing to go through this process because you're not just doing nikon

00:35:38.080 reflection on that person to see if there was any ways that they supported you or cared for you

00:35:43.780 you're doing nikon reflection on all these other people in your life as well and so it raises this

00:35:49.700 kind of interesting question that i think is a bigger question than than nikon it's much more of a

00:35:56.120 maybe a question about healing and what does it actually mean to heal or to be cured and i think

00:36:02.420 that the western approach to that tends to be to see things as tumors if we have something in our past in

00:36:10.780 which we suffered a lot that we somehow have to go through a process of surgically removing that from

00:36:18.700 our consciousness or our psyche or our memory so that we can then be at peace and be content and

00:36:25.900 essentially be healed but here's a very different kind of approach to healing which says that one of

00:36:31.980 the ways that we heal from being hurt is to basically realize how much care and love and support

00:36:39.520 we have received in the larger context not from a particular person but from everybody and everything

00:36:45.600 in the world and that healing isn't about getting rid of something that if it's in our past we really

00:36:51.720 can't get rid of it it's it's part of our karmic history so to speak but it's basically seeing it in

00:36:58.360 this larger context of a world which has you know brought us lots of of support and lots of joy

00:37:05.380 and cared for us to get us to this point in our life and yes there was this incident and there was

00:37:10.840 this incident and there was a whole string of these incidents but we see them in a much larger context of

00:37:16.040 being loved and cared for and i would say that that's actually a wonderful way to think about healing

00:37:21.720 okay so that's the first we went deep in that first question who are the people in your in the present

00:37:26.940 who are bringing blessings in your life and the key there think outside the box don't just think

00:37:31.580 friends and family and then also get very specific don't just be like i'm grateful for my wife for my

00:37:36.480 best friend like actually write down something specific they did in the past year to bring you

00:37:41.520 a grace in your life and then also you've been talking about you can do this with people in the

00:37:45.580 past in your life so you've done that with your daughter's piano teacher so this could be old

00:37:51.600 teachers you might have had old mentors you had at a job it could be old friends it could be

00:37:56.460 i mean just think back decades into your life years into back into your life to find these people don't

00:38:02.460 just don't just think about grandma grandpa of course if they're if that's there put it there but

00:38:08.240 get broad with this you want to get things out of the shadow and also get very specific you also

00:38:13.380 talk about objects list objects that are blessings in our lives what are some things that you list on your list

00:38:19.000 here well of course there you know particularly in in our culture these days there's always lots of

00:38:23.460 gadgets you know ranging from phones to tablets and those things i think for a lot of us play a very

00:38:28.480 practical support role but in terms of other types of objects you know our our car we have a four-wheel

00:38:35.140 drive toyota rav4 then we put studded snow tires on that this is what you're doing for my

00:38:39.400 so that that is a really important object during the winter because we live up on a hill 400 feet

00:38:45.840 from the road and we need to be able to get down to that road and that car is is just a great car

00:38:50.580 for us so that's certainly one of the objects i wear eyeglasses you know my my eyes are limited i'm

00:38:56.700 primarily nearsighted and wearing eyeglasses allows me to see the world so much more clearly

00:39:02.120 than if i don't have those eyeglasses and in fact allows me to drive safely as well so my eyeglasses are

00:39:08.620 an example of that my watch is an example of that and and i have an an apple watch which i got a few

00:39:14.240 years ago so now i use that as a timer when i'm baking and things like that so i could go on and

00:39:20.440 on in terms of everything from clothing i have a great bicycle i love cycling in vermont we have

00:39:26.000 some beautiful roads so that's that's a really a wonderful thing that i appreciate and that

00:39:30.200 is kind of a blessing in my life i think when we start you know thinking about objects just if

00:39:35.120 i just look around the room you know i'm looking at the we have a wood stove that we use to keep

00:39:40.140 the house warm and that's our fallback when we lose power is that we can heat in the wood stove

00:39:44.960 and get some heat in the house i have a nice stereo speakers that i've had since i was in college

00:39:50.500 these advent speakers which have a wonderful sound and i i love listening to music in the living room

