10% Happier with Dan Harris

How to (constructively) lower the bar on your meditation practice.

Ofosu Jones-Quartey is a meditation teacher, hip-hop artist, and author based in the DC area. He's a certified teacher with over 20 years of experience bringing mindfulness, self-compassion, and creativity to people of all ages. His stage name is "Born I,", and his new book is called Lyrical Dharma: Hip-Hop as Mindfulness.

In this episode we talk about:

• The definition of open-awareness meditation
• How it differs from classical concentration practices (such as focusing on your breath, or loving kindness phrases)
• Why Ofosu chose open-awareness meditation (in direct response to his struggles with OCD)
• How you can practice open-awareness meditation
• The benefits of a technique called "mental noting"
• The "practice self-assessment tapes" that we run in our mind
• Self-compassion and "lowering the bar" in your meditation practice
• The relationship between neurodiversity and meditation in general
• How to depersonalize the experience of suffering
• And we hear some of Ofosu's music and the life experiences that inspired it

Related Episodes:

• How to Become a Regular Meditator (and More) | Alexis Santos
• A More Relaxed Way to Meditate | Alexis Santos

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Additional Resources:

• Lyrical Dharma Music Playlist

Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here.

To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Sponsors:

Narwal VacuumIf you want to treat your home to spotless, fresh floors, visit us.narwal.com/podcast to get the early bird price!

Function HealthLearn more and join using our link. The first 1,000 get a $100 credit toward their membership. Visit www.functionhealth.com/HAPPIER or use gift code HAPPIER 100 at sign-up to own your health.

An expert in failure shows us how to find success in the most counterintuitive way.

Manu Kapur is currently the Director of the Singapore-ETH Center, and Professor for Learning Sciences and Higher Education at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where he also directs The Future Learning Initiative (FLI). Manu is also the Founding Chair of the ETH Zurich – EPFL Joint Doctoral Program in the Learning Sciences.

In this episode we talk about:

• The definition of Productive Failure (a concept Manu developed that allows you to design for and harness failure for deeper learning)
• Why we learn more from failing than from succeeding
• The difference between desirable and undesirable failure
• The neuroscience of curiosity
• Practical ways to incorporate productive failure into your daily life
• How to get into your "failure zone"
• Cool concepts like the looking back and moving the Gold posts
• How to normalize failure and create environments in which other people feel safe to fail
• The role of psychological safety and a growth mindset
• And much more

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Additional Resources:

• Productive Failure
• Manu's Ted Talk

Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025.

To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Sponsors:

Coop Sleep Goods Upgrade your summer sleep. Visit coopsleepgoods.com/HAPPIER10 to get 20% off your first order.

Open Phone OpenPhone is offering our listeners 20% off of your first 6 months at OpenPhone.com/happier.

NOCD Head over to nocd.com and book a free 15‑minute call with their team, to learn more and start getting help with OCD.

Sharing an episode today from our friend Gretchen Rubin's podcast, Happier. Gretchen and her sister Elizabeth Craft discuss the idea of the "familect" and why it might be fun to create a dictionary for our own familect. They also talk about a hack that makes it easier to use a smartphone, and they share dozens of listeners' thought-provoking "Secrets of Adulthood."

Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here!

Join Dan's online community here

Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok

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To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

We're bringing you some of our favorite gems from the archives, as chosen by our staff. This week, we're hearing from therapist Dick Schwartz, as chosen by Mani Chandy from our Substack team. Schwartz is the founder of Internal Family Systems, a way of looking at all of the various "parts" that we have inside ourselves, and how they can work together or make things harder for us.

Full Episodes: How to Handle Your Demons | Richard SchwartzHow (and Why) To Hug Your Inner Dragons | Richard Schwartz Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here!

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To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

An avalanche of practical advice and brief (but powerful) life lessons.

Gretchen Rubin is a New York Times bestselling author and happiness expert who explores human nature and habits. She's a highly acclaimed writer, host of the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin and the founder of the award-winning Happier app.

