10% Happier With Dan Harris

You don’t have to slow down and sit to be mindful. You can be busy and get things done while still growing your mindfulness muscles.About Jay Michaelson:Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, including his newest, The Secret That Is Not a Secret. In his “other career,” Jay is a columnist for The Daily Beast, and was a professional LGBTQ activist for ten years. Jay is an ordained rabbi and has taught meditation in secular, Buddhist, and Jewish context for eighteen years.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Meditate While You’re Busy.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We’re dropping a fun little treat in your feed today: it’s an episode of The Puzzler, a new podcast from writer A.J. Jacobs, who was my guest on Ten Percent Happier at the beginning of December. His new book, also called The Puzzler, is all about his exploration of the world of puzzles – everything from word games to jigsaw puzzles to Sudoku and beyond – and how what he calls “the puzzle mindset” can really improve your life.So then he asked me to be his guest on The Puzzler, a daily podcast that he hosts, with so-called “celebrity” guests trying to do puzzles. I’ve said before that I’m not really a puzzle guy, but A.J. is a delight and it was a lot of fun getting to be on his show – and that’s the episode we’re sharing with you today. You can find “The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs” wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks, A.J., for having me. Sign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite play

Sometimes perseverance is overrated. An argument for strategic quitting.Julia Keller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, novelist, and playwright. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from The Ohio State University and has taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She was the chief book critic at The Chicago Tribune for many years before quitting the world of daily journalism to write books. In this episode we talk about:The history behind why quitting gets such a bad rap What happens in our brains when we quit Why we don’t give enough credit to quittingThe myth of perseverance How to talk to our children about healthy quittingThe power of having a community of quittersRelated Episodes:The Myth of the Dream Job | Simone StolzoffHow To Find Meaningful Work in a Rapidly Changing World | Bruce FeilerSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Ha

Our ability to focus is not lost, it’s just changing. Here’s what we can adapt.Here’s a horrifying fact: the average attention span has now declined to just 47 seconds on any particular screen. 47 seconds! How did this happen? How can we get anything done this way?Today we’re going to meet the scientist who’s done this research, find out what’s driving this, and what we can do about it. And the good news is we really can do things about this.We're experiencing a fundamental shift in how we think, work, and focus. It shows up in our blizzard of notifications, zoom fatigue, task switching, and burn out. Dr. Gloria Mark is the Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She has been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012. She’s written a book called Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and ProductivityIn this episode we talked about:Four myths about attention and technologyThe problem with frequent task-switchingThe surp

Gently opening to the full sensations of anxiety and even making friends with it can actually create more calm and peace in your body.About Leslie Booker:After training as a yoga teacher in 2007, Booker was drawn to Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Mindful Yoga and Meditation training which she completed in 2012. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her partner and pup and is the Co-Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Making Friends with Your Anxiety.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Harvard Business School professor discusses how to get good at “intelligent failure.”Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her latest book is called the Right Kind of Wrong. Her research examines psychological safety and teaming within and between organizations.In this episode we talk about:The problems of shame, perfectionism, and social mediaHow not to get caught up in analysis paralysis The importance of self-compassion and a growth mindsetThe benefits of worrying with someone elseWhy redundancy is your friendHow to discuss failure without assigning blameWhy accepting your smallness can be freeingTaking the time to learn from failureThe cognitive framework: stop, challenge, and chooseHow to have a healthier relationships with anxiety and failureCreating a culture of psychological safetyRecognizing that not everybody in society has the same permission to take risks Related Episodes:Self-Compassion Ain’t Always Soft | Kristin NeffS

How to boost productivity, empathy, and focus, while reducing burnout. From the godfather of Emotional Intelligence. If you have any degree of ambition, one of the things you probably think about is how to perform at your best, or somewhere close, every day. How to keep your energy up. How to get into flow. How to stay focused and productive. How to play well with others.Daniel Goleman— his friends call him Danny—-has been thinking and writing about optimal performance for decades. He’s perhaps best known for his book, Emotional Intelligence. He’s a Harvard trained psychologist who also wrote in the New York Times for a while. And in his youth, he spent many years studying meditation in Asia, alongside many of today’s most intellectual meditation teachers like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg.He’s got a new book called Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day, co-written with Cary Cherniss.In this episode we talk about:How to train your mind for optimal statesHow to re

