Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 175: Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, The Mind of the Leader

Episode Date: February 20, 2019

Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter from the Potential Project discuss their mission of enhancing performance for leaders and large organizations through mindfulness. Potential Project believes we can cocreate a more peaceful and kinder world by helping others reach a calmer and more focused mindset. Hougaard and Carter have deep roots in the practice of meditation and mindfulness and have written books about what kind of mental qualities are needed for leaders in today's society along with what will effectively drive great work performance. Hougaard and Carter provide insight on how they have achieved this with large organizations such as Microsoft and Google. The Plug Zone Website: https://www.potentialproject.com/ Books: https://www.potentialproject.com/books/the-mind-of-the-leader/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, kids? What's up, kids?

From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. We've got a pair of whipsmart experts on the show this week talking about an issue that I think almost everybody can relate to, which is how can you use mindfulness in a work situation. So how do you deal with emails? How do you stay awake and boring meetings? How do you deal with bad bosses?

Rasmus Hogard and Jacqueline Carter are experts in this stuff. They work with organizations, huge corporations all over the world. They're also going to talk a lot about sleep. I got a ton out of this conversation, and I think you will, too. So they're coming up first, a few very quick items of business. Number one, there are some new meditations up on the 10% happier app that you should know about. One of them is called Partying with Your Narosses. That's by Dan Harris. The other is called Sleeping with Kindness by Orrin Sofer, who, as I've said before, is one of our most popular teachers on the app and has been on this podcast twice. The other

item of business is related to a familiar name for podcast listeners. Jeff Warren, who was just on the show recently and he and I wrote a book together called meditation for fidgety skeptics. He's going to do a meditation retreat for fidgety skeptics in upstate New York at the Omega Institute on May 10th through 12th. You should sign up for this. I think this would be, especially for people who haven't done a retreat before.

So it would be a great way to dip your toes in. Two days of exploring with a guy that I like to call them a guyver of meditation. He's hilarious. He's also a pretty good look and I'm told, you can reserve your spot on the cushion by going to jeffworn.org slash event slash omega retreat. Jeffworn.org slash event slash omega retreat. Jeff Warren dot org slash event slash omega retreat.

Check it out. Alrighty. Rasmus Hogard and Jacqueline Carter. They both work at a place called the potential project, which is, per their very short bio, a global leadership training, organizational development, and research firm. They help leaders and organizations enhance performance, innovation, and resilience through

mindfulness and other practices grounded in neuroscience and research. They partner with forward thinking companies such as Cisco, Lego, Accenture, Microsoft, and 500 plus other global clients. Rasmus has written a couple of books. One is called One Second Ahead, enhance your performance at work with mindfulness. The more recent one is called The Mind of the Leader. He's also written a bunch of stuff in Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Business Insider.

And Jacqueline has Masters of Science in Organizational Behavior. She spent 20 years working with large-scale organizations, helping them get their acts together. And she's also had a wide range of leadership and consulting roles in a variety of industries, including transportation, insurance, and government. And she's been, both of these folks have been studying and practicing mindfulness for quite a while and they embedded deeply

in what they do. So let me stop talking and we'll get right to Rasmus and Jacqueline here they are. Thank you both for being here. Not sure. Let me start with you Rasmus. How did you get into meditation? I got into meditation about 25 years ago when my brother had a girlfriend who was meditating and when I heard the word meditation it was kind of just clicked from me and I thought that's what I've been

really that sounded good to you. Yeah, I was so weird. That was before the word meditation was really known. So I went to the east, I went to Nepal and India and started studying with teachers there. Okay, because if somebody 25 years ago dropped the word meditation, I would not have dropped everything and gone to Nepal, because I thought meditation was ridiculous. So what about it was attractive to you? Well, I don't know. It was definitely ridiculous. Some of the first teachers I met, that was

pretty ridiculous. Where were you living at the time? I was living in Copenhagen, Denmark. And so the early teachers you met in Copenhagen were no actually met the first teachers in Nepal Oh, that was a bit the pretty esoteric I would say not like not like meditation or mindfulness as I would teach Is there or as many of the teachers today? It's certainly in the West are teaching it pretty different and how how old were you? What were you doing in your life? Well, I was 18 and I was a student Okay, and your parents how did they feel about the fact that you my mother was afraid? I would stay in a monastery and never come back

But they were okay and did you drop out of school to do this or no I took a to get a badical for her for a half a year and and went off and then I came back and then it's been Doing retreats and mainly studying with his wholeness done a llama for for many years now personally Yes personally and and in big audiences, both. So how did you become a student? That's a pretty big deal. How did you become a student of the Dalai Lama? If you're committed enough to the practice

and if you engage yourself in those circles, then that's what happens. So your practice is a Tibetan Buddhist practice? Yes, but I would say it's a Western form of that, so completely secular, completely scientific, more in the style that you would do it. So some of the teachers that I've been following for the past 15 years are more westernized teachers. So taking off the whistles and the bells and the colors and the mantras and all that

stuff and just a mind practice. Right, but if you're studying with a Dalai L a lot of him doing a lot of frustrations and prayers. Yeah, and like when you meet him, you give him a cata, but if it's a... That's the what's that. A cata, that's like this silver scarf. You give him this kind of a traditional Tibetan blessing. Nowadays, he just doesn't accept that.

So he doesn't want that distance, he doesn't want all that esoteric stuff. For him, it works because that's how he grew up. It's just for rest and others, that's absolutely pointless. Gotcha. And what about you, Jackie? How did you get into meditation? I actually started more from a scientific perspective, so I just thought it was so interesting

this idea of studying your mind. And so I really started more from reading. I actually did read books on Buddhism and just thought the whole idea of being able to, you can manage your mind, you can manage your thoughts, your thoughts are not your own, I just thought that was so fascinating. So for many years, I took it very much from a head perspective, and it was really in my early 20s that I went on my first retreat and started actually to realize, oh, this is not to something you think about, it's actually something that you need to practice. What was that first retreat for you?

A Goenka retreat, which is a very intense, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but yes. I am, but you can tell listeners who may not be. Yeah, so 10 days of silence, noble silence, so no eye contact, no contact at all with anybody, and sitting for 10 hours a day, which for some people sounds terrible, but I can just assure any listeners that it is one of the most amazing experiences to be able to really, truly sit and be alone with your own mind and have that amazing experience. It's something I recommend to everyone. So you were in your 20s at the time. What kind of change did it bring about for you?

I mean, that's a difficult question because I think there's so many changes that it brings about. I think that to start to be able to have that greater awareness of the thoughts that you have that your choices you can make about whether to take them down the rabbit hole that they take you down or to simply be able to observe them and let them go, to recognize that emotions are also just experiences that you have. They're not something that you have. You don't have to reside. They don't have to be the home that you reside in. They actually can be things that are just that you observe and that you learn from that you understand.