In this episode we talk about:

• What aphorisms are, and why they're useful
• How to make decisions that lead to a "bigger life"
• Why you should pay special attention to anything you lie about or hide
• The argument against task-sharing
• The dangers of being indecisive
• Why offering emotional validation can often be more powerful than offering solutions
• Why you should pay close attention when people repeat themselves over and over
• And much more

Related Episodes:

• The Happiness Project: Revisited
• How To Use Your Five Senses To Reduce Anxiety, Increase Creativity, and Improve Your Relationships
• Small Ways to Improve Your Everyday Life Right Now
• Outer Order, Inner Calm
• 'The Four Tendencies'
• Gretchen Rubin (Our Long-Lost Pilot Episode)

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Additional Resources:

• Gretchen's books
• The "Five Things Making Me Happy" Newsletter
• Gretchen on Substack: Secrets of Adulthood

Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here.

To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

A conversation with a Cornell professor who is attempting to rebrand the concept of defiance.

Dr. Sunita Sah started her career as a physician but then switched over to organizational psychology. At Cornell, she conducts research on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance. She is the author of Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes.

In this episode we talk about:

• How Dr. Sah defines defiance
• The costs of compliance
• The five stages of defiance
• How to make defiance a practice
• The upside of tension
• The importance of knowing your values — how to articulate them, and how this relates to our biology, specifically our hormones
• The gender components of defiance

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To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Sponsors: Smalls: For a limited time only, get 60% off your first order PLUS free shipping when you head to Smalls.com/HAPPIER.

Function Health: Learn more and join using our link. The first 1,000 get a $100 credit toward their membership. Visit www.functionhealth.com/HAPPIER or use gift code HAPPIER 100 at sign-up to own your health.

We're in the midst of an exciting evolution of the overall 10% Happier project. In our quest to make this podcast more actionable – to help you operationalize all the game-changing ideas you encounter on this pod – we're now offering guided meditations to accompany each full episode of the show, available to paid subscribers at DanHarris.com. For the month of August, those meditations will come from Kaira Jewel Lingo, a Buddhist teacher who spent 15 years as a monastic in the Plum Village tradition.

In this bonus episode, you'll hear our head of content, DJ Cashmere, in conversation with Kaira Jewel, sharing some of her fascinating backstory. From a communal Christian community in Chicago, to a Zen monastery in the south of France, to making her life as an independent teacher in New York, you'll hear how the thread of "voluntary simplicity" runs through all of it.

Related Episodes:

• How To Keep Your Relationships On the Rails | Kaira Jewel Lingo

• A Buddhist Recipe for Handling Turmoil | Kaira Jewel Lingo

Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here!

Join Dan's online community here

Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

A conversation with singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles and psychologist Dacher Keltner, recorded at the New York Times Well Festival, moderated by Dan. All three of them have dealt with anxiety and continue to work with it, and they discuss the ways they look for joy and sustainable wellness.

Related Episodes:

• Sara Bareilles: Anxiety, Anger, and Art

• The Evolutionary Case for Kindness | Dacher Keltner

• This Scientist Says One Emotion May Be the Key to Happiness. Can You Guess What It Is? | Dacher Keltner

Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025.

Join Dan's online community here

Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Reclaim your power from the news, booze, shopping, or denial.

Ayya Anandabodhi is the spiritual director of Pārāyana Vihāra, a monastic residence in Port Townsend, WA. She was raised in Wales, in the UK, and first encountered Buddhism in her early teens and began training as a nun at age 24. You can listen to some of her Dharma talks, here.

In this episode we talk about:

• What centering means – and how to do it in the midst of chaos or calamity (Including some very practical tips)
• The difference between centering vs equanimity
• How to break out of old patterns
• The power of pausing
• How anger is justified, but it doesn't help
• A quick but deep dive into the Four Noble truths, a foundational Buddhist list
• We tackle the tricky topic of "true nature"
• We talk about the vital role of that treacly and often misunderstood term, compassion

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To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

A happiness expert explains how to alter your ego, reduce self-consciousness, and boost "okayness".

Bruce Hood has been a Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at Bristol University since 1999, and for the past 5 years he has been concentrating on how to make students happier. He undertook his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Cambridge followed by appointments at University College London, MIT and a faculty professorship at Harvard.

In this episode we talk about:

• How to define happiness
• How to be happy in the midst of a shitshow
• How to shift from being egocentric (self-focused) to allocentric (interconnected)
• The impacts of social isolation (and how to avoid it)
• The challenge of optimism (and how to overcome it)
• Finding a "flow state" through meditation
• How to enhance your social connections
• Where "true, authentic happiness" comes from
• Controlling attention and rejecting negative comparisons
• The role of nature
• And much more

Join Dan's online community here

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Additional Resources:

• The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well

To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris.