Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 309: The Ultimate New Year's Resolution | Susan Piver and Jeff Warren

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

New Year’s Series Episode 1. We talk with expert meditation teachers Susan Piver and Jeff Warren about a radical approach to the new year: self-compassion. Susan and Jeff help introduce the New Year’s Meditation Challenge launching in the Ten Percent Happier app. And we respond to listener voicemail questions about how to operationalize self-love in our everyday lives. That’s right, we’re going all-in on self-love: leaning into the cheese, diving into the fondue, surfing the brie (a phrase that you’ll hear one of our guests today coin in real time). But I want to be clear: this is not sap for the sake of sap -- this is sap for the sake of science, and sanity.  As tens of millions of us go about the annual, humiliating ritual of making and then abandoning New Year’s resolutions, there is ample evidence that you are more likely to achieve your long-term goals if you pursue those goals not out of self-loathing or shame (which is the not-so-subtle subtext of the whole ‘New Year, New You’ slogan) but instead with self-love -- or self-compassion. So we have a whole bonanza of programming for you. First, our New Year’s Series starts today here on the podcast. Over the next few weeks, we’ve got a blockbuster lineup, including scientists, meditation teachers, and Karamo, star of the hit Netflix show Queer Eye and a vocal proponent of self-love.    How to join the New Year’s Challenge: ·        Download the Ten Percent Happier app directly in the Apple App Store (for iPhone/iPad): http://apple.co/1V7sqo9 or the Google Play store (for Android phones): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.changecollective.tenpercenthappier  ·        If you are new to Ten Percent Happier, tap Get Started to register an account. (If you already have an account you’ll need to tap Sign In at the bottom of the screen.) ·        You should be prompted to Join the Challenge after registering your account. Just tap on the Join Challenge button and follow the prompts.  ·        If you don’t join the Challenge during registration, within the app tap the Join Challenge banner at the bottom of the screen and follow the prompts.  ·        If you don’t see Join Challenge in the app you can also join on a mobile device by tapping this link: https://10percenthappier.app.link/NewYearsChallenge21 Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/newyear-challenge-kickoff-309 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. Hey y'all is your girl Hi, Dan. This is Diane from Portland. My question is, what do you mean by self-love? My therapist asked me, what would you say to your son if he told you that he was going through what you are? I would tell him that I support him unconditionally. After a beat, my therapist asked me, now why wouldn't you talk to your inner self that way? Walking around every day, thinking you need to fix yourself.

Pretty damn exhausting. Goodbye 2020, and here's the bigger and brighter things in 2021. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, I know New Year's is still a few days away, but we're not waiting. Starting today, we're kicking off a multi week New Year's bananza. And we have a very specific theme.

We're going to be hammering home in our programming. Self love. That's right. We're going to be hammering home in our programming. Self-love, that's right. We're leaning into the cheese. We're diving into the fondue. We're surfing the breeze. That's a phrase that you're going to hear one of our guests today, coin in real time, and I'm stealing it right now. I want to be clear, this is not sap for the sake of sap.

This is sap for the sake of science and sanity. As tens of millions of us go about the annual humiliating ritual of making and then abandoning New Year's resolutions, there is ample evidence that you are much more likely to achieve your long-term goals if you pursue those goals not out of self-loathing or shame, which is the not-so-subtext of the whole New Year, New Year thing, but instead with self-love or self-loathing or shame, which is the not-so-subtext of the whole new year, new you thing, but instead with self-love or self-compassion. So, like I said, we've got a whole bananza of programming coming up for you. First, our New Year series, which starts today right here on the podcast over the next few weeks. We've got a blockbuster lineup, including scientists, meditation teachers, and even Carambo from the hit Netflix show Queer Eye. He's a vocal proponent of this whole self-love thing.

Second, we're gonna be running a free New Year's meditation challenge built around this same theme on the 10% happier app. The idea here is that you can take all of the nuggets of wisdom you'll get on the show and gently pound them into your neurons while you actually meditate. Over the course of 21 days, starting on Monday, January 4th, our teachers will guide you

through a series of simple, easy meditations that both demonstrate the benefits of self-love and self-compassion and show you how to actually do it, how to go beyond the cliche and make it part of your life. Here's how the New Year's meditation challenge works. Your goal will be to meditate at least 15 out of 21 days, so daily-ish. Every day you'll get a short video from me, often in conversation with one of our teachers, followed by a guided meditation about 10 minutes long. We've carefully curated these meditations and we're including a lot of brand new ones that will premiere in the challenge.

If you miss a few days, no problem, don't worry, there's enough overlap here that you can pick it back up and continue to make progress. You can also, for the record, choose any meditation in the app and you'll still get credit in the challenge. Your home base for checking in on your progress will be the 10% happier app. And since we know some of you like gold stars and appreciate extra motivation,

there will be bonus levels if you average more than five minutes and more than 10 minutes a day. You can also invite your family and friends and do the challenge side by side, keeping one another accountable. If you're a long time listener, this meditation challenge is a great opportunity to learn directly from the expert teachers you know and love as guests on this podcast. The teachers this year are Susan Pivert, Twerry Salah, and Jeff Warren. And if you've never meditated before, this challenge is specifically designed to help you learn how to meditate. So everybody's welcome here.

You can join the challenge by downloading the 10% happier app right now, wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% all one word spelled out. By the way, in case I haven't said this, it's all free. If you already have the app, just open it and follow the instructions to join. For our less tech savvy listeners, we've included detailed instructions about how to download the app and sign up in the show notes. So go check those out. All right, so to kick things off today, I'm going to talk to two of the teachers who will be featured in the challenge, Jeff Warren and Susan Piver. A few weeks ago, you may remember this, we solicited listener questions, listener voice mails on the subject of self-love. And in this episode, we play those voicemails for Jeff and Susan

and they give some fascinating answers. It's basically a huge meditation nerd fest. By way of background, in case you're unfamiliar with these characters, Jeff is a meditation teacher based in Toronto, Canada and a regular teacher on the 10% happier app. He and I wrote a book together a couple of years ago called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics.

And Susan Piver is a meditation teacher based in the summer of Il Massachusetts and is the author of nine New York Times bestselling books. Okay, so here we go with Susan and Jeff. Susan Piver and Jeff Warren to TPH Stahlwarts. Thank you very much for doing this. So glad to be here. Very happy to be here.ahlwarts. Thank you very much for doing this. So glad to be here. Very happy to be here.