So it really changed my entire, I would say it was transformative and changed my relationship with my thoughts with my mind and just made me much more calm, much more relaxed and much more, I think reflective in terms of how I approached every situation every day, every moment. And where, where do I detect a Canadian accent? You too, Dan. That's a very good ear. Yes, did I say about something, something out of me. I'm not sure what it was, but sorry.

What where? Sorry, yeah, exactly. There you go. That was trying to, yes, be proud of my Canadian culture to apologize. Yes. Where in Canada? Originally from outside of Toronto. trying to be proud of my Canadian culture to apologize. Where in Canada? Originally from outside of Toronto. And what were you doing at the time that you were

in your mid, what was going on in your life in your early 20s when you decided to take a retreat with your background? Yeah, I think that well for me actually I started when I was 14 and my high school had a world religions course and Buddhism was part of that. So that was really, as I said, when I started just reading a lot of books. But it wasn't really until I got into my 20s that I was able to start to realize that

wait a minute, there was more to this than that. And that was my experience. Now what is your professional training? My professional training is management consulting. So I was with Deloitte Consulting for many years. I have a background in organizational behavior, a master's in that. And it's one of the things I just love. I just feel so passionate about helping organizations to enhance performance, and specifically, my specialization is managing change. And for me for many years, I kept my meditation practice a secret because in Deloitte consulting, the fast paced world of high pressure or consulting environment, the last thing that I was going to tell anybody was that I'd like to sit on

a uncomfortable cushion for extended periods of time and count my breaths. That was just never going to happen. And so it really took me a long time. For me, I talk about it as coming out of the closet as a mindfulness practitioner because I just realized the incredible benefit when you look at organizations and how they manage change, the idea of being able to integrate these practices into that environment is so powerful. But it's really, and again, I really respect people like yourself and others who have helped all of us be able to bring these into daily work life.

And for us, our passion is bringing them into daily organizational life. And when you say us, what are you referring to? Potential project. That's what we do. Tell us, tell us, tell us what is the potential project. Rasmus. Potential project is a global leadership organizational change and research firm. So what we do is we're training basically leaders and employees in large organizations like Google and Microsoft and so on. In becoming more clear minded focused and calm.

So basically mindfulness training for the corporate world. We're doing this for about 12 years now and we've been training 170,000 people now. It's pretty extensive network to around 250 trainers around the world that is doing this work. Yeah, and our mission is very simply to co-create a more peaceful, more kind world by helping people to have more calm, more focused, and more more kind minds, basically. How does it, how does sitting on a cushion, or in a chair, or whatever, have any impact at all on the way a corporation works? Oh, it has everything to say about that. So what we see today is that people are completely living in what we call a paid reality. They are under pressure.

They are always on information level and distracted. And as a result of that, we're basically losing our ability to pay attention. We just see from a research perspective that our abilities to be focused is really declining and that means people are running around like headless chicken and not really doing what is most important, but just doing everything that calls for their attention. And mindfulness is the opposite of that, is the ability of managing our attention to really be focused on what is most important right now. And that helps obviously on performance and productivity, which is what the company wants.

But it also helps like you've experienced from your own life. It helps to settle us and find more calm, more peace and therefore more happiness, whether that's 10% more or less doesn't matter. But people just become happier. You know, I have done some meditation and I definitely agree it's helped, but I still even just in the last couple of days, feel overwhelmed and confused and like not sure what I should be focusing on, or like I have too many ideas and running them in too many different directions. So it's not a panacea.

No, it definitely not. There's no silver bullet around meditation. I think meditation helps if we do the practice, if we don't, it doesn't help. Knowing about it doesn't help reading about it doesn't help doing the practice helps. It doesn't solve all problems. It solves some. And if on a foundational level, it helps us to be more calm, focused, and centered. But we also need to work on how we live our lives, obviously. And that's what we have specialized in. How do we help people in the corporates to embed the practice of mindfulness

into how they deal with emails, how they conduct their meetings, how they set their priorities, and how they get good sleep, and how they make sure to have better work-life balance. So it's not just sitting for 10 or 20 minutes a day. It's also about how you utilize those techniques of mastering the mind into everything you do. I actually think that that may be one of the areas where I have a short coming in my practices that I do the practice, but I'm not sure I really integrate it

into a lot of things, which is embarrassing to admit. So let's talk about some of them. How can you be mindful on your email? Well, I think the first thing is just be aware that at different times in the day, it's not always best to do email. So one of the things that we know is that first thing in the morning, if you've had a good

night's sleep, is actually when, hopefully, you have the most creative, most expansive mind. And if you download your email, which too many people do, first thing in the morning, checking it on their phone, you're basically dumping a whole bunch of clutter in a mind that actually potentially has really good space to solve creative problems. So just simply looking at, when do you check your email through the day, would actually be just a simple way to be more mindful and create less clutter. I'm fascinated by this.

For me as a news man, I need to, I feel, but maybe I'm wrong, that when I wake up in the morning, I need to find out what happened overnight, and he sort of missiles from the boss, not that my boss sends that many missiles, but whatever. I, I, it seems to me like I feel this pressure to check in, check the news, make sure that no emergency is broken out in my, any of my professional endeavors or anything like that. But you're saying, I mean, do you think it would be responsible for me to say, no, you know,

maybe instead the first thing I should do is pick up the creative project I'm working on and focus on that for a couple of minutes. Yeah. Well, and I think every job is different. Of course, you know, in news that may be appropriate that you need to check, but I mean, could you wait like maybe the first hour and not check it for the first hour to be able to do some other things? I mean, just from a mind perspective, this is about understanding our mind and making sure that we

use it to the best of our ability. And honestly, checking your emails first thing in the morning, it may be necessary, but it is creating clutter. It's cluttering that potentially spacious open mind. I've never spent a happy hour or two checking and answering you. Exactly. Good awareness. And you're creating from checking emails. Like, is it ever bringing fantastic ideas, right? No, it's a complete drain on our creativity.

And many ways our performance, and when we look at, at emails in general, you know, 90% of it is rubbish, and we really don't need to attend to it. And I know that sounds radical, but it's really true. If you go back and check the emails, like if you go on a vacation for a week and you come back, how much of that can you just purge because it's redundant. It has been taken care of even without your interference. Yeah, we'll also add ABC News.

There's an enormous amount of email around the news events of the day, and I also am on a regrettable, but tremendous amount of, you know, spam PR type stuff. So I have a lot of easy pruning I could do, but there are still, I mean, I helped a, I'm a co-founder of a business. I host a couple shows here. So there are things that I do have to pay attention. Definitely. And the next period of projects going with various people in the building and I need to nurture them

and make sure I don't miss stuff, but it's a pain in the butt. But do you need to pay attention first thing in the morning? Well, I actually, that's the challenge. That's the challenge. That's why I honed in on that because I agree. First thing in the morning is, in my experience, when it's the most fertile territory mentally. And I also agree that getting

sucked into the minutiae of whatever on your email is like kryptonite for your creative capacity. So that seems like a problematic move I've been making and maybe I need to rethink it. That's why I hopped on that. Well, and the other aspect of it is looking at just notifications. I mean, one of the things that we know is every time we get a pop-up notification, whether it's email or text or whatever it might be, it's a distraction for the mind that takes us away from whatever we were doing. And one of the things is just to really look at are those notifications actually valuable for you?

