Using “I get to” allows me to see that my daily deeds are gifts. Life is burgeoning with opportunities to meet our human needs. In context, it is all a blessing. I finally get to see that.

The Kaizen strategy goes one step beyond “showing up,” because you actually have to do something. But what you have to do is minimal. Suppose you’re trying to get your garden in shape. Your first step might be to go out to the garden and pull one weed and plant one tomato plant. That seems insignificant… and that’s the point.

“Only go straight, don’t know” was one. “Try, try, try for ten thousand years” was another. And a third, a decade before Nike used it to sell shoes, was the phrase “just do it.” The phrase had two slightly different meanings. First, it was to do only one thing at a time and to do it wholeheartedly. “When you are eating, only eat; when you are

So perhaps we can take a lesson from our friends, the trees, and simply do our best with whatever situation we encounter.

if our focus is on effort, then “how” we move forward is of great importance. We consider the impact of our actions on others.

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 a framework for reflecting on parents, friends, teachers, siblings, colleagues, children and partners. We reflect

“kaizen.” It’s a generic Japanese word that means “improvement,” but is usually used to describe a program of organizational development that is based on “continuous improvement.”

Taking action is one of the most important skills you can master if you wish to maintain good mental health. And over the course of your lifetime you’ll accomplish much more than if you often procrastinate or leave things unfinished. Furthermore, you’ll discover new purposes as they are revealed in tasks that are placed in front of you.

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