Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 219: Making and Breaking Habits, Sanely | Kelly McGonigal

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

For as long as she can remember, Kelly McGonigal has felt motivated to understand the causes of pain and suffering and find ways to relieve them. This motivation led her to pursue a career in psychology and cultivate a meditation practice. In this episode Kelly talks about the types of meditation that have the biggest impact for her and how she integrates them into her daily life. She also discusses her new book, "The Joy of Movement," which she hopes will help change the negative perceptions some have about exercise. Calling her book a love letter to movement and human nature, she believes movement can help us access the positive states of bliss, joy, hope, and connection. She also offers practical tips for building healthy habits. Check out the new Ten Percent Happier course on healthy habits with Kelly McGonigal: http://www.tenpercent.com/habits (App: https://10percenthappier.app.link/gAd07mXoo2) Plugzone: - Website: http://kellymcgonigal.com/ - "The Joy of Movement": https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Movement-exercise-happiness-connection-ebook/dp/B07Q4LY2CV - Previous Books: http://kellymcgonigal.com/books - TED Talk: How to make stress your friend https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellymariemcgonigal/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kellymcgonigalauthor/ Books mentioned: "Fearless Heart": https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Heart-Courage-Compassionate-Transform/dp/1101982926 Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 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. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT Hey guys, we are launching into the new year with a big, big series on how to make and break habits without breaking your spirit. So many of us approach New Year's resolutions specifically and behavior change generally

in a way that involves a lot of shame and self-legulation. And we're going to help you rethink that not only in broad strokes, but also in very specific ways. So in this series, we're going to talk about exercise, diet, sleep, and of course meditation with people who Almost all of them almost all the experts we recruited for this have deep Meditation expertise that they're bringing to the table so that brings us to our first guest Kelly McGonagall who is Quite impressive. She's a health

psychologist who's taught at Stanford University. She's written bestselling books and has one of the most popular TED talks, which is called How to Make Stress Your Friend. Her books include the willpower instinct, the upside of stress, and she's got a new book called The Joy of Movement, which is about exercise. So we're going to talk to her not only about how to get your exercise game improved in a way that will actually succeed and without involving you beating yourself up along the way. But we're also going to talk about how to scale that to habits generally. Kelly is the star of a brand new course that just went up on the 10% happier app, which is about how to form healthy habits without, as I said before, kicking your own button away that's egregious.

And over the course of the course, you get to watch Kelly work with 5, 10% happier app subscribers, each of whom as a specific habit they're looking to make or break and her way of doing this is really, really interesting and very compelling to me personally actually. So here we go with Kelly. We talk about exercise, we talk about habits, but we start with her meditation practice. Oh, nice to see you again. Yes, nice to see you. I want to, before we dive into the new book, just give people a sense of who you are. And your work is deeply influenced by psychology and mindfulness slash Buddhism meditation. And so I want to just kind of get a sense

of how you got interested in the stuff and where it took you. And you have told me in the past that there was, that part of your interest at least in the way the mind works was a result of physical pain from your childhood. Can you talk about that? So, if you know for as long as I can remember

going back to when I was maybe seven or eight, I had daily headaches and other kinds of pain, where it just, it seemed like my experience of life was one where my body produced pain every day without really knowing why and without being able to get rid of it through the sort of normal ways you would try to treat pain. And so, you know, that got me, it did a couple of things. One is I feel like I missed whatever part of life it is where you can avoid thinking about suffering. I feel like that was just sort of part of my mindset from very early on being aware of my own pain and the pain of others. I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like,

I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like,

I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like,

I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was just like, I was a classroom teacher, had a friend who was sort of like a new age person and she used to give me her cassette tapes and books that were sort of related to meditation like things. And so, you know, I was a little kid up in my room when nobody else was there playing these cassette tapes and learning, I don't even know what traditions they were from, but practicing

meditation, you know, like fourth grade, fifth grade, and on. So I feel like there's something in me that was drawn to both of those fields because both of them have this deep interest in understanding the causes of suffering and how to relieve suffering. Can you just give me a sense of when you started formally meditating and what what form that took? Good question. The first, the first place where I was able to show up to have a real teacher in a community

was when I went to Stanford. I had read books by Shari Hubert, who is an American Zen teacher. And it's a type of Zen that is very much focused on engaged living and engaged compassion in the world. So using meditation practice and awareness practice to really to live compassion rather than to necessarily achieve some sort of inner peace or enlightenment. And I'd read some of our books and it turned out when I was at Stanford that she had a Palo Alto Zen

Center that I ended up living a few blocks from. So that was the the first place where I was able to have that sort of direct relationship with a teacher and a community. What kind of impacted it have on your life? It's so funny because nobody ever asks me about these things. Now I would say the meditation that had the biggest impact on me at that time in my life was Tonglin, and a practice known as the Benefactor Meditation. So these are practices. The Benefactor Practice was really interesting because it asks you to think about the people in your life that you're grateful to, and just sort of imagine putting them on a list,

and sending them your gratitude, and your loving kindness. But the actual exercise is to try to take people who might be on your neutral list and then people who are on your enemy list, people who have harmed you, that you perceived have harmed you, and find a way through compassion practice to move them onto the benefactor list. And I worked with that practice when I was in graduate school, studying psychology, and I just remember the first time, I won't say who it was, but when there were two people in my life, suddenly I realized with sincerity that I could view them on the benefactor list, it was almost like a miracle realizing how these practices can change your perception of life and change

the story that you have. And there really was a, it felt like a radical opening. And then the tongue-blown practice, which is still my favorite meditation practice, is the practice of recognizing, suffering in the world and imagining that you can breathe it in. And you've actually visualized it, right? You visualize it. Yeah, you can breathe it in. You've actually visualized it, right? You visualize it. Yeah, you can do it lots of different ways, but you can certainly do it through imagery.

You imagine breathing it in. You imagine allowing it to touch your heart and through your connection to compassion, transforming it into something you want to offer the world, like hope or courage or kindness. And I remember first learning this practice from Pemma Children. And it was counter to all of the, like the woo-woo, New Ageing Meditations, I had been introduced to as a little kid

where it was breathing the good stuff, breathe out the bad stuff. As if meditation practice was about trying to make a cocoon for yourself. I mean, I remember some of these old New Ageing Meditationsitations like, imagine yourself in a pink bubble and it's healing you. And this was so different. And I remember, Pembrochorin saying, this was a practice of courage. And that was something because my own temperament leaned so strongly towards fear and anxiety. I felt that, like, this is, this is an amazing practice. I felt what it had to do with courage,

that it was about saying, um, suffering in the world is real, and you can't, you can't protect yourself from it. And more importantly, this practice requires you to acknowledge that this is someone's reality. You know, I feel like so much of people go around the world thinking that they don't want to understand the reality of other people's lived experiences, including deep suffering. And I feel like Tanglen is this amazing practice where you have to drop that illusion. And so, and both of those practices I came to when I was a graduate student. They had a very big impact on me in that way. Stanford for psychology.

Yeah. Basitji, you were primed to be able to do this practice because as a seven-year-old, you realized suffering was out there. Yeah, and I'm here, right in your head. I feel like my, and I had a temperament to toward empathy, to the point where some of my early childhood memories, I remember trying to rescue worms when it rained because I thought the worms were drowning, which I don't know, maybe they were, they weren't,

but not wanting to get on the bus to go to school because I was trying to rescue the worms. Like there was something in me that wanted to do that, but also was very easily overwhelmed. And so I feel like what meditation practices did for me. Tanglan and also yoga, which is something that I was deepening my practice of around the same time, that those practices, they give you a strength.

