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| Yuhan Ito |
Art of Manliness: #671 Better Questions for Self Reflections - Gregg Krech interviewed
Naikan is a method of self-reflection that was developed in Japan. It was developed by a man by the name of Yoshimoto Ishin back in the… Oh, 1930s, 1940s was really kind of time when it first started to arise. But it was preceded by a kind of ancient tradition of self-reflection called mishirabe, which went back hundreds of years prior to that. And was affiliated originally with a form of Buddhism called Shin Buddhism, which is actually the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan today.
It’s an interesting form of Buddhism. Not a lot of Americans know about it, but it’s based or grounded in a concept called tariki. And tariki means something like “other power”. So we can look at, for instance, in the personal development arena, you hear a lot of things that are based on jiriki which means “self-power” as opposed to tariki which means “other power”.
And self-power is kind of the message that we give to people, “Look, if you wanna change your life, you gotta do it yourself, nobody’s gonna do it for you.” And it’s a healthy message in a lot of situations. Tariki is the message that you can’t do anything by yourself. You cannot do anything by yourself because anything that you try to do requires the support of other people, other objects, forms of energy, money, and so you’re really dependent on other things in the world for being able to just live, for example, or make any changes in your life.
So it’s a very different kind of conceptual foundation that you find in Naikan than the other form of Japanese therapy that we talked about last time, which is Morita therapy
On Naikan
I think one of the things that we miss is often how much other people are doing for us, because we’re often not paying very much attention to that. ... When we talk a little bit about the reflective questions, we can discuss that further. But one of the things we miss is really the level of support and care people are providing for us.
But another thing that we miss, and it’s really very hard to get in touch with, is how what we’re doing is causing trouble and difficulty to others. How we’re inconveniencing others. How we’re causing problems for others. That’s often something that we overlook. We focus a lot on how other people cause us problems.
...One of the foundation or main goals of this process of self-reflection is really to shift from a complaint-based life to a life of genuine appreciation. So a complaint-based life is something that many of us are familiar with probably because we’ve seen other live that kind of way, and we know what’s it’s like to be around somebody who’s constantly complaining.
But of course there are times when we’re that person and we’re constantly complaining. And even when we don’t complain out loud we may be just going through a litany of complaints about, “What a terrible day this was. I’m so glad this day is over.” Or in this case, “What a terrible year this was. I can’t wait to have this year and get on to the next year.|
I think as we reflect on our life and the world around us and the people around us, and we get a clearer sense of what’s really going on that we’re able to see, we’re much more likely to develop a really genuine or authentic sense of appreciation for our life.
...We’re not actually trying in Naikan to change our thinking, we’re actually trying to change our seeing. More specifically trying to change where we’re putting our attention. And there’s a maxim that we’ve developed that says, “Your experience of life is not based on your life, it’s based on what you pay attention to.”
Brett McKay: When you do a Naikan self-reflection, you ask, “What have I received from blank?” So why begin with this question?
Gregg Krech: Well, I think the question of looking at what you’ve received… And there’s a movement in positive psychology towards looking at how to develop more gratitude. And so you’ll see this whole idea for instance, of gratitude journaling. Putting down the things that you feel grateful for. This question is very carefully worded because it’s not asking you what you feel grateful for, it’s asking you to identify in a more factual way, “What have you received?”
So if I just use that question right now. I’m receiving the use of this microphone that I’m speaking into. The use of the technology that you’re using on your show to record our conversation. I’m receiving your attention and your invitation for me to be your guest on the show today.
I’m also receiving electricity and WiFi, a nice quiet room to basically sit and talk to you in. I’ve got a window in the room, so there’s some sunlight coming in. My eyesight is working pretty well. And I can go on and on with a list of what I’m receiving just right at this very moment. And the reality is that most of the time, for instance, as I go through the day, I’m not aware of most of those things.
I’m not aware that for instance, I’m receiving fresh air and oxygen that’s infusing my lungs and allowing me to breathe properly. And so, when we pause and we do this kind of reflection, we essentially expand our awareness of how the world is supporting us and caring for us.
There’s a neuroscientist by the name of Rick Hanson. And he developed, I think, a great metaphor for why this question’s important because he talks about our natural tendency… In fact, he attributes it to the way our brain is actually wired together from a neuro-scientific standpoint. He talks about the natural tendency we have to really notice the problems, challenges, threats, difficulties in our life.
