10% Happier with Dan Harris

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- These days, the word mindfulness has become a buzz phrase but very often people don't know what the word actually means, much less how to practice it. One simple definition of mindfulness is the ability to see what's happening in your mind without getting carried away by it. T...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- There are so many benefits to mindfulness with one of the biggest being the cultivation of more self-awareness. This cultivation can lead to identifying the unhelpful mental habits that can develop over the years. Today we're going to talk to Carol Wilson who offers very clear...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Many of us may have a reflexive reaction when we notice we're feeling down: we want it to go away. Maybe we think something is wrong with us and we automatically self medicate in any number of ways. But how do we square this with the fact that many of us may also really like s...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Sit in meditation for a few minutes and you're likely to experience pain, either physical or psychological. Hang around the meditation scene for very long, and you are likely to hear the expression, "Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."  And that's what this episode is...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- We all have long-standing painful patterns of behavior or inner storylines that can cause us to react disproportionately or inappropriately to everyday events.   Today's guest, Dr. Radhule Weininger, has a term for this. She calls them longstanding recurrent painful patterns o...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Today we're gonna tackle one of the best known contemplative clichés: being in the present moment and inhabiting the now. The present moment seems to be a state we aspire towards, but are rarely given practical information about how to actually achieve. But today's guest, Matt...

Often, when you're afraid of something, the best advice is deeply counterintuitive, not to mention inconvenient: to turn toward the source of your fear. Today we're going to talk about the fear of confronting your own past with our guest Sarah Polley.  Polley is an Oscar nominated filmmaker and actress who recently wrote a new book, called Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memo...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. Depression is a debilitating problem both on an individual and a societal level and it has only gotten worse during the pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, depression is now one of the leading causes of disability on the planet.  Our guest today Dr. Samantha Boar...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. Anxiety has long been a massive societal issue that has spiked during the pandemic. In this episode, renowned Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche talks in detail about how he personally works with anxiety and panic and the practices he draws upon when dealing with these states. ...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- In this episode, the social justice educator and activist Jacoby Ballard talks about a universal, or near universal, issue: anger. And, he offers us two mental skills that can help channel anger into something even more powerful and effective. Those skills are forgiveness and...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- How, on this planet, did we go from molten lava and shifting tectonic plates to sentient beings? How are you awake and aware right now? Who and where and what exactly is the "you" that is experiencing everything? Guest Anil Seth says that exploring these questions can lead to...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- One of the most common and insidious complaints of meditators is distraction, which can be a frustrating and difficult obstacle. Even the Buddha himself acknowledged this common problem and laid out some detailed practices for dealing with it.  In this episode, Shaila Catherin...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- It seems like a design flaw in our species that we live in a world of constant change yet most of us are not comfortable with uncertainty.  In this episode, we talk to Maya Shankar about how to get better at dealing with change and to stop seeking what scientists call "cogniti...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- "The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life."  These words from the legendary Esther Perel have the power to genuinely change your outlook on life. But while it's easy to hear them and immediately have your mind go to family relationships or romantic...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Life is filled with all kinds of moral dilemmas— from the mundane to the momentous. Should I lie and tell my friend that I like her ugly shirt? Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Ultimately, does anything...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- How much would your relationships improve if you could up your emotional intelligence game? That phrase, "emotional intelligence" or EQ, entered the lexicon over 25 years ago, when Daniel Goleman wrote a book by the same name.  In this episode, Daniel Goleman talks about the f...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- It's completely natural when dealing with anxiety, depression, anger, shame, or any other unpleasant emotion, to just want it to go away. Guest Susan David says that these discomforts are the price of admission to being alive and offers an approach called emotional agility as...

The phrase, "Get over yourself" is often used in a flippant way, but it's actually speaking to a deep human need to get out of our heads and off our own backs. At a fundamental level, this is what Buddhism is all about— seeing through the illusion of the self, which can be the source of so much of our suffering.  In this episode guest Pascal Auclair talks about how we can unlock this suffering thr...

Our culture has oddly conflicting views about pleasure.  In this episode, author adrienne maree brown explores the importance of pleasure and how it changes your experience of the world.  adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent...

In a culture that values persistent productivity, one can be left feeling chronically behind.  In this episode, author and recovering time management junkie, Oliver Burkeman  encourages us to stop scrambling to fit it all in by exploring the relationship between our mortality and getting things done.  Oliver Burkeman is the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Former guest A...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. Our guest this week is Alicia Menendez, an award-winning journalist, who finds herself in a common position for many women: caring way too much about what others think of her. Be nice, but not too nice. Be successful, but not too successful. Just be likable, whatever that means. I...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Sometimes part of healing trauma means learning how to be human.  This episode is the last episode of our Mental Health Reboot series to mark Mental Health Awareness Month. Dr. Jacob Ham, who was introduced in Stephanie Foo's episode earlier this week, helped Stephanie through...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- We've all had difficult, and sometimes horrible things happen to us.  While some people may be luckier than others, it's rare that anyone goes unscathed. This episode is part of our Mental Health Reboot series to mark Mental Health Awareness Month.  In this episode, Stephanie...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Very few of us will live a life without loss.  As part of our Mental Health Reboot series in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, this week's episodes talk a lot about grieving. Mary-Frances O'Connor, an expert in bereavement research, explores the science of how we g...

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- There is an unstoppable flow of gain and loss within our lives.  Processing this flow helps us to develop equanimity. In this conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winner and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz discusses her new book Lost and Found: A Memoir , in which she explores...