Three good questions and two bad questions to ask yourself

In January 2004, I attended a mental training course called "Naikan. (内観)" Naikan is Japanese for "looking within." This method was created to enable better self-control of young people at reformatories. Its main method is to make one think about the answers to the following three questions:

• What have I received from (person x)?
• What have I given back to (person x)?
• What trouble and difficulties have I caused (person x)?

On the other hand, the following two questions were banned:

• What trouble and difficulties has (person x) caused me?
• What are the things (person x) did not do for me?

The training course made me think about the answers for each person in my life by dividing periods of my life into age groups of 0 to 3, 4 to 7, 8 to 11, etc., until the present. "Person x" started with my mother, then my father, my sisters, my wife, some of my friends, etc. I thought of each person during each period for over an hour and tried to recall what had actually happened. The whole Naikan process took 6 days.

Going through that was an amazing experience and I started to feel very happy. The whole process made me believe that I had been and would be protected by the people in my life, and I wouldn't become the person I was without them. The different ways in which I questioned myself made me realize that I owe so much to the people in my life. Feelings of appreciation, apologies, the wanting to give back to them what I owe sprung up. The feeling was as if I woke up fresh and early in the morning after a tight and sound sleep.

It was the worst period of my life when the business I had started in the year 2000 did not go well for so long, and I kept complaining to my coworkers for not helping me enough to make the business sound. Naikan made me realize that I was wrong. I needed to ask myself the three good questions and not the two bad ones. The two bad questions are the ones you tend to remember. The good three ones, we tend to easily forget.

This philosophy lies in the foundation of my morning mail comments. Appreciation, apologies, and giving-back are the key. Since I started this, in a year (2005), people who disagreed with me left the company, in two years (2006), the business turned black ink, and all the years since 2004 to the present, the business grew about 25% each year. By experiencing this made me believe in the leaders' way of questioning themselves being very important.