Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 407: How a Buddhist Teacher Gets Unstuck | Matthew Hepburn

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

It’s the second episode of our Getting Unstuck Series. In this episode, Buddhist teacher and TPH fan favorite Matthew Hepburn offers a Buddhist lens on getting unstuck across many facets of our lives: from our relationship with technology to the difficulty we sometimes experience when asking for help. Matthew Hepburn is a graduate of the IMS/Spirit Rock four-year teacher training program and the host of the Twenty Percent Happier Podcast. In this episode, Matthew will explain why joining a meditation challenge can be useful for anyone, whether you’re booting up, rebooting, or simply seeking to maintain a meditation practice. We also explore how incorporating simple phrases throughout the day can help us rewire our brains and reimagine our existence. Join us for Getting Unstuck – our free 14-day meditation challenge, featuring Matthew and other great meditation teachers. The challenge starts on January 3, over on the Ten Percent Happier app. Click here to get started.   Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/matthew-hepburn-407See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, here's an interesting question. What does an ace meditation teacher do when he's in a rut, unable to overcome inertia? And what does he recommend to the rest of us when it comes to distraction, powerlessness, or getting unstuck from stale, emotional patterns, and ancient storylines. We're going to get into all of that today with the Buddhist teacher and TPH fan favorite, Matthew Hepburn. It's the second episode in a

special slate of interviews and guided meditations. We've put together here on this show to help you do life better as we head into the new year. We know from the research that New Year's resolutions fail at shockingly high rates. So instead of trying to make unrealistic promises, we've put together a roster of rock solid experts from PhDs to Dharma teachers to help us tackle stuckness, burnout, and also some fundamental questions about

the human situation. A couple of days ago, we posted our first episode with the author and social worker, Nedra Tawab. We explored the subject of boundaries, which I always thought was some sort of empty new age cliche, but as in fact, a fascinating lens on upping your game at work home and everywhere else. Today, we're bringing in some Dharma. The aforementioned Matthew Hepburn is a graduate of the IMS spirit rock four-year teacher training

program and also the host of the Chikli entitled 20% happier podcast. In this conversation, Matthew offers a Buddhist lens on getting unstuck across many facets of our lives from our relationship with technology to the difficulty we sometimes experience when asking for help. And we explore how incorporating simple phrases, little mantras you can summon throughout the day can help us rewire our brains and really reimagine our existence. Side note to anybody out there is reflexively skeptical the way I sometimes can be. The idea of these little mantras or slogans

can maybe for some seem a little forced or tried or whatever, but I just have to say that having these little phrases to fall back on, both in my meditation practice and in my life has been phenomenally useful. I'm just reminded of the great quote I like to bring out once in a while, which is something that some meditation teacher once said, which is that if you can't be cheesy, you can't be free. Anyway, if at the end of today's episode you find yourself wanting more Matthew, I suspect

you might. In that case, I've got good news for you. Starting next week, you can join Matthew and me in 10% Happy Years brand new New Year's meditation challenge, which this year is all about getting unstuck. It's a free 14-day meditation challenge, and it starts on January 3rd. The Getting Unstuck Challenge is a great way to shake things up and learn some new skills to tweak your approach to meditation and life so that you can have your own back and more

skillfully consider subtle changes in your day-to-day that might reduce misery. In the Getting on Stuck Challenge, Matthew and I will lead you on a free 14-day reset we'll also offer up-guided meditations from some of the world's greatest teachers. In today's episode of the podcast, though, Matthew will explain why joining a meditation challenge can be useful for anybody, whether you're booting up, rebooting, or simply seeking to maintain a meditation practice. And he'll even talk about why it's okay to do this challenge and then fall back

off of the meditation wagon. Your home base for the Getting Unstuck Challenge is the 10% happier app, download the app right away, wherever you get your apps, to join the Getting Un unstuck challenge for free. Alrighty, we'll get started with Matthew Hepburn right after this. 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 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 Kelli 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%.com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on 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 Ski-E-Pomber

on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Matthew Hepburn, Happy Almost New Year. Happy New Year, Dan. It's almost here. This is a great way to start a year with you. And I want to ask you if you're comfortable, a personal question, which is, what do you do when you're feeling stuck, when you're in a rut? What do you, Matthew, have been highly trained meditation teacher

all around wise individual, what do you do in those situations? First, I try and come up with any way that I can justify not getting out from under the covers for about seven days at a time. Usually, we decided to interview the wrong person. I warned you, you may actually have the wrong guy here. I have to fail first. Usually, generally in my life, it usually starts with making the mistake first and then having to course correct. And so typically, I fail miserably at justifying

staying under the covers for a week or sometimes I can get away with a day or two. But then I have nothing to do but face the fact that I am feeling stuck. And the moment that I go from running and hiding to turning directly towards what ain't pretty and a fun, you know, everything starts to become workable and things start to change. It's always kind of a scary turn, but that is the fundamental contemplative gesture that, you know, over time, I've learned how to make and it always feels better once I actually start to look directly at things aren't going very well. You're struggling, kiddo. What do we got to do here? going very well, you're struggling, kiddo. What do we got to do here? And when you say turn toward, you mean put your butt on the cushion and let it rip. That's exactly right. I mean,

putting my butt on the cushion is a real good looking day if I'm really going through it. And often what I have to do is stop wherever I am because, oh, if I'm really in a rut, I'm in a tough mental spot, usually. My energy may be low or I may be too keyed up. You know, my thoughts are sabotaging my sense of well-being. And that stuff doesn't wait for an opportune time to sit down cross-legged on a nice fluffy cushion. And so if I'm in bed, often actually that means like folding my pillow over double on itself and sitting on my pillow actually just assume the posture.