So that if you have a natural tendency to want to relieve the suffering in the world, they give you the, so that you can keep your heart open and not feel completely overwhelmed by wanting to engage with that. What does your practice look like today? Pretty much, well, so I have, I have practices that I do when I wake up

and when I go to sleep that are really important for my values. So in the morning, my morning practice is about bringing awareness to my intention for the day and thinking about what I'm going to be doing that day and what I want to bring to that day. And sometimes it'll have a word like enthusiasm. Where does this take place just while you're still like?

I won't even get out of bed. Yeah, before I do that no matter what chaos is happening. There have been some crazy moments where I've been like, okay, wait, it just need to do this. Okay, now I can deal with whatever is happening. Right. Whatever your cat is puking in the hallway. That is hat.

Oh, no, on the bed. Yeah, forget the hallway, because my husband is trying to launch the cat off the bed. Yes. So that's the very first one I can say today. I did drill down on that second. Because actually, I've been thinking, you know, I've had on the show a couple times, the Tyn' Jimpa.

Yes. So he's one of my collaborators. Oh, right. Because did you were you involved in the Stanford? And developing this, yes, the Stanford Compassion Cultivation Program. OK. So we've also, another of your collaborators was Emma

several involved in that. She wasn't involved in she was the science director for the research branch of the Center for Combation. Okay, so Emma's been on the show before I really, really like her a lot. Respect her a lot. Dupton, Jim was telling me, I was reading his book, which is really excellent book. I think it's called a fearless heart. Fearless heart, yes. I know I love that, not like a lovey-dovey heart. Fearless heart. Right.

I still have a problem with the word heart, but anyway, we can dive into it. That's just maybe I can heart for me to shake my frat boy-ness. Anyway, the book is wonderful. And he talks, and I did it for a while. He talked about, like, kind of waking up in the morning and setting an intention for the day. Setting an intention is one of these phrases that can sound very new, A.G. and I don't know, I have a bit of an allergic reaction to even that phrase. And yet, I noticed that it's kind of waking up in the morning and motivation is so important. And if you set the motivation

to, you know, I don't know, not be a jerk today or, as you said, be enthusiastic or it's not just, it's not just motivation. So one of the things that, that the Zen teacher Sherry Huber says often is the focus of your attention determines the quality of your life. So I think of it not so much. It's, it's simply, you're choosing what to pay attention to, and you're choosing what you want to bring. Particularly when I did the practice,

I'm thinking about moments that I think have potential for meaning and joy, and also moments I think have potential for stress or worry or conflict. And so the intention is about being, it's about clarity. It's about agency. So I am setting up who I want to be that day. Not like what I wish will happen, if that makes sense.

It's not like here's what I'm going to do today. It's here's how I'm going to do today. And it sounds like it's pretty quick. You're just kind of... Oh yeah. Well now, because I've been doing it for, I've been doing this practice for at least 15 years. I can't remember when I started it um It this is so much better than my my morning practice used to be to drag myself out of bed before coffee and sit down and do my formal practice

And actually as it turns out that's not the best time for me to sit and do practice before I've had coffee So I found like this is actually a much better way for me to start the day. And how would we do it? There was us. You probably have to start by sending the intention before you go to sleep at night. Like something is going to have to remind you to do it when you wake up. It is possible if you're someone who looks at your phone first thing in the morning, maybe you can send yourself a text message or something that you would see when you grab your phone. That's like, hey, put this down for a second and think about maybe a word that describes what you want to bring today or what you want to experience today.

But I think it's like a muscle that you strengthen. So this sounds like it can be super quick. You're lying in bed. It's like, all right, here's what's going on my docket today Can I be can I give everybody my full attention? Yes. Yeah, I mean, that's a great one or maybe today It'll be giving people the benefit of the doubt. I mean you can experiment with so many things and I found there are a few That really that do have a big influence on the quality of it or you know what today? I'm gonna give myself the benefit Yeah, right. Yeah, and so okay, so that's one of your practices that I've...

Evening practice is the best. I love this practice so much as someone who's average from insomnia. So it's not like I'm going to go to sleep and fall asleep. Something else has to happen for a little while. So I do, I call it my interdependence practice where I review the day and I think about everything I did and experience and who think about everything I did in experience and who I came into contact with and I imagine thanking them and thinking about why I'm grateful that they were a part of that day from you know,

some a checkout person at the grocery store or somebody that I worked with or family members my partner and I go through that and it's like a loving kindness practice, but it's rooted in memory and how I choose to remember the day. And I'm a big fan of interdependence in general as a meditation practice. It doesn't necessarily have to be that form. But we know from the psychology of it that when you strengthen a mindset of interdependence, when you are willing to acknowledge, we're all in this together and that other people contribute to your life, it's not, you know, you aren't the sole determinant of everything you experience.

And also that you play that role for others as well. It makes people more likely to ask for help when they're struggling. It increases people sort of spontaneous feelings of hope and gratitude. So, I've been doing that practice for just a couple of years. Is that also in bed? Yes, it is. I know you're like, do you ever meditate sitting? Yes, I do.

But I think the three most important, I'm sharing with you the three most important practices and the third most important one is on the moment tongue-glon. And that is on the moment, tongue-glenn. And that is on the spot. If I am with someone and I'm aware that they're struggling in some way, but it's not necessarily appropriate for me to give them a hug or have a conversation about it to do tongue-glenn for them in that moment. Or if I'm feeling worried about something,

to bring to mind people in the world who are dealing with that amplified. So if I'm worried about maybe some minor health issue, now I'll just bring to mind the people in the world right now who are dealing with a major health issue and do tongue-line for them. And I find that that practice also is extremely, it's extremely helpful for me in managing, just managing moment to moment life.

And I don't know that any of these practices, I'm a big believer in sitting down and learning the practices, but when I teach meditation, I always tell people, you sit down and you practice things so that you have skills with your mind, but I'm not convinced that those sit down sessions have as much a determinant on the quality of my life as the way that I found to integrate

practices into my daily rituals. You do sit seated practice. And also I view yoga as part of that practice because the yoga that I practice involves breath focus. So the main practice that I learned through Zen was counting the breath, and the main yoga practice that I spent years cultivating also involves counting the breath. So sort of this perfect synchrony. Well, it brings us right to the subject of your new book. Yes.

Joy of movement, love letter to movement and exercise. Just why did you want to write it? What's it about? It's a love letter to movement and to human nature, which I didn't know when I wrote it, it was going to turn out to be. I learned a lot about the science of movement and why humans thrive when we move. And I learned a lot from talking to people about their experiences with movement that gave me a lot of hope about human nature as well.

But I wanted to write this book for a couple of reasons. One is that I think of meditation, things we've been talking about so far as helping me deal with suffering. But nothing produces sheer joy in my life as moving to music, for example, taking a dance class or teaching a dance class or taking a kickboxing class to an amazing soundtrack that makes me feel empowered or practicing yoga. That the part of me that experiences bliss, hope, joy, connection, that sort of

the empowered positive states, I access that best through movement. So I wanted to write this book because I've only ever written books that I really think are about how to deal with the hard stuff, you know, stress, behavior change. I feel like I've spent most of my public facing career helping people deal with things they wish they didn't have to deal with. My first book was about chronic pain. And I feel like that's a big part of my personality. Let's just go to the pain points and see what we can do with this.

