Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Balance Happiness and Ambition | Twenty Percent Happier with Matthew Hepburn

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

Check out this sneak peak into an episode of our new podcast Twenty Percent Happier, available exclusively in the Ten Percent Happier app. About Matthew Hepburn:Matthew Hepburn is a straight shooting, clear thinking, and dedicated meditation teacher. His personal practice caught fire over the course of several extended meditation retreats and volunteering to teach buddhist meditation in prisons in his early twenties. Now he shares his love of contemplative practice with people on intensive silent retreats, through dedicated daily life practice as a core teacher at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, and as the Editor of Mobile Content for Ten Percent Happier.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. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad.

Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, today we're tackling a question that has dogged me since the beginning of my contemplative career.

If I get too happy, will that kill my ambition? As some of you may have heard me mention before, my dad, who was a successful academic physician, bequeathed to me a motto. His motto was the price of security is insecurity, which is a fantastic thing to tell your children. However, it does have a lot of truth to it. In order to achieve success in any sphere, don't we need some amount of plotting and planning and hand-ringing? Of course, it's very possible to take that too far. If you do that, you're going to be stressed all the time, and that could run down your resilience and make you less successful.

So how do we strike a balance here? That is what today's episode is all about. And this is not just any old episode, you're gonna get to hear Ace meditation teacher Matthew Hepburn work directly with a student who is struggling with this issue. If you're a regular listener, you know I've been enthusiastically touting my colleague Matthew's new podcast,

20% happier. And yes, the basic premise is that he's trying to double the benefit that you get out of this show, 10% happier. The idea of Matthews new show, 20% happier is that it's a place to hear real people trying to learn how to meditate or even people who've been doing it for a long time, but still could use some guidance as we all could. And then you're going to hear these people as they struggle to apply their practice to the rest of their life. You may remember we had Matthew as a guest on this show about a month ago to tell us about

his new show. Up until now, you've only been able to hear little snippets of the wisdom bombs that Matthew drops on 20% happier, unless of, you're a subscriber to the app. That's because the show is only available over on the 10% happier app. But today, we're going to whole hog drop an entire episode of 20% happier right down this feed right here so you get the whole experience.

In today's episode, you're going to hear Matthew talk with a meditator named Saeed, who is struggling to manage his own sense of vigilance as he continues to grow more and more successful in a fast-paced media career. You're going to hear Matthew give Saeed some practical advice tailored to his meditation practice, but we think that you're going to find nuggets of wisdom that you can take away for yourself. It's a powerful lesson, so without further ado, here is the very first episode of 20% happier.

Think about the last time you had a restless night. Mind spinning with anxious thoughts, that feeling of being powerless to just relax, worried about what's lurking in your future, it's like it's a monster under the bed. When we were kids, we learned to deal with these monsters the best way we knew how. We shed our eyes, we ran to the nearest grown-up. As adults, we found all sorts of ways to cope with our deepest anxieties. We drink, we get lost in our phones, we work too hard. And since we'll never run out of things to worry about, we can find ourselves perpetually

bracing for the next big thing. And that can lead to a pretty painful inner world. That's the case for my friend Saeed. He came to me for some advice on how he uses new meditation practice to understand the way those monsters might be driving him and whether they have to. Can I tell you what my fear is? Yeah, tell me. My fear is that...

I hear what you're saying is like, it's very much like an internal training of your body to like be okay, not even be okay, but to relish in like the good parts of things, like the pleasure, right? My fear is I'll linger there too long. What's too long? An hour?

Really tell me, what is too long? I don't know, like, I'll like be feeling really good and I'm like, yeah, it looks like safer this. And then I'll take that throughout the rest of my day and I'll be feeling pleasure and then I'll get blindsided by something. Sid's mind is in a tough spot. He's very ambitious and he's been working his way up the letter in a high stakes media job for a while now. But the thing is, after talking with him, he explained how he's been using his fear as a way to meet the standards that he sets for himself at work. And it's hard to reach your full potential if you're not thriving on the inside. No matter how well things are going externally, real happiness is going to remain out of reach when fear and anxiety have turned into a habit.