And it's funny how that can bring online all kinds of qualities of resilience, compassion, wisdom that didn't feel accessible when I had the covers pulled tightly up around my eyes. I really appreciate what you said. I mean, I know I made the job. Did we hop for the wrong person to have this? Do this episode with, but actually I think the opposite is true. And just to make sure you don't feel alone, I've had some very humbling moments, even recently, where, in the weeks leading up to this recording, I had a bit of a dip, a depression, and I noticed that the meditation was the fourth thing I went for. I tried a bunch of other stuff to just get away from this feeling, and I was like, oh, man, yeah,

yeah, I gotta sit with this thing. And that was a little because I'm Mr., you know, I'm happy in his meditation guy. It was a little embarrassing that that was not the first, you know, like I'm a mindful robot and I just put my butt on the cushion immediately. I didn't. And so I appreciate that you said that. It can be embarrassing, you know, and I'll tell you actually the meditation center that I have been supporting and teaching at for the last 10 years locally here, the Cambridge Insight

Meditation Center. We have little bumper stickers that we give to our members. And just an hour ago, on my way into the office to record this very conversation, I was driving and merging onto the on ramp and eating a burrito at the same time and saw that the person ahead of me had a Cambridge Insight Meditation sticker on it and I said, oh damn, that's probably one of my students they're gonna see their teacher merging onto the highway

with a burrito in hand. This is definitely the picture of the enlightened master. Multitasking. That's right. And so it's like there are a lot of ways in which it can actually be good. I have found as a practitioner first, becoming a teacher and developing the egoic idea that I should be more perfect, just like you were just describing, you know, and being the host of this podcast,

and post your child for 10% happier. When you start to feel the responsibility to be a model for others, actually, you're imperfections or the ways that you don't line up to your own ideals of mindful living, get highlighted, they get cast in relief. And that forces us to just get real about what it really looks like to be doing our best. And on some days, it all looks so good.

And if we're striving towards an ideal, we can just beat ourselves up. And all that's going to do is keep us stuck in the same rut. But eventually, if you are keeping it real and you ultimately have developed a sense of wanting to have your own back, you just start to get an honest look at yourself and say, Hey, sometimes I need some forgiveness. I need to make some mistakes. I need some self-compassion. I need a little patience for myself. And yeah, maybe you'll try something indulgent or aversive or avoidant. The first time, the second time, the third time, but then that fourth time comes around and meditation is what you reach for.

And it's something that we can be grateful we've developed the habit to reach for at some point or other. Hey, man. And just on the burrito thing, I mean, I, you know, I'm not a Buddhist scholar, but I understand in the Buddhist scriptures, there is a carnitas exception to multitasking. It's like there's a specific codicilf that you can, Barito is totally fine. So, what do I leave?

There's a classic story from the Soto Zen tradition. There was a kind of well-renowned meditation master, his name was Suzuki Roshi, who founded the San Francisco Zen Center. And he had a center there where he was living and he had some students who were living there as well. And his students knew him famously as giving the teaching that you should do one thing at a time, that you give your full attention to mindfully. And one morning, some students came downstairs

and saw him eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. And later on, they worked up the courage to go challenge the master about his improper behavior, his, you know, what's the word I'm looking for, his hypocritical behavior. And they said I'm looking for, his, have a critical behavior. And they said, Rochy, we saw that you were simultaneously eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. And he famously responded with, ah, when eating breakfast and reading the

newspaper, just eat breakfast and read the newspaper. the newspaper, just eat breakfast and read the newspaper. Yeah. And if you're good enough, maybe you can mindfully do two things at once. Yes, I won't give myself all that much credit for the burrito and driving, maybe in moments. But this does go to something you were just talking about before, which is if, you know, we're going to be in the course of this discussion, we're going to be talking about lots of ways to get unstuck, but a very common psychological dynamic that I think is drilled into us by the larger culture, which is perfectionism. This very common psychological dynamic, which, you know, is hard to avoid when you feel like you got to keep up with your friendly local Instagram influencer and when the more pernicious aspects of capitalism

are predicated upon engendering a sense of insufficiency so that we're incentivized to spend. So in this atmosphere, we all come upon perfectionism quite naturally, but it can get us more entangled in the briar patch of stuckness if we're unwilling to do the messy work it takes to get out. That's exactly it. It's the more that our thoughts return to some ideal of what our life should look like or how we should be able to behave. If we're feeling that we're not living up to that, then it saps our energy, it saps our motivation, it saps our fundamental self-confidence that's required actually to

do what we do best when we're feeling natural at ease and confident. And that's what gets us out of the rut. That's when we feel in full integrity and like we're thriving. And so you're right, that perfectionism that we come by so honestly because of cultural influences is one of the most important things to begin to see a pattern of indulgence in, in order to short circuit the old habit that we may have developed for entrenching ourselves in a feeling of stuckness. I want to play a little audio clip now because you very generously and skillfully played the role of Maestro in the New Year's challenge

that we're launching over on the 10% happier app. We had a lot of fun, you and I, filming the challenge together. And one of the things we talked about, we kind of tax-automized the obstacles to getting unstuck. And one of the obstacles we talked about in the challenge is distraction and so i want to play a little clip of our conversation which will be featured in the challenge for those of you who sign up which hopefully will be all of you and then we'll talk more about it on the backside of the clip so let's listen to the clip avoid distractions. And so it's important not to set the bar too high, but you can do some serious things

that will change just how frequently you're getting pulled off of the things that matter and into things that matter less to you. And the first thing that I'd say is you can change things about your environment. So for many of us, our phones are a major distraction, or all the things that our phones give us access to can be major distractions. So you might do something like changing your phone to black and white, so it's not so stimulating to the visual part of the brain. You might take 15 minutes out of your day and just do a little notifications audit and turn off notifications for apps that you don't need notifications for.