00:39:56.120 because of that so and you know it's as i'm actually responding to your question tell me some

00:40:02.380 of the things on your list i can feel my internal experience changing i can feel myself kind of softening

00:40:08.760 to the world you know having more of a sense of appreciation for my life just by answering the

00:40:15.220 question for 60 seconds or 90 seconds in this conversation i already can kind of feel how my

00:40:22.800 attitude and my way of understanding my life at this moment has changed no i can do that i'm looking

00:40:29.160 i'm in my closet that's from my podcast studio and right in front of me i have my macbook pro i've had for

00:40:35.240 a long time it's beat up but this is what's giving me my livelihood it allows me to do my podcast

00:40:40.980 allows me to write articles it's allowed me to surf the internet and create memories for my family

00:40:46.740 you know planning trips communicate with friends who are who are gone so i mean right there my laptop

00:40:52.380 but there's so many things i could just be not even i don't have to be grateful for it again you don't

00:40:56.600 have to feel gratitude right away it's just what are the good things that your laptop has brought into

00:41:01.140 your life what else do i got here i've got a suit that i really enjoy that i i got to wear yesterday

00:41:06.920 and i look sharp at church there's a pair of shoes they're like flat sold they're a barefoot shoe that

00:41:12.300 helped alleviate some foot pain that i was experiencing last year so that that's a i think

00:41:17.060 you can you can go deep with that one and you can get really mundane you don't have to think about

00:41:21.420 the big things you can even just think really silly things that you might not might not think of if

00:41:26.920 you're doing a typical gratitude practice another prompt that i thought was interesting is list forms

00:41:32.460 of energies that are blessings in your life what do you mean by forms of energy well i think that the

00:41:39.160 one that probably most of our listeners are pretty clearly connected with would be electricity and i don't

00:41:45.920 really know in any deep way how electricity works i have a basic idea but if you think about the

00:41:53.300 electricity in your house what you see is you see these switches on the wall and you see these outlets

00:41:58.160 right and if you need to give power to something so it will work could be your kettle boiling water or

00:42:05.440 your coffee maker in the morning or your blender or just a lamp so that you can read you know you just

00:42:11.180 plug it into this thing in the wall and suddenly it is functional because it has power and because i've

00:42:17.900 done some construction work in my life i know what those walls look like before the inside walls get put up

00:42:23.060 there's all this wiring back there right but it's all hidden we don't see that wiring and i think it's a

00:42:28.100 great metaphor for a lot of our life you know what we see is what's on the surface but the world is

00:42:35.000 basically doing things that are underneath the surface or hidden from us are the way our postal mail comes

00:42:41.560 in the you know the amazing system of email that we have there's a whole kind of you know backstory

00:42:48.620 to how that came about and who invented it and who's maintaining it that we don't really see

00:42:55.380 so electricity is a great example of a form of energy that you can connect to so many things that

00:43:00.840 you do probably in the course of a day but sunlight uh even if you don't have solar we have windows and

00:43:07.560 i think on a day in vermont which are rare when it's really a sunny day the house just kind of has a

00:43:13.900 different feel for it when it's filled with sunlight so that to me is a form of of energy as well so you

00:43:20.680 can just think about other kind of forms of energy there's a type of energy we get for our bodies when

00:43:27.200 we eat you know particularly nutritious food right that gives us energy caffeine and coffee gives us

00:43:32.360 energy so we can even think about it that way but it's just another way to kind of slice this pie is

00:43:38.440 to really think about you know what is my life like thanks to different forms of energy and this

00:43:44.720 kind of question that we can always reverse which is what would my life be like without that thing

00:43:51.660 right what would my life be like without electricity would my life be like without sunlight or an object

00:43:57.280 without eyeglasses and we realize as soon as we start thinking about what would happen if that was

00:44:02.700 missing from our life often we see it very differently and then of course it's not till it really is

00:44:07.100 missing that it becomes very noticeable yeah that's the george bailey effect right from it's a wonderful

00:44:14.120 life where you know george bailey he's able to see how blessed he is by seeing what would happen if