But in my own life, I have always, I mean, going back to when I was around the same age that I started having pain and I discovered jazzy or size because my mom brought home VHS tapes from garage sales that she never did, but I did them. I discovered that this made me happy. And that's different. And you wear leg warmers for jazz or stuff? Okay, first of all, leg warmers are amazing. I didn't at home that.

I didn't have sneakers. We were not an exercising family. I don't know what I was doing. I remember begging my mom for this thong liatar that was so inappropriate and I did not get it. But I do remember like, like, lusting after this liatar with roses on it at the discount department store. And this, by the way, is it a suburban filling?

Yeah, yeah, in New Jersey. And so I wanted to write this book because, you know, I've been teaching fitness for 20 years. And before that, I was using movement to experience joy. And I just felt like it was time to share that with the world and the way that I share it with my local community. You know, the best part of my day is when I teach an exercise class. And I wanted to help change the conversation we have about movement because so often when we talk about exercise, it is about number one, it's burning calories losing weight, which can absolutely kill the joy that is possible. I mean, of course, you do burn calories, but if that is, joy that is possible. I mean, of course you do burn calories,

but if that is your mindset, it screws up so many of the natural things that you could harness in movement that bring you joy. It just becomes often a big distraction. So weight loss, preventing heart attacks. We know that exercise is so good for you that we forget how good it is. And I wanted to just reintroduce that into our conversation because if you talk to people

who exercise regularly, they often will tell you they don't do it because they're keeping track of how many calories they're burning. Their face is light up. They tell you what they love and they tell you what it means to them. And those are the stories that when I said that the book made me give me hope about human nature. There's a story people were telling about what, what powerlifting had meant to them or what the community that they found,

taking fitness classes meant to them or what they learned about themselves from going from being unable to walk a 5k to running half marathons. When people talk about movement, they often become like the best version of themselves. And by the way, I'm really excited because I hope that's true for me too. And I feel like writing this book was an opportunity for me to also get to know that aspect of myself. I'm just kidding, and on something you said, many things you said are incredibly interesting.

I want to chase them down a little bit. But one thing you said about how the movement itself can produce joy and yet where many of us exercise for reasons around, you know, burning a certain amount of calories or I don't know, look in a certain way, I find often that my exercise, I've been thinking yesterday I did a 45 minute spin class

on Peloton and yeah, I loved the teacher and the music was all right. But a lot of it was just really hard. And I was kind of suffering a little bit. But I liked having done it more than I liked doing it. So does that mean I should pick a different form of exercise? I should have a different mindset while I'm exercising. What, how do you diagnose that? I don't know that I would diagnose that.

It is okay to do things that are hard and be aware that they're hard while you're doing it and have an inner stream that is like, why am I doing this? This hurts. This is hard. This is uncomfortable. It's actually really common for a lot of things that are meaningful and useful in our life that also can produce joy. So it doesn't concern me that you could have that experience while doing something that

is really physically hard, although I know Peloton, they do try to structure the experience so that you will feel really empowered for having done it. In fact, I think that's actually part of the way they construct their whole program and product is to produce the feeling that you described that afterwards you're like, I did that. And I'm the kind of person who did that. So maybe you're getting exactly the kind of joy

you need from it while getting whatever the other health benefits are. I don't know that I would light up talking about it. In other words, you were talking about how people light up talking about their exercise. I feel like there are some forms of exercise that I would light up talking about, but they're much easier than a 45-minute spin class where I feel like I'm being strangled at points. Okay, so we should talk about how I use spin class, by the way, because it was the worst

exercise experience in my life when I started it. So I think there can be value in that. But so the thing, if you were asking me seriously, how should I spend my exercise time? It comes down to what is the purpose of it in your life. And if you are deriving the types of joy that I talk about, connection, meaning, purpose, personal growth, self-transcendant, if you're getting that from other practices and other relationships, and you're thinking of exercise as this is for my heart, maybe you just do the hardest thing that works your heart and you feel good about it

after work. So you mean, lip actual heart, not your other- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. That thing that's pounding in your chest. Yeah, that one. It's okay. It doesn't have to exercise, doesn't have to play a particular role in every person's life, but I'm interested in talking to the person who feels like there's

actually something that is maybe missing. And that movement seems to help us access the joys that are really important to our humanity, like social connection, like a sense of mastery, like self-transcendence, particularly if we exercise outdoors. So, you know, if we were going to diagnose your situation, you said there are movement forms that would light you up. I would ask you, is it worth doing that because it lights you up, not in exchange for something that's cardiovascular difficult so that you feel good about that, but because it would enhance your life?

And that's really the focus I have, is movement can enhance your life. I'm not primarily interested in making the thing you do for your health more fun. You can do something for your health, that's fine. But if you're looking to experience a sense of, maybe you're reimagining what's possible in your life, I know that there are movement forms that can help you tap into that.

You said you wanted to say something. Oh yes, okay. So one of the things I'm most proud of in my life is having overcome a fear of flying that kept me off of airplanes for years and years and years. And when I decided it was time to conquer it, you know, I had good reasons. I wanted to be able to see my family more often, and I wanted to be able to take professional opportunities that required getting on a plane. And so I decided, I don't know when this was like 2004 maybe, that I was going to start

doing this. And I thought to myself, where do I, where have I ever felt like I feel on an airplane? Clostrophobic, trapped. My heart is pounding. I hate every moment of it and I want to escape and I can't leave. I was like, that spinning class I want to escape and I can't leave. I was like, that spinning class I took a few years ago. That's exactly how I felt in that class.

So I started going to cycling classes knowing that I would hate it, that I would find it miserable, that I would struggle to breathe, that my heart would be pounding, and I would literally feel strapped as I do on an airplane. And I said to myself I'm practicing being with that and not leaving the room and I will teach myself how to do that through this Experience and what's so crazy first of all it worked and one of the things that helped me stay in the room was the music the playlist So I started listening to cycling playlists on airplanes and I still do that when we hit bad turbulence

I put on music from like a cycling class. And, but the crazy thing is, is even though I hated it so much, because of what I had to do to stay in the room, and like listening to the music, that, you know, often in cycling classes, they play really, music that's about working hard and being tough and being determined.

Somehow, it got me, and I ended up getting certified to teach cycling like 10 years later and Although it's not my favorite form of exercise like something shifted in me Because of the role that it played in that sort of part of my journey and the you know being so proud to have dealt with that fear that I spent so much time letting control me So that's my so you know know, there's an example. That's a joy that's still not like, if you asked me, you gave me 20 different workouts. I'm probably not going to choose getting on a bike. But it's a joy, but it's not a ball.

It's a joy. Yeah. So what else did you learn in the writing of the book about the power of movement for? You said it was about not only about exercise, a love letter to movement and exercise, but also a love letter to human nature. So can you say more about that? Yeah, so one of the reasons I wrote the book also is because a lot of the people in my life I love, love running.

And I also don't run. I'm like, why would you run when you could dance? But so I wanted to understand why people love running so much. And runners have such a love affair with the sport and the exercise. So I started by trying to figure out what the runner's high is. I mean, I think I actually do experience it in other forms of movement. But I thought, like, let's talk to runners

and look at the science of the runner's high. And I discovered this whole field of research from anthropology and neuroscience that the theory is that we experience a high that is related to endorphins and endocannabinoids and possibly oxytocin when we exert ourselves over a period of time that's related to our need when we were hunters and gatherers to go out and walk, run, forage, carry heavy things. Evolution wanted us to do this stuff. Yeah, and that our brain found a way to reward us for persisting through physical labor.