The risk for sight is that it will end up realizing as aspirations without any of the fulfillment he thought it'd give him. I wanted to see if I could find a new driving force for sighted ambitions, the force of genuine well-being as opposed to vigilance. Today on the show, we're going to talk about the ways to move between driving and thriving, so that you can have a more balanced and successful life. This is 20% happier. I'm Matthew Hepburn. So here we are. Yes, here we are. Yes, here we are. What's going on in your world?

What I like to do just as starch as to get a feel for each other is, you know, hear how you're doing, what's going on with you? I'm thinking about, because I have these expectations now of myself that I have been trying to make more consistent and make more, more part of my life, but I like continue to sleep a little bit doing so. And those expectations are like, you know, to wake up and the first thing I do is not pick up my phone. I want to do less of that when I wake up in the morning

and more of like doing like a meditation. And then I begin my day, but half the time I feel like a 14 year old kid and I'm just like reaching for the things that make me feel good when I first wake up. Still. Yeah. But if I don't meditate at some point today,

at what point will the ill effects of that start showing up? So now I'm like worried about that. Yeah, well, you know, it's, I hear more than anything, the pressure around it, both on the aspirational side on one side and on the other side the like anticipating Both the ill effects of not meditating and then like probably and I'm projecting I'm I'm assuming here some guilt that comes from like I didn't do the thing that I knew I should have done and now I'm all anxious and now I gotta get back to the breathing thing.

How close to my health far off in my hair? Now you're pretty close, you're pretty close that you just kind of summed up my whole mental self-talk. Like that is how I talk to myself nine times out of 10, even beyond meditation is like, damn, I didn't do the thing that I was supposed to do, I didn't get the thing right that I was supposed to get right. So I just end up with just the stress and the anxiety of just like either anticipating something bad about the happen

or like something bad did happen or even maybe something small did happen. And I'm just like putting a lot of pressure on myself about like why did I let it happen? Why didn't I do it differently? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yo, it's like we're like in the thick of it. Okay, so I really appreciate you're just, you're just really forthcoming with like exactly

what's going on right off the bat. And it's so helpful, you know, as a meditation teacher, as I work with people to understand like, you know, what is your mental talk like and what is it like in your inner worlds? Because, you know, it's not like I'm like a boxing coach or a soccer coach, like, see how your form is and what's going on, you know?

But one of the things that I hear is that the things that create and fuel the anxiety, that like, oh, I gotta do this, I should have done this, I should be doing this, is the same thing that you're using to help you do meditation. And I'm sure other things that are meant to reduce the anxiety. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, no, it's that same hyper-vigilant mindset, doing things the right way, and just being on top of your game, right? Like, it's that sort of mindset that allows me to be good at my job and good at my life. Oh, it's good as I can be, but it's also the thing that like, hurts me.

Yeah, I wish I could harness it for good in my life, and not just, yeah, and it wasn't just like, running wild and running free. Yeah, so it's like, what does come up when you imagine letting go? Yeah, well, when I think about letting go, just like the idea of letting go, the thing, the first thing that comes to my mind is that it is the most vulnerable place that I could be in.

When I think about even just like, even just as simple as like letting go of my stomach, letting go and just letting it hang. Yeah, it's been a process of just bracing for the next seismic thing to happen in my life, right? And so I can never feel truly, I never feel truly like, like I'm just living. To answer your question when I let go, it feels like I'm just waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Yeah, yeah, and I I would guess that like

You said that project of adulthood in your life many ways has become to Develop some control over you know situations that are legitimately threatening and big seismic shifts that totally destabilize things. And I would imagine that you actually have really developed a fair amount of influence to create some stability and good things in your life. Do you feel like that's the case? I know it factually, but I don't know it emotionally. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I don't experience that in my body in that way. Everything still feels like a temporal, everything still feels like it could be taken away. Nothing feels like worth anything, really. And it's funny because like, I know that's the same thing that's driving me to achieve more or work harder or like do good work, but it's also the thing that like,

it's also the thing that doesn't really allow me to see whatever influence I do have and whatever accomplishment I have had. Like I have a really hard time with acknowledging what have already attained. Well, that would be of letting go and not staying ready for the next seismic thing. Exactly.