00:44:19.740 he didn't exist and so you can do that with people like what would happen if i didn't have my wife in 0.99

00:44:26.680 my life what would my life be like if my child wasn't in my life and then you can start it helps you bring

00:44:32.000 things out of the shadows that you otherwise would overlook so that's another thing you can do during

00:44:36.360 this nikon practice another prompt you have for your thanksgiving nikon session is that i really

00:44:41.760 liked is list things that you have learned to do that have been blessings in your life and so again

00:44:46.820 i i did this myself kind of quickly before we got on the show and it's just you i got really mundane

00:44:51.780 i was like i learned how i know how to walk i learned how to ride a bike i learned how to throw a

00:44:56.820 football i learned how to hit a baseball i've learned how to read i've learned how to write and then i get

00:45:01.600 more complex i've learned how to navigate complex bureaucracies uh you know the life skills allow

00:45:08.120 me to navigate life and all these things have brought me so many good things in my life and as

00:45:12.800 i was thinking about this reflection about things you have learned i think this is a great antidote

00:45:17.560 to self-pity when we take on that victim mindset we kind of think of ourselves as less than able to

00:45:24.840 navigate the world we think of ourselves with less agency but focusing on the things that we have

00:45:30.480 learned in our life can help us get out of that we can actually see oh actually i'm capable of

00:45:35.620 increasing my agency so i can navigate the world and take on the world so i think that can be a really

00:45:41.380 powerful reflection especially if you're feeling a lot of victimization self-pity yes i i agree and i

00:45:48.060 think that the other thing that you can do once you start creating that list is then take each of those

00:45:54.140 items and actually think about can you think of someone or how it was that you learned that so i

00:46:00.780 had a piano teacher you know for six years that taught me how to introduce me to playing piano and

00:46:06.820 it's one of the reasons that i can actually play professionally now but my mother was a singer and

00:46:11.680 she also provided tremendous inspiration and encouragement for me to practice and and basically

00:46:17.960 there was always music going on in our house so when i you know look at whatever musical skill i have

00:46:24.140 i can actually start identifying specific people or things you know that basically inspired me and

00:46:30.220 sometimes it's a youtube video where they did a lesson in you know how to solo in the blues or

00:46:35.480 something like that but for each of those things i remember because i'm a writer also and and i can go back

00:46:42.680 to first grade the first person i think who really started teaching me how to write was my first grade

00:46:48.400 teacher mrs myers i remember her name and uh and so so part of it is we realize how much we've learned

00:46:55.060 to do and part of it is we've realized that when we're born we don't know how to do anything

00:47:00.140 right we basically kind of know how to breathe and cry but pretty much everything that we know how to

00:47:06.540 do at this point even if it's to cook rice or how to clean the bathtub is something that at some point

00:47:13.400 we had to learn from someone or from some mechanism even if it's a book or a video and so i think it's

00:47:19.880 also very humbling to realize that we have benefited from again so many people some of whom we don't

00:47:26.860 even know that made it possible for us to learn how to drive a car do you remember who taught you how

00:47:33.180 to drive a car brett uh it was my parents so like my dad and my mom would take me out different times

00:47:38.520 yeah and and i remember my dad specifically taking me to this high school parking lot you know where

00:47:44.920 i grew up in illinois and uh when it was empty on a sunday morning and you know i would be driving

00:47:50.400 around learning how to drive and so again these are things that we we take for granted but often there

00:47:56.380 were specific people involved and this question is an example of the interactive nature of this

00:48:03.300 process because i may think about things that i've learned to do and i may connect me with someone

00:48:09.520 who taught me to do that and then i think oh i can put that on my list of people who were blessings

00:48:16.720 from my past right because i didn't think of them when i did that list so it's not really as

00:48:22.540 sequential sequential of a process as it may seem because often we're jumping back and forth between

00:48:28.280 those lists because we're working on thinking about objects or thinking about what we've learned

00:48:33.460 and that's getting us helping us to remember something that goes on a different list so the

00:48:40.320 idea is to really just try to capture as much as we can objectively you know about our life our life