I think you guys know how we're going to do this. We solicited voicemails from listeners to this show. And we asked people to submit questions about the rather squishy subjects of self-love and self-compassion. So we're going to play the questions we got. And we're also going to play some clips from the New Year's meditation challenge

that both of you guys participated in. And in between the playing of the aforementioned clips, we'll chitchat and reflect and gossip and whatever else we feel like doing. So without further ado, let's play the first batch of voice mails we got and then we'll talk on the back end. Hi there. Thank you so much for doing this. I think it's a great idea. You're right on. Sometimes self-love feels like a platitude that I have no idea what that means. I don't know what it feels like. I don't know what it looks like. And while I understand love towards others,

love towards concepts, spiritual love, self-love is the one I just don't have a handle on it. What is it? And how do we know where they are? And how do we cultivate it? Hey guys, thank you so much for doing the podcast. I found it a little bit ago and it's wonderful. It's just wonderful. So I have a question, is there a difference between self-love and self-acceptance. My query would be defining self-esteem versus self-love. Are they related? Is that different? Because I think of myself as having a good a bit of self-esteem. But I don't know about the self-love.

Much a low-huh, thanks. A low-huh back to you. Susan, let's start with you. It sounds like there is, and I think this is legitimate. There's some confusion about what self-love is. Yeah, these are such good questions. The first voicemail said something really interesting, I have no idea what that means. I don't know what it feels like. I don't know what it looks like. And I think that is actually the perfect place to start, because if you're like, okay, self-love, I get what that is, I'm going to aim for it, I'm going to try to accomplish it, I'm going

to try to feel it. Oh, now I'm judging myself or feeling it and not feeling it, then you're already sort of out of the ballpark of self-love as I understand it, which means rather than trying to like yourself or think that you are awesome in all cases, self love means something more like being with yourself as you are in each moment. When you like yourself, when you don't like yourself, when you're confused about self love and when you're clear about it. So a good place to start is to sort of ask yourself, what would you do with a friend

who was struggling with how they felt about themselves, how they felt about their lives? You wouldn't shout at them, you wouldn't tell them, you need to feel differently, you would just sort of listen and be with them. And that's what is meant by self-love here. It's not, again, self-like or I'm awesome or I feel accomplished or successful. Sure you feel those things sometimes, but other times you don't. And the indication of self-love is,

how quickly can you turn toward what you feel, rather than trying to strong arm yourself into feeling something that you think you ought to feel? So that's also really a great, I would say, consequence of meditation practice. The second person said, is there a difference between self-love and self-acceptance? And I would say, no, there is no difference. And the key to both is allowing, allowing yourself to be exactly as you are.

And sometimes that feels marvelous. And sometimes it feels excruciating and sometimes it's boring and sometimes it's beautiful. And to allow your inner experience to be what it is with a sense of companionship is so much gentler and more empowering than constantly tinkering with yourself to be this or that. And that is very workable. That is very tender and easier in a sense than I suck.

Uh-oh, now what? I've definitely had the I suck, but we can get into that later. Jeff, let me get over to you for a second. Because I suspect that people get hung up on the word love. Love has been ruined in many ways as a word by Hollywood and pop songs, and as soon as that word escapes your lips or enters your mind, you're envisioning something grandiose.

It might be useful to define love down to something just a scosh north of neutral. Yeah, I mean, that's why I think the self-acceptance is really the ground of love. You know, it's the ground of just saying, it's very sane. This is what's here. This is who I am. I'm going to accept the full messy contour, the full catastrophe, you could say. So there's this very generous decision to hold all of that as something that's already here. It's very loving. And there can be a kind of neutrality in that.

But then there's to me a kind of more active sparkly piece, which may or may not be there, but this is this thing of like, can you begin to actually treat yourself as someone who is beautiful, whose various characteristics are the right characteristics? And so there's a kind of sparkliness that can be there as well, but it doesn't have to go there.

I'm speaking from my experience where I did a lot of straight-up insight practice into seeing patterns and accepting who I was, but there was this, there was still a kind of levelness in there, almost a kind of grimness in there, and what I didn't see was any kindness to myself, even in the accepting. So I had to like learn to begin to treat myself exactly like Susan said as the way I would treat a friend with just a little more kindness. And that just opened everything up. That became a kind of path, a more human path. There's more of a way into my own humanity. Does that make sense?

It makes complete sense and it absolutely tracks with my own experience where I was being quote unquote nonjudgmentally aware, mindful of all of the junk that's coming up in my mind, but there was a coldness, a clinical journalistic stance there that I think concealed no small amount of a version. And when I turned on the warmth, which at first felt really contrived. And I had to practice it through meditation. It really changed things a lot. How does one turn the warmth on towards your own patterns, et cetera, et cetera?

And what's the difference between having some warmth or caring towards your own suffering and ugliness, and et cetera, et cetera? What's the difference between that and like self-esteem, staring in the mirror and telling yourself how awesome you are? Well, I think it's what Susan said, which is that self-esteem is a kind of evaluation. It's like, this is the way I am,

and I like these things about who I am. Self-compassion doesn't really care about who you are. You can be anyway. However you are is still worthy of care. However you are is still just of care. However you are is still just exactly like the way in which whoever your friend is, whatever qualities they may have, if you see them having a hard time, you're going to be like, you're going to show concern. So in a way, the self-compassion is like, it's like leveling the playing field of care. You're no longer making a

special, spiteful exception for yourself as someone you don't show it to. You treat yourself exactly the way you would treat anybody else. And so how you do that, you know, how you do that is, first of all, don't make it into this thing. Again, what Susan said, it's, it's this very common sense response at first. It's just noticing that you're having a hard time. You may not have noticed. I mean, that's been the work for me is less the work around generating some special Compassion thing. It's been more of the work around noticing when I'm having a hard time in the first place Which can be super subtle and I'm in some story about Having a hard time and then I'm either just trying to ignore that or I'm even worse