It would be silly of me to like let go would just be like yeah, I've got the thing that I need now. Like you just, the fact that it's possible that it could be taken away is enough for me to be like nah, like nah we're still in this fight, this is still a fight. Yes, yes, yes. It feels a little hopeless. It feels to be honest. It feels a little hopeless. I can hear that. And I think it will feel hopeless, probably so long as it feels like a project of undoing a way that you have become,

the person that you are that the mind has developed, these patterns. And if it's a project of trying to undo that, for many of us, we just think about our history and what we've inherited intergenerationaly, culturally, and the thought of trying to undo all that, is daunting.

It's a question of, is it possible? And even if it was possible for a person to do that, like, do I have the time? Right. And like, who am I outside of that? Like, I don't know who that person is. I know who I am right now. But like, what is that? Who is that person? That's scary too. Yeah. What I want to do is try and figure out a way together that we can make a plan for you to just lean into the things that are naturally you that will help create some space around this pattern. So it's not running the show all the time and you feel like you get some reprieve. So the question

I want to ask is, what do you do or how do you experience in your day-to-day regular life pleasure? Just like honest, simple, but real pleasure. Yeah, that's a good question. Pleasure. It's tough because examples I'm thinking of are things that like, they aren't like just pure pleasure. They have pleasure in them, but they also bring a lot of the stuff with it too. Like I think the first thing that came in mind was like, is exercise?

Not quite weightlifting, but running. It's like everything else just falls away. All there is is what's in front of you. If it's running, what's in front of you is the road. If it's basketball, what's in front of you is these other five people on the court and the net. It's like I took my mind out of one state of being and just like plopped it into another and the only rules here are the ones that are present here, like on this court.

Whatever the rules of the court are, even like the arguments and all that shit. Like it literally feels like I'm in a different realm. And those suit things bring me like a lot of pleasure in that it does feel like a paradigm shift from my normal life into another dimension altogether. Well, one of the things that meditation is all about is using attention, like bringing our, like full awareness to the process of living so that we learn from it. It's in many ways as simple as that. What I have a hunch could be a really profound way to start some serious momentum creating bigger gaps from when you feel totally

oppressed by this mind state of like pressure, pressure, and all the rest of it, is to really tune in to what it feels like for that pressure to loosen, for that grip to loosen. What I think will be amazing for you is to have these moments where you feel pleasure in your life and then to pause and just lean into feeling it. Because the trouble is you get a dopamine hit when you're on a run, but you just are still moving through life one stage to the next and not tuning in and going, this is what it feels like in the cells of my body to not be put in pressure on myself to, you know, have everything together. And as soon as you start turning your full interest

and curiosity and attention to like actually really enjoying and understanding and appreciating what it's like to depressurize, when you start doing that, yo, your body is gonna love that shit. And it will just start to look for more opportunities to feel that. It's a very natural way toward a kind of depressurization,

right, because we actually feel the benefit in real time. And it's like anything else. It's like the body realizes that it's pleasant and enjoyable. And then it like seeks it out more often. And the trouble is when we're focused externally, we then get addicted to the things that bring us pleasure. We don't cultivate a taste for the like internal letting go of the staying addicted to making the pressure.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Can I tell you what my fear is? Yeah, tell me. My fear is that I hear what you're saying is like it's very much like a sort of like internal like training of your body to be okay, not even be okay, but to relish in like the good parts of things like the pleasure, right? in like the good parts of things, like the pleasure, right? My fear is I'll linger there too long.

What's too long, like an hour? It really tells me, what is too long? I don't know, like I'll like be feeling really good and I'm like, yeah, it looks like savor this and then I'll take that throughout the rest of my day and I'll be feeling pleasure and then I'll get that throughout the rest of my day and I'll be feeling pleasure. And then I'll get blindsided by something. I think that's a real, you know, legitimate fear that comes from your experience in the

world. And, you know, the truth at the end of the day, say, he just like, it will be you who decides to put it to the test and you can't take on somebody's word or as a good idea intellectually that like lingering in a felt sense of well-being, I'll call it, is actually not going to hinder you or set you up to get blindsided. The only way that you would end up experiencing a world in which maybe it doesn't feel like that's the case is if you like test it out and actually see, it's like, okay, I'm going to try this out and like, I'm ready. Am I going to get blindsided? And feel it out. And it'll be an experiment. Like, maybe it'll go well, maybe it won't go well.