Do you have your email like outlook open all the time and it's distracting you from other work? I do. And yes. Then maybe not because I mean, seriously, this is shut it down. Just shut it down. And just decide when are you actually going to check your email? You're talking about like when you're on your desktop. When you're on your desktop exactly. I mean, your phone for that matter. Real cool study from Stanford came out a few years ago, finding that the more often we let ourselves distract by incoming messages because of the pings of the pings of the notifications coming up the more our prefrontal cortex will shrink and the prefrontal cortex is

associated with our ability to actually be focused and our executive function. So having a thinner prefrontal cortex really a challenge in terms of living a meaningful life. I agree there are structural things you can do like turning off the notifications, but then there's also I notice a real tick that if I'm working on something creative and I hit a tough spot, I immediately want to reach for Instagram or email some dopamine hit. Yes, exactly. And I think that's habit and it's also, I think it's just like any quick fix, right?

It's like reaching for a chocolate bar. And I think that the invitation is, does that really help you? If it does great, I mean, maybe that does help you get over that creative, yeah, it probably does. And it probably just sucks you in to a distraction fast, which is wonderful for the mind, because the mind loves tapping into novelty

and something new and something, but it, but what could be better, you know, more beneficial is going for a walk, you know, getting some, getting some space taking a performance break or maybe doing one minute of mindfulness practice. Right. Just to be able to clear the clutter because that's what you really need a spacious mind. I hate to be the annoying person who espouses taking a walk, but, or meditating in those moments, but the fact that matter is now that I have a marginally improved self-awareness Through meditation. I noticed that when I step outside

Mm-hmm all the Baloney that I was worried about some significant percentage of it evaporates exactly and I'm seeing things more clearly in a different way with a different perspective. Or if I sit and meditate, I may, I found this when I was writing my last book and I was really miserable the whole time. And occasionally I would pull away and just meditate, which felt counterintuitive. But often the problem that I was trying to solve, I would get answers, not necessarily the answers I was looking for. and sometimes they were stupid.

But sometimes there was there was something really there, but it was certainly an guys who were of new ideas that were not available to me when I was standing there, intermittently pounding my head against the computer screen and checking social media. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, this is a challenge. I didn't go out. This sounds like an intervention for a Stan. This. Exactly. Okay, this is a challenge. This sounds like an intervention for us, Dan. This is exciting. Yeah, no, I like to use this podcast. What else can we help you with? Well, I'm

going to, I'm prepared to continue to ask because I'm going to use this podcast my own personal benefit. And if you don't want to listen, no, you should listen. What else? Sleep was the other thing you mentioned in terms of helping people. No, actually before I get to sleep, meetings. I think this is another area where I don't do a good job of bringing mindfulness to the table. I often find that's me at my worst in meetings, especially if we're discussing a creative project that I'm trying to push forward,

and I notice that I'm impatient with other people or if they're not fully understanding everything I have in my head I can't believe how dumb they are which of course I haven't even explained it to them So how does one bring the practice into meetings? The first thing is to be prepared prepared for the meeting what often happens in many organizations that we have back-to-back meetings Meaning we're kind of a few minutes late for after one meeting. So meeting runs over, meaning we'll be too late for the next meeting. Meaning we're going to enter that meeting in the 15 first minutes. We're just going to be focused on wrapping up what happened in the previous

meetings. We're constantly behind from mental point of view. Yeah. So a really practical thing is always in meetings, five minutes before time. And like in your outlook, always schedule so that you have at least five minutes of time and like in your outlook always schedule so that you have at least five minutes of transition time and what you do in that transition time is you basically prepare yourself mentally. So whether you're walking to another meeting room or whether you're just sitting and waiting for a conference call or a phone call, rather than checking Instagram or emails or Facebook or whatever, just take one minute or even just 30 seconds to just sit there and just breathe. Just take a short pause whereby your mindset was a little bit

and your mind will be more clear for the next meeting. A couple of years ago I started volunteering in a hospice and I was trained by a pair of Zen Buddhist priests who actually been on this podcast before one of our early podcasts with Chodo and Cotion, or Mary does end Buddhist priests and they run this program and trains people out of your hospice care providers and They had the species of advice they gave me that was great advice that I have Utterly failed to apply in any meaningful way in my actual life But when you're going from room to room, they said, they said, the quotient said that often we are like these huge macy's day parade floats. Like our head is the whole thing. And we're not in any way connected to our body. And we're

just kind of all head floating from meeting to meeting and just bringing with the stuff from the last meeting into the next meeting. And they basically said, just make a little tiny, imperceptible ritual of perhaps just touching the doorframe as you're going from hospice bed to hospice bed, going from room to room to talk to these residents, to reset, to just remind the mind that this is a new interaction here. And I noticed even yesterday I went into this one meeting here at ABC. The culture is often such that even we often have a lot of unscheduled meetings. Like we got to catch this one editor at one point, this one senior producer at one point,

to get her to sign off on our plan. And we've got it five minutes and she's half checking her email. And so you're kind of rushed. And I didn't take any reset. I just came barreling into it and, you know, it was fine, but didn't... I felt like I didn't conduct myself the way I would have liked to have conducted myself. And anyway, that was a word salad there, but I don't know if you want to react. Well, I think, Dan, first of all, it's great awareness, right? In terms of, and I think that's

one of the things, the other things that the practice gives us, is it gives us an awareness, am I in the right state of mind to be having this meeting right now? Because if I'm not, like for example, especially if you're trying to convince somebody of something, or maybe if you're giving somebody feedback, like you really need to check in to make sure, am I in the right state of mind to be having this important discussion? But I think the other thing that you point out, and this is one of the things that we look at, is of course, organizations aren't just about individuals. They're individuals working within a collective, within a culture.

And what we really look at is not just about you walking in with the right frame of rhyme to be able to have the most effective meeting. But what about your colleagues? You know, like you say, like if you're rushing and grabbing people on the fly, how really truly prepared is that producer to have that conversation? Now, you said it went well, but I mean, are you actually being kind of, you know, grabbing the person on the run should, if it's a really important discussion, you know, should you give her a chance to be able to clear her clutter, to maybe have some time to make sure she's fully prepared, because if she's not in the right mind state, your chance of being successful is diminished. Yes, no, I think that's absolutely correct. It would require a big cultural shift here

that's much more systemic than I am personally capable for, because if I hadn't cluttered this woman's mind, somebody else would have. So it's not like this was some unique lightning bolt. It is that her day is a series of lightning bolts. So you just, but we can't progress unless we get her sign off. And so it's just a complicated environment here. But I think that the question that we would have is not a radical change overnight.