I'm berating myself around the fact that I'm having a hard time. So self-compassion is on the fact that I'm having a hard time. So self-compassion is noticing that and breaking that cycle. Instead of continuing in this tighter loop of judgment, it's suddenly you're moving into this open space of more caring response. It's just much more pleasurable to be in that space. Let's dive more deeply now into how we can use meditation

to get us into that space. As Jeff just said, I want to tee up another clip here. The clip I'm about to play is not from voicemails, from listeners. This instead is a clip from the meditation challenge we're about to launch the New Year's meditation challenge. And this is a slice of a conversation between me and Susan This is a slice of a conversation between me and Susan about how to link self-compassion and meditation. Take a listen. As you know, the theme of the challenge really is how we can create a better relationship

with ourselves, not kick our own butt as much. How does meditation help with that? Yeah. It helps better than anything I have ever discovered because it sort of turns on its head, the normal idea that to work on ourselves, we have to find what's wrong and then apply a lot of self-aggression

to change it into something else. And meditation actually says the opposite. It doesn't start from the assumption that there's something wrong with you that you need to fix. But in meditation, the assumption is there's nothing wrong with you. And if you relax, you will see that who you are is already completely whole and worthy. So it dispenses with the self-aggression that so many of us turn to when a new year arrives. Like, this is what I want to change and this is what I want to fix.

And, excellent change in fix, all the things. But meditation, rather than fueling that effort, I would say, supports you to see what you can truly be confident right now in yourself, including all your brilliance and all your difficulties. Just to be clear here, one of the ways in which meditation can do this is over and over, you're confronted with the humiliating,

racing nature of your own mind, and over and over, you say, that's cool, and you start again and again and again, and that really can change the way you are with yourself. Well said, Harris, what a cheese. That's who sounds like a do-it-all. There's so much to unpack there, I before we do that, though, I just want to say, for those of you who are contemplating signing up for the meditation challenge, and I hope that's everybody, the way it works is every day you get a clip,

a video clip, a short one with me talking to Susan or Jeff or Tawari Salah, who's another great meditation teacher. We also have a couple of clips that we're using from Karamo who is one of the stars of that great show and Netflix, the reboot of Queer Eye. He's a very, very interesting guy. He was worked as a social worker and is really interested in issues around self-love.

So he'll be featured in a couple of the video clips. And so each day for the 21 days of the challenge, you get a little bit of video, and then it slides directly into an audio guided meditation. So that's how it works. But let's get back to the subject at hand here, which is how to use meditation to develop this self-love or self-compassion or self-acceptance that we're talking about here.

Susan, you said something there that I got a little stuck on, not in a critical way, but in a maybe in a self-critical way. You said, and I'm quoting here, if you relax, you'll see that who you are is already completely whole and worthy. And maybe I've been meditating incorrectly for the last 11 years, but I don't know that I've ever had that insight. Where's the disconnect here? So you had the insight that you hadn't had that insight,

which I know sounds kind of circular. The insight itself is evidence in this view anyway of your worthiness, wholeness, another word for which is wakefulness. So your ability to see who you are and how that shifts from moment to moment is called worthiness and wholeness. And it's basically how we were born. We were not born with preferences beyond, you know, I'd like to be warm and loved and so forth. But we didn't have a lot of opinions about ourselves. And so I'm not suggesting we should go back to being big babies

or little babies or any kind of babies. But just this idea that you have a mind that works in a heart that is open and a capacity to see, that's the evidence. So I think what you're saying is just noticing that you have this capacity to see your mind with some clarity. Is the wholeness? Yes. Really? Because I was just kind of guessing. Really, really sweet guess. You know, it's it I investigate this myself all the time. Like, do I really think this? Do I really believe this? Or am I just like parroting something that

someone else told me? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But the more I try to look for, well, actually, am I okay? Am I an okay person? Am I worthy? Am I good? Am I decent? Am I whole and all that?

I can come up with reasons all day long, where I am not. It doesn't seem useful in any way. But when I notice that I am responsive, I am receptive, I am open, I get a little closer to what I think it means. So we're born into a world that says, you're not okay. Whether it's a religious background or a cultural background or watching too many ads on TV, the message that we get all the time is not okay.

Actually you need to purchase something or believe something to make yourself okay. And it just amplifies a sense of lack. What if I thought I am okay? And all of my doubts were a sign of confusion. Could I at least equally claim that? And the answer is yes. Jeff, I heard you sort of agree, I think. Did you have something that you were thinking right now?

Oh, yeah. And I'm just loving what you're saying. And I just would, I mean, I think what we're talking about is what practice is all about. It's about leading us into a perspective in our life where things are okay in a sense independent of conditions. I love listening to you guys, talk. I've made the joke before on the show

that I have this magical ability to channel the desires of the audience and articulate them on the show. I have this sense that there may be people in the audience who very much right back to that first voice mail articulate them on the show. I have this sense that there may be people in the audience who very much right back to that first voicemail really want to know on a very, very, very basic and very, very granular level.

How do I use meditation to cultivate this unicorn of self-love that we're conjuring here? So So Jeff, let me just go to you with that. What if I want to sit down and meditate and start to turn on the warmth to get into that zone of just a little bit north of neutral, what are what's the basic blocking and tackling there? Right. So basically meditation is the train a sitting practice is the training ground. It's this deliberately very simple medium in which you can sit and get relatively quiet and begin to notice what's going on under the surface. The insights you generate there, you can then bring it into the world.

You get better and better at doing that on the fly out in the world. So your first job just from a straight up practical point of view, is to begin to develop a clarity of knowing when you're having a hard time. That sounds very trivial. A lot of us think we know when that is, and sometimes it is very obvious. There's a dramatic thing that we're wrestling with. But what I've found, in addition to that, there are more subtle ways in which we're in a story that's causing ourselves suffering, and we don't even realize we're doing it. So we're in a story, for example, to use the theme of the show about how I need to fix myself,

how I am isn't really all that great. You know, I kind of don't like how I am. I need to be better, I need to be like this. So in the middle of that, there's this little knife going, kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk you have for yourself. Or maybe another one is, I'm worried about the future. I mean, it's like this low level worry. I don't know quite how things are going to go, but there's this sort of panic, hyper-vigilance going on under the surface where I'm having a hard time, and it's just kind of, it's just, you know, it's sort of in flavoring everything else.

