10% Happier with Dan Harris

Not thinking is not the point of mindfulness. We know, shocking! Emotions and thoughts are inextricably linked: know them to know yourself.

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. Throughout many consciousness adventures including a few mind-bendingly long meditation retreats, she has explored the wilderness of the mind, chronic illness, the importance of pleasure, and a wide range of other things that she might get in trouble for mentioning publicly. 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 “Can’t Stop Thinking,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=e09bcee4-651b-4ca0-84ad-bb1f69eb8a18.

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

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

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Virtue is a tricky topic. It's often sold to us by religious leaders who are thundering judgmentally, and sometimes hypocritically, down to us from the mountaintop. But from the Buddhist perspective, there is actually a deeply self-interested case for ethics and virtue. The Buddhists are not trying to get you to follow a bunch of very specific rules: they are trying to get you to do no harm because that will make you happy.

This is part two of our series on a venerable Buddhist list called the Noble Eightfold Path. The three middle items on the list all have to do with ethical conduct. They are: right speech, right action, and right livelihood.

Our guest today, Eugene Cash, is gonna talk about this stuff in super practical, non-dogmatic and non-preachy ways. Cash has been a Buddhist teacher since 1990. He's the founding teacher of San Francisco Insight and a senior teacher on the Spirit Rock Teachers Council. His teaching is influenced by many streams of Buddhism— Theravada, Zen and Tibetan.

In this conversation we talk about:

• How to make terms such as virtue and ethics more attractive to skeptics
• Eugene's case that being ethical is in your self-interest
• His idea that kindness can actually be hard-nosed and tough
• How the Buddha could be hard on people when it was helpful for those people
• How to use right speech skillfully
• Why he says that practicing right action all day long is his idea of fun
• The technical versus the holistic understanding of right livelihood
• The difference between "being present" and "presence"
• And what has kept him devoted to the eightfold path for so many years

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/eugene-cash-595

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

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Today's guest is the legendary astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, the host of the Emmy nominated podcast, Star Talk, and the recipient of 21 honorary doctorates. He also has an asteroid named in his honor.

Tyson's latest book is right up our alley on the show. It's called Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization and it's basically about how taking a scientific perspective can improve your life—and the world.

In this episode we talk about:

• Applying a scientific lens to our emotions
• The importance of intellectual humility
• How the knowledge of death brings meaning to life
• Neil's long view of social media
• Whether we are living in a simulation
• Neil's personal mental health regime
• And whether there is intelligent life in the universe

Full Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/neil-degrasse-tyson-594

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

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This episode kicks off our series on the Eightfold Path which will continue on Wednesdays for the next two weeks with Eugene Cash and Joseph Goldstein.

DaRa Williams is a trainer, meditation teacher and psychotherapist and has been a meditator for the past 25 years. She is a practitioner of both Vipassana and Ascension meditation and is a graduate of the Spirit Rock/Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program and is an IMS Emeritus Guiding Teacher.

In this episode we talk about:

• The first two components of the Eightfold Path: Right View and Right Thinking
• How the Eightfold Path has played out in DaRa's life
• The notions of Intuition, Clear Seeing, and Openness
• And the very tricky skills of renunciation and fostering non-attachment to outcomes

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dara-williams-592

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

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Actor Michael Imperioli is best known for a string of memorable onscreen performances that include Goodfellas, The Sopranos, and most recently on The White Lotus. What you may not know is that he has a deep Buddhist practice and has actually grown into something of a meditation teacher.

In this episode we talk about:

• The classic celebrity life crisis that brought Imperioli to Buddhism
• The importance of consistent practice as a way to get familiar with your mind so that your thoughts and emotions and urges don't own you
• The specific Tibetan Buddhist tradition Imperioli practices and what his daily practice looks like
• Whether meditation helps him be more creative
• How acting and meditation are similar
• Whether getting older affects our ability to grok impermanence
• Why Imperioli started teaching meditation online
• How to meditate off the cushion in daily life

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/michael-imperioli-591

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

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Perhaps nobody is better at helping people unlock themselves than the Buddhist meditation teacher George Mumford who taught meditation to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. He's also worked with inmates, police officers, and corporate executives. There's a reason why they call him the "Performance Whisperer."