And that reward is the runner's high. But what is so fascinating about is the neurochemistry of it. It's not just an endorphin rush, which is what would make us maybe feel good. An endorphin tell us connect with others, too. But it seems to be driven largely by endocannabinoids, which is a neurochemical that relieves pain and relieves anxiety that makes us really optimistic and facilitates the joy we get from social contact. It makes us more likely to enjoy sharing and playing and listening to other people tell stories and enhances the pleasure of shared laughter.

And this is a big part of the runners high and also oxytocin, which is a neuro hormone that helps us bond with others, particularly other people who are already in our life and in our social circle. And oxytocin also enhances the pleasure we get from helping others and cooperating. And the idea that the runner's high is basically this neurochemical cocktail that doesn't just make us feel good. It's priming us to connect. And when I talk to Herman Ponser and anthropologists, I talked to who has studied some of this.

And he was talking about how sharing was like the defining feature that made modern humans human, whereas other people would argue it was hunting and gathering. And I thought, how amazing is it that humans have this capacity to physically endure in order to survive, but that capacity that the biological rush we get, is priming us to share and cooperate and connect with one another. It's like you go out, you get your runners high, and you come back to your family or your tribe, a version of yourself that's going to enjoy cooperating, enjoy sharing, enjoy connecting, and that strengthens the bonds that help us survive. Like to me, so that's like, when I talk about like a love letter to human nature, like that's

amazing. And so much of what I learned from talking to people about the role that movement plays in their lives is that they are experiencing this social support network, or it empowers them to connect with the people in their life who are already important to them. And just beginning to understand the neurovology of that blew my mind. Are there things you learned about exercise and the benefits therein that surprised you?

Yes, okay, so I also found a body of research that I was not familiar with, and I feel like most people are not familiar with, that has only come out in the last decade. And it is the insight that your muscles are an endocrine organ. So like we know your adrenal glands will pump out all sorts of hormones, your pituitary gland, pumps out stuff that influences every system of your body. And it turns out your muscles are also like an endocrine organ.

And when you contract your muscles and exercise, they secrete proteins, they secrete substances that are insanely good for your health that kill cancer cells and reduce inflammation and all of that, but also have a really profound effect on brain health and mental health. And one of the first scientific papers that wrote about this called them Hope Molecules. This idea that when you exercise, like literally if you go for a runner walk, your quadriceps, your muscles will secrete into your bloodstream, hope molecules. These molecules that move through the bloodstream to your brain and act on the brain in ways that make you more resilient to stress, that help you recover from trauma,

that increase positive motivation, that increase neuroplasticity in a positive way, and there's a whole bunch of them, they're called myocions, and that one study found dozens of these beneficial myocions that were pumped out by your muscles, and to me, that's, again,

it's just so fascinating to think, who would think you had a pharmacy in your quadriceps, and that the only way to access them is to contract your muscles and to use your body. And so I think like, you know, you're basically giving yourself an intravenous dose of hope every time you exercise. And that's probably one of the reasons that, like I knew that exercise is one of the most powerful preventions and treatments for depression. I knew that, but this is like one of

those mechanisms I'd never heard explained before, and I like to think about that when I exercise, and I'm giving my brain that that IV dose of hope. I love that. You were writing the book, were you thinking, okay, well this is for people who don't exercise and I'm gonna help them get excited to do it? No it's not that it's not for them but I felt like I thought maybe that's who the book was for but as I was writing it I realized that I kept running into so many people who already loved movement. There were more of them than I thought there were, and they had never been asked to talk

about movement before in a way where they could explain how it made them feel about themselves or what it had meant to them in a difficult time. And I think I realized writing the book that I wanted, I ended up writing a book that first and foremost is not an argument to persuade non-exercises to exercise, although I think it might. I mean, there's a lot of good reasons to exercise. I think I ended up writing a book that if you're somebody who has used movement of some form to survive, to thrive, to find joy in meaning, this might be the first time you see it described

in a way where you really recognize it and its value. This is the book to give someone who doesn't understand why you love running or why it's so important to go to that Zumba class. This is this is the book I think that says maybe people have told you that it's self-indulgent to prioritize exercise when you should be taking care of other people or focusing on something else. And this is the book that says, you know, if you figure this out, like this is real, and here's ways to deepen it even more. And I think that if you're somebody who thinks you hate movement, because I do meet people,

but there's so many people talking to them for this book who thought they hated movement until they found the right type. One woman I spoke to, she waited until her late 40s to get in a boat. She's a rower now. When she got in the boat, she always thought she had the wrong body. It's not how a body should be. The story that a lot of people have. And then once you got in a boat and felt the power and the power of working with other women to row, she was like, yes, this is what I was born for. And I feel like sometimes it's about finding the right movement form or the right time

in your life. I mean, the other thing that I found in the research that was really interesting is that as we age our brains change in a way that makes us less receptive to joy. You know our reward system change in a way where you're basically losing a little bit of your capacity for everyday joy with every decade. And exercise seems to prevent and reverse that. And I thought like maybe that's one reason why people swear they hate exercise. And then I have people showing up to my classes in their 60s and 70s who didn't exercise earlier. And now they're saying, this is such a tremendous resource for them. I think sometimes we have to wait for our brains and our bodies to need it in a certain way to really understand the role that it can play. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this.

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 East's new podcast, This and Tell, 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 feud 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 it's new years time. I think there are a lot of people out there who I know because I see I say it at my local gym. You have these resolution years who are in there and for a couple weeks and then then it's empty again so everybody's trying not everybody but a huge percentage of the population is trying to do the new year new you thing and get an exercise habit going you've just listed all the benefits

but that it's uh... for some people i think i would imagine that can provoke a sense of guilt and shame like well all these benefits are out there but i'm not accessing this stuff because i can't get myself to the gym. So how do we make this a habit? Let me start by saying something that I think is really important, which is that the benefits I've been talking about, and even benefits we haven't talked about, like your sense of self, that they have been demonstrated every age, every physical status, they don't require being any particular weight, they don't

require not having disabilities. I mean, I was looking at research all the way into hospice care. At end of life, you still see the psychological and social benefits of movement. So if there's anyone who's listening and thinking, I don't have the right body for it, or I have a barrier to it, that is going to make this not the case. Chronic pain, disability, health condition, I do want to say upfront that that is not true. So there's no sort of, nothing required to get started.

And what I would encourage people to do is not to look for the thing that is selling you the promise of getting a different body or losing weight, which is so prevalent in New Year's. But why don't you ask yourself, what's a form of movement that you are inspired by? If you were going to watch people move, what's interesting to you? Maybe there's a sports or someone's going to send you a YouTube video. What would you actually slow down and watch? Is it a pole vault or is it a YouTube video. What would you actually slow down and watch? Is it a poll-volter, or is it a poll-dancer?

What speaks to you? Or was there a type of movement you enjoyed as a child? First of all, give yourself permission to think of this as something that is going to be better than you think it's going to be, that there's a chance that you could really discover an aspect of yourself that you love through movement, or that it could actually be fun.

It could actually be meaningful. Like, do you want to throw things? Do you want to lift heavy things? Like, what type of movement seems appealing to you? That's a place to start. And if you can't think of that, to think about something that you know you enjoy, that you don't get enough of in your life already. Maybe it's being outdoors,

maybe it's listening to music you love, I like lip sync in every form of exercise that I do. Maybe it's spending time with particular individuals, or like there's something, maybe there's something that you know you enjoy, and you movement can almost always be integrated into that joy. And so you can think of movement as an opportunity to get both of those at once. And then to just start and experiment and see what resonates with you.