But are there small ways from a cultural perspective? Because if you know that everybody is walking around with cluttered minds and macy day parades, big andattest you know balloons over their heads, is that the most effective way to operate and could having just maybe a little bit in integrating drips of mindfulness, drips of mindfulness practice, drips of being able to help people clear the clutter, touch the wall, everybody do that just a little bit more, 10%, maybe, maybe even only 5%, but would that help you in terms of being more effective, being less stressed,

collectively maybe even enhance your performance, enhance your creativity, enhance your output? What are the other drips of mindfulness that would help in terms of how we interact face-to-face in our meetings in a professional environment? We've talked about resetting before a meeting either on a walk or with a 30-second sit in the room. We've talked about the Chodo and Cotion thing of touching the door frame and being aware

that you have the Macy's Day Proclivity. What are other things that we could maybe think about doing based on our meditation practices that would make us more effective in meetings? I would say silencing our mind as much as we can because, as you say, when we come with that big head, that head is so full and it's so cluttered, it's so basically confused, that we don't necessarily see what is most important in this conversation. So taking that time to prepare, but then when you're in it, actually take time to listen and not listen to your inner voice, but listen to what's going on out there.

And see what emerges from that. If we try to come into a meeting, always trying to solve things, we don't solve a lot because we're so busy trying to solve that our rational mind is just running amok. And often when we try to just slow that down a little bit, things go much faster. We try to implement this in in Kalsburg,

or we do this with all of our clients, basically Calsburg. Yeah, the beer company. Yeah, so beer company interesting. Yeah, they do good work, obviously, and if beer company interesting, but they basically start doing this thing of taking a one-minute pause and being more attentive to listening during the meeting, so as teams, and they wanted to measure the effects of that. And they actually found that they reduced the meeting time with 35%. That's significant return on investment for taking one minute of break at the beginning

of each meeting. And it was not a cultural change. Not a meditating. They just said, OK, now we're just for one minute, we won't check our devices, and we won't have conversations. We'll just be present in the room. That's all they said.

And it wasn't like a big cultural change, no big Reasons why they just did it and then they they mentioned what it is. It's crazy. I mean I'm a co-founder of a company 10% happier. We don't do this. That's a great example. Yeah, so we should be doing this Yeah, totally. I mean although I have having said that you, sometimes when I'm we are our headquarters in Boston, sometimes home there, I'll say, Hey guys, can we do a guided meditation? And always everybody's a little surprised that I've suggested that, but it's not culturally weird. Everybody's psyched to do it. Whereas here at ABC, I think it would be a little, but I think Dan, you don't have to call it a guided meditation. No, I know you can call it. You can call it whatever makes sense in that culture. Like

one of the things and what we find is one of the things that we just say, hey, you know, we're all running back to back. I'm sure you just came from somewhere. Would everybody like just a minute to just settle in? That's it. Like just make it really simple. And most people say, oh, thank you. Like that is so nice. You know, just just take a moment and just to be able to allow yourself to fully arrive. You're here physically, but just allow yourself to arrive mentally or whatever works, the language, the culture that makes sense. But another thing that I think is really important in terms of organizations and cultures and meetings, but it's also true just in general, is to really look at your priorities.

I think that too many people, the reason why their heads are so cluttered is because they've got too many things that are top priorities and we know from a mind perspective that we cannot. That's my problem. Okay, well, yeah, go on. No, no, no, you go. Okay, well, it's just that we can't handle from a mental perspective, you know, 20, 30 top priorities. That's just impossible.

And that makes us overwhelmed because we have this list of all these things that we really, really, really need to do and we really, really, really can't because we really, really, really don't have enough time or enough headspace to be able to effectively get them done. So one of the things is just to be able to be really disciplined with yourself and say, okay, you've got only so many hours in the day, what truly are your two or three top priorities? When are you actually going to do them? So schedule those into your day to make sure that you've got space to actually get those done. And the key thing is those other, however many they are, seven, you know, 10, 20 things. Maybe you'll get to them, but don't think about them because if you're thinking about the things that you can't get done today, you're just distracting yourself from taking, you're taking away from the time that you actually can do the things that you can't get done today. You're just distracting yourself from taking away from the time that you actually can do the things

that realistically you can get done and that you really need to get done. So the ability to be able to let go of priorities and I'm putting air quotes on that. Priorities that you really have to be disciplined about saying you can't get done today is such a great way to be able to have more focus and more clarity.

If somebody needed this in their life and I have a friend who needs this in his life, his initials are Dan Harris. How would you go about implementing what you just described, which sounds very sane? Well, the way that we work with individuals and organizations is through a series of interventions. So a series of sessions like this perhaps is just talking about, you know, tell me about your daily life. Tell me about the challenges that you face from a mental perspective and looking for ways to not only do the 10 minutes of training, which we do have and we make that very simple and again with no nothing fancy, just simple focusing on the breath. But more importantly, well, I would say not more importantly is hand, then how can we apply that to daily work life? And then we just walk through what are the

things that you do every day? And how would applying a little bit more focus, a little bit more calm, a little bit more clarity? How would that help you? And just again, each week looking because we also know that the other thing is we know that we don't change our habits all in one shot. So the idea is to have a series of short, sharp interventions where we can say, okay, this week down, what would be, okay, so we've had this conversation about emails. What are you going to commit to do next week? And then next week we can touch base and follow up and look at maybe next week we'll focus on meetings.

So just have a series of giving you easy things to do, tangible, practical, that'll actually hopefully save you time and energy and help you be more effective, but over a series of different interventions. Gotcha. Sleep, you mentioned sleep. Whoa, whoa. How does, I haven't seen any evidence that meditation actually helps with sleep,

but maybe it does. Maybe the science just isn't good enough, but riff, if you would. Yeah, so there's been research on this, who's in Colson from, I think she's from Calgary, I can't remember. Anyway, research has done research on sleep and mindfulness specifically finding that improves sleep quality on the Pittsburgh sleep quality index, which is seven parts of sleep, like how quickly fall asleep, how deep is your sleep, how often you wake up and so on. On average, it improves all of those on 37%. It's pretty significant. I think the reason for that is mindfulness helps to calm the mind. When we have sleep challenges, it's not the body that

is the problem, it's the mind that keeps us busy, obviously. What we recommend for sleep is keeps us busy obviously. So what we recommend for sleep is if you want to avoid sleep drugs and so on. Just to do a few minutes of mindfulness practice just before you go to bed, so that you can let go of all the unresolved issues from the day and not having to deal with them in a half unconscious state in sleep state basically. That's the first thing, like do a bit of mindfulness and the way you lie down on your bed, lie down on your back and just breathe out, relax, breathe out, relax every time you breathe out, just relax. And the moment you start to fall asleep, you turn on your sides, you make a conscious shift

between the actual practice of mindfulness and mindful relaxation to then falling asleep. So that's a really important point. And then when you wake up at night, which some people do and can't fall asleep again, you just repeat this pattern. So it's pretty simple. There's also some more radical things about sleep. If you really want to have a good night sleep, is one hour before you go to bed, no devices. And that's, I mean, for many people, they're like, there's no way I can do that. But I mean, again, the idea is that we know that if we have too many thoughts in our head, it's our thoughts that keep us up. So if we can do things to clear the clutter, like going for a walk or exercising or playing

with your pets, doing something that's a more perceptual activity, taking a shower, anything that wakes us up into a perceptual mode, which is really what we need for sleep as opposed to a conceptual mode where we're thinking or oftentimes ruminating about things. Yeah, there's another tip that my dad when I was little used to give, which was, I would complain to him that I couldn't sleep and he would say bend over and run as fast as you can into the wall. I thought it was a great. Did that work well for you?

