10% Happier with Dan Harris

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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The meditation style that changed Dan's entire practice.

Alexis Santos, has been practicing meditation for twenty years and was a student of a highly influential Burmese monk by the name of Sayadaw U Tejaniya. Alexis is also a core teacher in the Ten Percent Happier app and the lead teacher of our On The Go course.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/alexis-santos-rerun

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Nirvana is a culturally confusing and freighted term. It's the name of the best rock band of the 1990s and also the name of smoothie joints, vape stores and yoga studios. There's a vape place near me called Nirvana.

Nirvana's been fully co-opted and sometimes corrupted by the culture… and yet it is also the clearly stated goal of the Buddha's teaching. So what does it really mean?

We cover all of that today in what is an experimental episode for us. Not only because the topic is so unusual, but also because this is our first podcast recording of a live show. We recorded this at the Armory in Boston in front of a sold out crowd who did not know in advance that premier teacher Joseph Goldstein would be the guest. We would love your feedback, because if you like this, we'll do more.

Joseph Goldstein is one of the top western proponents of mindfulness. He co-founded the legendary Insight Meditation Society alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. He also wrote a book called Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening.

PS We've been trying to do a bunch of experiments here on this show, and our latest is a weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for here!

Related Episodes:

• The Mental States That Steal Your Calm | Bhikkhu Bodhi
• The Words of the Buddha | Bhikkhu Bodhi
• Joseph Goldstein On: How Not To Try Too Hard in Meditation, Why You Shouldn't "Waste Your Suffering," and the Value Of Seeing How Ridiculous You Are

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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How to spend your money in ways that will really boost your happiness and a look at the state of happiness research.

Dr. Elizabeth Dunn is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Dunn conducts experimental research examining how time, money, and technology shape human happiness. She is the co-author of "Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending" with Dr. Michael Norton. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Time, CNN, and more.

We've been trying to do a bunch of experiments here on this show, and our latest is a weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for here!

To celebrate this new endeavor, we've put together a whole episode about risk taking and experimenting. We thought this would be helpful and educational while also giving you a fun peek behind the scenes (and also allowing us to be blatantly self-promotional in the process—a win/win!). In fact, this episode itself is experimental in its format, because we don't have a typical guest.

I sat down with the show's Senior Editor Marissa Schneiderman—who has been collaborating with me on the newsletter—to talk about how we've been putting into practice the wisdom from some of our best guests, including Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Rick Rubin, Sarah Cooper.

You can sign up for Dan Harris' Newsletter at:

https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast

It's a weekly roundup of life hacks, cultural recommendations, pod news, and upcoming events.

Related Episodes:

• Adam Grant on the Science of Potential and Achievement
• Legendary Record Producer Rick Rubin On: Creativity, Habits, Self-Doubt, Intuition and Meditation
• Comedian Sarah Cooper On: Humiliation, Perfectionism, and Taking Chances
• Vulnerability: The Key to Courage | Brené Brown
• How to Speak Clearly, Calmly, and Without Alienating People | Dan Clurman and Mudita Nisker

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/take-risks

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Plus: Why Lama Rod is "no longer interested in being a good person," why we need to let go of perfectionism, and the selfish case for sainthood.

Lama Rod Owens is making his fifth appearance on Ten Percent Happier. He describes himself as "a Black Buddhist Southern Queen" and is an authorized lama in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism with a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard. His new book is The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors.

In this episode we talk about:

• What Lama Rod means by "New Saint"
• Why he is "no longer interested in being a good person"
• Why it's so important to let go of the ideal of perfection
• The practices and characteristics of a New Saint
• The questions you should ask yourself about your beliefs
• His experiences with what he refers to as "unseen beings" and his exploration of the "unseen world"

Related Episodes:

• Meditation Party: Magic, Mystery, Intuition, Tattoos, and Non-Efforting | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren
• Lama Rod's first appearance on Ten Percent Happier

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/lama-rod-owens-new-saints/lama-rod-owens-new-saints

One of our most frequent and popular guests talks about how to develop the character skills to discover your hidden potential.

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. His books have sold millions of copies, hisTED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times, and he hosts the hit podcastRe:Thinking. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021. He has been recognized as one of the world's ten most influential management thinkers.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why character skills are so important and how to develop them
• What we learn from seeking discomfort
• The concept of scaffolding as a way to overcome obstacles
• The value of acceptable mistakes
• And How to see the hidden potential in others and champion them
• Take Adam's Quiz: Which skill could unlock your potential?

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/adam-grant-hidden-potential

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Understanding the difference between 'normal' forgetfulness and actual memory loss, practical ways to stave off Alzheimer's disease, and meditation's role in brain health.

Lisa Genova has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. She is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels including Still Alice—which was adapted into a film starring Julianne Moore who won the 2015 Best Actress Oscar for her role as Alice Howland, Love Anthony, and Every Note Played. Her first work of nonfiction is Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting. Genova's first TED talk, What You Can Do To Prevent Alzheimer's has been viewed over eight million times and her most recent TED talk, How Memory Works--and Why Forgetting is Totally OK was the sixth most watched TED talk of 2021.

In this episode we talk about:

• The difference between 'normal' forgetting and actual memory loss
• The difference between dementia and Alzheimer's disease
• Meditation's role in brain health
• What the Memory Paradox is
• The best foods and types of exercise for staving off Alzheimer's
• The three things happening in your brain while you sleep that are helpful for memory
• Why brain games (like crossword puzzles and sudoku) don't actually improve memory
• The first necessary ingredient for creating a memory
• How memories are formed
• And the relationship between memories and music

Related Episodes:

Ten Percent Happier Podcast Sleep Series

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/lisa-genova

You can use awareness of walking as a touchstone to help feel more connected to the moment in this simple walking meditation.

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 Finding Your Way: Meditations, Thoughts, and Wisdom for Living an Authentic Life. 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 “Basic Walking Meditation.”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our friend Dr. Michael Gervais at the Finding Mastery podcast is a renowned sports psychologist who found meditation by happenstance. We wanted to share this conversation he had with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn about the mind/body interactions for healing and clinical applications for mindfulness meditation training.

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn is a Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where in 1995 he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society and in 1979, its world-renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic.

Order Dr. Michael Gervais' new book here: https://findingmastery.com/book/

Listen to the Finding Mastery podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finding-mastery/id1025326955

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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The host of On Being shares lessons learned from 20 years of interviews, including: how to live with open questions, counterprogramming against your negativity bias, and getting over the God question.

Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, a National Humanities Medalist, and a New York Times bestselling author. She grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, and became a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin. After studying theology at Yale Divinity School in the early 1990s, Tippett launched Speaking of Faith — later On Being — as a weekly national public radio show in 2003. She has published three books: Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living; Einstein's God, drawn from her interviews at the intersection of science, medicine, and spiritual inquiry; and Speaking of Faith, a memoir of religion in our time.

In this episode we talk about:

• Getting over the God question when it comes to contemplating religion
• Why Western culture has such a dearth of ways to talk about love
• Why she thinks the core of relationships is not about agreeing but about navigating differences
• Tuning into our generative agency
• Her definition of a wise life as distinct from a knowledgeable or accomplished on
• Why she believes it is as important to know what you love as it is to know what you hate
• Learning to love big open questions instead of rushing to answers
• Why the things we get paid to do may not define whether we're living a worthy life
• And getting our intentions straight and then trying not to tie them too tightly to our goals

Other Resources Mentioned:

Krista Tippett's TED Talk: 3 practices for a life of wisdom

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/krista-tippett