There is some research suggesting that it takes six weeks to get hooked on exercise for your brain to literally change in a way that makes you want to exercise if you have never exercised before. So that's another thing you might think about it around the new year is it might take six weeks to really find out if this is for you. And so anything you can do to make the process more enjoyable while you get there, while your brain is adapting to this new experience to take that long view. You have in the foregoing used the word enjoy quite a bit and I would point out that joy

is in the title of your new book and I know a little bit about your, you've done deep work around habit formation and habit change and I know a little bit about it because you're the star of this new habit change course we're doing on the 10% happier app. And joy is a, you know, the reward systems of the brain can be harnessed to establish new habits. Yes. So we know that the way new habits get formed is there's something that motivates you to do something.

You practice the behavior and you experience a reward for it. Like that's it. That's the secret of habitation. That's called Q routine reward. Yeah, I think what's interesting is Q, it's often when we're talking about an important habit. So if we're talking about what you pick from the vending machine, Q sometimes works. But when you're forming a new habit,

that requires you to really use your agency and do something different, that Q is often really an important motivation, a deep motivation. Like there's gonna be no Q in the world that makes you want to quit smoking, for example. Like that's not, I mean, that actually makes you practice the behavior

of resisting the incredible urge to smoke. So I often will use the word motivation to make sure people understand that it starts there. But so then you do your behavior. And then the reward reinforces it. And over time, the brain learns this is something we do. And your brain changes in ways that makes it more automatic. And often more enjoyable, or at least more effortless. So that reward, often around New Year's, we think about rewarding ourselves through extrinsic rewards, almost like we will bribe ourselves to do a new behavior. And I always encourage people to look for the joy

that's already intrinsic to the new behavior. Enjoy can take the form of pleasure, so you can look for ways to make the new habit or behavior more actually pleasurable. So, you know, if you want to eat healthier, you should make sure that the food tastes good. You know, go for the most delicious version of whatever your new diet is going to be. And to try to like pack into that process, whether it's grocery shopping or cooking or who you eat that healthy food with. Pack in as much pleasure as you can because that's one type of brain reward. But there's also the joy that comes from doing something that's consistent with your values

and your goals. So you said you feel really good when you're done with a Peloton ride. Like that is a reinforcement. That is a form of joy to pause for a moment and be like, I did that. I'm glad I did it. Even just saying I'm glad I did it is a form of joy to pause for a moment and be like, I did that. I'm glad I did it. Even just saying I'm glad I did it is a form of joy. The celebration is for me. Celebration, celebration and appreciation. Because we can let it go. I sort of like, I felt good for a nanosecond, but then I'm checking my email. So we can maybe

savor that as a way to more deeply ingrained habits. And I think that's one of the reasons why people so often take selfies after a workout. I think it's not necessarily to brag. I mean, I take way more workout selfies and I would ever share with other people because there's something about that moment where you realize you're taking a picture of the version of you that did something hard. Like, I'm tough, I did it, I'm smiling, or maybe this is who I did it with, you know, and I spent this time with that person. So selfies can be a great way to do it too,

or if, you know, going back to eating healthier, take a picture of your meal, and that can be a way to slow down and celebrate what you did. But I also think, you know, there's joy that comes from meaning. It's not just the pride and satisfaction of having done it, but really understanding what it means. And that's why getting clear about your motivation is so important because, you know, you can, there can be nine different reasons you would want a new habit, and one of them is going to be more powerful than the others. I want to stop and just put a big exclamation point on the point you're raising now. We really want to signpost this because another part of your, a huge part, if not the

center piece of your, as I understand it, your philosophy around habit change is figuring out your deepest motivation for why you want to do something. Actually, habit change, which we can sometimes think of as this superficial hacky thing, actually in your worldview, is a moment for a profound reflection. Yeah, and I think even the choosing of the habit is a time for deep reflection. That if somebody's listening now and they have their New Year's resolution, it's time to think, did you pick the right resolution?

Is this something that is going to enhance your daily life? Is it going to help you get closer to your goals? Is this really the right thing to put your energy and attention toward? And if it is, you'll be able to find a motivation that really carries some energy with it, and that will give you strength when you're exhausted, when it's difficult, when you're stressed out, when other people are putting pressure on you. So, talk to us.

I mean, I know in the 10% happier app course, we have guided meditations that help people kind of get clear on what their deepest motivation is, but how, just practically speaking right now, if I want to think about why I want to establish an exercise habit, how do I get clear on this sort of profound stuff rather than I just want a six pack? I often start people, I tell them, okay, forget the habit for a moment. What are the most important roles and relationships in your life right now? Get people to think about what they are. What are the most important personal goals that you're pursuing? Are you on a path professionally or personally? Is there something in your life

that is causing pain that you want to change in an important way? To reflect on questions like that, or is there a version of you that you can envision yourself becoming, like a version of you that you want to show up in the world as, and people will often say things like, yes, I want to be the more adventurous version of myself, or the more compassionate version of myself or something like that.

And so you ask yourself questions about really what matters to you and what direction are you trying to move in life. Then you look at this habit and you ask yourself, what does that have to do with the things that I've identified as important to me. And if it's a good habit for you at this time in your life, you will be able to drill down and see some important connections. And that becomes the most powerful motivation. And if it's not the right habit, if you picked it because you read in a magazine, it was a good idea to drink,

you know, however many glasses of water a day, but you don't actually, like, deeply believe it's gonna change your energy and health in a way that makes you a better parent or whatever like that motivation is, this is really not, why would you spend your precious energy cultivating that habit? So I think that in many ways choosing the right habit

is as important as figuring out how to nail the habit. Right, so this seems to be correct me from wrong, but it seems to me to take habit formation out of the realm of extrinsic motivation into intrinsic motivation. So if I am exercising because, you know, I feel insufficient and inferior because I keep looking at the cover of Men's Health magazine and those guys have bigger deltoids than I do, that might not be fuel that actually lasts too long. Whereas

I am exercising because I have this deep desire, which I do, to be around for when my sun gets married. Well, then that's actually quite, that seems like a renewable source of energy that when I have my inevitable failures and twists and turns, I can draw upon that in a way that my feelings of inferiority probably won't fuel me. And here's the thing that I think people don't understand. It's not just that that motivation might help you exercise longer. You know, there's research showing, yes, that's probably the case, that motivation will

work for you better in the long term. The more profound motivation. Yeah, then feeling shame or stigma or self-judgment about your appearance. There's plenty of studies that show that. But the other thing I think people don't think about is if you choose a habit you're trying to form and you link it to a motivation that reinforces your own suffering,

you are building a habit of reinforcing your own suffering. So if you try to link exercise to feeling bad about yourself and the way that your body looks and internalizing societal stigma and shame, you're not just building the exercise habit. You're building that habit. You're building the shame habit.

Yeah. And even if somehow it gets you to work out, you can't separate the habit that you're learning. You may get an exercise habit, but your brain is also learning. This is how I control myself. I control myself through shame and stigma. And so I feel like in many ways, habit, habit formation or New Year's resolutions are an opportunity to practice the habit

of a different way of being with yourself. And you can choose almost any habit and go through that process of finding a motivation that feels positive and meaningful and using learning how to use that motivation. You could use that motivation to do almost anything and you would be building a habit that's meaningful. Right, I've long been sort of reflexively and maybe not that thoughtfully anti-new year's resolution because I feel like if it matters to you, you do the thing or you would endeavor to do the thing. So this is just like an artificial date on a calendar, which is, of course, itself artificial.

