10% Happier with Dan Harris Folgen

A common problem among type-A people is trying to win at meditation. But the practice doesn't work like that. If you over-effort, if you try to make something happen, it's pretty much guaranteed not to happen. What is guaranteed is that you will suffer. Meditation is like a video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward too badly.  Our guest today is Alexis Santos, who has been practicing meditation for twenty years and was a student of the highly influential Burmese monk 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. In this episode, Alexis recounts his time learning from Sayadaw and shares an approach to meditation that is more relaxed than what many of us may be used to. It just might change your practice. Watch Season 2 of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+. Subscription required. Apple TV+ and/or select content may not be available in all regions. To join the Ted Lasso Challenge by midnight tonight, download the Ten Percent Happier app here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/alexis-santos-377

In this episode, we're talking about the difference between kindness and what our guest, La Sarmiento, calls "radical kindness," how to muster the strength to be kind to annoying people while setting appropriate boundaries, the difference between radical compassion and what the Tibetans call "idiot compassion," and their experience of learning to accept themselves in a culture that is not always so welcoming. Sarmiento, whose pronouns are they/them, has been practicing Vipassana meditation since the 1990's. They are a graduate of the Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader Training Program and a mentor in the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. They serve as the guiding teacher for the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ sanghas at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC, where they are also board president. We are bringing you this Ten Percent Happier podcast series in collaboration with the Apple TV+ Original Series Ted Lasso because kindness is a huge theme in the show, and there are many practical lessons embedded right in the plot. CTA: Watch Season 2 of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+. Subscription required. Apple TV+ and/or select content may not be available in all regions. Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/la-sarmiento-376

In this episode we're talking about how what you believe— about yourself, or about the world — can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you believe the world is a cold and unforgiving place, it can become that way. And if you believe that you have limited capacities for kindness, you can, in effect, make it so. Our guest is Jamil Zaki, who is making his second appearance here on the show. Jamil is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He is a leading expert on empathy and the author of the book The War for Kindness. Jamil discusses three levels of kindness: kindness toward ourselves, kindness in our close relationships, and kindness in our communities. He argues that starting with the self is critical, but also that the kinder we can make our communities, the kinder we will be ourselves. And the more we reorient ourselves to focus on the positive, the more we can create a self-fulfilling prophecy of kindness. We are bringing you this Ten Percent Happier podcast series in collaboration with the Apple TV+ Original Series Ted Lasso because kindness is a huge theme in the show, and there are many practical lessons embedded right in the plot. Watch Season 2 of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+. Subscription required. Apple TV+ and/or select content may not be available in all regions. To sign up for the Ted Lasso Challenge, download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jamil-zaki-375