00:48:47.640 from the as far back as we can remember until the present day so that gives us a kind of picture of

00:48:53.520 essentially where we've come and where we are at this point and it doesn't mean that we didn't

00:48:59.100 suffer or have problems or challenges or difficulties but for many people going through this process is a

00:49:06.600 way of just reconnecting with a very natural sense of appreciation and gratitude that we have the life

00:49:13.040 that we have so this last prompt can be a tough one list difficulties and disappointments that have

00:49:18.980 turned out to be blessings in your life what kind of things might end up on this list

00:49:22.820 yeah and that is a difficult one and i and when people come and do a retreat i don't give them

00:49:30.900 this question until towards the end of the retreat and i always make it optional because i don't want

00:49:36.980 people to i think that there's a certain kind of energy in in some of the views about gratitude

00:49:42.620 that you should be able to look at any difficulty tragedy in your life and see how it was a blessing

00:49:50.080 and i don't believe that i don't think you can be grateful for everything that happened to you in

00:49:55.040 your life there are things that i think that are painful and tragic and i don't think we should force

00:50:00.780 ourselves to try to be grateful for those things on the other hand i think that sometimes when we look

00:50:07.680 back over something that happened so many years ago and the example that comes up for me and i'll just

00:50:13.820 give you a very short version of this is that when my dad was in his mid-80s after many many years of

00:50:19.880 my suggesting this he finally agreed to come and move to vermont and live here so he could be close

00:50:24.680 to us he lived in chicago and i went out to get him in january of 2014 i had a one-way ticket for him

00:50:32.200 so he could come back on the plane with me and we were going to just pack up a couple suitcases and

00:50:36.140 have things shipped and when i got to his house he wasn't there it turned out he was in the hospital he had

00:50:41.560 fallen in the hospital they diagnosed him with stage four lung cancer and i unexpectedly spent

00:50:47.980 the last 10 days of his life in hospice with him where he died in my arms it was not the ending of a

00:50:54.220 story that made me very happy i was terribly upset i went through a lot of grief it was all a complete

00:51:00.400 surprise when i look at this now almost 10 years later it was a real blessing and what was a blessing

00:51:05.600 is i got to spend the last 10 days of his life with him sitting next to him talking to him

00:51:11.120 holding his hand and a lot of people don't have that opportunity with a loved one and i did and

00:51:17.360 and so i see it now not as something oh you know it wasn't sad it wasn't upsetting it was but when i

00:51:24.780 look back at it now it was really a blessing that i had had that time with him the way that i did

00:51:29.300 so that's an example of something that i could put in there very genuinely as a blessing that's really

00:51:35.260 beautiful well greg this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about

00:51:39.440 your work in this thanksgiving nikon well our website where we have a lot of this work up is

00:51:45.620 called 30 000 days dot org so it's 30 000 days all one word dot org and what i thought we could do if

00:51:54.980 this is okay with you brett is to put up the actual booklet that we're using i always revise it every

00:52:00.280 year so it won't be probably up till monday but we'll put it up on the site so that people who are

00:52:06.380 listening to this if they hear this in time for thanksgiving or if they even if it's after

00:52:10.620 thanksgiving they'll be able to go to the site and actually download that booklet if they want to use

00:52:15.220 it does that sound okay sounds great well greg thanks so much for your time i hope you have a

00:52:20.300 very happy thanksgiving yes and you too brett i hope you have a great holiday and a great holiday

00:52:25.800 season and again thanks for allowing me to be a guest on the show today my guest today was greg

00:52:31.800 he's the executive director of the toto institute you can find more information about his work at

00:52:36.320 his website 30 000 days dot org and while you're there make sure to request a free copy of their

00:52:41.420 guide to thanksgiving reflection also check out our show notes at aom.is slash nikon we find links

00:52:46.940 to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:52:49.000 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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00:53:05.360 over the years about pretty much anything you think of and i want to wish you all a happy

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The Art of Manliness - November 20, 2023

The Japanese Practice That Can Give More Meaning to an American Holiday

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