But you were right when you said like, the intellectual level is not gonna translate into some kind of translate into some kind of emotional result. But one of the antidotes to that kind of fear is to take some time to vision for yourself, to really envision what thriving, healthy success in your internal life looks like in relationship to your external life. Because there's a strong link for you in your mind right now between internal pressure and external results. And I wonder what would happen for you if you really took some time to envision like and for you if you really took some time to envision like, what's the inner worlds of say 10 years from now that I really want to be,

you know, that I really want to see, that I really want to experience. I'm curious what comes up when I ask that question. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I think, yeah, I've actually never pinpointed that dynamic of like internal whatever into external results. Like, I've, yeah, I've never just like thought about it as like a solitary thing that exists inside my body that doesn't necessarily need to be connected to external results. But when you said it, the first thing that came to mind was a flourishing, healthy, green in with a waterfall and a bird's chirping and like it is watered and it has everything it needs, it is cared for and it doesn't need anything except for what it contains. Sayyid is doing something incredibly vulnerable right now. This isn't his vigilance talking. Sayyid is believing in the possibility of a different way to live.

And having a clear vision for this may turn his meditation from a to-do list item into something that will change his life. So right now, what I want him to do is to lean into this, to immerse himself in this vision, so he can come back here whenever he needs. What kind of plants are there? They're just like lush bushes that are like dotted with pink flowers that the bushes naturally provide, but like it's mostly greenery with like dots of pink and red flowers.

What are you here? I hear a bird's chirping. I hear water gently running, like sort of like a stream that goes through it. I see, yeah, and I see some birds like ducking their heads into the water to drink because this is a healthy thing that they like and they're enjoying it. Yeah, and I just, and it's bright. Everything feels bright and everything just feels, it feels like an, it feels like an ecosystem. It feels like a healthy ecosystem that it's just like taking care of itself. When you think of this place, this possibility for your inner world, you know, some years from now, and you think of the reality of what that would feel like or look like if you were living

from that place. Is there like a word or a phrase that comes to mind that represents that? I think of the word abundant and I think of the word self-sufficient and just thriving I guess. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I think thriving is the feeling. I think envisioning this is potentially really powerful thing to do in your life. Mm-hmm. What if that were really possible? What if that was really on the horizon for you?

That would be amazing. That would be amazing. I think it's really, as I'm listening to you speak and the difference between what you're saying now and the way that you talked about meditation right off the bat when we started talking. Reflecting on this or envisioning this possibility sounds to me like a real pattern interrupts from your typical internal mode. Yeah, totally. And one thing that's interesting to me is that all those other things that you've been talking about loving to do have all been pattern interrupts. They're a reprieve, they're a break, right? It's like you go for a run and it's the relentless, you know, pressure or anxious thinking. Yeah.

And so I have a thought first that it would be interesting for you to make a daily practice of just remembering the garden as a pattern interrupts. If you want to interrupt the pattern. No, I do. I do. That's true. Yeah, I am 110 percent willing to give it a shot. Yeah, I won't know until I try it because, yeah, what you're offering is something that, to me, as it stands right now, even though it's coming from me, feels like a threat to the way I already do things. Don't set these things up as antagonistic to each other. What I wish for you is take this on, try coming back to and reflecting on this beautiful vision that you're developing as a possibility for yourself, like where you could go.

And then when you're done, you know, like maybe set a timer and take like four minutes, right, and envision it. And when you're done, be on your grind. It's grind season, be about your business, like go get things done. You don't have to try and not hustle because for good reason, the mind and the body are like, no, that works. And, you know, I'm not going to let that go until it doesn't work.

And I don't think you need to. But this is adding in something else. And so don't set them up as opposed to each other, but just it's like dropping in something new. And I'm curious to see where it goes and check out that fear. You know, if the fear comes up that like it's going to be, it's going to throw you off or it's going to keep you from being alert, recognize that when it's happening. And it's not that it should be different or it should go away or anything like that Just know that that's the patterning that's the conditioning that's the vigilance

Yeah Yeah Okay, you can try that all right. Let's try it. Let's try. Let's try. Let's try. We'll see what happens all right Let's try it, let's try it. Let's try it, we'll see what happens. All right. In between sessions, Said took some time for himself to try out what we talked about. Most students take a while to open up and be honest about how they're really doing. Not Said.