I never tried it. Oh really. Interesting one. It could put you in a perceptible state. It could. The wall impact the running. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, we don't, we didn't recommend that one, but we'll consider it.

Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after the celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Disantel, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us?

The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other, and it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. So, he's written a couple of books.

Most recent one is The Mind of the Leader by both of you. Tell me about the book. So, it's basically his research, his four-year research study with Harvard Business Review, where we have assessed 35,000 leaders around the world and interviewed 250 some CXOs around the world from Microsoft to McKinsey and Accenture. So big companies. CXO. Chief whatever author. So there could be CEO, CFO, CEO, whatever.

Got you. Basically to figure out what kind of mental qualities I need for leaders nowadays to be effectful in creating engagement, motivation, and basically drive great performance in their teams and their organizations. What are those qualities that leaders need to have? And out of this whole research, the three qualities that stood out really clearly was, first of all, mindfulness. Because without mindfulness, you really don't have anything. You're not focused, you're not self-aware, you're not present with your people. So without that, you kind of lose out on all parameters. The second one is self-lessness, which is a bit of a surprise to us. Selflessness in terms of

leading for the greater good and for the benefit of the the majority, not for your own interest, because if you do that, people are not going to be willing to work hard for you. The last one is compassion, which is the intention to be of benefit for others. If you as a leader show up compassion with compassion and you have actually compassion for the people you're leading and for the clients that you're serving, they will know you have their back and they will come back and they will work harder for you. So mindfulness self-confidence compassion with the three qualities that are really key for leaders nowadays. Two, complete you up in here or push back,

you up in here to the idea of compassion in a professional context. One is, isn't it going to lead you to be pushed around? Right, so there's a challenge. So, yeah, there's a challenge of both self and the compassion that people will think that you become a doormat, which is not the case. Compassion doesn't mean that you're always soft and fluffy and like petting people and then giving them what they want

trying to please them. It can be about giving the tough feedback. It can be about laying people off, but doing it with the intention to be a benefit rather than just be ruthless and tough. Compassion is not soft. It's actually pretty hard because it means you show up as a human being in the act of doing tough things to other people, which is your job as a leader. So compassion is not soft, it's pretty hard actually. If that here's the second question, if selflessness and compassion are what are two of the most important things these people are telling the CX, oh, people are telling you. Why does so many toxic people succeed? There's equal research, like our research was a four-year project with a pretty big data

sample. There's also research from people like Jeffre Feffer from Stanford. It's basically saying, if you want to raise fast and ranks, you need to be all about yourself, and you need to be ruthless and tough. That's the way of getting a great career. So there seems to be evidence for both of those paths. I think for each leader is a decision of what do you want to bring into the world, and also who is it that you want to be. We can certainly see that with those qualities of basically being good and doing good,

you have a good chance of raising faster. There's also evidence that shows though that if you are ruthless and if you're all about yourself, that'll be short lived. People won't work for you for very long. People will not necessarily, they certainly won't stay late. They certainly won't put in the extra effort. And I think what we're seeing now in organizations is engagement scores continue to see the Gallup poll results.

Only 14% of the global workforce is engaged and it doesn't look like it's going to go up anytime soon. And I think that now as we're looking at the jobs that we have are so much more about collaboration because no one person can have all of the answers. We need to be able to be present with each other. We need to actually enjoy working together because we're probably going to be working a lot together. If we don't have the social cohesion,

if we don't have the trust, if I don't know, Dan, that you have my back, really how long, how effective are we gonna be in terms of our relationship? Maybe for a short period of time, a short sprint, but over the long haul, which I think is what we're seeing now is really troubling for organizations,

is they're not able to build loyalty and trust in social cohesion over an extended period of time. What I see of particularly toxic people is they're very good at managing up and therefore get the promotions and then you have to work for terrifying people. Yeah. And I think that what we're seeing, though, from a leadership perspective, is that how long is the team going to stick around? I see. Right now, especially, I mean, right now anybody can work from their couch. And if they're smart and if they're capable, they can get a job

anywhere in the world. So there's .5% unemployment or whatever. Well, exactly. So I think the thing is is that in the war for talent, if you're, if you're a jerk and you're treating your people like crap, how successful you can be. That's the bottom line. And also, I mean, what kind of person do you want to be? But if you're beyond that question, that in terms of actually your ability to be able to manage in today's complex, you know, diverse, global worlds, where creativity is becoming more and more important for every different, like Karlsburg, they need creativity as much as any other organization now. You need team. But you mentioned this study out of this guy at a Stanford who's found

the opposite. So what is how if he were in the room, what would he be saying now? He would probably say, well, it seems both of those options are great. And I hope you would say, so what do you want to be? What do you want to be? What do you want to bring into the world? But his research is compelling, you know, do the power play, do what is good for you and that's going to get you up there a little bit faster. But you would also say it's short-lived, as Jacqueline says, the team is not going to stay around for long. At some point you may be told on that you're bastard and it won't in the long term, it won't support you. And it won't feel good for you.

No, I mean, that's the other thing is it doesn't feel good. Yeah. You know, many of the people who are bastards are not mindful. They're not quite aware of the pain, but it doesn't feel good. Right. I think I think that's the other thing that we know is, and I think the research is backing this up, but we actually know that we are social beings. We look from our ancestors. We look to be able to have communities,

and we look to be able to support each other. And we know that when we're not kind to others, it actually affects us from a neurological perspective. We may not be consciously aware of it, but subconsciously, we know it doesn't feel good and it has long-term negative effects. So I think that those people that are rising up the ranks and feel like, wow, I'm amassing a lot of power and money

and maybe on the outside, it may seem like I have it all. My question is, I don't really think they're very happy. And I think that's also from an organizational point of view, there's massive research now finding that organizations that are actually truly caring for the people are doing financially much better as well. So this is real business case for basically bringing good into leadership. Isn't that so, so we talked in the micro level of how you can be a dormant of the people who are, you can be a dormant if you're compassionate. But what about on the macro level for an individual corporation, if you're giving great health

benefits, whatever, how does that help the bottom line? Right. I think we share a great story of one of the organizations that we work closely with in this research, which is Merriott, which is one of the biggest companies in the world with the merger with Starwood now 750,000 employees or massive, massive organization. They have a business philosophy, which is if we take care of our people, they take care of our guests and the guests will return. That's basically the business philosophy. It's not like that HR promise or a way of thinking about people.