So how does meditation help? The basis of meditation is that it's a training in attention. And so we sit down for some period of time, five minutes, 10 minutes, maybe longer. And we set the intention to pay attention to something very simple, like the breath or the feeling of the body or sound. And then all of a sudden, we get distracted.

We didn't mean to. It happens. And then we notice that the mind has gotten distracted. And as we guide our attention back to whatever we originally wanted to practice focusing on, then we train the skill of developing a tension that can rest in a certain place. Right? Mine gets distracted again. We pull it back.

Mine gets distracted again. We pull it, mine gets distracted again. That's how it is in meditation. And doing this over and over and over is a process of doing repetitions like exercise that allow your brain to get stronger in its capacity to rest and focus on a single thing. Shout out to quickly to my friend Katherine Price, author of a great book called How to Break Up with Your Phone, which goes into lots of technical things you can do with your phone and with your mind. She's also a mindfulness practitioner. But beyond the phone, what are other ways we can

reduce distractions in our lives so we can start to focus on the self-improvement that many of us want to do at this time of year? One thing that I'll start by saying, these ideas about adjusting how you use technology, these are little strategies, small behavior changes that can really help. But it wouldn't be right if I didn't start by talking about this from a deeper angle,

which is that we have to be really motivated to change the way that we use our attention. So the first thing to do is just to recognize, we need to find a way to actually feel inspired, really intrinsically motivated and inspired to take back our attention. And one of the things that inspired me recently was author, I believe his name is Oliver Berkman, who was being interviewed about time and how we use time in our life. And much like the way we think of time as a resource, we can think of our attention as a resource. But he totally flips the idea that our attention is a resource that we might use.

And says, instead, at the end of your life, the sum total of all of the things that you paid attention to, that will have been your life. That what we think about as our life is none other than where we put our attention. If we recognize that, all of a sudden, where we put our attention becomes somewhat of a matter of life or death. It's like, whoa, what kind of life do I want to live? And now all of a sudden, we're coming from a wisdom perspective. And the motivation becomes really intrinsic.

It's like, it's not like a life hack. What do I have to change to get a little more of my attention back? It's like, no, I care about my life and I want to live the life that matters to me most. And so the thing that has the greatest influence over that is my attention. This is many of our you and myself and my colleagues fundamental motivation for training and mindfulness, which is all it is, is a training and attention. It's learning how to use your attention intentionally.

So the more that you do it, the more that you actually have the capacity to live the life you actually want to live. And so there's a million things you can do actually to change the context you're living in, to reduce distractions, changing habits around how you use your phone or other technology,

noticing the areas and the times and the places where you multitask and seeing if you can reduce the multitasking. But most importantly, it's actually to take a little bit of time and reflect on what do you give your attention to, what saps your attention, what pulls it away, and can you get in touch with a feeling of really caring about that? Cause that's your life. I love that you provided the deeper context here, which can give us the intrinsic motivation. That's the strategic level and then we can move from there, what's regrounded at it, to the tactical level of what are the hacks we're going to do to sort of to reduce distractions.

But the tactics can lose their power pretty quickly if you're not in touch with the Y. And it kind of reminds me of something I heard on my first meditation retreat in back in 2010. I was just starting to get a little bit more mindful after a few days on the meditation retreat. One of the teachers said something like, you know, when you sit in meditation, you see how distracted you are, you're seeing what your life is actually about. And it's like, yeah, you might think your life's about these big grand goals, family, friends, service. And yeah, it is to some extent, of course. But it's also a lot about like what's for lunch and lots of random thoughts about planning revenge against people who wronged you in eighth grade. And are you going to avail yourself of the inner

technology, meditation and other modalities to shift that so that at the end, the sum total of what you've paid attention to, i.e. your life is better and under your control. Yes, this is totally it. You know, and one of the things that I would encourage on the to i.e. your life is better and under your control. Yes. This is totally it. You know, and one of the things that I would encourage on the tactical level is not the punitive or the restrictive side so much, although those things help, but actually the encouraging side of figuring out where you do want to put your attention and filling your life with those things. What are the places and times in your

life where you it feels easy to give your attention fully to something that really matters to you? Where at the end of the day you're grateful you gave your attention to that thing. And what do you need to set up in your life so that it's easy to give your full attention? An extreme example to probably many of the listeners, but for me is I wanted to give more time and energy to meditation. It's hard for me to be focused on meditation

when I'm in my house and there's a million projects to do and things to be clean and a ton of distractions. So there's a period of my life where I went to the meditation center for half a day every single week. And then the context, there makes it easy to give my attention to something I care about. Or recently this past summer and fall, I got into the habit of calling old friends who live far away and wanting to give them my full attention at hop on my bike and go for a long bike ride and just talk on the phone. And then I'm not really multitasking too much fussing about things I got a clean or other things I got

to do while I'm on the phone, puttering around my house. I'm just relaxing and watching the countryside go by as I'm on my bike and catching up with somebody who I really care about. At the end of the day, I'm really my bike and catching up with somebody who I really care about. At the end of the day, I'm really glad that I gave my attention to that relationship. I love all of that and just to say, and I think I'm speaking for both of us, but you'll correct me, this does not mean your attention has to be pristine devoted to the present moment at all times. I don't think either of us is anti-netflix.