I'm tired. Yeah, I'm tired. But I've been tired a lot lately. Yeah, I found myself dreading the week yesterday because I knew it was going to be a lot of work and a lot of moving parts and I had to take a moment to just feel very upset. But I didn't sit there for too long. I just had to feel that. I wonder, do you think that's related in any way? So the things that we were talking about just around

pressure or anxiety or anything like that? I mean, probably, yeah, it was in anticipation of how much I know I'm about to give myself to this thing. And then that turned it to a little bit of anxiety. But then I did some of the visualization stuff that we talked about. Like I did that quite a few times since we last spoke actually. And it helped. But I did think in the back of my mind, the thing that always happens is I'll find a new thing that allows me to see things in a new perspective.

But then like something will happen, maybe I'll just forget it or like I'll get distracted or work will become intense again. And I will have to just like throw everything to the wayside and just focus on my work. And then the magic's gone. Then I lose it. And then I'm searching for the next thing. The next thing that's gonna like give me that magic again. So that's annoying.

That's like a thing that I fear happening. Yeah, this is something that happens for all of us. I mean, I could say I've gone through the same thing a lot of times. It's like we learn some kind of mental health or contemplative tool or something like that and it really helps when it's new and when it's fresh and it's like something about it being new and fresh allows it to interrupt our patterns. And then it's kind of like the inner patterns like know what to expect. They like, no, it's come in.

They're like, you don't try and use that on me. And I know exactly how that works. And it's not gonna work for you anymore. Exactly. That thing you thought was helping, that's stupid now. We don't, it's not gonna work. It's actually really dumb what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it sounds like to me, like, you've got this kind of, you're in the like honeymoon phase with the

latest one here. So it's working now, but you're like, yeah, for how long? Right. Right. but you're like, yeah, for how long? Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I'm curious, do you imagine it's possible on what would it take in your life for something to actually start to have

like a consistent trend for this shifts? I mean, I wanted to be possible, but I don't know if it is. for this shifts. I mean, I wanted to be possible, but I don't know if it is. But yeah, yeah, I'm having a hard time seeing what that looks like consistently, but maybe I'm already doing it, but I don't know. I have to imagine that there is a better version of what I'm already doing it, but I don't know. I have to imagine that there is a better version

of what I'm already doing. Well, I would imagine that you're already doing it. And yet, from what I see, working with people, there are a million factors that just affect as we fall into our patterns, how, how many times are we going to have to fall back in and how far do we have to fall back in on our way towards not falling into the patterns? And it varies. One of the most important differentiators is just how much people get stuck in the delusion that they shouldn't fall back down into them

and that it's their personal fault. And when you have that kind of real nasty combination of like you're feeling on the up and up. You're not having that, you know, depressive cycle or anxious cycle or you're not falling into that same pattern. Whatever it is, it's different for different people, right? And you have the delusion that's like, well, I've been working on this my whole life, but I feel great now and like, it's never going to happen again because like, I got everything

together. And you know, that's a really attractive hope to fall into, but it's usually not the most realistic, right? And then people see the pattern itself, not something that's conditioned by culture, by family situation, by circumstance, by all these things, but when they fall back in, they see it as both a huge surprise and it's like it's my personal feeling. You know, in the meditation practice that I've learned more than anything, it's about developing a kind of wakeful awareness that accompanies you all the time. Yeah, like a lot of the times I'm like,

I feel like I'm on autopilot. And I'm just like, for so many reasons, I just feel like I'm on autopilot. And that, I think it's because like,ilot. And I think it's because, like, quite frankly, I think it's because that helped me actually get through a lot of traumatic things in my past. Because if you're just on autopilot, and you're just not allowing,

if you're not engaging with the world in front of you, then it has less impact on you if the things that you're seeing in front of you are really fucked up. Or the things that are happening right in front of your eyes are really messed up. You're not engaging with it. It doesn't impact you as much.

It maybe does subconsciously, but for the meantime, it doesn't impact you as much. So I think that's maybe why that autopilot thing has resonated with me for years now. But it's so important to recognize that like, just being on autopilot has helped significantly to deal with having to live through or see or experience traumatic stuff.