And yet, if you're using the artificiality to do a profound dive into what actually matters to you, well, that sounds pretty good to me. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I love fresh starts. You can do it at New Year's. You can do it for back to school. You can do it for back to school. You can do it for the beginning of the week. And I think that, you know, the practice that I do around New Year's is actually choosing

a word or a theme for the year that is the year-long version of what I do when I wake up in the morning. So I think about that word that I want to, when I'm making choices. Do I say yes to this or no? Who do I spend time with? Whatever the choices I'm making throughout the whole year, I have a word that I can use to help me make that decision. And that has been more effective for me than New Year's resolutions, but it is a kind of resolve. So, okay, so we've talked about joy as something to tune into,

which by the way, your meditation practice can really, that self-awareness that's generated through meditation can really help you tune into the joy, which can then keep you doing the habit that you want to do. We've talked on an even deeper level and not disconnected about doing a look at your life and figuring out what it is that you truly care about and harnessing your habit, change, agenda to that.

Let's just get a little bit more practical because you also talk about ways that once you've taken a look at what really matters to you, there are more practical steps so you can sort of more small, more steps you can take to ease your path. And a lot of them have to do with changing your environment. Can you go for that? Yeah, so if you're clear that there's a change you want to make or a goal you want to reach, to start to think about your environment

is something that is always influencing you, either supporting you or maybe sabotaging you. And one of the first steps I encourage people to do is put a physical reminder in their environment that will literally just remind them of what their goal is or what the new behavior is. One of the things people talk about is like putting your sneakers out. Yeah, and that's actually a tool.

So that could sort of two purposes. But I think also, so let's say you had mentioned your son as a motivation for exercising. So it could also be a picture of your son and here where you keep your sneakers. That that may be the thing that you need to remember. And then the shoes are actually creating an environment that supports your goals, because that's the behavior that you really want

to facilitate. But I think that that first step is, people will sometimes write a word out or something like that, or it could be a picture of a place that makes them feel a certain way or it could be your environment can literally, concretely support your goals. And that's about putting the sneakers out or getting the right food in your fridge or getting the technology that you need or figuring out what it is so that when you go about your life, there are things that when you get distracted or when you're tired, you have this kind of support embedded in your environment. Another thing that another aspect of a lot of our environments is other people.

So I found in my marriage, my wife and I work out together, that makes it much more seamless. And we sometimes embark upon, we decide, well, we're gonna try to not do so much late night snacking, we do it together. And you've talked about social connection as being part of habit change. Can you say more? Yeah, I mean, so first of all, social support

is incredibly helpful for any change. If you have someone in your life who shares your goal and is doing it with you, or who simply believes shares your goal and is doing it with you or who simply believes in your goal and is willing to support you, you have a much better chance of succeeding. And I think those are two different types of social support to think about. If there's actually someone who will do it with you, you can almost in a way outsource some of the usual willpower we use.

That because they'll remind you of it, they'll take care of some of the logistics of it maybe. And then you also get that reward to build the habit that comes from the social contact and the pleasure that you get from that. But also, you know, it can be useful to know who in your life support you in making this change. Maybe you're the only one who is making it or the only one who needs to make it, and that you can ask people to support you in particular ways to maybe to stop sabotaging you in particular ways, or to give you friendly reminders, helpful reminders.

Hold you accountable. Yeah, in a positive way. Yeah. Yeah, by asking how it's going, and is there anything I can do to support it and by celebrating any successes with you. And you know, I feel like both of those are really important for any type of behavior change. Another thing that's huge for you and we go into this in depth in the course on the app is self-compassion or let's just say the dis-utility of shame. Can you hold forth on that for a moment? Because I think a lot of us use habit formation as a fiesta of self-judgment. Yeah, so many of us think that shame and self-criticism are motivating. And in part that's because

when we're feeling ashamed or we're feeling self-critical, it feels so bad that we are really motivated in that moment to get rid of that feeling and we might even make a vow to change. But studies show that that that place of stigma or shame or self-criticism, it's really disempowering. It basically, it's almost like throwing someone into a hole and then taking away any ladder they could have to climb out of it. And you're just kind of stuck in that hole, feeling bad and looking for and escape

without the resources you need to get out of the hole. And what we know is much more effective is it sometimes called self-compassion, but you had that allergic reaction to, even the word heart, I think a lot of people have an allergic reaction to the called self-compassion, but like you had that allergic reaction to even the word heart. I think a lot of people have an allergic reaction to the word self-compassion. Many people think it sounds like self-indulgence or I don't know. The approach that I encourage people to take is to think about someone who believes in you and sees the best in you, sees your potential, and really, really wants you to succeed at your own goals, wants to see you, be happy, be healthy, and thrive.

What would that person do, and then you do that for yourself, and part of self-compassion is also, find the people in your life who feel that way about you, or go out and get someone like a coach or a mentor. That self-compassion is about choosing to believe that you have the capacity to change and grow, being willing to remind yourself of what matters to you even when you're in that pain point, a feeling like you let yourself down. And having the courage to get back engaged with your goal, even when it would be easier to give up and say, I don't really care, or I'm not dealing with this right now. That's really, and going back, we started off talking a little bit about compassion as a kind of courage.

And you think about why we have compassion as a human instinct. It is it is literally a form of embodied courage so that we will approach someone else's suffering rather than try to protect ourselves and not get involved. We have a compassionate instinct. So when we see suffering, we will be brave and we will act. And that's the definition of self-compassion that I like, that we have these other instincts that can be destructive when we're suffering, when we're feeling bad about a mistake we made, or we're feeling hopeless about change.

And we tend to want to escape those feelings, and we look for the exit route, or that self-compassion is, okay, I am going to find the version of myself who is brave and is going to act in this moment to protect my well-being, and that's how I define it. What does this look like? How would we actually practice self-compassion? Because the case you just made, my view is unimpeachable, how do I do it? It starts by recognizing suffering.

I mean, I would basically use my process model of compassion. So you don't need self-compassion until you are in a moment where maybe you're beating yourself up over some mistake you made or you didn't do what you said you were going to do. So maybe you notice yourself saying, like, what's the point? Or you always do this, you always say you're going to, and then you never do.

It's because you never will. Whatever that inner dialogue is, and it's not always a verbal, right? Sometimes it's a feeling. But you notice that and you bring the same presence of mind that you would bring to someone else's suffering if you wanted to offer compassion, that is you have to immediately not fight it, but take a breath with it and allow yourself to be with it and recognize, okay, this is a moment of suffering. And then the next step of self-compassion is often about trying to get some distance from that over-identification we can have with our own pain where it feels like we're drowning in it.

And a tool that is often recommended is the perspective of common humanity. But over identification we can have with our own pain where it feels like we're drowning in it. And a tool that is often recommended is the perspective of common humanity. So you're beating yourself up saying like, this is, I'm feeling bad about myself right now. This is hard. That you say, I'm not the only one. Like this is part of being human. This is part of the process of change.

And there are countless other people right now who are struggling with this process or this goal or even harder addictions and habits that they are trying to work with. And to take some strength from that, and I often will go a step further and think like maybe in some way, my ability to break this trap I'm in right now of self-criticism or self-doubt or fear, my willingness to try to be brave and strong in this moment could help all of those other people too. And I don't need to know how. That's sort of like the tongue-learn mindset of self-compassion. So I'm going to imagine that my current act of mindfulness and self-compassion is somehow empowering all of us who are in the same boat. And then you ask yourself, so what's the next step I can take? What do I need right now? What can I do that reinforces that I am committed to this, that is a positive action? And often, I think we talk about self-compassion.