I know you, Matthew, one of the things you enjoy doing is watching movie trailers on your phone. Generally, your phone, as I understand it, is black and white to make it less alluring, but you'll turn the color back on so you can watch them coming attractions. So that's not to say, you know, at the end of the day, when you're tired, there's no joy to be had in watching television or whatever, but you can get a little bit more intentional about distraction that actually wears you down and makes you less happy. And it feels good when you choose to give your attention to entertainment with some real intention behind it.

Like, you know, you don't just flip on that flicks because there was nothing else to do and you didn't even think about it. You take a moment and you pause and you go, damn, I'm tired. What would be good right now? You want to know what I actually just want to sit down and watch my favorite show. And then when you do, you know you made that choice. And it actually feels great. If you talk to someone afterwards, you wouldn't feel guilty for saying, hey, I've just been watching Netflix for the last hour and a half, you'd say,

yeah, I caught up on my favorite show tonight. That's what I wanted to do. You know, actually, I'm glad you're saying this because I think this is something that I can work on in the new year because I do notice the, it's eight o'clock kids of sleep. I just kind of reflexively hurl myself into some supine pose and turn the TV on and actually think that might be a good point to inject some, you know, mindfulness of what are the

other options right now? Maybe this is a good time to sneak in a little sit. Maybe I'd rather be happier reading. Some of the happiest evenings are when they decide not to turn on the CV at all and call somebody or talk to my wife, which just last night we did that. We just talked for a couple of hours and it was way more enjoyable than hunting for some middling form of entertainment. So anyway, I'm glad to hear what you just said

because I think that can be a little practice for me. Yeah, this is it. Don't assume what you like to do or even how you like to spend your attention. Take a moment and go, what would be the most awesome way to spend the next hour of my life? And sometimes that is Netflix, right?

And like no shame if that's the answer. But give yourself a moment to come up with the answer to that question. What's the most awesome way to spend the next period of my life given how I actually feel right now in this moment? Just that formulation you use there, how do I want to spend the next hour of my life? Just reminding us that this is, it may feel like just some random Tuesday, but it is your life and it is finite. And this is going to,

some people don't like what I'm about to say because it can sound morbid, but it is sometimes a not bad way to get unstuck. And this actually is in the Buddhist scriptures unlike my lame burrito joke earlier, is to contemplate our finitude, to contemplate our mortality, to in fact, as the old school Buddhists did

to sit and meditate while staring at a decomposing body. You don't have to do that, but to contemplate that life is fleeting can really revitalize you and shift your priorities. Anyway, I've yammered a lot there. Do you agree with any of that? But sounds incredibly depressing and morbid. I don't know. This is something I'd encourage. No, really. But it seems that way on face value.

And you are getting to the point that it doesn't actually have to be. It actually can make you feel way more alive and in the driver's seat of your life, it's the opposite of feeling stuck to say, hey, wait a minute, I'm not going to live forever and I don't know how long I have and like, what do I really want to do? And the moment you answer that question and do it, you're not stuck. Much more of my conversation with Matthew Hepburn right after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares of a freshly honest

and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert-expert. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone.

So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondry app. Let me play another clip because another big obstacle to getting unstuck or another to rephrase it, another source of stuckness is emotional patterns. I see this, you know, I've got this sour old emotional patterns, I just replay and I can get really stuck in them. So I just want to play a little clip of our conversation on this from the challenge, and then we'll freestyle on it after the clip is played.

One of the things that's very important to do with a strong emotion is to recognize any kind of reinforcing spirals. If we just stay in the realm of the mind, can send us on these enormous roller coasters. So for example, let's say that something happens, somebody slits you in some way that's really egregious, and you get angry. Soon as you start getting angry, then an angry thought pops into mind.

As soon as the angry thought pops up, makes you more angry. Feel more angry, start thinking more angry thoughts, back and forth, and then shhh, all of a sudden, by see you back down on planet earth and an hour or something like that. So one of the ways to both short circuit that, um, whole process, but also to get in touch with ourselves is to see what's happening in our body, whether it's a tightness in the stomach, weakness in the hands, it could be anything.

This is incredibly powerful technique of going south of the border below your neck to get in touch with how an emotion shows up in your body. This allows you to do a kind of emotional jujitsu, so instead of running away from your emotions or completely being owned by them, you actually kind of investigate them calmly, clearly, warmly. This is a thing Matthew, we've talked about quite a bit on the shows, getting out of your head and into your body as a way to relate in a different way. I'm hopefully in a more constructive way.

But I can imagine some people might be thinking, well, how exactly do I do that? Or I remember I've been taught how to do it by some meditation teacher, but I've forgotten. So can you just kind of give us a primer on how to actually get out of our heads? It's easier than it sounds. A lot of people actually struggle with this because the idea of feeling your body has become some kind of contemplative, mystical trick of the mind that only great meditators know how to do.