And it really does. And when our nervous system learns that we're safe through that, it's not the right thing to do to try and just change it all together and completely strip away being on autopilot. It's like you know, as a passenger on a plane, I want my captain to be awake and aware, but if they're flying the plane and they're awake and aware, I do want them to also have autopilot available because sometimes shit goes down and if some shit goes down and they

need to like, you know, step away for a second, it's good that it's there. I feel protected by being available, right? That's right. And the ideal is that, you know, they switch between the modes as much as is necessary or useful. But when we've learned a pattern of staying on autopilot, then you can't just swing all the way to the other direction. So there's a practice or a technique of developing more wakefulness, more awareness that's called pendulation. And pendulation, you can imagine, you know, like the swinging of like a grandfather clock or something like that.

What we do is we stay in our comfort zone which may be like being on autopilot, right? And then we move over into being really aware for a very short period of time. And then you just let yourself go back on autopilot. And then when you're ready, you swing back for a few moments and then you switch back.

And that actually tends to be a much kind of stronger and more sustainable way to do these types of practices of becoming more aware. And so I wonder if with your temperament, also meditation, when it's not something that's just replacing the thoughts that you've got going at a given moment, there's lots of meditations that I think are really useful and probably will continue to be very useful for you. When you're replacing your inner thought stream with a different thought stream, for instance, or

a visualization, for instance. But there's some types of meditation instructions and they'll just tell you to be open and aware to everything you're feeling in your body and everything you think and all of that stuff. And I would guess that that stuff is going to feel really challenging. And you're going to feel like, you know, times when it's working, but times when like the mind just totally rebels. And oh, yeah, definitely. Ah, so I think there's some pendulation that's actually needed. Like it would be useful for you any time that you try that kind of thing to go in with the personal approach, basically,

it says, okay, I'm going to do this for a few seconds at a time and then I'm just going to relax and chill out. Then I'm going to do this for a few more seconds at a time. Then I'm going to relax and chill out. So that it's less about like how much of this can you endure and much more about how much do you just want to do it? Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. I mean, you just think about it. From my perspective as a meditation teacher, do I want people coming to meditation

thinking about it as how much of this? I can't do it. You don't do it. You don't do it. That's what it feels like sometimes. Some of those meditation is just like, all right, I'm about to train my mind. I am about to be the rocky of meditation

and like just go in and some. And like if you're feeling like rocky that morning, like great, go ahead like that, right? But if you're not feeling like rocky, then that's not the mode, that's not the approach. Yeah, because I think where, yeah, I think where I mess up is like when I start, when it starts to feel like another pressure, that's when it's like not doing what it's supposed to do, I think.

You had something that you said that I thought was so insightful about being on autopilot and reminded me of a study that was done. They did this study with monks that had done more than 10,000 hours of compassion practice and regular folks, and they took them as two different groups, and they exposed each group to these like sounds of people in pain and misery, and they did brain scans on them throughout the process of them being exposed to this stuff. And what's really fascinating is that they found that for the ordinary group, the non-compassion meditators, they would have these big spikes early on

when they first got exposed to these sounds of people in pain. And then over time, the spikes would get less and less and less and less. Now, the meditators, their spikes would go high in the beginning and they would stay high all the way through. The spikes would actually be higher than the other folks who didn't meditate as if it was more affecting to them to hear these painful expressions from people. But what was really fascinating to me is that the meditators would spike and then immediately come back down to their normal level, their normal baseline, whereas the other folks

weren't peaking, but over time, their overall activation level was just getting higher and higher and higher, and so they wouldn't actually be able to come down from the peaks. And so that, to me, was this like amazing, aha moment of understanding how when people are training in being wakeful and aware and not on autopilot, they're way more sensitive to the world around them. Yeah.

But it doesn't hang with them and trouble them through the rest of their day, the rest of their life. It's like, actually it just comes and goes and then they can move on. It's interesting too because what they're also signing up for is when you sign up for feeling things, all the things, when it happens and not putting it off, you're literally signing up for whatever, right? You're signing up for feeling literally anything, but I think working in somewhat of a corporate setting somewhere where you're sort of like you sort of have to put shit away in order

to get shit done. It could feel dangerous to like exist in those spaces like that. It can feel dangerous to exist in a space like a corporate setting and feel like I'm gonna be a person who feels everything all the time because That can inhibit your work It could feel like it's long the process down people may not have enough time to like make space for that You could just be the weird guy who feels everything And like I find that in like artistic spaces that was like acceptable. Even if it was like not explicit permission given, it was like implied.