Or whatever it is, you start to go in and start to see that there's this little layer of hurt And what happens normally is we just go on with that we either try to ignore that or we try or we have a judgment around that So what's like we're feeding that layer of hurt it just keeps going around We're stuck in this particular loop. So the meditation is just first noticing there's that little layer of hurt there That's going on and then choosing this different response this choosing to just Be concerned about that again. You're not choosing to turn on the like fireworks of like Super love where you're gonna just squeeze yourself in massage oil and have some kind of party This is all this is just saying is oh wait actually

I'm hurting right now just like my friend would be hurting this slight moment of concern of turning towards. And then, and then from that place of beginning to just of making a decision to practice what caring looks like for you, caring me, just look in that moment like repeating a phrase like, oh, well, I dude, you're having a hard time. I hope you feel a little bit better. That looks hard. Or whatever it is, a phrase that begins to kind of shift the tone of that inner world.

Or it may be a different strategy. You kind of learn what your self care things are. It might be that, oh, and I'm in this place. You know what I can do for myself? That's quite caring. I could go for a good walk in nature. Or actually, I'm just gonna lay out my back and I'm gonna stretch my hamstrings.

Or I'm gonna watch the Queen's Gambit again. You know, whatever it is, it's like if you were seeing a friend who had a hard time and you'd be like, yo, I see you're having a hard time. Hey look, come on, let's go for a walk or less. You would just, you might engage in some activity that helps them kind of shift tracks a little bit. So, I mean, to me, that's what it looks like. It looks like noticing when I'm having a hard time and just turning towards and going, oh, that looks hard. And to me, that's what it looks like. It looks like noticing when I'm having a hard time and just turning towards and going, oh, that looks hard. And right away, that just creates a little bit of space.

Yeah, the turning towards is key. Absolutely key. And to break that down to its most foundational qualities, that's what we're doing in meditation. We're turning toward by working with our attention and what it is resting on. So that's not just a device to make yourself into a better anything. That capacity to work with attention and make choices about where it is directed is super important in what Jeff is suggesting, because if you can't work with attention, if you get overrun as we all certainly do,

from time to time, by the inner condition, and you don't have any agency over where attention is going, then everything just becomes much more difficult. One of my favorite things that any human being ever said was said by the poet and Zen teacher John Tarant, Roshi, who said, attention is the most basic form of love. Through it we bless and are blessed. So as you know, and as people who are maybe beginning meditation will know, we work with

attention in meditation, not thoughts, not change this into that, but let me place my attention on my breath, for example. And that's a very simple thing to do. And then, of course, your attention skitters away and you come back, or you notice your thinking, then you let go. So there's something about shining the light of awareness on the notion that you are thinking. Oh, I see that I'm thinking. That actually seems to self liberate the thought, meaning you can let go. It dissolves. There's something so potent about knowing where to turn your awareness. In the effort to achieve self-love and friendship toward yourself.

So I just will say again, because I think it's so powerful, attention is the most basic form of love. So it's not a mechanism. It's a gesture of love. Yeah, I mean, attention liberates. When you turn to anything with clarity and equanimity, it's like whatever it lands on, it sort of shaves the suffering out of it. It doesn't eliminate, the pattern, it doesn't eliminate who you are. What it shaves out or eliminates, you could say, is what was fixated in it, what was driven. So it has this liberating quality that, I mean, I see this again and again in my practice,

I'm amazed at it. You know, you find you're in some pattern of obsessive thinking or feeling and you turn this caring attention, this generous attention towards it, and then you just stay with it, accepting it. And if you can't accept it, whatever it is you're feeling, you can accept that. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to reject anything, I find that very... You can always back up to a broader perspective. There's just back up again.

Whatever problem you're in, it's like, oh, but then you see that and back up again. It's like this continual recursive backing, backing up. Seriously. And just to say, though, because I, you know, I have much less on the cushion time than either review, but I based on what I've experienced thus far, I agree with everything you've just said and to bring back the point you made earlier, Jeff, that for some of us, myself included in it, sounds like for you. And I suspect for many people listening, the attention alone is not enough, or you're

not doing the, you're not actually, I use this language gingerly, but you're not actually doing the attention right. In other words, there's a certain aversion baked into what you think is your non-judgmental awareness. Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. And that's where the extra steps that you listed before can be very helpful, like the saying a kind phrase to yourself, et cetera, et cetera, which I, it feels there, for me at least,

feels really contrived, and I didn't want to do it. I still don't want to do it. And when I surrender to the cheese, it's, you know, when I dive into the fondue, it is much better. Let me give you an example. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but that probably means it's worth admitting. We taped an interview that's going to post in a couple of days. It's going to be part two of this series with a scientist from Harvard named Chris Germer, who's phenomenal, and he is one of the leading experts in self-compassion. He made mention of how occasionally he'll be feeling some pain, either in meditation or just in, you know, free range, living, and he'll actually put his hand on the place in his body where the pain is showing up, you know, that some emotional pain has physiological ramifications.

So maybe you're feeling, you know, like somebody spilled a hot cup of coffee on your solar plexus or whatever. You put your hand there, he was saying, and say something, you know, corny to yourself, like, you know, oh, sweetie, it'll be fine. I can't bring myself there, but I was, I've been feeling anxious about something certain, super not interesting for the last couple of days. And yesterday I was meditating and I noticed

that I felt really anxious and this kind of like dull thing in the center of my torso. And I put my hand there really reluctantly and with a lot of anger toward Chris for forcing me to do this and said, like, it's cool dude, like, you'll be fine. I got you or this just sucks. You know, like, let's just acknowledge that.

And the whole system calmed it down. I hate admitting this, but it actually worked. Because Dan, you're a mammal, dude. Acceptance is cosmic. You know, active love and care is mammalian. It's animal. It's the body wants the touch. It wants the care.

It's this most natural response. So it's just, it's like, add that extra little gravy. You know, and so you have to just surf that wave of breath. I'm, man, you need to surf that wave of breathe with your pirate shirt and your hair flowing back. And you just to ride that mammalian love wave of cheese to just really mix the metaphors there. I love in that visual. I got to say. All right, let me change the subject just slightly and ask you

a tactical question about challenges, Susan. You know, we're doing this meditation challenge and we're playing some clips here from the meditation challenge along with voicemails. And I just wonder if you have any thoughts, Susan, about signing up for a 21-day challenge. Is that, can that be helpful to people and if so, how? Yes, it's extremely helpful. In fact, it's absurdly helpful. And I know I'm not alone in this, but I have trouble being consistent in my meditation practice. And if it is a meditator for, it's like 1993, it's like a seriously long time.