But actually, assuming that you have got feeling in your hands or feet, but wherever you do have feeling in the body, if someone were to put an ice cube there, if you could tell me whether it's cold or hot, then you can feel the body. So it's not some kind of extraordinary contemplative technique. And what I recommend for most people that, you know, anyone listening to this conversation right now could do is first just feel your hands. Whatever they're happening to be doing in this moment. Your hands are full of nerves that are meant to send signals to your brain about whether things are hot or cold, whether things are hard or soft, whether things are wet or dry. And so in this moment,

your hands are feeding tons of information into your brain. And as soon as you choose to turn attention to them, all of a sudden you notice, oh, they feel clammy, oh, they feel dry, oh, they feel warm, oh, they feel cool. Actually, the back of the hand feels cool, but the palm feels warm. And these are ordinary things that you can look and notice in any given moment. And even right now, as someone's listening, it turns out that you can give some of your attention to what you're up to listening to this conversation or walking or driving and also give a little bit of attention to the simple sensations that are happening in the hands. And this is bringing a little bit more of your awareness into the experience of the body.

Now, the hands have a lot of sensation that's easy to notice in them. But any part of the body, for the most part, is noticeable. Feeling the sensations in your earlobes might be pretty tough, that might be a high order, right? But you can take this exact same practice, just looking for ordinary sensations, and pressure, softness, coolness, warmth, tightness, vibration, anything like that, and

take an interest or ask a question of what do you feel in other places in the body, in the belly or in the feet, the feet are almost as sensitive as the hands or in the mouth, any part of the body that you want, right? And as soon as you start to tune into the sensations in the body, for one thing, in this example from the clip, if you had moments ago been embroiled in a death spiral of intense difficult emotion to a thought that was generated by that emotion that just fuels a stronger emotional reaction and back and forth and back and forth, you're reclaiming some of your attention, letting it rest somewhere that's not gonna spin up

or keep throwing logs on the fire of anger or sadness or regret or resentment. Right. So it's like a circuit breaker. As you indicated before, feel your body, the body knows can be a kind of contemplative cliche that gets yelled at us by our spin instructor or whatever, but the practical value of it, well, there are many practical values of it, but one of them, at least, as you just

articulated, is it can be a circuit breaker on these runaway ancient, ruminative patterns. Yes. Yes. One of the things that can be so helpful when we have one of these ancient ruminative patterns come up, is if we bring our attention into the body, it does break that circuit, but more importantly, it does so without running away from the experience. It turns out

that our bodies experience the emotion we're having as well. Anger is something that happens not just to the mind, but also to the body. Sadness is something that happens not just to the mind, but also to the body. So if we learn to bring our attention to the simple sensations happening in our body, we also over time get attuned. It may not be obvious immediately, but over time and with practice, we start to develop a whole new relationship to our emotional world, which is the body's experience of our emotions. And you don't need to start off by saying, well, is that little tingling sensation?

Is that part of anger or is that just my shirt sleeve? Right. You don't need to worry about it at that level. Just bring attention to the body and get used to breaking that circuit. And over time, we get more and more and more familiar with the body's somatic language of experiencing emotion. The more that we get familiar with that, the better we know ourselves. The more that we can see an emotional spiral coming miles ahead, actually, because we're attuned to the body's response. And then we don't notice it 10 minutes into the ruminative spiral that happens

in a mind made world of thinking. Yes, it's like an intermediologist, an inner alroker or ginger Z, who's like, yeah, dude, there's a hurricane brewing, and you should take cover that allows you to see, yeah, I'm getting super pissed and I'm going to do something extraordinarily dumb right now unless I pause. And so the body is a great kind of barometer in that way. Yes.

For sure. We're not going to do endless clips here, but there are two more clips I just want to play because I think they're really powerful. And one of them is on the opposite of powerful. It's on powerlessness, which is, as we continue to sort of textonomize obstacles to getting unstuck, that is definitely on the list. So let me just play a clip of our conversation

from the challenge about powerlessness. And then we'll again talk about it on the back end. How do we not get stuck in feelings of powerlessness? First we have to recognize that if we're focused on a sense of powerlessness, it's just going to be a self-fulfilling realm of ideation. However, if we start to recognize that even the small actions that we take do matter, then it's possible to actually take satisfaction in them. And if we start taking satisfaction in just the small actions that we

take, all of a sudden we want to take more of those actions and the momentum builds. Now we actually have a relationship to life that we want to take more of those actions and the momentum builds. Now we actually have a relationship to life that's starting to feel more and more engaged and we see more opportunities for influence. And it changes the way we relate to the world. So we don't have to fool ourselves into thinking that we can all by ourselves wave some sort of magic wand, but we can make a difference in small but meaningful ways. So where do we start here?

Start as small as you can think of. I mean, I can think about my own days and when I'm walking down the street and a random stranger smiles at me or somebody stops their car so I can cross the road and waves at me, it just makes me feel like the world's a little bit more of a friendly place. And then when I get bad news or somebody doesn't treat me right five minutes later, I might actually have a little more patience to deal with that situation. And so that very tiny act of kindness or generosity or patience from somebody else actually affects me, it affects my day. And if we recognize that that's true for any of our actions, then the creativity has no limits. I like that a lot.

