The Art of Taking Action: Lessons from Japanese Psychology

One of the simplest approaches to taking action is to get your body in the right position.

When we keep others waiting, we are not being respectful of their lives. And time is the most precious commodity that any of us have.

Morita’s work provides great relief as we begin to see these thoughts as happening to us, similar to the way rain falls or a gust of wind blows across the yard.

The process of Naikan reflection is relatively simple. It is based on three questions: (1) What have I received from ____? (2) What have I given to ______? (3) What troubles and difficulties have I caused ______? These questions provide

But when we think of our own mortality, we realize that it is the important things we are most likely to regret not doing when we finally run out of time (for good!). So it’s crucial to find a way to set aside time regularly for the important activities that aren’t necessarily urgent. We can usually do this by giving up some of our less purposeful

Action isn’t something that comes after figuring things out. Action is a way of figuring things out.

two categories. Either we know what needs to be done, and we’re not doing it. Or… We really just don’t know what to do.

The Demon of Boredom usually employs distraction as his tool. He lures our minds into connecting with something other than what we need to do.

We live in a goal-oriented culture and we receive encouragement to identify goals, write them down, and work towards them. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, except that we can quickly find ourselves attached to the goals themselves, which are nearly always outcomes. And outcomes, in most cases, are uncontrollable. Finding a job, losing we