10% Happier with Dan Harris Folgen

In western culture, there's been a long held view that our ability to reason should be placed above our emotions. But the hard truth is that our emotions are there and they're non-negotiable— and If you don't know how to work with them, they can own you. The good news is that you can work with them and that there are many systems for doing so. To boot, you can learn a ton by listening to your emotions in the right ways.  Today's guests, Shinzen Young and James Gross will help us understand how to work with our emotions and offer both techniques in modern science and ancient wisdom in order to do so.  Gross is the Ernest R. Hilgard Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. Young is an American mindfulness teacher and neuroscience research consultant. He teaches something called Unified Mindfulness, which you will hear him describe in this conversation. This is part one in a series we're calling The Art and Science of Keeping Your Sh*t Together. In each episode we bring together a meditative adept or Buddhist scholar and a respected scientist. The idea is to give you the best of both worlds to arm you with both modern and ancient tools for regulating your emotions.  In this episode we talk about: James's "modal model" for understanding what emotions are and how they work James's five different types of strategies you can use for regulating your emotions Shinzen's contention that emotions have two sides to them How we can experience emotions with more fulfillment and less suffering via a mindfulness training he calls "focus factors" James's "process model of emotion regulation"  What James believes are the elements that unite science and Buddhism Shinzen's contention that anyone can experience massive benefits of mindfulness training if their meditation practice has four key components Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/shinzen-young-james-gross-519

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Can gratitude be more than just a platitude? Our guest today argues: yes.  DaRa Williams is a longtime practitioner and teacher of meditation. She is one of the guiding teachers at Insight Meditation Society, a graduate of the Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program, and also has a clinical mental health private practice in Manhattan. DaRa also says, only semi-facetiously, that she believes gratitude can be considered the fifth Brahma Vihara.  In this conversation we talk about: How to start knitting gratitude into your everyday life Whether gratitude is possible when everything sucks How to avoid spiritual bypass The opportunity that suffering brings for happiness How to take our suffering less personally The power of reminding yourself that you are nature And our unconscious fascination with creating difficulty Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dara-williams-295-rerun

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- There are all sorts of ways to struggle with getting things done. Maybe you're a procrastinator, maybe you're somebody whose energy flags in the middle of a project, maybe you're too stubborn and don't know when to quit, or maybe you're somebody who sets too many goals and gets burned out. Whatever your situation, we all struggle with motivation. The good news is that there's a whole crew of scientists who study best practices for getting things done, including today's guest, Ayelet Fishbach, PhD. Fishbach is one of the most eminent players in the field. She is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. She is also the author of Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.  In this episode we talk about: The crucial first step of setting goals How to pick the right goals for you Whether it's more effective to have a goal that is positive – where you're aiming to achieve something specific – or negative – where you're aiming to stop doing something Whether to-do lists work Whether incentives work Best practices for monitoring your progress The importance of celebrating milestones  The importance of negative feedback Why the 10,000 steps per day goal makes motivational sense even though it's been proven to be scientifically arbitrary  And how to know when to let go of a goal Full Shownotes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/ayelet-fishbach-525