But I still struggle with, how do I, I don't feel like doing it. Oh, I better do it. That kind of thing. And PS, I've noticed that 99% of people I've ever spoken to about meditation, which now is quite a few, they also struggle with consistency. And they think there's something wrong with them. And at one point, I just remember realizing, wait a minute,

I'm not a mathematician, but it's mathematically impossible for 99% of human beings who want to meditate to lack the self-discipline to do so. That just doesn't make any sense. There must be something else. And so I thought about it a lot. And I think just to say to yourself, okay, you know, you should meditate.

People say it's good for you. You know you ought to do it. Okay, you young man, young lady, you sit down there and you do it and you don't get up for 10 minutes. Well, that has some some utility, but that doesn't really help. It's not going to make it stick. You need like two other things and the challenge supplies those two other things. So you need to know how to practice. Okay, that's number one. The challenge will teach you that. You need to have some way of considering what happens to you as you practice. Not from a therapeutic point of view, but just to reflect on what is changing? Something, nothing. So you hear conversations with people in the challenge and

and you ask yourself questions and you have different experiences and meditations. So you start to develop a relationship with a path that starts to unfold for you. And it's very particular to you. That's the second. And the third, and this is so weird because I'm like, wait, that can't be right. This is a solitary practice.

Why do I need a community to make it sustainable? But from my observations, that is the linchpin. To know you're practicing with others as part of a community, whether you ever talk to them or ever see them or not, it doesn't matter. But to know that you're doing this together seems to create a strong foundation. So it's important to know how to meditate. It's important to contemplate or consider what happens as a result. And it's important to be part of a group, whether it's temporary or not, it doesn't matter. But to know that you sit with others, those

three make a practice sustainable. And the challenge provides all three, and all you have to do is sort of just click on something. So yes, in other words, that's a long-winded way of saying, hell yeah, I think is extremely useful. Beautiful. I said. Yeah, I like the way you're framing it there, Susan, because, and again, I don't want to be too salesy about this. It's totally fine if you don't sign up for the challenge, but I do think it's a kind

of the way you describe it, an act of self love, an act of self compassion, because you're helping yourself boot up a practice that's really beneficial. Getting back to the self love angle here, many of us have blocks here, variety of blocks. And so there's actually this clip I want to play now

that is from the challenge where Jeff and I, this is one of the challenge videos we're gonna play you an excerpt from, where Jeff and I talk about some of the blocks to self love, so here it is. Something I've noticed that is a little bit annoying is that all the cliches tend to be true. I mean, there's a reason why they became cliches.

So I'm gonna give you a lesser known cliché today that is very true, which is that all the cliches tend to be true. I mean, there's a reason why they became cliches. So I'm gonna give you a lesser known cliché today that is very true, which is that comparison is the thief of joy. Really, if you walk around comparing yourself to other people, it's gonna make you miserable. And it's particularly relevant at this time of year because many of us are motivating ourselves to make or break habits out of a sense of comparison.

We wanna look like our local Instagram influencer or some celebrity we've seen, or maybe we're even comparing ourselves to a younger version of ourselves. For example, I'm often sort of trying to get back the body I had at age 35, which is incredibly frustrating and probably impossible. So let's talk now a little bit about how to manage

what meditators often refer to as the comparing mind with Jeff Warren. So what are your thoughts about how we can work with this painful trend? I think many of us view internally about comparing ourselves to other people. I mean first step is noticing it happening in the first place and that's not a trivial step. It's very subtle and sneaky the way it kind of happens. A lot of this is about using mindfulness to see what stories you're walking around with. The comparing yourself story is often emerges from a kind of story of not feeling good enough, not measuring up. So noticing it is the most important thing. The next thing is to give yourself a break.

To like, this is the person you are, this is the place you're at. What would it actually feel like to accept myself where I am at, who I am right now? And that acceptance is really the ground of compassion. And then if you do have, you know, changes that you wanna make, small realistic changes, they're much more likely to land from that ground. So we're talking here about the many blocks that exist for many of us.

When it comes to self-love, we reference it earlier, the fact that a lot of us find it just irretrievably corny. And then we just talked about the fact that comparing ourselves to other people can place self-love even further out of reach. We heard from Jeff there, I wanna bring in Susan now to riff on what you just heard, Susan, does that land for you? Oh, 100%.

Yeah. And it is so incredibly painful, the comparing mind. And we live in a world as I don't have to explain to anybody that is inviting those comparisons constantly. And what I find useful usually, because sometimes I just cry, but what I usually find helpful is first, don't try to remove the comparison. Then I'm going to fight with myself. I'm like, Joe, I don't feel that. Feel something else. So if I dig into the comparison, well, maybe actually that person is not really awesome

and you really are, not also not useful. But if I feel the quality of the comparison, which is sometimes I feel it in my body, like you were describing earlier, Dan, about you felt something burning and you placed your hand and it was helpful. So what is the... I never said that. Okay. That never said that. That wasn't me. Okay. I must have fallen asleep and had a little weird little dream there for a second. Okay, I'm awake now. If you feel it in your body, okay, I feel this comparison to someone else who I think I ought to be, what's happening? Are my shoulders tensing up?

Is my stomach clenching? Or sometimes people don't feel these things in their body. They feel them in the environment. Does this suddenly seem like a scary place? It won't't dangerous. Tune into the sensation of it is really an important way to begin softening toward it. And then the key, this is the clincher, is really hard, is not the story of it,

the feeling without the story. So you may tune into what you feel, you know, less than whatever it might be. And then your mind starts making thoughts, well, it's because of this or because of that or they're not so great, you're great or vice versa, whatever it might be, no, those will let go. Just let go of the story of the comparison. And instead attend to the feeling of distress, whatever you might call it, that comes with the comparison. And as we were sort of talking about earlier, just the fact of attending, and this also, in another word for attending, is feeling.

Feeling. It's not assessing, it's not analyzing, it's not disproving or debating, it's how do I feel in my body or in my world right now? Let me just be with that. Let me just spend some time with that and that introduces a note of softening also as Jeff was mentioning earlier that creates the space for something else. What I find for myself, and this is just me, is as I attend to it, it starts to dissipate a little bit, and then often some part of me goes, well, you know, actually, you really

should be better at this or that. Okay, okay, okay, young lady, I hear you. But let me go back to the feeling of it, being with my in my body, and it starts to dissipate a little bit more. So that's what helps me is as I have was taught, feel the feeling and drop the story. And that is a super amazing seed-soluble instruction. Yeah. Notice what's here. Notice what's here. Notice what's here. Let that just be the basic guidance. Instead of getting all intellectually cut up and what is the right way to work with this kind of problem and this kind of thing and you end up just creating more noise in the system.