It's the business philosophy. And it sounds good and something that most organizations would say, yeah, we think that as well. Question is, what do you do when Robert hits the road and Mary had had a real crush back or a crunch back in the financial crisis when in 2008 and when companies stopped traveling and people, you know, can't stand their vacations. Nobody went to hotels for any reason. So they went from a global occupancy rate of 87 to 4 within a few months, meaning basically they had millions of hotel rooms that were empty, and they had hundreds of thousands of people that basically had nothing to do. And the chairman Bill Merriot, he asked the CEO and the CHRO, the HR director,

to come into the boardroom and said, what's the situation? And the CEO basically shared, it's looking really bad, we are having red numbers, we have to change something. The biggest causes are people. So you turn to the HR director, David Rickison said, so David, what can we do about this? And David said, first of all, we can lay off people, that's what all companies are doing right now. And Bill just instinctively said,

well, that would be wrong because people will not be able to pay their mortgage. They won't be able to put their kids through education. We can't do that. That's not compassionate. So what is the plan B and David said, well, it'll be painful, but we can reduce everybody's hours. The downside of that is that people will lose their health coverage and Bill married again. And he said, well, that sounds like a good plan. Let's do that. But we'll have to suspend the rule about health coverage and Bill Mariet again and he said, well, that sounds like a good plan. Let's do that, but we'll have to suspend the rule about health coverage. People need their health coverage. So it was costly for for Mariet through a year and a half, but after that that recession, they came out with the highest engagement scores that they had ever had.

And they have really high engagement scores in general. They have high engagement scores done organizations like Google or Microsoft that have high paid people and people with high education, which is normally created with with high engagement scores. But Mary, it really have people that are committed to their work because they're taking care of. So I think in a macro perspective, it really makes sense. And we see this in many of the organizations that we work with. What is your, what do you guys counsel your readers or clients or whoever you're dealing with about, and this is a non-sequitur, I apologize, about dealing with toxic folks in

the workplace or dealing with the toddler at home because he's really changing some of those diapers. Now I'm kidding about the kid, but on the grownups who are toxic and you just find them in the workplace, how do I think a lot of us wonder how do we work with those folks while not abandoning our ideals? I think that for me the one thing that I I often look with organizations is to try to get that individual to see whether that's actually helping them or not. We're all driven by our motivations. Is that actually truly being effective for that person? Is there any way that you can look at what's important to that person and maybe it is around

the team? Maybe it is around. And we often see this, people will come to us because a leader, they're having extreme turnover within their team. And we say, OK, so this is a problem. You're getting bad turnover within your team. You're getting whatever reviews, your 360 reviews are coming back all negative. So is there something that actually is a pain point that they would say is a pain point

that then you could be able to use to be able to open a door to a conversation. But honestly, I mean, you know, you can't do that if it's your boss though. Well, yeah, and I think that's a tough situation. I mean, but I think that to me, I would say that if you can't find a way that they can be motivated to even slightly look at

how their behavior may or may not be effective for you. That's just a tough situation. I would say then again for you, if you don't have any other choice to be unique, the job, you need to stay in the job, I would say then the practice is actually probably really important to you and make sure you're doing a lot of self-care and self-compassion because it sounds like in a situation like that you might need it. But my experience is that I believe in positive of things about human beings.

I think that most people, if they're shown a better way to be able to lead, that includes being kind to people, I actually think most people are open to that. You just may have to help them see that perhaps it's been the way that they were let. It's habit, it's like that's what they think that bosses are supposed to be like, bosses are supposed to be jerks. And if there's any way, maybe give them our book, I don't know, something that might help inspire them to see that there's an alternative. And I think that's the

big thing that we see in organizations and leaders right now is that too many leaders, I think, are habitual in terms of how they think they're supposed to lead. And it's not working for them. It's not helping them. It's not helping their teams. It's not helping their mind. And I think what we're really seeing is there's a new wave of, we need a new way of leading. We need a new way of showing up, which is much more about being human, which is much more about being real, being mindful, being selfless, being compassionate.

And it seems anyway that a lot of other people are sure that find another leader that supports that is a better role model and see if they would be mentored that person or connect with them. Find some way. The other book that I know that you've written, I don't know if you wrote it together one second ahead. Yes. Are you solo? No, together. Together. Okay, so tell me about that book or either one of you can. So that's that's kind of where the interview started. That is really about incorporating mindfulness into all daily work activities. So we talked about emails and the meetings and the sleep and the prioritization and so on.

So let's be really a book about how to become more effective and therefore more calm, more clear minded, more creative, more resilient by utilizing mindfulness in a fast-paced, busy business life. Do you over-struckle implementing any of the aforementioned? I would be lying if I said, no, I'm not lying. Never struggle. He's perfect. He's never struggles.

No, it is. I mean, we live the lives of our clients. So we run our global organization. So we have emails coming in in all time zones. We have meetings in all time zones. We are managing around 500 large clients. So we're living their lives. We're traveling most of,

both of us, probably 150 to 200 days a year. So we know the reality that they are in. Do we always manage to do everything that we say, of course, we don't. That would be ridiculous. What we are, I think both of us, 100% committed to is the daily practice, because without that, it seems just things are falling together, falling apart. How much meditation do you do every day? Depends on busy it is.

If it's vacation, I think at least I go a little bit more lazy. I don't need it as much, but when it's busy, especially when, especially when traveling a lot is at least 20 to 20 minutes in the morning. Do you ever get really pissed off? I don't have a hard time imagining that. I would say that you're dating, you know, it's not. Yeah, it's not in my culture, Dan. So, but I think that what I find is that I think what Rasmus was saying about the practices I think that what I find is that, I think what Rasmus was saying about the practices, I find that when I'm, I can tell, I think what the practice has given me is I can tell when I need to pull away. And I think that's probably one of the most valuable things that the practice has given

me is that if I'm in a meeting and I'm starting to notice, wow, you know, I'm starting to feel a little bit of tension in my body or I'm starting to feel a little bit of frustration arising, I've practiced enough to know that I can of tension in my body, or I'm starting to feel a little bit of frustration arising. I've practiced enough to know that I can see it before it takes over. I can say, you know what, I'm so sorry, but I've got to call a quits on this meeting. I mean, I really seriously like because I know that whatever I might say next is not going to be my best self.

For me, if people don't bulk at that, well, I think that people respect it because if I say, you know what, Dan, I, I really, this is really important to me and you're really important to me. And this conversation is really important to me, but I'm not in the right headspace to have this conversation right now. And this applies to the toddler and maybe not so much. Sorry, I just had to throw the thing because I thought that was cute. But this applies, I think in the workplace, but also in all of our social interactions.

I think that it's so important for us to be able to call it and to say, I am not going to be my best self in this moment. So can I just go take a break to be able to make sure that I can clear my head and I can come back and be able to be more calm, more clear, more focused? So I'm not just reactive. I want to be responsive to every moment. And if I know I can't be, then I should do something about it and take responsibility. That all makes sense.

