10% Happier With Dan Harris

The allure of resentment, of holding a grudge or nursing your rage can be super powerful. In today’s episode, Jack Kornfield, one of the great western meditation masters, talks about Buddhist strategies for not holding grudges and the self-interested case for forgiveness. This episode is the first of a two-part series this week on forgiveness. In this conversation we talk about: What forgiveness is and isn’t Whether forgiveness is a single act or an ongoing processThe cost of not forgivingA forgiveness practice you can try in your meditationWhether it’s possible to respond to the misdeeds and transgressions of others with force and love at the same timeWhether there are things that are unforgivableAnd Jack’s contention that forgiveness involves a shift in identityFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jack-kornfield-533See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sebene guides you through using physical touch points to reduce anxiety. This is a great alternative to focusing on breathing.About Sebene Selassie:Sebene Selassie was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Working With Anxiety,” or click here: "https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=1fe8c559-04a4-4082-bf7c-e59d573c1252"See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Ca

Today we’re taking a run at something that is simultaneously a contemplative cliché and also a deeply desired psychological outcome: getting out of your head and into your body. So many of us want an escape route from the spinning, looping, fishing narratives and grudges in our head and our guest today has some very practical suggestions to help us do that. Kelly Boys is a mindfulness trainer and coach. She has helped design and deliver mindfulness and resilience programs for the UN, Google, and San Quentin State Prison. She is also the author of The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What's Right in Front of You Today we’re going to talk specifically about a type of meditation that Kelly teaches called Yoga Nidra, which has been shown to help you sleep, improve your working memory, and decrease cravings. In this episode we talk about:The difference between Yoga Nidra and mindfulness meditation, and how Kelly seeks to combine themThe value of being able to both observe and high-five your de

The subject of anxiety never seems to lose its relevance. In this special episode we answer listener voicemails with one of the world’s leading experts on anxiety. Dr. Jud Brewer is the Chief Medical Officer at Sharecare and the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center. He is also the New York Times best-selling author of Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind and an expert in the field of habit change and the science of self-mastery. In this episode we talk about:  The current levels of anxiety in our cultureWhy fear and planning can be helpful, but worrying is notThe role of curiosity and kindness in short circuiting anxiety How to differentiate between anxiety and excitementWhether we can try too hard to treat our anxietyAnd why as a society we are moving away from distress tolerance Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/judson-brewer-530See Privacy Policy at http

This simple but profound meditation will help you flip the judgment switch and genuinely welcome whatever your life presents.About Jeff Warren:Jeff is an incredibly gifted meditation teacher. He's trained in multiple traditions, including with renowned teacher Shinzen Young. Jeff is the co-author of NY Times Bestseller "Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics," and the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club, a meditation adventure group in Toronto. He has a knack for surfacing the exact meditation that will help everyone he meets. "I have a meditation for that" is regularly heard from Jeff, so we've dubbed him the "Meditation MacGyver."To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Welcoming Your Imperfection,” or click here:"https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=dfa31f5f-cf3e-40a6-ae63-ecf0ee524803"See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We’ve all got parts of our personality or our past that we’re ashamed of. We might refer to these parts of ourselves as our demons, our baggage, or our secrets; no one is immune.So, how do you want to deal with this situation? Stay coiled in shame and denial? That only makes the demons stronger. An alternative, per my guest Koshin Paley Ellison, is to approach your stuff with “healthy embarrassment.” That allows you to work more skillfully with your baggage so that it doesn’t own you. And once you’re cooler with yourself, that can improve your relationships with other people, which is probably the most important variable for your happiness. And healthy embarrassment is just one of many extremely useful things we are going to talk about today.Koshin Paley Ellison is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and Certified Chaplaincy Educator. He is the co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, an amazing place which, among other things, trains people to be volunteers in hospice center

Today we explore the entire dread spectrum with Saleem Reshamwala, who took a deep dive on this very common, very uncomfortable emotion. What is dread, exactly? What evolutionary purpose does it serve? Most importantly, how do we deal with it? What are the antidotes?Reshamwala has worked for The New York Times, PBS, and also TED, where he hosts a podcast called Far Flung. He is also the host of More Than A Feeling, another podcast here at Ten Percent Happier. Saleem and his team recently launched something called The Dread Project - we shared their first episode kicking off the series last week. It’s a five-day series that investigates dread. Each day of the challenge, listeners tackle dread in a different way. You can sign up for The Dread Project at dreadproject.com.In this episode we talk about:Dread-management techniques, including: journaling, drawing, and welcoming your dread to the party inside your headHow to face dread when it comes to climate change And the biggest dread of all— deathFull Shown