And the spaces are occupying now that's not really realistic. Yeah. Oh my God. I mean, I can I can really relate. How long did it take you do you think to develop that balance? Well, yo, let me just say first and foremost, I'm not done. I'm not done. And I think that after about four years of real intensive, uh, five years of, of really like going for it and making this a priority. I probably made like three or four very memorable mistakes around figuring out this balance of being too wound up around work or to open at work. You know, and it's a seesaw. I still go back and forth, but like, I made some serious mistakes in both directions,

but ultimately it's worth it to me because of where I've seen like that I've got to. And I hope that it goes even further and further because I'll say to this day, sometimes I'll have a really tender meditation session or a really intense therapy session. And I gotta go into work and it feels like, wow, is it? Can I go into this meeting and like, you know, talk to six people about all the things that were behind deadline on while I'm like,

in my feelings around this, and it's not easy, but it's possible. But it's possible. Yeah. Whew. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that is, that I can, that is something that I want for myself. I want to be able to strike that balance

because I know what my work looks like when I'm rested, and I have space, and I feel balanced, and I know what it looks like when I feel stressed and hurried and panicky. But I think the work that I have in front of me is knowing that the deadlines are a little bit more strict now, but how can I still create an ecosystem for myself under these circumstances that allow for some of that balance

that I had when the deadlines weren't so strict? That's the hope that I have right now. I guess it's like what I'm trying to, is what I'm dreaming or what I'm envisioning right now. Yeah, really taking time to just stop and breathe and just not be so go, go, go. Really, I've never actually, I never regret it. It's always hard for me to get into it, but I never regret it afterwards. I will say. It's hard to remember to do that on your own, but we're social creatures.

And so what I see is that people who want to do something to take like little small moments throughout the day, whether it's pausing to breathe or whether it's like gratitude or something like that, the game changer is like having a squad, even if it's like gratitude or something like that, the game changer is like having a squad, even if it's like a squad of two and as you and one other person, that's actually the game changer. Oh, I never thought about that. It's really the thing because then it doesn't become a personal battle. It's not another personal thing to achieve. It's like how you commune with people who you are already close to.

Right. So I would suggest if you think that's the thing that will help you the most this week, take a little time and reflect on who else in your life would really benefit from that and would be down to just be on a consistent text thread with you and you can just like call for a pause and breathe moment with via text and you know gas each other up for taking the time. I already know already know who would be down for that so definitely this is a great idea it's a great idea. It's a great idea.

Yeah. Meditation is a team sport and people don't look at it that way, but like, if it's not, it's just impossible to keep it going. So I would like be 100% behind you with those like, pause and breathe for a few moments, but get somebody else on your team. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that, I'm gonna do that. Definitely

gonna do that. Now you're now you're my meditation homie. When people are like, do you know about yeah, I was like, yeah, I know my homie, man, he, you gotta you put me on. You gotta do the thing though, if you're gonna claim to have a meditation home, you gotta be about your pauses. I am! I am! Awesome. Thank you so much, man. This is, yeah.

Both times went in feeling very like this and came off feeling like this. That's a good sign. Yeah. Big thanks to Matthew Hepburn and the whole team over at 20% happier for coming over and playing in our sandbox for a day. We hope you'll do that again soon. And we hope that you, dear listener, enjoyed this episode. There are plenty more to check out over on the 10% happier app. Right now, there are three more episodes

waiting there for you and more coming every other Wednesday. Just a reminder, despite the fact that we give you a full taste of the show in our podcast feed today, to listen to 20% happier on the regular, you've got to download the 10% happier app, wherever you get your apps, and then open it up and tap on the podcasts tab at the bottom of the screen.

All right, we'll see you back here on Monday with a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation with the renowned Buddhist teacher and author, Robert Thurman. This is a good one, sort of a head-spinning one at times. So we'll see you on Monday. For that, in the meantime, have a great weekend. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ meantime, have a great weekend. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus

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