So one more concern I have. We on the 10% happier app we have a communications course and the teacher is this amazing guy, Orrin Sofer, who's been on this podcast at least once. And one of the qualms I had in the production of that course, and I would run it, I sort of peppered him in the videos a lot about this, and I would put the same question to you guys, which is, how do you implement this stuff, especially around communication,

without sounding a little program, without sounding a little earnest with this, you know, like this conversation is really important to me. You're really important to me. Yeah. So I mean, I think that was an effective thing to say if I was in the receiving end of that, I would like it.

But also I wonder whether I think, well, okay, is that sincere or is that, you know, or is that, is that, you know, is she so earnest that like she, you know, can't drop an F-bomb or drink Carlsburg or whatever. So, I, you think do you understand where I'm getting going? I totally understand where you're getting, and I think that, from our perspective, I would

say that that's why it's so important to make this part of the culture. Because if I was the only one doing it, it might seem weird, it might seem counter-cultural, but if we all have an understanding of our crazy minds, we know that we get distracted easily. We know that when we're reactive, when we're emotional, when we know that emotions are a huge part of our lives and they're a huge part of our work, we know that sometimes that can not help us bear best selves.

If we can make that not just me being earnest, but actually being asked being effective as a team, and we can introduce the language of attention, of emotional regulation, of responsibility versus reactivity, then I think it becomes not so weird. So I totally agree with you. If it was just me, it might seem weird, but let's make it part of the culture because it can be beneficial for all of us. But then isn't the whole culture weird?

And is that such a bad thing? But I think what I would add to that is also, to me being mindful is not about not being tough, it's not about not being fast. To me, mindfulness is about being fast, it's about having a mental velocity and agility that can allow you to switch from being really focused and calm in a conversation. And then you have a conversation that requires that you bring some toughness into that. There's absolutely no contradiction between those. So I don't think that mindfulness about being soft, fluffy, or weird. It's about doing the right thing and being aware of what is the right

thing right now. And that can be really fast. Final question for me. I know you guys have heard this a million times, but what about the beef from the mindfulness crowd? And I actually think some of these folks, these sort of Buddhist purists, I have a point that the, in other words, their argument is that we're turning mindfulness into mick mindfulness by bringing into these corporations, focusing on performance and perhaps playing into the desire of management to have happy, compliant, super productive employees. What's your take on this critique? I think there's value to that for sure, and coming from a Buddhist background myself, and having been a researcher for years, I totally buy into that at least

in theory, two things, the compliance, we don't see people becoming more compliant, we see people and we have worked with hundreds of thousands and I personally worked with at least a few thousand people. I see people becoming more self-aware and standing more up for what they believe is right. So I have seen people going against ethical or unethical decisions in organizations because mindfulness simply allowed them, they could not just sit and watch that. So I don't believe in the compliance. You know, it's not like you're making an alien. No, it's not. It's totally not like that. So it's perfectly good thing. But yeah, that's one thing. I don't think

I don't believe in the compliance thing. The thing about is just going to turn people into is I was just feeding the the the dragon here with just making people more productive. I think there's a risk of that. And it depends how you teach the mindfulness. What is that you bring into the teaching of the actual practice? Yeah, because you're bringing in all this like Canadian stuff around compassion and kindness and being present for other people. And so it's not just one second ahead with your email being able to respond quickly. Exactly. So if you do it just for that sake, I think it's a complete missed opportunity of creating

something positive in the world. Yeah. Go Canada. Go Canada. I think it's just a tiny thing. Do you want to bite at that apple before we go? I would just say that I think that for me the big thing is, is the way that we're working today, is it working for us? And if it's not working, and I think that this is what we see, a lot of organizations, they're not embracing this because they think that it'll make their people

more productive or they're really looking at this because the way that we're working today is not effective. And the idea of being more focused, more calm, more clear-minded, wow, actually, I could actually be nicer. It could be a nicer place to work and lo and behold, it also can make us more productive. Yeah, I mean, you're telling, it's good because for me, some of the ways that I'm working

are not working for me. So it's good to have the conversation. Before we go, let's just plug everything you've got. Whoever wants to go can just give us all the books, all the social media handles, the websites, whatever. We suck at this. We are really not at commercial company. We're set up as an offer profit principle. So we're not here for the commercial gain. I suck at this. We are really not a commercial company. We're set up as a

not-for-profit principle. So we're not here for the commercial gain. I have to say, having said that if anybody's interested in bringing mindfulness to their organization, it goes to www.potentialproject.com. So you're a 5-1-2-3? 3? You're a 5-1-1-1-1- the companies is founded in Europe, so it's a different, a whole different structure there. But it's a nonprofit. It's not, it's operating on not from

profit principles means that no shareholders getting any returns, there's no profit paid out, there's no bonuses, there's pretty low salaries to everybody. Because we believe so much that the methods of mindfulness, self-denial compassion should be free available to everybody. So we're doing this work because we really believe it's important. We're doing a very professional not in a, in a, in a

it's a terrible. How do you support yourselves in New York City? We're all getting a salary and, and the company's paying for the expenses. Okay. Yeah. And books, one second ahead, one second ahead, and the mind of the leader from Harvard's, yeah, great books, read them. All right. Thank you both. Really appreciate it. Great job. Thanks, Dan. Thank you, Dan.

Thank you to Jacqueline and Rasmus for coming on the show. I learned a lot. So let's get to the voicemails. Here's number one. Hi, Dan. My name is Julie and my question is focusing on the breath has always been a bit difficult for me because as soon as I start to focus on my breath, I either hold my breath or I hyperventilate. And I don't know if this has ever been addressed in any kind of meditation work that's out there, but I find it's hard for me to focus on my breath. Is there something else to practice meditation

that you can focus on besides your breath? Thanks, Dan. Thank you, Julie. The good news is this is super common. And yes, there are many, many options. You can focus if feeling the breath coming in and going out makes you anxious or sometimes you're holding your breath or

hyperventilate or some people feel like even if they're not getting an anxious response they worry we had another voicemail that we're not playing on the show this week but it's from a young man named Jesse in San Diego who worries that that he might be controlling his breath too much I've had that issue before so there are lots of other ways to meditate you can just focus on the feeling of your body sitting, and then when you get distracted, start again. Or you can just pick one spot on the body, like your bottom on the cushion, or the feeling of your hands touching one another, or if you've got them cut together. So the body is a great place to go. You can also do body scan meditations where you start it, you know, your head and work your way down to the toes.

You can focus on sounds. You can do open awareness where you're just focused on whatever naturally arises. And then when you get distracted, you start again. You can do loving kindness meditation. We have all of the aforementioned flavors of meditation on the app. If you want more granular advice about where to find specific styles of meditation on the app, use your coach. A lot of users aren't really tuned into this, but if you use the app, you get a coach who will answer your questions very quickly. Just go to the find your coach within the app and type in a question. And she or he will get back to you.