Setting intentions regularly can be an incredibly effective and deeply satisfying tool to map out how you want to live your life.About Dawn Mauricio:Dawn Mauricio discovered the practices of Buddhist meditation in 2005, and from then on, did what any well-intentioned perfectionist would do — plunge in head first! Since then, she's graduated from several teaching programs, including Spirit Rock's four-year Teacher Training. Her teaching style is playful, dynamic, and heartfelt, and she teaches extensively in her home-country of Canada, as well as the US, to teens, people of color, and folks of all backgrounds.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Daily Intention Setting,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=deaecaa8-6b71-43cd-b2f7-a406c93fafd4See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Can gratitude be more than just a platitude? Our guest today argues: yes. DaRa Williams is a longtime practitioner and teacher of meditation. She is one of the guiding teachers at Insight Meditation Society, a graduate of the Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program, and also has a clinical mental health private practice in Manhattan. DaRa also says, only semi-facetiously, that she believes gratitude can be considered the fifth Brahma Vihara. In this conversation we talk about:How to start knitting gratitude into your everyday lifeWhether gratitude is possible when everything sucksHow to avoid spiritual bypassThe opportunity that suffering brings for happinessHow to take our suffering less personallyThe power of reminding yourself that you are natureAnd our unconscious fascination with creating difficultyFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dara-williams-295-rerunSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art1

There are all sorts of ways to struggle with getting things done. Maybe you’re a procrastinator, maybe you’re somebody whose energy flags in the middle of a project, maybe you’re too stubborn and don’t know when to quit, or maybe you’re somebody who sets too many goals and gets burned out. Whatever your situation, we all struggle with motivation. The good news is that there’s a whole crew of scientists who study best practices for getting things done, including today’s guest, Ayelet Fishbach, PhD.Fishbach is one of the most eminent players in the field. She is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. She is also the author of Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. In this episode we talk about:The crucial first step of setting goalsHow to pick the right goals for youWhether it’s more effective to have a goal that is positive – where you’re aiming to achieve something specific – or negativ

Bring an open minded curiosity to your big emotions and get to know yourself more fully, developing resilience to deal with all the feels.About Sharon Salzberg:A towering figure in the meditation world, Sharon Salzberg is a prominent teacher & New York Times best-selling author. She has played a crucial role bringing mindfulness and lovingkindness practices to the West.Sharon co-founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) alongside Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield and is the author of nine books, including Lovingkindness, Real Happiness, and the most recent Real Love. Sharon lives in New York City and teaches around the world.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Being with Big Emotions,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=0606529f-6448-4fa4-8b87-d9c64666f743See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is for anyone who has ever had a tough or tricky moment. In other words, everyone who is currently drawing breath on planet earth right now.Today’s guests are powerhouse duo Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Daniel Goleman.Tsoknyi Rinpoche is one of the greatest living Tibetan masters who has a whole toolbox of techniques for dealing with difficult moments, habitual patterns, and common meditation obstacles. He’ll be in conversation with Daniel Goleman, a trained scientist and science writer best known for his landmark book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Together, they have just written a book called Why We Meditate: The Science and Practice of Clarity and Compassion. This is the fourth and final installment of our series called, The Art and Science of Keeping Your Sh*t Together. In each episode we bring together a meditative adept or Buddhist scholar and a respected scientist. The idea is to give you the best of both worlds to arm you with both modern and ancient tools for regu

Is it possible to learn to spot which state your nervous system is in and move from suboptimal states to much better ones? The subject of how to work with your own nervous system is called Polyvagal Theory and today’s guests Deb Dana & Kaira Jewel Lingo will give us a primer on what that exactly means. They will also talk about how our nervous systems are connected to the nervous systems of other people, and how we can learn to co-regulate our systems for the betterment of others. Deb Dana is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who is a clinician, consultant and author specializing in complex trauma.  Her work is focused on using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma, and creating ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. She has written several books, including Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.  Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in spirituality and social ju

