Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to See Hope in the Everyday | Bonus Meditation with Sebene Selassie

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

Learning to trust life moment-to-moment is a powerful practice. Check it out. About Sebene Selassie: Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer. 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. For MBC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, as you may know, we are right now smacking the middle of a big initiative here at 10% happier, a two week series on the concept of hope.

What does it mean to conceive of hope not just as as groundless belief that things will get better immediately, but rather as a skill that we can cultivate in order to help us navigate the ups and downs of life in a more supple fashion. Today's brand new meditation comes to us from Seven A. Celacii. I just posted an interview with Seb on Wednesday if you haven't had a chance to go. Check that out. I highly recommend it. Today though, in this meditation Seb is going to walk us through a practice designed to help us put her ideas into practice, literally into our meditation practice right now today.

Here we go with 7a. Hey there, this is 7a. Maybe you've noticed a central paradox of meditation. We may come to practice seeking positive transformation for ourselves and the world, but first we must learn to allow things just as they are. Genuine acceptance lays the foundation for transformation. I like to think of this as learning not to be in contention with reality. learning not to be in contention with reality. Another way to say that is trusting life, moment to moment. Let's try it together.

Find a way to settle in that's comfortable for you wherever you are. You can close your eyes if you'd like or keep them open with a relaxed gaze. Allow the body to naturally soften anywhere that feels tight or tense. Trusting life as it is begins by trusting the body and all its sensations. Let's begin by connecting to the sensations of the body. What sensations are you feeling right now? You can even ask yourself, what's happening in my body right now? There's no right answer. Simply notice what's here, making space for whatever is happening. Remember, we are learning to allow each sensation as it is. Simply noticing and trusting what is happening.

Sometimes what we notice is the very resistance we're hoping to release. There may be tension or tightness in the body you don't like. Or maybe you already hear a critical voice telling you that you can't do this. Just noticing that resistance is an essential step here. So great job. Rather than being in contention with any of this, try letting yourself feel it in your body without pushing it away. Allowing everything to be here. You can trust this too. Now let's try expanding the inquiry, asking what's happening in my body right now and adding can I allow this experience? Can I trust this experience? Go ahead and give it a try on your own. As we finish this meditation, take another opportunity to appreciate how incredible life is. This changing cascade of sensations, thoughts, emotions, you can be aware of whatever is happening and

learn to trust it all. How amazing is that? You can open your eyes now and reconnect to your surroundings as we end this meditation. Thanks for practicing trusting life with me. I'm wishing you really well. Thank you, Seb. And if you enjoyed this meditation, you can find a longer version of it, along with several other brand new meditations on hope in the 10% happier app. You can download the 10% happier app today for free wherever you get your apps. And we'll see you back here on Monday for the next edition in our Hope series with Orinj Sofer.

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 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court.

I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them.

It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. on Amazon Music or the Wondering App.