Start your day by tuning in and learning how to feel more connected to all the little details of your life. It turns out, they matter.About Cara Lai:Cara Lai spent most of her life trying to figure out how to be happy, or at least avoid total misery, which landed her on a meditation cushion for the majority of her adulthood. In the past, Cara has worked as an artist, wilderness guide, social worker and psychotherapist, but at this point she’s given up on being an adult in exchange for an all-out mindfulness rampage. Her teaching is relatable, authentic, funny and sometimes crass, and is accessible for many people. She teaches teens and adults at Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, and UCLA; ultimately hoping to become as good of a show-off as Dan. And to help people be happier.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Embracing Life.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.co

The author/podcaster talks about her nonnegotiables at a delicate time in her life.Glennon Doyle is an author, activist, and the founder of Together Rising. She hosts the We Can Do Hard Things podcast and wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed, a Reese’s Book Club selection, which has sold nearly three million copies. Photo Credit: Alexandra HedisonIn this episode we talk about:The concept of embodimentUndoing harmful deep conditioning around hustle and diet cultureThe role of Internal Family Systems in Glennon’s lifeRelated Episodes:You Don’t Have to be Miserable While Doing Important Work | adrienne maree brownHow To End The War With Your Body | Sonya Renee TaylorThe Anti-Diet | Evelyn TriboleSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/Additional Resourc

Plus, provocative and practical ideas about actually enjoying exercise, the real relationship between weight and health, the problem with weight loss, the morality of food, feeding your kids, and who "the real bad guy" is.Virginia Sole-Smith is the bestselling author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture and The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. She also writes the Burnt Toast newsletter, hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast, and frequently contributes to The New York Times and other publications.In this episode we talk about:The actual connections between health and body sizeThe severe limitations of many of the most popular approaches to weight lossNuanced strategies for disentangling from diet cultureHow to exercise without a hidden agenda of trying to wrench your body into a specific shapeThe idea that food doesn’t have a moral valueThe relationship between men, exercise, food, and diet cultureHow our kids are getting caught up in diet culture, and what parents can do ab

Dr. Jud breaks down how habits work and how to change them. Plus, insights on stress, boredom, mindfulness, pleasure, satisfaction, and contentment.Judson Brewer M.D., Ph.D., is an internationally renowned addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist and a bestselling author. He is a professor in the School of Public Health and Medical School at Brown University. His new book is called The Hunger Habit: Why We Eat When We’re Not Hungry and How to Stop.In this episode we talk about:The scientific evidence behind Dr. Jud’s approach The difference between satisfaction and contentmentThe difference between hedonic and homeostatic hungerWhy changing behavior may not require you to dig into your past“Unforced freedom of choice”The “bigger better offer”The “pleasure plateau”Habits vs. addictions“The hunger test” The Buddha’s advice on eatingWhether or not we can still eat gummy wormsRelated Episodes:Dr. Jud’s anxiety Q&ADr. Jud on anxiety as a habitDr. Jud on addiction and bad habitsEvelyn Tribole on intu

You are complex and contain multitudes. Try this refreshing take on loving-kindness and offer love to all the different parts of yourself.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 “Loving Your Many Sides”. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you already bailed on your resolutions? Where are you on your other life goals? This episode is a master class on sticking with it, no matter what.Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama—an organization that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, as well as reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. He is the author of the bestselling memoir Just Mercy, which was made into a feature film, and the subject of an HBO documentary, True Justice. He is also a MacArthur “Genius,” a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of over 50 honorary doctoral degrees from institutions like Yale, Princeton, and Oxford University.In this episode we talk about:Bryan’s “non-negotiables,” including exercise, music, and mindfulnessThe nece