You will hear people almost talk about it as that extrinsic reward again. Like an active self-kindness, like take a bubble bath or give yourself a treat. Well, okay, if the bubble bath has something to do with why you're suffering in the first place, but I think it's a more important act of self-compassion. If you do something in that moment, that's consistent with your goal, that you get back on track, whether it's choosing health or repairing a relationship,

I mean, whatever it is, don't think about externally bribing yourself or soothing yourself as the choice of self-kindness. The truly self-kind thing to do is start to make amends in the direction of whatever caused the self-judgment in the first place. Let me make that concrete because the thing I've been working on for a long time is, as you know, because we talk about it in the course of the course, is mindless eating. So just last night, I had an example of that. I was on plan all day.

I did a pretty good job with my eating what I wanted to eat and enjoying it while I was eating it and feeling good. And then I took my son to see a movie and finished his popcorn. And then actually ended up feeling like just ill. What is the move right there? Because that was a moment of suffering. I didn't feel good and I felt bad about myself and I was kind of beating myself up right there. So how would I operationalize

your advice in a moment like that? Yeah. And was this while it was actually happening? Like were you alone or were you in the movie theater feeling uncomfortable in my pants and so you're still with your son, right? Yes. So here's how I'm in it because it's different than if you can't fall asleep at night and you're replaying it in your mind. I actually think it might be a different situation. Fair enough.

But I, so I know from having talked with you about this, but part of your motivation around this is because you want to have, to be more present with your son, right? So the moment of self-compassion here, I think would be to notice, okay, so maybe I ate popcorn in this moment of connecting with my son that I didn't mean to eat, and now I'm feeling uncomfortable in my body. And so you just acknowledge that that happened, and you're having this feeling that you had wanted to avoid.

Whatever that feeling is, the regret or the physical discomfort. And then go to that place, so you've acknowledged it. You go to that place of common humanity. Like, you could even, you're in a movie theater, right? You could be like, I bet half the people in this room right now probably have done something similar. Like, literally in the same boat with me right now.

The first step is noticing, okay, this sucks. This is a bad moment. Second step is. Well, yeah, okay, but that language, I don't even know that you need to go to this sucks. This is a bad moment. Second step is... Well, yeah, okay, but that language, I don't even know that you need to go to this sucks. This is a bad moment. I think one of the things we know from the science of mindfulness is that affect labeling is really effective, that you label how you feel as opposed to judge the whole circumstance of it. So rather than this sucks, this is a bad moment. I am feeling, and then what you're feeling.

Yeah, okay. You know, it- Loaded and guilty. Yeah, okay, but that actually, so what's interesting is that's a more clear label, and even just labeling the physical sensations and the emotion. The research suggests that starts to change how you experience those feelings in your brain

in a way that gives you a little bit of distance from it. Labeling is a great technique, sort of, on the fly, mindfulness, that begins to give you a little bit more space around it. And that can be part of a self-compassion practice. So the next step is that common humanity, and there's so many ways you can do it. But then I think, so self-kindness in that moment, so what's something you can do to get back on track? I mean, one of the reasons that you're interested in working with mindless eating is to be less consumed by self-criticism so that you can be more present with your son.

So it's anything you could do in that moment, like to look at him and think, wow, I love you. I mean, I think there's so many things you could do in that moment that would reflect your goal and motivation and also change something about the moment that allows you to move beyond the self-recrimination. That's one way it could look. For somebody else that doesn't have that backstory, maybe it's about looking at the carton of popcorn

and thinking about that you are grateful that you are able to nourish your body and that you are also grateful that you have the freedom to not put things into your body that you don't want and mindfully throw it out when you leave the movie theater. I don't always know what the act of self-kindness is going to be, but it's that thing where you choose to bring something into that moment that feels like the opposite of both the self-judgment and also whatever that suffering is. So I think of, you know, maybe gratitude as an antidote to guilt or empowering yourself

to take a positive action, like mindfully throwing out the bucket and just thinking, I'm going to remember this moment. I'm going to set the intention to remember this the next time. I actually think I did kind of the first thing you recommended, which was, you know, I was watching my son enjoy the movie who's kind of dancing around to the music. I think he was bothering the dude sitting in front of us,

but anyway, whatever. I was really enjoying watching my son dance around. I like watching him dance and he was, you know, he would talk to me during the movie. So I did do all of those things, so I'm kind of familiar with the, we've had Kristen Neff on the show, so I'm kind of familiar with these steps around self-compassion and I've been trying to do it. What I do find is that it's a kind of rinse and repeat situation because the remorse or self-laceration comes back and I just do it again.

Okay, and so let me, I'm going to give you a perspective that maybe you're not going to particularly enjoy, but here's my perspective on things like this. I don't know that the mindless eating that you engaged in last night is really having a big effect on your wellbeing and your ability to contribute to the world. So sometimes I think self-criticism actually latches on to things

that don't actually matter that much. And sometimes the habit you need to train is to let go of something you've been trying to control that actually is not as big of a deal as we have sort of clung to this belief. You know, sometimes I think the self-critic likes to find things that it believes are going to be really difficult to change, not the things that are really important to change. I don't know. I guess I understand why you would think I wouldn't like that perspective. I actually love that perspective.

And you say... The inner critic doesn't like that perspective is what I should probably should have said. Fair enough. In the course of making the course, you actually, what there was a moment where you said, maybe the habit you need to change isn't mindless eating but self-criticism. Yeah. Which I think is very profound, it hits me as a quite a profound insight. And by the way, part of you're one of your many,, sort of not to use a superficial term, but like kind of talking points or insights around

habit changes, sometimes you're working on the wrong habit. And this may be a case where I'm working on the wrong habit. And so- I'm pretty like if the inner critic chose the habit, like I don't know that I would trust that decision. Like if the person who's gonna be put in charge of the habit change is the inner critic, you've probably got the wrong habit. And if what I truly care about is my relationships, first and foremost, my relationships with my

wife and child, then that, and I'm making decisions about how to have a change based again in this deep dive into my own priorities then mindless eating probably isn't going to make the cut at least not before definitely not before self criticism which of course obscures my visibility in many ways and this is the and one of the reasons why i was so sort of cautious in in talking with you about this yesterday is because i can't know. I don't actually know. I mean there could be a Circus yesterday we were Oh, sorry, I get so like it could be the case, you know, you could be one of them the many many people who struggle with serious A serious eating disorder. I don't I don't know that so when someone says they want work on on mindless eating

That can be a tremendous source of suffering in your life. Mindless eating could be a really important habit to work with. And I was just, you know, in talking with you, I'm trying to figure out like, why? Why make this the focus? And it's the thing I hope people will investigate for themselves. Because there are a lot of things we're told we should control that, frankly, at the end of the day, it's a waste of time to try to control them. They aren't the thing that's really determining

whether you are happy in life and whether you are doing what you're here for. Right, and one of the things you said to me is, all right, well, if you're uncomfortable with your pants, maybe rather than work on mindless eating or exercise to a point where you're just taking up too much of your time or whatever, maybe just get new pants.