Just notice what's here. Again and again. Turn towards it and notice it and learn for yourself. Experience through your body. What happens when you do that, again and again and again. And you need to hear that instruction again and again and again. Again and again. And again. So true. Because you're always going to forget and then you're going to remember and then you're going to forget and then you're going to remember and that's the

human game. Well, that forgetting is what's keeping me in business. So that's all about some businesses. Speaking of business, we got to take a break to get paid. With some commercials here, we'll be right back with more from Susan and Jeff. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, pure on earth? And what really is the best cereal?

These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode,

I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like if you had a sandwich named after you,

what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. And we're back. I haven't heard of voicemails in a minute, so let's play some voicemails. This batch you're about to hear was this is one of the biggest trends we noticed in the voicemails we received.

So take a listen to these voicemails and see if you can define the trend. Hi there. Well, thank you so much for the whole program that you put together. It has been so wonderful and thank you for letting teachers join for free. Damn, it's just been the best. So thank you so so much. I guess for me, I would love to know how would you just move beyond whatever you're feeling bad about. Like, hey, you said something to somebody you regret, or you did something you regret. How do you just let that go and move forward and start again?

Hi, this is Stephanie from Vermont. One of the things that I'm looking to develop is meditation practices around boosting myself a steam in regards to productivity and time management. I think I have a whole lot of negative thoughts, unconsciously, going through my brain, which makes me even less effective in tackling my progress, nationsination techniques that I've perfected over the past 55 years of my life. So anything in that arena would be interesting to me. Hi, my name is Kim.

First I want to thank you for the opportunities, mid questions, and thoughts for the Self-Lost Series in January. My question is how to give yourself self-love when you're not happy with what you become. For me, that is gaining a lot of weight this year. So much weight in fact that I don't have the confidence that I'll be able to get it off.

So this of course, for me, triggers fear, resentment, negative self-talk, and of course, more eating. So I would be interested in hearing how to cultivate self-love when you find it hard to even look in the mirror because you're not happy with what you've become. Thank you again and I look forward to seeing and hearing what you have to say in January. Bye-bye. Those are great voicemails. I really appreciate you guys, the audience, for being game to call in and let loose like that. It's we value it immensely. Susan, let me start with you. I don't think it's gonna take much to see the trend there.

All of them have to do with the inner critic rather than formulating a precise question. What's your response after having heard all of them have to do with the inner critic. Rather than formulating a precise question, what's your response after having heard all of that? Yeah. My first response is just, besides, I relate. It's just heartbreak. I mean, it's so painful to not like yourself. And to think, well, I'm going to look in the mirror, I'm going to see someone that's going to make me feel pain. We can all relate to it. We can all totally relate to it.

I certainly can. It's just, I just first want to acknowledge the excruciating nature of just not liking yourself. And sometimes the first impulses to try to debate yourself, well actually you can do it, or you're not that bad, or to beat yourself up more, it harder on yourself, and both of those are weird forms of self-aggression that are a kind of rejection. And it can be tempting to think, well, I should just embrace myself, even though I don't like these things. Well, that's all, that's kind of sappy, and there are things that we want to change about ourselves. 100%. I teach meditation and writing retreats sometimes, and often people come with such a circumstance.

I'm struggling so deeply with this thing that's happening within me about how I don't like myself. So this may sound a little, I don't know, cheesy, breath-like. What I have found helpful to suggest and to do myself is to sort of isolate this thing. I don't like how much I've gained weight. I don't like my procrastination. I don't like feeling regret for something I did or said.

If you have any interest in writing or have any sense of comfort with writing, you don't know whenever it's going to read this, you don't have to think, oh, I'm a good writer, or bad writer, that's irrelevant. But if you take this instance and write about it, but not from the first person, from the third person, she said this, she did that, then this happened to him, they went over here. In other words, just sort of take it out of me, I, this is bad, how do I fix it, and frame it from a little bit of a distance in the third person. Tell the story of what's going on with you as if you were writing it about someone else.

someone else. There's something really powerful in that one step back from I to her or they or him that creates a kind of purview that includes softness that is missing when you just own it from the first person perspective. I have found this very useful and I've seen people do it to go to fact. That's one suggestion and the main idea behind that suggestion is to do something, whether it's writing or something else, to get out of the fight with yourself. Like, I'm going to beat myself up to be the person I want to be. Whatever you can do, and sometimes writing about it is useful because no one's going to win that fight because it's you

against you. I like it. Jeff, I want to bring you in on that and other techniques for dealing with the inner critic. Before I bring the you that's here in this interview and I want to bring in the other you from a clip of me and you chatting for the New Year's Meditation Challenge. So this is one of the clips you'll see if you sign up for the Meditation Challenge, which I hope you will. This is from day six and this is me and Jeff talking about the intercritic. So we'll listen to this and then talk more to Jeff on the backside. me and Jeff talking about the intercritic. So we'll listen to this and then talk more to Jeff on the backside. It's sort of like we have a mass self-harm epidemic happening out there,

except it's all happening on the inside. So nobody knows it. So there should be PSAs about this self-harm epidemic happening now. I mean, that's our intercritic. You know, it's the, if not the obvious voice that's sitting there criticizing you or criticizing the situation, then some more subtle begrudged feeling that ends up filling up your experience. It's for real. What do we do about it? How exactly in your view is meditation useful here? Well, what we do about it is first we notice it's happening. So we notice what the stories are that we've got going inside.

You know, I'm wasting my time. You know, I can't believe that. I got impatient. I hate myself for getting impatient. I hate myself for hitting myself for getting impatient. Like you start to tune into whatever the story is and start to see the harm in it. You know, start to notice the, in a sense, the violence in it. And that's the, just that noticing in and of itself sometimes can cool it out.

