Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 509: How to Deal With Stressful Thoughts | Bonus Meditation with Jessica Morey

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

Relieve your anxiety by exploring the relationship between stress and thinking while learning to break unhealthy habit loops.About Jess Morey:Jess Morey is a lead teacher, cofounder and former executive director of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education which runs in-depth mindfulness programming for youth, and the parents and professionals who support them across the US, and internationally. She began practicing meditation at age 14 on teen retreats offered by the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), and has maintained a consistent commitment to meditation since. Diving head first into meditation at such a key developmental stage makes the revelatory perspective of mindfulness & compassion her natural home turf, and gives her an easy, conversational teaching style anyone can relate to.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Soothe Stressful Thoughts,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=eb664bd8-0560-439e-9e57-e5eddb622bfa.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant,

Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life Project on your favorite podcast app. This is the 10% happier podcast, Dan Harris. Happy Friday, time for a bonus meditation. I think for many of us, when we have stressful thoughts, we unfortunately just believe those stressful thoughts and then we inhabit the stress and we're off on unhealthy habit loops as a consequence.

Today we're going to learn a technique for soothing those stressful thoughts when they arise. And our teacher, Du jour, is Jess Mori, otherwise known as JMo. She's a lead teacher, co-founder, and former executive director of Inward Bound, mindfulness education, also known as IBME, which runs in-depth mindfulness programming for youth and the parents and professionals support them

across the United States and internationally. She's also an employee at and teacher on the 10% happier app. Here we go now with Jess Mori. Hi, this is Jess. One morning, not long ago, over the course of just five minutes, my business collapsed into bankruptcy. All of my staff ended up homeless.

And because of my utter failure as a boss, it was clear that I would never be able to get another job. And then I woke up. In this practice, we'll explore the relationship between stress and thinking and learn ways to break unhealthy habit loops. Come into a comfortable seated position and take a few deeper breaths, settling your Notice if you feel any places of tension or tightness. Now let's explore thinking. Most of us experience thinking somewhere in our heads, So bring your attention into your head and notice what kinds of thoughts are happening.

Now that you have a sense of how you experience thinking, let's explore the relationship between thinking and stress. Bring to mind a stressful situation in your life, not the most stressful situation, more like a five on a scale of ten. Think about the situation, what happened, who was involved. what happened who was involved. Get an image of the situation.

Take a moment to reflect on what you are worried about. Now, with some firmness, bring your attention away from thinking and into your body. This might take some determination, but really bring your attention back into your arms, hands, chest, stomach, away from your thoughts and explore what you are feeling now. Notice any places of tightness or tension. What changed in your body once you started thinking about this stressful situation? Pay attention to for these sensations. As we bring this practice to a close, notice how you feel right now. Pulling your attention back into the present moment, into your body and away from thoughts can really help to create less stress and anxiety in your day and in your life. To close, take a few deeper breaths, feeling your exhale. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes if they're closed.

Thanks for your practice. Have a great day. Thank you to Jess Mori, JMo. And we'll see you right back here on Monday for a brand new episode with the Titan of the modern meditation scene, Sharon Salzberg, will be here to talk about a concept many of us not gonna name any names but his initials are Dan Harris. Many of us might be tempted to write off as cheesy. We're gonna be talking about self-love and self-compassion and how it inexorably leads to improving your relationships with everybody.

It's not selfish as some people seem to believe that's coming up on Monday with The Great Sharon Salisbury. 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.