Yeah. Which, amen. Two last questions. One, is there anything I should have asked but didn't? Hmm. Hmm, I mean, no. That's always a great question, but I don't have anything in mind to offer. Two, some people are uncomfortable with this, so I'm going to make you do it anyway,

which is, you just need you to be as self-promotional as possible. Can you plug the new book? Can you tell us where you've got a TED Talk with 20 million more views? Give us a, if we want to do a deep dive on your past books, give us everything, please. Well, the new book, which I love so much, is called The Joy of Movement, how exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage. Previous books include the willpower instinct and the upside of stress. If you are not one of those people who has seen the TED Talk,

it's just go to TED.com and it's called How to Make Stress Your Friend. And then I was telling you yesterday, the little known fact is I was practicing tongue-lion right before the talk. and I have always thought that one of the reasons it's been so viewed I'm not sure the talk is actually that good but I feel like maybe people can tell that I was doing tongue-glenn and that's somehow that elevated the talk and yeah you can find me on my website at KelliMegonigle.com and all of the social media channels under my name. You're a star. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. me on my website at KelliMegonigle.com and all of the social media channels under my name.

Your restore. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Big thanks to Kelli for that. As a reminder, be sure to check out the new Healthy Habits course with Kelli that is up on the 10% happier app right now. It launched today. You can head over to 10% dot com slash habits to learn more about that.

You can try the full course with our seven day full trial. And yeah, I'm really proud of it. It's what I think one of the best things we've done. All right, time for the voicemails. We're doing something special this week and for a couple of weeks, we've recruited a ringer, a person that you've heard me, I think talk about it on the show before,

her name is Ray Hausman. She's the head of the coaching team at 10% happier. The coaches are a feature of the app that we're really proud of. We have these really deeply committed and experienced meditators who are on call to answer your questions. If not in real time, then in a short period of time. And Ray is, as I said, the boss of that group. She is not only an experienced meditation teacher,

she's what's called a somatic experiencing therapist, and also just, I have to say, I don't personally know the high quality human being who's very, very funny and very, very smart. So she's gonna answer your voice mail, so here we go. Hi, Dan, my name is Julie, and my husband and I both read your first book. I am currently using the meditation app that you just put out.

And I haven't read your second, but 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.

Thanks for the question. It's great to hear that you're using the app, and thanks for sharing about the experience you're having when you try to focus on the breath. It's not uncommon to have a difficult time breathing when practicing with a focus on the breath. I will note that this is often the result of trying too hard to concentrate. Sometimes people are able to move through this if they're able to relax the attention and just let the sensations of the breath be known.

And there are certainly other practices that are equally good to take up in place of a breath-focused practice. What I recommend for folks who, for various reasons, have a difficult time using the breath as a primary focus is to shift the practice to either sound or overall body sensations. When you work with sound as your primary focus, you simply direct the attention to the ambient sounds in your environment. There's no need to try and hear anything or to identify what it is you're hearing. Just allow the sounds that arise in your environment to be known.

And if you're using the noting practice as a support, I suggest using the note, hearing, hearing. And if you work with the sensations of the body as the primary focus of your practice, you will allow the awareness to rest on the experience of what the body sensations are as you are sitting. You can use a body scan practice to support a focus on the sensations of the body. You would scan the body, feeling the sensations while moving the attention through the body from the head to toe or toe to head. We have practices on the app that support both of these styles

of practice. You can find them by using the search function at the bottom of the singles tab using the search terms sound or body scan. With either of these two options the practice would be the same as it is when you use the breath as the primary focus. Every time you notice that the mind has gotten caught in thought, gently bring the attention back to either sounds or the body sensations. I hope this is helpful. Thanks again for your question. Alright, thanks to Ray for that.

That's Voice Maln number one. Let's do number two. You'll hear the voice mail followed by Ray's response. That's VoiceMail number one. Let's do number two. You'll hear the VoiceMail followed by Ray's response. Hey Dan, my name's Vince. Thanks for everything you're doing, obviously. I've been meditating on and off for like a couple years. I would say more daily for the last year, almost to the day. And I'm noticing that when I'm in a period of what you

might call it depression or just an overall low point in life. Sometimes you last, for me, I call it depression. I last, you know, months and months at a time. When I'm meditating in that more depressed state, a part of me feels like it's so desperately trying to self-sabotage even my own meditation practice. And what I mean by that is like, when I'm meditating, I notice that I kind of sink into two different places, which are either part of me internally is just screaming at myself to stop meditating.

As soon as I'm sitting there for, you know, five minutes, my body is like so stressed about sitting there meditating and I'm trying to watch that stress pass and I'm trying to, you know, I am awareness, I'm the sky, let the anger and all that go, but sometimes it feels so overwhelming that it literally feels like I'm going to burst a blood vessel. Like I feel like I have to almost cancel my muscles to let it pass and even then it just keeps coming back. Or the second mood is that just my brain space is so cloudy and my meditation becomes so dreamy that it ultimately feels like unfruitful.

Like I'm not sure if I'm falling asleep or dreaming or what. Long winded, but basically when I'm depressed, these meditations that I'm in seem to be a lot less fruitful. I'm wondering if this is something you've encountered or if this seems common or if that even made any sense at all. Anyway, thanks so much again for everything you guys are doing.

I know ultimately the answer is probably to just keep meditating through it, what's going on with me right now. I get it. I get it. Meditate through it. It seems to be the idea, but again, I would love to hear if you have any insight on that. Thank you. Thanks for this message.

I so appreciate your interest in learning to practice skillfully with depressive mind states. We do want to be cautious about how we interpret the phrase, practice through it. When we practice, we aren't sitting down to check a box or log time, and we aren't trying to get somewhere else, not even to a different mind state. We are interested in meeting our experience just as it is, arising in the moment, and we want to do that as skillfully as we are able. When a depressive state is arising and you're aiming to practice with it, you can check to see if there's curiosity in the mind about the state itself.

Is there interest in investigating the state? If there is interest, then you can explore, increase like, what does the body feel like when there is a depressive state in the mind? What are the sensations in the body? What is the mind state itself like? Or what is the quality of a depressive state feel like? Perhaps the mind is more narrow or dull. What thoughts or beliefs may be happening that support the depressive state? The idea here, if the mind can be curious about the state, is to explore the state with awareness and openness,

without taking it personally and without reinforcing it. This is also true if the state feels dull or sleepy. When we bring interest to our mind states and know them as they are, we can gradually learn about them. And if the mind is not curious or does not have interest in exploring the state, that's okay. We want to respect that and not try and push through it. In times when there is no curiosity arising, we want to move toward practices that can help bring more ease to the experience.

You may find walking meditation practice to be supportive in a time like this. Directing the attention out toward your present moment external environment and allowing the mind to simply be aware as you are walking of both the environment and the sensations of the body moving can bring some ease to the mind and uplift the heart. It can also be really supportive to work with a therapist or counselor when navigating depressive states. I encourage you to get all the support you may need. Thanks again for your question. Really appreciate it. Big thanks to Ray for diving in. It's great to have her answering the questions this week and she'll be back for more very soon. In fact, we've got a big month coming up as we launch into

2020 here. We're going to be tackling sleep with a huge episode on sleep, a big episode on healthy attitudes around eating. We're calling it the anti-diet episode. And then also we're going to dive into how to boot up your meditation habit. That's obviously a huge issue at this time of year. So come on back, we'll see you next Wednesday, and also just a little plug. If you like what we do, share us on social media or just share an individual episode with a friend. That's a great way to help us grow. For our go, I just want to thank everybody who works so hard on the show, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, Lauren Hartzog, Tiffany O'Mehundro, thanks to all you guys. Also, Josh Kohan has helped us back, working with us for a little while.

See you next week. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery 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. Survey at Wondery.com-survey.