George has an incredible story: he began teaching mindfulness and meditation after kicking a serious drug habit, leaving a career as a financial analyst, and then earning a master's in counseling psychology. He's got a new book, it's called Unlock: Embrace Your Greatness. Find the Flow. Discover Success.

His first book was called The Mindful Athlete: The Secret to Pure Performance. If you want to hear him talk about that book, we've put links in the show notes to his prior appearances on this podcast.

In this episode we talk about:

• What it means to be in flow and why many of us may be achieving that state more than we think
• How to challenge negative self-talk
• The importance of gratitude
• The importance of service
• The importance of making mistakes (as George says, "no struggle, no swag")
• How to recognize what he calls your hideouts
• Why he identifies as an empath and why he believes this may have played a role in his addiction
• And George's take on often misunderstood terms such as love, hope, and faith

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/george-mumford-589

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

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Today's guest is a happiness expert and devout non-meditator. In her latest book Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, she describes how a routine visit to her eye doctor made her realize she'd been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses.

Gretchen Rubin is the author of many books, including the New York Times bestsellers Outer Order, Inner Calm; The Four Tendencies; Better Than Before; and The Happiness Project. Her books have sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, and have been translated in more than thirty languages. She also hosts the top-ranking, award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin.

In this episode we talk about:

• What led Gretchen to explore the five senses
• How we often take our senses for granted
• How our senses work with the brain to impact our perception
• The relationship between the senses and nostalgia
• The surprising power of ketchup and vanilla when it comes to the sense of taste
• The sense of hearing and what she calls her "Audio Apothecary"
• How to be a better listener
• The interplay between the senses of taste and smell
• The sense of touch and the use of comfort objects
• Why she decided to visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art everyday to explore the five senses
• And how she uses the five senses to boost creativity

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/gretchen-rubin-588

You may have heard our interview with Sharon Salzberg earlier this week where we talked about openness, not believing the stories you tell yourself, and why the most powerful tools often seem the most stupid at first. I'm a big fan of hers and everything she does, so we wanted to give you a special preview of her new book, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom.

In Real Life, Sharon sets a path out for us, merging the insights of inspiring voices with her own teachings to:

• Uncover a deeper sense of ourselves
• Expand our vision of what's possible for ourselves
• Align our words, hearts, and actions with our core values
• Navigate loss without getting stuck in bitterness or disconnect
• Carry a sense of community with us, even in stormy times
• Recover from the emotional effects of crisis
• Learn the art of letting go and beginning again
• Build emotional intelligence to face times of difficulty without fear
• Seek out joy in everyday life, even when things don't go our way
• Befriend ourselves on the journey of being human
• Embark on the journey to embody a life of curiosity, authenticity, and freedom.

So enjoy this excerpt from her book, Real Life.

Working through fear by anchoring in the breath and body gives you the capacity to be fully available to help when help is needed.

About Sebene Selassie:

Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. 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. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer.

To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Caring for Vulnerable People,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=bc7cb7bc-6883-466f-8626-cad27be2a5e6

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

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

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There's so much to be grateful for in modern medicine. We can all agree that we would not do as well in a world with no Advil or dentistry. And yet, our guest today, who is a renowned doctor, says modern medicine is overlooking something crucial: the pernicious impact that modern living has on our minds and bodies. In other words, we are surrounded by these hidden societal and structural sources of stress and we aren't thinking about how to treat and prevent these factors that are degrading our happiness and our immune systems.

Dr. Gabor Maté is a bestselling author with an expertise on everything from stress to addiction to ADHD. His latest book is called, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Content Warning: This episode has mentions of child abuse, sexual trauma, suicide and addiction

In this episode we talk about:

• What he means by "the myth of normal"
• How diseases, such as autoimmune conditions, are an "artifact of civilization"
• How to begin to tackle what Dr. Maté calls, "the social sources of illness"
• His definition of trauma and the difference between "big T traumatic events" and the trauma of "wounding"
• How trauma in society is so normalized that we don't even recognize it
• Whether the term trauma is overused
• Why comparing suffering is a fruitless endeavor
• What he means by "the necessity to be disillusioned"
• The power and possibility of psychedelics
• Why he thinks we should incorporate shamanic medicine into our western medical framework
• And what he means by "undoing self-limiting beliefs" and how these beliefs show up in our everyday lives

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/gabor-mate-586