The team over at our sister show, More Than a Feeling, are diving deep into an emotion that a lot of us can relate to: dread. And while that may sound unappetizing, they’ve found a way to make this series delightful and useful. It’s called “The Dread Project,” and today you’re gonna hear their kick off episode, and then next week, every day, in the More Than a Feeling podcast feed, you’ll find a short episode that will give you a new, short and fun exercise on how to work with your dread.Sign up for The Dread Project Challenge at dreadproject.com, and you’ll get five days of emails with insights from each day’s episode and the exercise that goes with it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A common idea in the west is that our feelings or emotions should be viewed with suspicion, superseded or overridden by rational thought, and that your mind is a battleground between emotions and rationality. But on the show today, guests Lisa Feldman Barrett and John Dunne are going to offer a very compelling science backed argument that disputes the notion that thinking and feeling are distinct. Furthermore, they argue that understanding how emotions are actually made can be a life or death matter. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University with appointments at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Barrett is among the top 1% most-cited scientists, having published over 270 peer-reviewed scientific papers.  She has written several books, including How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, and Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain. Her TED talk has been viewed more than 6.5 million times.John Dunne

In western culture, there's been a long held view that our ability to reason should be placed above our emotions. But the hard truth is that our emotions are there and they're non-negotiable— and If you don't know how to work with them, they can own you.The good news is that you can work with them and that there are many systems for doing so. To boot, you can learn a ton by listening to your emotions in the right ways. Today’s guests, Shinzen Young and James Gross will help us understand how to work with our emotions and offer both techniques in modern science and ancient wisdom in order to do so. Gross is the Ernest R. Hilgard Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. Young is an American mindfulness teacher and neuroscience research consultant. He teaches something called Unified Mindfulness, which you will hear him describe in this conversation.This is part one in a series we’re calling The Art and Science of Keeping Your Sh*t Toget

Cultivate resilience by choosing to turn towards joy, and transform difficult times into growth opportunities and heartache into gratitude.About La Sarmiento:La Sarmiento is the guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington's BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Sanghas and a mentor for the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and Cloud Sangha. They graduated from Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Community Dharma Leader Training Program in 2012. As an immigrant, non-binary, Filipinx-American, La is committed to expanding access to the Dharma. They live in Towson, MD with their life partner Wendy and rescue pups Annabel and Bader.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Opening to Joy,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=ad5f5edb-d41b-4419-8cdd-cbe4155ef6ae.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We’re sharing a very special episode from a frequent guest of the show, Esther Perel. In this episode, “Love in War with Esther Perel: Ukraine,” you’ll hear a couples session led by Esther, between a husband and wife whose family has been torn apart by the war in Ukraine. Through the lens of relationship, you experience both the horrors of war and the relatability of intimate relationships.Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of many books, including Mating In Captivity. She’s also the host of the podcasts Where Should We Begin? and How’s Work?. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It is so easy to be pessimistic and, in fact, we are evolutionarily wired towards it with a built in negativity bias. This bias can be super useful, because it keeps us on guard for threats. But like all biases, it can warp the way we see the world. This is why optimism can be incredibly helpful. We’re not talking about blind optimism here but more about grounded, realistic and reasonable optimism. Our guest today, Robin Roberts, has come by this skill the hard way. Not only is she one of the boldest of the boldface names in the news business, where she is forced to confront crime, war, and natural disasters on the regular, but she’s also come through two very serious bouts of cancer.Roberts is the longtime co-anchor of Good Morning America. She has a new book called, Brighter by the Day: Waking Up to New Hopes and Dreams in which she talks about how she has honed her optimism chops, and how you can, too. In this episode we talk about:How to strengthen your optimism muscleMaking “one day, day one”Op

Friendship might not necessarily be something you’ve considered to be an urgent psychological and physiological issue. One thing we explore a lot on the show is that the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life, and sadly, in many ways, it’s harder than ever to make and keep friends. With loneliness and disconnection on the rise, our society just wasn’t constructed for social connection, and recent data suggests we’re in a friendship crisis, with many of us reporting that we have fewer close friendships than ever.Our guest today is Robin Dunbar, an Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University and the author of numerous books on the development of homo sapiens. Dunbar is perhaps best known for formulating “Dunbar's number,” which is a measurement of the number of relationships our brain is capable of maintaining at any one time. He is a world-renowned expert on human relationships, and has a ton of fascinating research findings and practical tips for upping your f