That those things tend to stick with us in a way that he connects with the image of velcro, the way a piece of velcro sticks to the other side of itself. But when things are going on, like we have fresh air to breathe, or we have a cup of coffee to drink, or we have hot water in the shower, or our car starts in the morning, we tend not to notice those things.
And so that’s more like Teflon. So we can think of this tendency that we have, which goes really into the way our brains are wired, as the difference between velcro, of noticing troubles and problems in our life, and Teflon, which is the way that the things that are actually supporting and caring for us tend to just kind of get noticed incidentally and then kind of slide right back off to become invisible.
Brett McKay: Sorry, I wanna reiterate you’re not… This isn’t based on feelings. This is kind of like Morita therapy. With Morita, you’re not really focused on your feelings, you’re focused on action you can take. The same with Naikan. You’re not thinking about what you feel grateful for, you’re just thinking about factually, what are the things that I receive from different people or organizations, or even just the Earth itself, the universe itself on a daily basis.
Gregg Krech: Yes, it’s actually very objective. And it’s one of the things that I think is a common denominator in Morita and Naikan, is their both what I would call reality based therapies. In both cases, you’re trying to see reality clearly.
Gregg Krech: Yeah, which is actually a great thing to do every once in a while, particularly if you’re feeling a lot of self-pity or depression, is to really spend a couple of hours and see how long of a list you can make. But there are different ways to use this question, and you can direct the question towards the world as a whole, which is to some extent what I’ve been doing in the examples I’m giving. Or you can direct it towards a specific person.
And my wife, Linda and I, who’ve been working together for 25 years or more have… We use this as part of our morning routine. And we… The whole thing, this part of it takes probably about five or six minutes. And what we do is we sit down and we say, “Let’s just reflect on each other for the previous day.”
So we have probably three minutes of silence. And I’m thinking of, in part, the first question, “What did I receive from Linda yesterday?” And I’m thinking, “Well, she got me a hot cup of coffee, and she made a really nice healthy salad for dinner. She kept me company on a walk that we took at lunch time so I can get some exercise. And she picked up the mail from the post-office. And she listened to some music that I was trying to compose and gave me some feedback.”
So I’m just coming up with a very practical list of what I received from her the day before. And she’s doing the same thing in her three minutes, and we’re using these other questions as well. And then we actually just share that with each other for a couple of minutes. We find that it’s a really great way to start the day, that we look back at the previous 24 hours.
And most importantly, we found that using this process keeps us connected to what the other person in the marriage is actually giving to us. I would say without exaggerating that if it wasn’t for this process over the past 25 years, I’m not sure we would still be married.
This really has kept us from falling into the trap that I think is very easy in a relationship or a marriage, where you start getting focused on what the other person isn’t doing, that you really want them to do. Or what they are doing that really aggravates you. And that’s where your attention goes, and that’s what your experience of the marriage starts to become.
So this is kind of an antidote to that. And even by just taking a few minutes in the morning, we’re able to kind of rekindle a sense of appreciation for one another.
BM: talks about DoorDash meal and all the steps/people involved in the actual arrival of the food.
GK: I think what you just shared with us in terms of starting that list is just an example of taking a particular incident or event, just receiving food being delivered from a restaurant, and you begin to see the endless roots of what it took for you to get that meal. If we don’t do that, then we can get pulled in the direction of the only thing that we notice is that the food isn’t as hot as we wanted it.
And that becomes our experience. It’s like, “What’s wrong with these DoorDash people? It took him so long to get here and now, the food’s cold and now, I have to heat it up.” And so again, you look at this idea of how you make that shift from a complaint-based life to a life of genuine sense of appreciation. I think reflection and attention are the two basic ingredients in that recipe.
Brett McKay: Alright, so the second question is, “What have I given to?” fill in the blank. So what’s the purpose of this question? What are we trying to do?
Gregg Krech: So this is just the reverse, we’re just looking at the… We’re just changing the direction. If we use your example of DoorDash, we’re thinking, “Well, what did I give? So I paid for the meal that was given to me. There was a fee added. I gave a tip to the driver,” maybe. So we’re looking at what you gave in the situation.
And so, when we look at these two questions side by side, we now see the give and take of our lives, either during this period of time or in relation to this particular relationship. So if I was to do this somewhat thoroughly, if I could, in relation to my wife for a 24-hour period for yesterday, and she was to do the same thing, I would basically see all the things I received from her and I would identify what I had given to her.