Chödrön also talks about how to deal with difficult people, set boundaries, and keep a sense of humor in the face of our human foibles and failings.Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City. In her mid-thirties, Ani Pema met and studied with Lama Chime Rinpoche, becoming a novice nun in 1974 in London. She received ordination from His Holiness the Sixteenth Karampa during that time. Pema first met her root guru, the teacher with whom she had the most profound connection, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972, and she studied closely with him until his death in 1987. In 1984, at the behest of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Ani Pema moved from Boulder, Colorado to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. She currently teaches throughout the United States and Canada and continues her studies and meditative retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.In this episode we talk about:How to deal with difficult people and set boundariesHaving a sense of humor about o

Kabat-Zinn on the nitty gritty practicalities of starting a practice, being fully present with no agenda, and letting go of “the story of me.”Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Back in the 1970s, he came up with something called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, which is a secular way of teaching Buddhist meditation. He’s written many books, including Full Catastrophe Living; Wherever You Go, There You Are; and Coming to Our Senses. His latest book is called Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief.In this episode we talk about:The nitty gritty practicalities of starting a practiceHow he’s learned to be more relaxed about his practice—including advocating for meditating in bed  How to practice being fully present with no agenda How investigating your motivations—something most people don’t do— can help you be more mindful How to practice letting go of “the story of me”Related Episodes:Tripping Out with a Legend

Is meditation the last thing you want to do right now? This one's for when closing your eyes and watching your breath sounds like torture.About Matthew Hepburn:Matthew is a meditation and dharma teacher with more than a decade of teaching experience and a passion for getting real about what it means to live well. Beyond Ten Percent Happier, Matthew has taught in prisons, schools, corporate events and continues to teach across North America in buddhist centers offering intensive silent retreats and dharma for urban daily life. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “I Don’t Want to Meditate.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The star of SNL and Barry discusses how he channels his anxiety into his work. Plus, an imitation of Joseph Goldstein.Bill Hader has made the transition from being a master of stand-out characters and impressions on eight seasons of Saturday Night Life to becoming a true multi-hyphenate by creating, directing, writing, producing and starring as a burned-out assassin trying to break into Hollywood as an actor in HBO’s award-winning and critically lauded dark comedy, Barry.In this episode we talk about:How Bill deals with anxietyHis panic attack on live televisionHis love of directing and the importance of having the right collaboratorsFull Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/bill-haderAdditional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/installSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The renowned psychotherapist talks about the importance of accountability in generosity in her own life, and the one thing you can do right now, today, to make yourself happier.Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and bestselling author. She has a therapy practice in New York City and serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Her TED Talks have garnered more than 40 million views and her books, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, are huge bestsellers. Esther is also the host of the hit podcast Where Should We Begin?In this episode we talk about:How to get around the obstacles that hinder connection with other people The role of conflict in relationships and why we shouldn’t be afraid of itWays to get better at experiencing anxiety or discomfort so that you can better handle the ups and downs of lifeAnd the simple thing you can do right now to make yourself happier Related Episodes:Can Anxiety Be a Gift? | Dr. David RosmarinLessons From the World’s Long

A leading behavioral psychologist reveals practical strategies to help you actually make the changes you want to make this new year (and beyond).Hal Hershfield is a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making, and psychology at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and the author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. His research on future selves has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, as well as the Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today. In this episode we talk about:What he means by a future self, and why thinking about your future self will help you make better decisionsHow to think about your future self without neglecting the present momentThe importance of commitment devices, and what they are — including some which you can even adopt right nowThe importance of breaking down big goals to make them achievableHow to reframe commitments so that you actually stick to themThe role of mental time travel to help you actually do

Get out of the trance of thinking and explore what it’s like to be more generous with your attention directly, here, now.About Pascal Auclair:Pascal has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997, sitting retreats in Asia and America with revered monastics and lay teachers. He has been mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. He is a co-founder of True North Insight and one of TNI’s Guiding Teachers.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “The Present Moment.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.