Look at the split and they love doing this. And they will get as deep as you want on any question. About what you are curious. So good news for you, Julie. Thanks for that question. Also thanks to Jesse, although we're not playing your voice mail. We appreciated both of those questions. Here's voice mail number two.

Hi, Dan. This is Justin Colling from Ottawa, Ontario, in Canada. I had a question and a comment. Maybe I'll start with a question. At first, as always, thank you so much for all the work you do. You really deepen my practice and introduce me to so many teachers and teaching that have really changed my life. So my first question is about lineage and how you feel about lineage because obviously

in the west we don't really think about lineage very much. But if you're approaching it from a Buddhist perspective or even trying to find the right teacher, you know, there's considerations like do you study with a terrible teacher? Do you study with a Zen teacher? Do you study with a Vajrayana teacher? And is that lineage important? Or are the teachings and sessions and meditations more important? Anyways, it's a question I've been thinking about a lot and felt torn between different

languages at different times. So I was wondering what you thought about that. For my comment, I was just really taken by the voicemail on your Ruth King episode with the lady who was talking about her issues with confronting anxiety during meditation. And actually, one of the coaches on the 10% happier app gave me such a good advice for this, and I just wanted to share it. And she was saying when anxieties come up

or very strong emotions come up during meditation, you can know it, know how it feels. And then you can kind of make a decision at that point whether you're going to return to your focus and kind of just let that emotion be there, or really dive into the feeling of the emotion and accept it. And she described as kind of like white water, rapids, like just as you're hitting the curve, or you're going to go for it or not. And maybe that's one approach that could be helpful because if you're feeling super stressed out and that anxiety or emotion is just too powerful, it's totally okay to just note it and say, oh, that's this.

And then return your focus. And then sometimes you might be able to jump into the waters. Anyways, that was a very long message. But thank you so much again and thank you for everything you do. Thank you so much to respond to there. I think I can do this pretty quickly. On the how to deal with anxiety thing, it reminds me of something Jeff Warren has talked about, the teacher Jeff Warren, who's quite popular on the app, which is that you can focus in or focus away. So if you've got a strong emotion like anxiety, one move is to focus in to, as the coach who was consulting with Justin said, you know, jump into the, into the rapids and really examine what it's like this feeling of anger or anxiety or fear.

And in so examining it, you can break it down into its component parts of what kind of thoughts come up, what's it like in your body, and ultimately that can lead you to seeing it as both impermanent and changing and also impersonal. And that is a great way to unhook from these often massively powerful emotions that we think are hours in some way. But in fact, are just these passing storms that we don't own, really, and they don't have to own us. The other is to focus away. So focus in would be to dive into the thing, focus away would

be to focus on the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, making a note every time anxiety gets really prominent, but instead you're going to stay with the often calming features of the breath. So those are two, in my experience, great ways to work in those situations. I'm glad the coach gave you a good advice. I'm not surprised because our coaches are really highly trained meditators.

But your question has to do with lineage. So should lineage be important when you're picking a meditation teacher? I'm gonna give you my opinion. So this is just one guy's opinion. My opinion is in that it's really about the teacher. Do you respond well to the teacher? Now obviously lineage will be intermingle with that in other words the you know your feelings of whether you relate to somebody, in part, we'll speak to that person's personal predilections and their taste and the type of practice

that they may have gravitated towards will be the type of practice that you would gravitate towards. So gravitate towards. But for me, it's really just about the person first and the thing I'm always looking for and I've said this on the podcast is house, well, I guess two things. One is, do they have a real background and extensive grounding in the practice? Have they done this for a while? Have they studied it seriously? Have they done a lot of retreats? Who are their teachers. That to me is always very interesting. And then also, what do they like? Does it, does it, do they seem like they're putting the precepts of the practice to work in their own lives?

I'm always interested in like, how seriously do they take themselves? To me, that just seems like a really interesting data point because if, when people take themselves too seriously, just, that's somehow just my antenna go up when that's the case. Just by way of an example Joseph Goldstein who's been practicing meditation for 50 years also extremely popular on the 10% happier app also my personal meditation teacher also a guy who's never showed up on this podcast although we are doing an event

together in April in Boston which will be on this, and you can get tickets to that if you Google it, I forget the link. We'll put it in the show notes, but it's if you just Google Dan Harris, Joseph Goldstein, Boston event, it's something should come up. It's put on by the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center CIMC. It's a benefit for CIMC and IMS, the Insight Meditation Center Society. That's in Boston in April. You should go to it, and then he'll finally be on the podcast as soon as we post it. Anyway, I digress.

Joseph doesn't take himself seriously at all. He takes the Dharma seriously. He takes your practice if you're one of his students, very seriously. But when he's talking about himself, he's incredibly light. And that, to me, just seems like a really interesting data point.

This is just one man's opinion. There are, on the question of lineage, there are many flavors of Buddhism. As you listed some of them just in Teravada, which is kind of the old school. There's Zen, there's Tibetan. And then even within those, there are lots of little nooks and crannies.

So, and major schools within Tibetan Buddhism, within Zen, within Teravada. So, I think these things are interesting, but personally it's really been about the teacher first for me. The one other thing I'll say, and I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating, that people when they get excited about meditation often want to hoover up everything, but I would argue that when you're going to, you know, when it comes to your practice and your

teacher, I would pick one thing to start with with one school, one teacher, one practice, or one set of related practices taught by in a particular tradition, and really go for that for a couple of years, rather than trying a million things all at once, because it's really hard to know what's working when you do the ladder, when you're just doing everything at once. And then once you have a grounding in one type of one lineage per se, or one teacher, or one style, then I think doing a little taste testing from there. So I think it makes sense to do taste testing at the beginning to really get a sense of what resonates with you and then to commit for a while.

And then you might want to pop your head up and look around and do some comparative Practicing but again, that's just one guy's opinion Really appreciate these voicemails guys keep in coming and as I've said before We are now going to or soon start having teachers answer the questions and I'm told that the first teacher who's gonna be answering a bunch of questions in the very near future We got a ringer for this one Sharon Salzburg one of the most important and well-known eminent and lovable meditation teachers on planet earth

Thank you for listening to the 10% happier podcast. We love that we have a growing and engaged audience We'll be back next Wednesday with another show. I'm going to say what I always say at the end of the show, but at please note dismiss this as a perfunctory thing. If you go on to your wherever you get your podcasts, where you go onto the player and if you give us a rating and a review, especially, I mean, I'm just like somewhat biased toward five star reviews, but you know, I'm not trying to put my thumb on the scale here. If you give us a rating or review, that really helps us in the rankings, and so it makes

it easier for people to find the show. So doing that, or telling people about us on social media, all of that is incredibly helpful and helps us continue to do what we do and we love what we do. So please, if you've got a moment, do that. I want to thank before I go the producers of the show, Ryan Kessler and also Samuel Johns. And we will see you again next week. If you have ideas for guests, hit me up on Twitter.

We really do look at that at Dan P. Harris. Let's see you soon. Hey, hey, Prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

at Wondery.com slash survey.