#174 Japanese Psychology Lessons: How Do You Want to Use Your 30,000 Days? | Gregg Krech

Many of you know that I’m kind of in love with Japan. I lived there in my 20’s for nearly three years, I studied the language intensely, and because it offered such a different point of view from what I grew up with, it informed how I think. 

This episode is dedicated to Japanese psychology and—procrastinators, listen up—it is also dedicated to taking action. As you’ll hear from my guest, we have, on average, around 30,000 days of life. To deal with this reality, there have been some great contributions to the field coming from Japan—and you’ll get to hear and learn about therapies you may never have heard of, specifically, Morita and Naikan Therapies. And many people have been loving Marie Kondo’s work and have seen her Netflix special and have rid their homes of anything that didn’t bring them a spark of joy, as she so brilliantly puts it. Her thinking, too, is in line with this way of thinking as I see it.

To make the concepts super accessible to my listeners, I found a man who has been studying and teaching Japanese psychology for over three decades and has presented on the topic internationally multiple times. Gregg Krech (https://www.thirtythousanddays.org/) is the founder and executive director of the Todo Institute, a non-profit organization in Vermont dedicated to the study of Japanese psychology. Gregg is the author of multiple books on this topic including one on Naikan which Publishers Weekly described as “illuminating and instructive." In addition, he wrote a book that has been read with overwhelmingly positive reviews by a very wide audience, The Art of Taking Action: Lessons from Japanese Psychology.

So, listen in as Gregg and I get into the art of taking action and lessons from Japanese psychology. Book link: https://amzn.to/45lJ8Jv This is an affiliate link. It will provide me with a small commission on purchases made through it and help the podcast (but it won’t affect the price you pay).