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This week we talk to Gregg Krech
Gregg is an author, poet, and one of the leading authorities on Japanese Psychology in North America. His work has been featured in THE SUN magazine, Tricycle, SELF, Utne Reader, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan and Experience Life. His books include Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection, A Natural Approach to Mental Wellness, and The Art of Taking Action. His newest book, Question Your Life, will be available soon.
Gregg and his wife, Linda, founded the ToDo Institute (http://www.todoinstitute.org), a non-profit center in Vermont that uses Japanese Psychology as an alternative to traditional Western approaches to psychology. Over the past 25 years, Gregg has introduced Japanese Psychology, particularly Naikan Therapy, Morita Therapy and Kaizen, to thousands of people through his workshops and online courses. His work supports a blend of the psychological, the spiritual and the practical, and helps individuals to clarify purpose, cultivate gratitude, develop compassion and engage in meaningful action. He is a member of the North American Naikan Counsel and Editor in Chief for the quarterly journal “Thirty Thousand Days: A Journal for Purposeful Living.
In This Interview, Gregg Krech and I Discuss…
- The Wolf Parable
- His book, The Art of Taking Actions: Lessons from Japanese Psychology
- How Eastern wisdom is directed towards taking action, as well as contemplation
- Taking your practice off your cushion
- The misguided premise that we have to figure things out in our life before we can act
- The power of momentum in action when small steps are taken
- Cultivating gratitude
- Avoidance, resignation, complaining
- How accepting things as they are isn’t necessarily passive
- That complaining keeps us stuck in focusing on the trouble in our lives
- The overlap between ACT and Japenese Therapy
- Feelings and thoughts are uncontrollable by our will
- Allowing feelings to be what they are but not letting them inhibit our ability to move forward and take action
- Taking action based on the needs of the situation rather than just on the feelings we have
- How essential it is to step back from our lives and reflect and then make choices on how you need to move forward
- How most of the time we do not feel like doing the things that need to be done
- Exercise being an example!
- The maxim: Lead with the body
- How if you don’t feel like something now, you’re probably never really going to want to do it so get it done now
- That the anticipation is often worse than the consummation
- His next book that focuses on self-reflection
Gregg Krech Links
A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other.
One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feedThe Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable.
This parable goes by many names including:
The Tale of Two Wolves
The Parable of the Two Wolves
Two Wolves
Which Wolf Do You Feed
Which Wolf are You Feeding
Which Wolf Will You Feed
It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.
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