As one year ends and another begins, it’s natural to reflect on both the past and the future — who we were, who we are, and who we want to become.

My guest today offers three questions that can help make that self-reflection truly fruitful, insightful, and possibly even life-changing. His name is Gregg Krech, he’s executive director of the ToDo Institute, which promotes principles of psychology based on Eastern traditions, and the author of Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection. Gregg and I begin our conversation with what Naikan is, and how this structured method of self-reflection can hold up a mirror to your life, helping you gain greater self-awareness, and see reality, and the way people perceive you, more clearly. Gregg then walks us through Naikan’s three rich, incisive questions and how to use them to help you discover how you really show up and operate in the world. We end our conversation with how to incorporate these reflections into your daily routine, and even make it a special ritual with which to ring in the new year.

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Show Highlights

• What is naikan? What’s its history?


• How naikan fits into the idea of morita (action oriented) therapy


• The value of self-reflection 


• Why we often miss how much other people are doing for us


• Moving from a complaint-based life to one of gratitude 


• The power of asking yourself what you’ve received in the last year 


• How to work reflection into your daily routine 


• Why it’s important to look at what you’ve given to others


• The hardest question of all: what are the difficulties I’ve caused?


• Turning naikan into a regular ritual 

Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast

• My first interview with Gregg


• 30 Prompts for Reflection on Your Integrity


• The Real Virtue of Thankfulness


• AoM series on spiritual disciplines


• Gut Check: Are You a Contemptible Person?


• Never Complain; Never Explain


• Ego Is the Enemy

Connect With Gregg

ToDo Institute

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay, and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. As one year ends and another begins, it’s natural to reflect on both and the past and the future. Who we were, who we are and who we want to become. My guest today offers three questions that can help make that self-reflection truly fruitful, insightful and possibly even life-changing.

His name is Gregg Krech. He’s executive director of the ToDo Institute, which promotes the principle of psychology based on Eastern traditions and the author of Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection. Gregg and I begin our conversation with what Naikan is, and how this structured method of self-reflection can hold a mirror to your life, helping you gain greater self-awareness and see reality and the way people perceive you more clearly.

Gregg then walks us through icons Naikan’s three rich incisive questions and how to use them to help you discover how you really show up and operate in the world. We end our conversation with how to incorporate these reflections into your daily routine, and even make it a special ritual with which to ring in the New Year. After the show’s over check out our show notes at aom.is/reflect.

Alright, Gregg Krech welcome back to the show.

Gregg Krech: Well, it’s good to be back Brett. Thanks very much.

Brett McKay: So we had you on the show, I think a year ago, it might have been two years ago. It’s… Time has flown. I’ve lost… My sense of time in 2020 is completely messed up. But anyways, we had you on to talk about Morita therapy and your work with it, which is a type of Japanese psychology. Today I want to talk about something that’s adjacent to that, which is a practice that you work with and help people work with. It’s called Naikan, another Japanese practice. So let’s start off. What is Naikan? Who developed it and what’s its back story?

Gregg Krech: Well, 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.

Brett McKay: So for those who haven