And that is a wonderful reconciliation to look at because you see the debits and credits. And the man who developed Naikan, Yoshimoto Ishin, he was a very devout religious person, but he was also a very successful business person. And he wrote that he developed these first two questions, kind of working from a accounting or business framework.
Because his company, which made artificial leather for Japanese cars back in the ’60s and ’70s, that his company would send out a statement to their clients saying, “Here’s how much product we shipped to, and here’s how much money you basically paid. And either you have a credit or you owe us some money.”
He saw this as kind of more of a spiritual reconciliation based on our life. “So I went through the day yesterday, this is what I received from the world: Food from the refrigerator, air to breathe, my car worked, my wife made a nice salad, this whole list of things, a hot shower. And here’s what I gave: I walked the dog, I fed the dog. I helped my daughter with a particular question she had about the computer. And now, I look at these things side by side.”
And for me, personally, and I always encourage people to deal with this freshly, but for me, personally, almost all the time, what I find, no matter what I’m looking at, is that I’ve received more than I gave.
And that astounded me and it made me, on the one hand, feel guilty that I wasn’t giving more or doing more, but on the other hand, it made me feel more cared for and supported than I had ever felt in my entire life. This is when I was back in my early 30s, it’s over 30 years ago now.
I think when we look at these two questions side by side, we begin to get a sense of the balance or imbalance in our receiving and giving. And in situations where we’re receiving more, again, there’s often this natural sense that, “I wanna do something more for my wife, I wanna do something more for the community, I wanna do something more for the planet,” whatever it is that we’re looking at.
BM: Let’s talk about this third question, which is, “What troubles and difficulties did I cause, blank?” So what are we doing with this question?
GK: It could just simply be, “I left my dirty dishes in the sink, and my wife ended up washing them,” or, “I left my socks on the floor in the bedroom,” or, “I was half an hour late for a lunch appointment and the person had to wait for me.” But when we see those things, we begin to put ourselves in another person’s shoes. What is it like for someone to be my colleague and have to work with me? What is it like for my wife to actually have to deal with me as her husband? Or for my daughter to have to deal with me as her father?
And some of the most, I would say, profound and emotional reflections I’ve had have really been doing this third question, and looking at people I was very close to, my family and close friends for years, and seeing, essentially, some of the really selfish things that I had done to cause trouble and difficulty to those people.
But I would argue that that’s incredibly important, because whether you see it or not, it’s part of a page of the book of your life that’s already been written. So your choice is really, do you want to be conscious about how you’ve lived your life? Or do you want to essentially be blind to these elements of how you lived your life?
And I think we should, in the interest of living a good life, and in the interest of our own spiritual aspirations, we should try to be more conscious of basically how we’re living.
Brett McKay: Right. These questions helps you be less of a complainer. You even recommend that people spend about 60% of their reflection when they’re doing Naikan on this question.
Gregg Krech: Yeah, and that’s really what was, I think recommended to me in my own training in Japan, is that this is really of the three questions, this is really an important question because it allows us to see ourselves, again this idea of using a mirror, in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise see. And when I talk about the idea of putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, this question, “What is it like for Linda to be married to me?”
That that process of doing that psychologically is really the foundation of empathy, it’s the foundation of compassion, it’s the foundation of understanding. So our ability to see things from the other person’s perspective, including ourselves, is really one of the essential elements, I think of a healthy relationship with anybody, someone we’re working with, or members of our family.
So if we can do that, we really increase the chances that we can basically have healthy relationships in our life, as opposed to conflict and resentment towards others.
(when to do it?)
I mentioned just taking, again six or seven minutes with my wife Linda in the morning where we do this as just part of our morning routine. I think you can dedicate blocks of time to this, in the same way that you dedicate time to getting physical exercise by going running or going to the gym or working out in some way. I think we have to dedicate time to self-reflection. If we don’t do that, it’s very hard to have, I think any balance in our life.
Most people are very active, and we’re busy people. Most of us are busy. You ask people, “How are you?” And they say, “Oh, I’m so busy.” And we go from one thing to another, and we get to a point in our day where we say, “Okay, that’s it, I’m done,” and then we shift from action to some kind of passivity, which could be looking at Facebook, watching a movie, watching a sitcom, surfing the internet, passive activities.
So we have action and we have passiveness, or passivity, but what’s often missing from our life is reflectivity, which is what we’re really discussing today, and actually building time into your day, even if it’s just for a few minutes before bed, first thing in the morning, to just be reflecting on your life. Using this kind of method or even other methods that may lead you to the same type of contemplative approach to your life.
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