So that's real. And it may not be enough. It may be that you want to do a more playful intervention. The inner critic often has a sort of one dimensional quality. It's sort of a caricature. So I think you can kind of turn up the gain on that caricature quality by lightly sort of playfully making fun of your inner critic. I had an angry part of me that I just kind of call the cartoon Hulk and just experiencing

it like that changes the way I relate to it. I'm not kind of as inside it. The other thing you can kind of do is sort of playfully or lightly make fun of the critic as it's happening. So I call this the sweetest chef move. So as the voice is going on in there, I kind of start to imagine that it's sort of like the sweetest chef kind of like a schmorky board, keyboard, keyboard, you know, or like the adult from Charlie Brown, where every time an adult, which you never really see the adults, you just hear the voice like, wwa, wwa, wwa, wwa, wwa. Just seeing it and begin to kind of be more playful around the presence of that voice can change the experience of it. And that's what you want.

You want to kind of disarm it, you want to take the charge out of it. Yeah, under your tutelage, you and I took a bus trip across the country and you recommended I do this, that I give my inner critic a name. I thought it was a really dumb idea. Maybe that was my outer critic speaking.

And but I did it begrudgingly and I named my inner critic after my cramuginly grandfather and I have found it to be phenomenally helpful. I love Jeff's idea of auto tuning your inner critic. That's awesome. But let, so let me go back into my semi-facitious role of magically channeling the thoughts

and desires of the audience. Because as I think back to those voicemails we got, one woman regretting something she'd said, and other really beating herself up about procrastination and a third feeling badly about having gained some weight, I suspect some of them might say, okay, I hear you piver, Warren Harris. I got to stay with the feelings,

stay with the feeling, be warmed toward the feeling, but I also need to deal with the problem. You know, the apology to the person, the getting back on track with whatever project I'm working on, with getting myself healthier, et cetera, et cetera. So how can I engage in what you're saying? I'm sold, I should love myself a little bit more, but I don't wanna slide into a puddle

of sloppy resignation. Jeff, what would you say to that? Well, I guess I would try to articulate the case for meditation, which is on the one hand, there's a way in which we just talked about working with the inner critic, that's a more active intervention. But then there's just the basics of sitting and learning to open and be with your experience,

and notice what's happening, your experience. And just that alone does something. It's like it kind of trickles out, and it cools out the nervous system, and it calms things and it creates more space for more intelligent, more creative, more appropriate responses. So that, to me, is the answer. This is why meditation is so wildly helpful for so many people. It's that you don't have to know what the particular thing you need to do is in this particular situation. You practice to create space to reset the looping mind. And then from that place, you suddenly see the way to be to address this problem at work,

a more clear channel for making some adjustment to this relationship or for saying this thing. It's out of that space that these new sets of creative responses kind of emerged. So it really, I mean, this has been my experience from practice that the more I have a place where I can kind of reset into that open just seeing and being an awareness, the more when I go back to my life,

I am just able to deal with whatever the issue is across the board. Yes, to that. And I would add, just based on my own experience, that I need to keep reapplying what I've learned in meditation to, let's just take the productivity thing, because that's a huge issue. For me, I'm trying to write a book and it's taking years and it's very hard.

And I can see myself getting into loops of, you know, you're never going to finish this. You're not doing a good job, et cetera, et cetera. That storyline keeps coming up or the storyline around, you know, the thickening that happens to your body as you get older. And I've had lots of sort of toxic inner criticism around that, just keeps coming up no matter how many times in meditation I arrive at a more Aquanimous place, as soon as I leave the cushion, it comes back up in my day to day life and you just need to be ready over and over and over again to gently counteract your habitual storylines with, you know, a warm phrase with auto-tuning the voice

of the critic because it takes time to change these storylines. You're trying to undo decades and decades of conditioning that's happening inside your own mind and then within that's been injected into you by the larger culture. And so you need kind of self-compassion on top of the self-compassion as you try to do the self-compassion thing. Am I making any sense to either of you? You're totally making sense. We all have these things just as you're saying that we repeat and repeat and repeat, and they are culturally ingrained and it does take time.

And it doesn't, the one thing I would add is that those changes don't seem to happen on the cushion. We're all having the same experience on the cushion, whether we meditated for one day or one decade. So you see the incredible cascade of thoughts and think, how could this be helpful? But then when you look back, you see,

I don't know how, but it was incredibly helpful in shifting the power of this super critical inner voice. And to do the things that we want to do, whether it's become healthier or complete a project or apologize to someone, as we've been sort of talking about noticing the feelings of discomfort and shame and pain that you have is a really, really good starting point, even though it doesn't feel good.

A sort of softening toward yourself gives you more self-compassion also as we've been talking about. But it doesn't seem to end there because self-compassion is hugely important. It needs also some sense of confidence in yourself and an ability to be brave, to step out of your comfort zone, and do the things that you want to do, that you have been so far unable to do. So I found it interesting that meditation, in addition to cultivating self-compassion, also seems to give a kind of inner fierceness, a sharpness, a willingness to take chances, a kind of confidence,

that I didn't necessarily expect from this very sweet practice, and that confidence and sharpness and so on has made it easier for me, usually, to take chances or to change patterns or to confront the things I don't like. Well, just to say your assertions there are backed by science and listeners will hear the aforementioned Chris Gurmour talk about this, the expert on self-compassion that study after study has shown that if you're looking to stick to long-term goals, you're more likely to succeed if you have a self-compassion at approach as opposed to an inner drill surgeon

who's constantly self-lacerating. So this isn't just, you know, we'll nonsense. We're spouting, although we do a lot of that too, but this happens to be backed by science. I do want to, as we vector toward the close here, I do want to talk about one more issue, one more block that many of us have towards self-love, which is that we can have this suspicion that somehow it's selfish. And Jeff and I talked about that during the meditation challenge, so I'm going to play a little clip of that.

Here we go. So line up the coping strategies. It's sort of like the medicine shelf. What is the stuff you can do when you're inside some intense discomfort and challenge? What are the kind of medicines that you can apply that you know are going to help you that kind of that involve pulling away from some of that intensity and taking care of yourself. So it might mean watching a Netflix. It might mean your daily nature walk. It might mean laying on your living room floor and doing stretches or whatever it is that works for you,

you should know what those strategies are. I mean, the tricky balance here, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know, is and I'm not telling you anything you don't know is the line between sort of useful, caring indulgence and overindulgence that actually just makes everything work. Exactly. So I would say basically you have two rules inside you. If you really want to take care of yourself, you got to kind of activate both these sides of yourself. One is the caregiver.