It kind of reminds me there was a great Jonathan Franz, and he's an amazing novelist. He, I'm sure many of you are familiar with him. He wrote an article in the New Yorker a couple years ago that really got my attention about climate change. And he was quite pessimistic about climate change. And whether you agree with that or not, I think what he was recommending, I think we can

all embrace, which was that none of us individually is going to be able to fix all of this. And yet there are things we can do to help out in whatever context we find ourselves that can give you a sense of agency and make a real difference. It's enobling, it's empowering, it's the opposite of powerlessness. Anyway, I'm rambling again. Does any of that land for you? What does, and even if all that taking small actions did was encourage our sense of appreciation for our own agency, even if all that it did was inspire us to want to take action. Then when the opportunity to get involved in something where we can act that

has a much greater influence comes along, we've got a ton of momentum to not let that moment pass us by, to not let that opportunity pass us by and say, yeah, actually, you're going to go out and knock on doors and help change some policy. You're going to go out and knock on doors and help change some policy. You're going to make phone calls and help change some policy. Six months ago when I was stuck in a rut, I never would have said yes to that. But for the last six months, I've been making small changes and feeling glad that I've been doing it. And this sounds like it's got even more leverage.

And so we, over time, when we are willing to celebrate the small wins, we change the climate of the mind to one that is more satisfied with any level of engagement. That doesn't set some imaginary bar that says, our contributions are only worthwhile if they meet some particular measure that ultimately is arbitrary, right? And says, no, I embrace and celebrate everything that I can do that is contributing to some influence that is meaningful to me in my own life, in the life of my dear loved ones, family, friends, and my community in the world. And then over time, that just builds.

We develop an attitude that says, Hey, I'm ready to help and pitch in and lend a hand whenever there's a need. And frankly, that just feels like a better way to live. But even more so, it's contagious. The more that other people feel that way, the more that we actually act for the collective good. And this is a time in the world where nothing is more needed than individuals changing the climate of their own inner world to value deeply the sense of the collective good and a willingness to come together and join with others and act in support of it. to come together and join with others and act in support of it. Yeah, and again, it doesn't have to be grandiose. You listed something as simple as somebody smiling at you. And it reminds me, I always, as I was listening to you talk, I was kind of flashing back to the first

time I met you, which was several years ago, I might have been five years ago, I was coming off of a retreat, a 10-day silent meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, and you showed up with a camera crew, and you would just join 10% happier as one of our content zars. You showed up with a camera crew, and I rolled out of retreat and into an interview with Joseph Goldstein for a course that still lives on the 10% happier app. And the course was kind of built around the fact that Joseph has these little phrases he uses in teaching. All these kind of brilliant little phrases that either were generated by him or that he

stole from other people and he uses in his teaching these little mantras, these little sayings he uses. And one of his little sayings, which he stole from a great meditation teacher by the name of Ram Das, it was the name of a book that Ram Das co-authored. One of the little sayings is, how can I help? And just holding that attitude of how can I help? And again, it doesn't mean you're solving all the world's problems all the time or that you're perpetually in Florence Nightingale mode. It's just, it can be tiny little, you know, completely not glamorous things that put you in a better mood. And by the way,

we're down to the benefit of everybody in your orbit. And I just got to say, Dan, my life personally has been really changed by developing this sensibility of how can I help. I, many years ago, was somebody who, I still somewhat described myself as a bit of a lone wolf. I'm, I tend not to be the person who wants to get lots of people together. I can't remember the last time I had a birthday celebration for instance. I'm just not a, you know, shake hands and hang out with a bunch of people. Type a guy, okay? And so in the same way, I came out of college for instance with an enormous amount of debt.

And I was moving through the world with this question, which is, how can I get myself into a better situation? And I felt fundamentally in competition with everybody else out there in the world. And so I was looking out for myself before anybody else. And my life has just changed so dramatically. Over the last just changed so dramatically. Over the last 24 hours, I could tell you that it seems like the more that you take on these opportunities for little actions that can be supportive or helpful, the more that they come find you and give you an opportunity to feel connected to other people. And like you have something to offer and you have influence that can matter.

And I had a friend who asked me for a place to crash while she's in town for a couple days years ago. I wouldn't have wanted that. I don't want anybody staying in my house, right? Sleeping on my sofa. Actually, no, the climate of my mind has changed over time. I want to help my friends out and I love making the connection with somebody. I supported a couple of friends who had a new baby

to get some cleaners to help clean the house up because they're having trouble with some chores. There's a coworker who had a family emergency and we put together a little bit of fund for them to get meals delivered during this time. And that's just been in the last 24 hours. It's like the more that we make a practice of opening our eyes to look for the places where we can help, the more that our life becomes

full of really fulfilling, small, not over the top, but ultimately fulfilling opportunities to be connected with other people, to have a positive influence and to help and support people. Let me ask about the inverse of this because it is also true that if we're feeling like we're in a rut, asking for help can be very useful and yet also very hard. There was a statistic that I've quoted on the show before because it's so horrifying,

but I think it's worth bringing back up. Many, many years ago, Americans were surveyed and asked the question, how many people could you are really close enough to you that you could call them in an emergency. And for many years, the average was five. The average has subsequently gone down to zero. Tells you a lot about the state of modern life in particular in America.

So talk about the practice of asking for help, given that a lot of people will hear those words and find them terror inducing. It's not easy for a lot of us to ask for help. It's still in many situations for me requires bravery. The first thing that comes up in the mind often for me, upon the thought of needing help. Frankly, then I've had to do a lot of personal work just to be able to identify and acknowledge a need for external help. I have come by it honestly through family and culture and conditioning around my gender and all kinds of other things learned that it's real uncomfortable and maybe an appropriate even to ever feel that I need help from others.

