10% Happier with Dan Harris

So it came about as I was writing my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis and I was teaching Psych 101 at the time at the University of Virginia and I was trying to explain all of psychology in 24 lectures

And like the first one you find pretty much is the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict

In the happiest hypothesis of what I did was I looked for all of the psychological claims that had been made across multiple millennia and multiple continents.

He spent his whole life writing and rewriting Leaves of Grass, which was his search for meaning, right?

even though it's famous for the line, I celebrate myself. In Leaves of Grass, the most frequently used word is the word you.

Buried between parentheses in the middle of Leaves of Grass is Whitman's testament to this elemental truth which turned his greatest heartbreak into his greatest masterpiece.

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturned love but now I think there is no unreturned love the pay is certain one way or another. I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not returned yet out of that I've written these songs.

I love the title. So I decided to call the book that because so much of my life has been about uncovering the truth behind what lies beneath.

I love television. Television to me represented the platonic ideal of reality.

Everyone's born awake, sharp and conscious. And then as you get older, you go back to sleep.

Life can be bracing and difficult, even in all its magic. And when we taste its bitterness, we know that it is real and so too are we.

I've had the same therapist for 25 years.

There's a great book by Dr. Susan Forward called Toxic Parents, I read many years ago, where she runs through a process of reconciling a relationship with a parent, whether they're alive or not.

I saw a book, The Red Badge of Courage.

Well, The Red Badge of Courage would turn into The Red Vag of Courage.

She's the author of the number one New York Times bestseller WOLFPACK.

The first book is Who You Were Meant to Be.

And then the next book is called Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents. This is actually turned into a series.

And then my next book, which is called Disentangling from EIPs, is going to be out in July of 2023.

And she wrote about taking a break, I don't know if it was from Running entirely but certainly from training for things, after she dropped out of a 24-hour race that was like all about Running as many four-mile loops as you possibly could in 24 hours.

He's written a series of bestselling books, including The Blue Zones of Happiness and The Blue Zones Kitchen.

He's written a series of bestselling books, including The Blue Zones of Happiness and The Blue Zones Kitchen.

My work, however, I wrote about in the New York Times Sunday magazine article, The Island Where People Forget to Die, and also the book called The Blue Zone Solution, which was two-time New York Times bestseller.

I know people say well I can't afford to live in Boulder that may be true but the other point and I wrote a whole book on this it's called the Blue Zone Challenge where I aggregated about 40 different evidence-based things you can do to your home, your kitchen, your bedroom, your social circle, your commute in your workplace that will permanently set up nudges or defaults so you'll unconsciously move more, eat better, sleep better, socialize more and know and live your purpose.

I know people say well I can't afford to live in Boulder that may be true but the other point and I wrote a whole book on this it's called the Blue Zone Challenge where I aggregated about 40 different evidence based things you can do to your home, your kitchen, your bedroom, your social circle, your commute in your workplace that will permanently set up nudges or defaults so you'll unconsciously move more, eat better, sleep better, socialize more and know and live your purpose.

They have a new book out called Better in Every Sense, and in it they describe something they call sense foraging, which is a simple but very powerful practice designed to use our senses to turn down the more noxious aspects of the default mode network, like being overly focused on ourselves or not receptive to change or newness in the world around us.

We talk about what sense foraging is exactly and how it can help us go from languishing to flourishing, how shutting down our senses can make us more vulnerable to depression, the differences and similarities between sense foraging and mindfulness, why counterintuitively most of us could use a little bit more chaos in our lives, how radical acceptance can be a starting point for sense foraging and the nine simple rules to sense foraging.

So we're trying to find ways to have accurate models of the world, and in doing so, we want to discount things that are going to disrupt our models and try to have a sense that we're in control, we know what's going on, and that can come at the expense of surprise, new connection, and change in general.

The DMN, that's your shorthand for default mode network, the DMN's mental routines evolved to help us survive long enough to reproduce, but they are agnostic when it comes to our individual well-being.

The default mode network, for sure. It's absolutely essential. I would say it's not voluntary that we have mental habits, that we have an internal narrative, that we have a sense of where we are in the world and some personal sense of identity.

He's the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of THE BOY WHO WAS RAISED AS A DOG, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children

Dr. Perry is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children and Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered.