10% Happier With Dan Harris

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- You may be breathing wrong. Here’s how to fix it.  At times, self-improvement can seem like a never-ending hallway filled with limitless shame and insufficiency. So when something as simple as the breath falls into this category, it seems only natural to meet that news with some resistance. Our guest today, James Nestor, argues that many of us, of all things, are breathing incorrectly but that by fixing our breathing, it can help with both physical and psychological ailments. Nestor is a science journalist who wrote a book called, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, which spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into more than 35 languages. In this episode we talk about: How Nestor got interested in breathing in the first place Why we are the worst breathers in the animal kingdom The importance of posture The deleterious effects of mouth breathing Why

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Dan Savage has been writing the popular sex-advice column Savage Love for over thirty years. He also hosts the Savage Lovecast and is the author of numerous books. In 2010 Dan and his husband founded the It Gets Better Project, which was designed to give hope to LGBTQ kids. It was seen all over the world–and won an Emmy.  In this episode we talk about: How to handle disappointment and jealousy How to get better at sex Why so many couples lose their spark and what to do about it How to date in the era of apps Why it’s so hard for straight couples to talk about sex Dan’s contention that the idea of a ‘couple’ is an illusion Related Episodes: Lori Brotto on mindful sex Devon and Craig Hase on how not to be a hot mess Myisha Battle on love, sex, dating, and relationship myths Sign up for Dan Harris’s weekly newsletter here Follow Dan Harris on social: Instagram, TikTok Ten Percent Happi

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- 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 quitting The myth of perseverance  How to talk to our children about healthy quitting The power of having a community of quitters Related Episodes: The Myth of the Dream Job | Simone Stolzoff How To Find Meaningful Work in a Rapidly

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

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. ---- 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 media How not to get caught up in analysis paralysis  The importance of self-compassion and a growth mindset The benefits of worrying with someone else Why redundancy is your friend How to discuss failure without assigning blame Why accepting your smallness can be freeing Taking the time to learn from failure The cognitive framework: stop, challenge, and choose How to have a healthier relationships with anxiety and failure Creating a culture of psychological safety Recognizing t

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

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. ---- 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 Hedison In this episode we talk about: The concept of embodiment Undoing harmful deep conditioning around hustle and diet culture The role of Internal Family Systems in Glennon’s life Related Episodes: You Don’t Have to be Miserable While Doing Important Work | adrienne maree brown How To End The War With Your Body | Sonya Renee Taylor The Anti-Diet | Evelyn Tribole Sign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Ten Percent Happier online bookstore Subscribe to our YouTube Channel Our favorite pla

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- 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 size The severe limitations of many of the most popular approaches to weight loss Nuanced strategies for disentangling from diet culture How to exercise without a hidden agenda of trying to wrench your body into a specific shape The idea that food doesn’t have a moral value The rel

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- 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 contentment The difference between hedonic and homeostatic hunger Why 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 eating Whether or not we can still eat gummy worms

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

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

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

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- 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 anxiety His panic attack on live television His love of directing and the importance of having the right collaborators Full Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/bill-hader Additional Resources: Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. ---- 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 it Ways to get better at experiencing anxiety or discomfort so that you can better handle the ups and downs of life And the simple thing you can do r

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. ---- 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 decisions How to think about your future self without neglecting the present moment The importance of commitment devices, and what they are — including some which you can even adopt right now The importance of breaking down big goals to make th

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Tackling one of the best known contemplative clichés: being in the present moment and “inhabiting the now.” Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD, teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers.He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Each summer, he lectures at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center on the intersections between mindfulness, science and psychotherapy. Matthew is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence and continues to be interested in the unfolding dialogue between Buddhism and science. In this episode we talk about: What being present actu

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- A slew of evidence-based, ready-to-try-today interventions we can use to “complete the stress cycle.” Emily Nagoski is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life. She has a MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior, both from Indiana University. She’s also the co-author of Burnout: The Secret To Unlocking The Stress Cycle.    Amelia Nagoski holds a DMA in conducting from the University of Connecticut. An assistant professor and coordinator of music at Western New England University, she regularly presents educational sessions discussing the application of communications science and psychological research for audiences of other professional musicians, including “Beyond Burnout Prevention: Embodied Wellness for Conductors.” She is the co-author of Burnout: The Secret To Unlocking The Stress Cy

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- How to stay focused, fight distraction, and function at your peak. Dr. Amishi Jha is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. Dr Jha is the author of the national bestseller, Peak Mind.  In this episode we talk about: What peak mind is Why meta awareness is important to practice and achieve peak mind The suite of mindfulness-based attention training practices Why humans developed attention in the first place Using the flashlight and floodlight metaphors to help us understand different types of attention The mental pushup for attention: focus, notice, and redirect The attention benefits for high stress populations who engage in contemplatives practices Multitasking vs. monotasking The real life and death consequences of confirmation b

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Understanding the Buddhist concept of “the five aggregates.“ Pascal Auclair has been immersed in the study and practice of Buddhist teachings since 1997. He has participated in retreats in Asia and America with renowned masters from both monastic and secular backgrounds. Pascal completed four years of teacher training with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. Pascal teaches mainly in North America and Europe. He is one of the founding members of True North Insight, where he teaches and acts as a mentor. In this episode we talk about: How the five aggregates got Auclair hooked on Buddhist practice and philosophy The five aggregates as a way to work with difficulty Living with the non-negotiable prospect of dying Paying attention to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling tone Meditation

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Next year marks the fifteenth anniversary of Gretchen Rubin’s #1 New York Times bestselling book, The Happiness Project. To celebrate, she’s leading a one-time, one-year course called “The Happiness Project: Revisited.” In this bonus excerpt from the course, Gretchen and Elizabeth explore the lessons Gretchen has learned over the years, talk about her plans to do a new happiness project in 2024, and discuss how other people can do their own happiness projects.  You can learn more and sign up here—plus, get 30% off through December 31st with code THPR30DEC.