10% Happier With Dan Harris

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- A wide ranging interview with one the biggest and most controversial names in the self-help world.  Deepak Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality. He is a best selling author, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His new book, Quantum Body: The New Science of Living a Longer, Healthier, More Vital Life, is out now.  In this episode we talk about: Deepak’s definition of the quantum field How Deepak handles criticism  The concept of creative intelligence  Breathing techniques, including vagal breathing and box breathing The benefits of imagining your own death  The exercise of returning to your zero point The concept of the body as a verb And the difference between the localized 'I' and the non-local 'I' R

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- The tables have turned: Dan is interviewed by two of his producers. This is the kickoff episode of our upcoming series celebrating the 10th anniversary of Dan’s book, where two of Dan’s producers, DJ Cashmere and Lauren Smith, interview him. We talk about the story behind the book, what it was like to have a panic attack on national television, why Dan decided to admit it publicly, how the success of the book utterly transformed his life, and what he learned… Both while writing the book and subsequently. We talk about concepts such as “Respond, not react,” why our faults aren’t our fault (but they are our responsibility), and whether we all have the capacity to change. DJ and Lauren will even weigh in on how they think Dan’s doing on the score. To order the revised tenth anniversary edition of 10% Happier: click here  For tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- The four rules for a meaningful conversation, when to be vulnerable, and how to form the habits of becoming a supercommunicator. Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of the bestselling The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. His new book is called Supercommunicators. In this episode we talk about: How he defines super communicator  The four rules for a meaningful conversation  How and when to deploy vulnerability  How to transform shallow questions into deep ones The fast friends procedure  And how to form the habits of becoming a supercommunicator  Related Episodes: Dan Clurman and Mudita Nisker on communication Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence and optimal performance 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 playlist

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- How to cultivate a generosity mindset— and make a good thing less boring. Chris Anderson is the curator of TED. He is the author of New York Times bestseller TED Talks and has overseen the introduction of, among others, the TEDx program, the TED-Ed initiative, and the Audacious Project, a bold new philanthropic model to inspire change at scale. His newest book, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading, is out now.  In this episode we talk about: How to create a generosity mindset The audacious and daunting goal he recommends for annual giving And the promise of the Internet as a tool to dramatically amplify human kindness Related Episodes: Adam Grant, The Benefits of Generosity Generosity | Bonus Talk with Norman Fischer For tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at Symphony Space: click here Sign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter here Follow Dan

Three tools for living a “passion-struck” life. John R Miles is a former naval officer and corporate titan who has made it his business to study what it means to find passion and purpose in your life. He is the host of the Passion Struck Podcast and the author of the new book Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life. In this episode we talk about: A visualization technique for setting your priorities Why “autopilot” is the wrong metaphor for an unlived life The five “transition points” on “the journey to becoming passion struck”  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 playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular Episodes Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/john-r-miles

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- A master class in equanimity. It’s the latest installment of our Meditation Party series. Live from Omega. Sebene Selassie describes herself as a “writer, teacher, and immigrant-weirdo.” She teaches meditation on the Ten Percent Happier app and is the author of a great book called You Belong. She’s based in Brooklyn.  Jeff Warren is also a writer and a meditation teacher. He and Dan co-wrote the book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. He also hosts the Consciousness Explorers podcast. He’s based in Toronto.  Tickets for the two more Meditation Party retreats this year at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York are available now. The last one was a blast. Come join us for both. One is in May, the other October.  For tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at Symphony Space: click here Related Episodes: Meditation Party: The “Sh*t Is Fertilizer” Edition | Sebene Selassi

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Simple tools you can knit into your life both for when you’re actively freaking out, and for preventing future trips down the anxiety toilet.  Dr. Jenny Taitz is a clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Taitz completed her fellowship in psychology at Yale University School of Medicine and achieved board certifications in both cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. Her new book, Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes, is out now.  In this episode we talk about: The difference between stress and anxiety Jenny’s take on the use of benzodiazepines What she means by, “negative core beliefs”, and how to untangle ourselves from them How to prepare in advance for stressful situations The benefit of giving yourself a deliberate panic attack And why stress, while uncomf

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- What 40 years of research tells us about how to cultivate good relationships in our lives. World-renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction, Dr. John Gottman has conducted over 40 years of breakthrough research with thousands of couples. He is the co-founder of The Gottman Institute and Affective Software Inc. as well as author of over 200 published academic articles and author or co-author of more than 40 books, including The New York Times bestseller The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  Dr. Julie Gottman is the Co-Founder and President of The Gottman Institute and Co-Founder of Affective Software, Inc. A highly respected clinical psychologist and author, she is sought internationally by media and organizations as an expert advisor on marriage, domestic violence, gay and lesbian adoption, same-sex marriage, and parenting issues. She is the co-creator o

Conflict doesn’t have to suck. These iconic relationship researchers tell us how.  Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection is the name of a new book by esteemed guests Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Gottman. They are the co-Founders of The Gottman Institute and have completed over 40 years of research with more than 3,000 couples. John is the researcher; Julie the clinician. They have written several books together, including Eight Dates and The Love Prescription. Even though the majority of the Gottmans’ research is on couples, the advice is applicable to all types of relationships.   In this episode we talk about: The three principle conflict styles Why we often don’t understand what it is we’re fighting about Perpetual problems vs. Solvable problems Why the first three minutes of an argument are key  The simple sentence to use at the beginning of an argument How to downregulate defensiveness in an argument Why the Gottmans’ believe there is no such thing as constructive criticism

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- We’re dropping a fun little treat in your feed today: it’s an episode of The Puzzler, a new podcast from writer A.J. Jacobs, who was my guest on Ten Percent Happier at the beginning of December. His new book, also called The Puzzler, is all about his exploration of the world of puzzles – everything from word games to jigsaw puzzles to Sudoku and beyond – and how what he calls “the puzzle mindset” can really improve your life. So then he asked me to be his guest on The Puzzler, a daily podcast that he hosts, with so-called “celebrity” guests trying to do puzzles. I’ve said before that I’m not really a puzzle guy, but A.J. is a delight and it was a lot of fun getting to be on his show – and that’s the episode we’re sharing with you today. You can find “The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs” wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks, A.J., for having me.  Sign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter here Fol

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