That's the part that knows when a withdrawal from the intensity and kind of nurture and take care of yourself. And like you said, it can be, it can end up leading to its own problems if it just, if that's all you do. But the other side is the warrior. This is the part of you that, I don't mean the warrior like bear down and grit kind of warrior. I mean, the part that opens to your discomfort, the part that opens to the challenge. And that, you need to really balance the caregiver with the warrior. So what that looks like is sometimes instead of reaching for the Netflix or whatever your medicine is, sometimes you actually want to practice staying with that intensity, opening to it, the warriors where you build capacity.

So I really think that taking care of yourself in hard times means being very explicit about both those sides of yourself and implementing both the kind of turn towards the intensity and the deliberately turn away strategies. Well, said, Jeff, and let me just add on to that. Of course, this process is more arc than science. And sometimes you're going to get it wrong. And that's cool. You just learn from that and start again.

I want to throw in one more listener voicemail here before we hear from Jeff and Susan one last time and it's related to what Jeff was talking about. So here it is. Thank you so much for doing this. My name is Andrea. I've often thought about the difference between self-love and selfishness. It's my life. Anything that you put yourself first or after what we might call a self-love

was considered not a good person. So my question is the difference between self-love and selfishness. Thank you. So Susan, there seem to be two issues here and I'll let you pick which one you want to tackle. There's the line between self-love and selfishness and the line between self-love and self-indulgence. You can take one both dealers' choice. Yeah, it's a tough one. It's a tough one to elucidate. I think when it comes to self love and selfishness, let's say, we don't always know. And there is no formula. Well, if I do these three things, it's selfish. And if I do those three things, it's self love. So it takes some experimentation and knowing that you're going to think you're doing one,

but you might be doing the other. And you'll figure it out. You'll find out. And I guess one tell for me, when I notice that I am thinking about something that's really important to me, that I'm very concerned about, that I really need to happen or not happen, when I have lost all sense of humor, I'm in the wrong place. I'm doing something selfish. I am bearing down on myself.

I am doing, it's not good, it's not good. But when I'm considering these concerns, from a place of self-love, there's more of a sense of sort of lightness. I don't mean light-heartedness necessarily, but a sense of, oh, yeah, I can have a little sense of humor about myself or a lot of sense of humor about myself. And I see how important this is to me, and I care about that.

But again, when I just get so grim that I can't even joke about myself, then I know I'm probably tipped over into the selfish part of the spectrum. Just to say before we get a final word from Jeff here, this is not uncommon, this concern about selfishness. And it is a hard line to draw sometimes, but there's one sort of baseline truth you can keep your eye on here, which is, well, it is imperative to want to be have serviced other people. It is hard to really do that in an abiding way if you're a mess. So it is worth taking care of yourself because in some ways this care,

this is now here. I'm going to flag early. I'm getting, I'm about to get super woo woo, but this capacity we have to care, or you can call it love, it's all the same thing, right? Whether you're caring for yourself or other people, it's omnidirectional. Jeff, I love when you disagree with me,

it feels like I'm a run-arounding third. That's a baseball reference for your Canadian. I'm Canadian. There hopefully there's a hockey application, I just have to assume that. Any final thoughts here, bud? Yeah, I mean, this is really important to recognize that for me, the most healthy response to suffering is care.

And you don't care where that suffering is coming from. It comes from yourself. Oh, yeah, care. It comes from someone else., oh yeah, care. It comes from someone else, oh yeah, care. So it's not selfish to level the playing field to just recognize that there's hurt and then there's the response to it. And having said that, life is a balancing act

between balancing taking care of yourself and taking care of others. And it's an active process, it's an active dynamic process. Sometimes, like I'm in a place right now as a new parent, where I'm spending much more energy towards taking care of others, taking care of my son, taking care of my family, that's how it needs to be. Sometimes I get a bit crispy because of that,

but I had it earlier part of my life, maybe where I got a little more being able to take care of myself, and maybe that will come down the line. So there is this dynamic, active balancing that happens. And, you know, I think that's just part of life is everyone's got to kind of figure that out on their own. You're never going to, you're going to get unbalanced at different times. And then you, you notice it happened because you have that principle of care. And then you do the best you can to bolster up the resources on your side or bolster up the resources on someone else's side. And I mean, is there, that is life. And I don't think there's a perfect answer to it. There's just a living through it with intelligence and care and kindness. And that's what the practice helps with.

Beautiful place to leave it. Let me just say in closing here that I love both of you. And I'm very grateful that both of you are part of the TPH family. So thank you. Thank you. It's always so wonderful to connect with you and great to know you, Jeff. I feel the same way. Big thanks to Susan and Jeff.

And thanks to everybody who submitted those excellent voice smells that we used in today's episode. You can hear even more from Jeff and Susan by joining the New Year's Meditation Challenge today and putting into practice much of what you just heard. As a reminder, you can join this free challenge by downloading the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps,

or you can go to 10% dot com, all one word spelled out, 10% dot com. If you already have the app, just open it up and follow the instructions to join. And as I said at the top of the show, if you're not super tech savvy, we've got detailed instructions on how to download the app and sign up in the show notes.

Hardy, thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show all the time. And in particular, on this episode, Samuel Johns is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our producer, Jules Dodson is our associate producer, our sound designer is Matt Boynton from Ultraviolet Audio, Maria Wartell is our production coordinator, HatTip is always to our TPH colleagues who regularly weigh in on our content here.

They include Ben Rubin, Nate Toby Jen Point, and Liz Levin, and of course another HatTip to my ABC News guys, Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan. While I'm at it, I also want to thank a bunch of people from the 10% happier app who have been working really hard to make this podcast series and then the challenge a reality. They include Maggie Moran, Alison Bryant, Julia Wu, Kimberly Mikeish, Nico Johnson, Amy Breckenridge, Jessica Haswell, Eva Brighton-Bock, Ray Houseman, Young O, Trostegress, Liz Farmer, Victoria Carey, and Kaleela Archer. Thanks again everybody, we'll be back on Wednesday with a great episode.

We've got a Harvard psychologist who is an expert, one of the world's leading experts in self-compassion, who's gonna talk about the science-based case for this often misunderstood skill. We'll see you then. Oh, by the way, Friday, Koremo. Lot coming up. 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 add 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. you