And then if I can feel like I don't need help from others, somehow I've totally succeeded in becoming a fully autonomous, successful and secure human being. When actually, we're all mammals, we're evolved to be social and to depend on one another. So having a need for support, mutuality, connection from other people is just a given. And having developed a capacity to actually feel and identify, hey, I need some help here. It can even still be actually quite scary to reach out and say, now that I know I need help, can you help me? And one of the greatest things that helped me step up and be brave, that continues to help me step up and be brave in those moments,

is having practiced take all these small opportunities to support someone, to give something, little acts, just like we were talking about in the clip, just smiling at a person is a little bit of a gift. And to recognize that those little moments have influence and to feel the goodness that comes from helping people out, I started to see that when I asked somebody else for help, if they intrinsically and honestly feel motivated to help me out, that feels good. The people who appreciate me and want to be close to me and good friends and family members, colleagues that I know and respect and have built rapport with, when they hear that I need

something and they have an opportunity, sincerely, to actually help me out, it feels great because we're building more of a bond. So my ask for help actually gives the other person an opportunity to feel fulfilled, connected to me, generous, having enough resources and abundance in their life that they can give their time, or their energy, or their talent, talent or their expertise or their resources. And that's a good thing. In the Buddhist tradition, look and see that if that's true in my own mind, honestly asking another person for help gives them an opportunity to be a little more

enlightenment prone if they can tap into a heartfelt and authentic sense of generosity. Much more of my conversation with Matthew Hepburn right after this. There are many, many things I want to talk to you about in the time we have, but there is one last clip I want to play. It has to do with it. I think an underappreciated human capacity generally, but in particular underappreciated as an antidote to stuckness, and that is all

AWE. So here's some of our conversation on the subject of awe and we'll talk more about it on the other side. We're going to talk about a related skill today and that is awe, which is seeing how amazing many things that we might otherwise overlook are, in fact. And then there's a way in which that seeing of how amazing things are can make you feel in a healthy way, small, interconnected. In fact, there's science that shows that awe can reduce anxiety and boost social connections. So let's talk to Matthew now about how we can practice awe in our meditation. Well, it's all about the perspective that we take. So let's talk to Matthew now about how we can practice all in our meditation.

Well, it's all about the perspective that we take. A lot of the things in our ordinary day to day life, a lot of the phenomena, a lot of the experiences are actually pretty incredible when we stop for a moment and we pay a little more attention. And that's the key. If we want to experience more awe, more wonder, we need to turn the dial up on our attention and our curiosity. There was a point in my meditation practice

where I was working on a set of contemplative skills that included wonder and awe. And what I did during that time was I would spend time actually meditating on soap bubbles. Okay, so we cut the clip off there. It's soap bubbles. Get weird, Matthew. What's the deal with soap bubbles? This is your plan to sabotage my credibility as a sane, grounded meditation teacher. One minute, he's so down to earth, he's eating a burrito and merging onto the highway.

The next minute, he's cross-eyed and cross-legged, staring at soap bubbles in the bath. No, this is actually a contemplative exercise that I took on, you know, and I actually think it's a great virtue that I've been able to develop over time to not take myself so damn seriously and to get a little bit playful with my own exploration of how to develop the qualities of mind that make living as a human being better.

And one of the qualities of mind that make living as a human being better is recognizing just how amazing and incredible some of the most ordinary everyday experiences are if we just stop and give them a little more attention. This actually reminds me a good friend of mine who's a serious meditation practitioner and a teacher in his own riot. He had just had a son and he was maybe six months in to being a parent of a newborn baby. And so, you know, he's just going through it. Exhausted life had completely changed. And I got a chance to just chat with him and I said, what's it been like? And he said to me, you know, raising an infant is a little bit like going on of a possum meditation

retreat. It's the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. And every once in a while, you see God. And that's... Yeah, that sounds great. Right, so it's like new parents will know, not that I have been a parent, but I'm spending a lot of time with a couple of friends in mine who have a two and a half month old right now. And it's brutal.

And there's just the ordinary everyday march of changing diapers and feeding and waking up and soothing back to sleep and cleaning up and the whole nine. But there are moments where you actually see that every single moment that you've been through the slog, there's this precious human life that's right in front of you. And it's actually miraculous. And our adult human life that we're actually seeing from the inside out that we are looking out from is just as precious and miraculous.

And most of the time, we don't notice it. And so we can actually take on practices that make us more awe or wonder or amazement prone to make us not take for granted the everyday experiences of life. And all this does is develop more appreciation. It's a reality check for what's really going on when we don't take things for granted. And it just gives a positive valence to the mind. In a world where we recognize that the human brain has developed a negativity bias. This is one of the most powerful ways to mitigate or to counterbalance, a tendency to ruminate on everything that's wrong and all the problems that we need to solve is to sit down and see. I see soap bubbles every day when I wash the dishes, but the moment that I stop and look at a floating sphere of soap and water, iridescent, reflecting my own image back to me,

it's beautiful and perfect, a perfect little sphere floating in the air. It's amazing. A two-year-old would come in and go like, whoa, look at that thing. That's amazing. Have you ever seen that before? You know, if they could say that many words, right? But they'd show you just by their slack jaw and open eye and, you know, spread out fingers. And we can access that kind of appreciation for life if we learn to train it. So that's one of the practices that we throw at folks in this challenge to help get unstuck. Cause if you're in a rut, likely you're missing a lot of the beauty and profundity that you're surrounded by in your daily life. You put a lot of time and thought into

the meditations you created for this challenge and then also the meditations you selected from other teachers. Can you just pull the curtain back a little bit and talk about your thought process there? Well, the amazing thing is that at this point in our company's development, we're not like a two-person content org. So developing this challenge and selecting these practices and meditations came out of a collaborative process with some brilliant folks, you know, Shade Weston, Jessica Olberg,

to name a few. But many people were involved. And some of the things that we talked about during this process of, you know, asking, what do people know works to shift the mind when it's in habitual patterns of creating misery for itself. Now, what have we learned most recently from the scientific literature and recent research about what creates results in people's subjective experience of well-being. And what can we bring in from those understandings?

And then we get to have a lot of fun creating an arc of an experience saying, what are the skills that need to be developed first? We start off the challenge with the bedrock practices and developing mindfulness and non-distraction and compassion. And then we build on those and give people a suite of different tools and approaches to living that come from the ancients and come from the latest greatest hits of what we know yields results. So last question for me, the, I can't remember the exact stat, but it's depressing, the rapidity with which people fall off the wagon after making New Year's resolutions is stunning. And it's a big thing we hear from meditators a lot. You know, like, how do

I keep this thing going? Habit formation is so hard. Habit maintenance is so hard. Do you have any thoughts that might help fend off hopelessness among people who are endeavoring to boot up or reboot or maintain a meditation habit this new year? Well, one of the things that I'd say is that there's nothing wrong with giving yourself a boost, even if you don't last, if you don't maintain the top of where that boost takes you to. Right? I actually imagine an image from nature, which gives me a lot of inspiration, which is when

you see a bird of prey, you know, like a hawk flying in the air and hunting, you'll see that a lot of times they'll catch a thermal and open their wings, they'll flap a little bit to find a rising current of warm air. And then once they catch it, they'll just open their wings and let the rising current of air lift them up And then after that they drift back down, right? And so it takes a little bit of activation energy to decide to join a challenge and make time to do something like this or to boot up a brand new meditation habit and then it starts to take on a life of its own and it lifts you up habit. And then it starts to take on a life of its own. And it lifts you up, right? It actually becomes a habit for some period of time, maybe not every single day between

now and the day you die. But the skills you develop, the perspectives that you develop during the period of time in which you are regular and consistent, they change your life for that period of time and influence the rest of your life going forward because you've developed, experience, wisdom and compassion that you can refer back to forever. Then after that, you may fall off the wagon a little bit and then you get back on. I talk to meditators about this all the time. You know, one of the things that I do as a meditation teacher is I support a community of local, serious life-long committed practitioners, people who have been practicing meditation for

decades, two, three, four decades at a time. And all of them tell me that different things in their life come and go that can sometimes distract them from keeping up a consistent meditation habit. But ultimately, the things that they have learned from the times where they do really invest in meditation, shift their values, shift their sense of themselves so they don't get in their own way so much. And when that happens, they're more and more likely to come back to strengthening those habits that are actually healthy and generate well-being instead of getting in their way.

And over time, the people that I've talked to, the students that I work with who've been practicing for many decades, they start to lose a sense of any separation between times that are good in life where they're practicing a lot and times that are bad, where they're tending to whatever the most immediate needs are, caring for a sick parent or dealing with some instability in their work life or something like that. And they understand that life is a dance. Sometimes they feel totally on the ball, and other times they're just making it through each day.

And there's a sense of groundedness in their values and their capacity for self forgiveness, for compassion, for mindfulness that carry them through the tough times, and they always know they'll be coming back. My friend, you've done a great job with this interview, and you did an amazing job with the challenge. Final, final thing I'd like to ask you though, I know we've had you on the show before to talk about

your show, 20% Happier, your podcast, which is available inside the 10% happier app. What's new on that show? What are you excited about these days? Can you just, it's such a great show and I just want to give you a chance to talk about it a little bit before we go. You know, I was a reluctant podcast host. I'll be honest and tell you, I wasn't sure that I wanted to sign up to spearhead a new

show for 10% happier. And I am coming to absolutely love what's happening on the show. You know, I get to talk to people who have a sincere meditation practice, but they're trying to make it work in their actual real, unglamorous daily lives. And the spread, the balance of the types of people that I've been talking to recently is just incredible. What I'm most excited about is the range of topics and lifestyles that come up. I've just had a conversation with a mom of three different special needs kids who has some amazing breakthroughs in finding some balance in the midst of the chaos of life.

Just had an incredible conversation with a meditator who just came out of a long period of silent retreat and is trying to integrate back into daily life and everything in between. So, you know, I just have an a blast talking to real people about what does it look like to live as a person who values mindfulness and meditation and where can I help as a teacher back to that question, where can I help? As a teacher, back to that question, how can I help? So this podcast is just another way for me to do that. And I get inspired by the people that I talk to. Bravo. It's a great show. Everybody should go over to the app and check it out. Matthew, thank you for all of your work on the challenge. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for all of your work on everything you do at TPH. And happy new year. Hey, happy new year.

Totally my pleasure. A lot of fun to have this conversation. Dan, I heard that you have a cold, so I hope that you get some rest after this conversation. You shouldn't work while you're sick, but thanks for being here anyway. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Thanks again to Matthew.

Before we head out, let me mention again, the 14 day Getting Unstuck Challenge, which is free and which we'll teach you how to overcome inertia and make the changes you want to make in your life. The challenge starts Monday, January 3rd over on the 10% happier app. Download it wherever you get your apps. This show is made by Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Kashmir, Justin Davy, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Poyant with audio engineering from Ultraviolet.

Audio, we'll see you on Friday for our final bonus meditation of the year fittingly from the great Joseph Goldstein. 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.

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