Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Joseph Goldstein on Self-Compassion | Bonus Meditation

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Self-compassion is powerful, but it's not always easy to acknowledge your own pain. This meditation helps you default to compassion. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Self-Compassion,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=0ee0c676-4215-4d7f-9b0d-9129a3d79a5b. If you don't have the Ten Percent Happier app, you can download it today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install. About Joseph Goldstein: Joseph is one of the most respected meditation teachers in the world -- a key architect of the rise of mindfulness in our modern society -- with a sense of humor to boot. In the 1970's, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Since its founding, thousands of people from around the world have come to IMS to learn mindfulness from leaders in the field. Joseph has been a teacher there since its founding and continues as the resident guiding teacher. 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. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, if you're a long time listener, you know we have circled back to the subject of self-compassion again and again on this show. It's a really powerful tool to deploy and it is also a pretty difficult habit to build.

This may be why when we ran a listener survey earlier this year's self-compassion was the number one topic that you are listeners wanted to hear more about. And that's one reason why we brought Chris Teneff back on the show earlier this week. And it's why we're bringing you today's meditation, which provides a simple way in. It comes from Joseph Goldstein, who is a great friend and great meditation teacher who I've worked with personally for many years, and he's the co-founder of the phenomenal

Inside Meditation Society, which is a retreat center in Massachusetts, and he's also one of the founding teachers on the 10% happier app, where you can hear many other meditations from Joseph. Anyway, here's this one from Joseph. Hello, this is Joseph. Nice to be with you again. In this meditation, we'll be talking about the development of compassion. Compassion is the motivation to alleviate suffering, to alleviate harm. When it's developed, it opens us to whatever suffering is in front of us, and it overcomes the arising of indifference and inaction.

It's not enough to admire the quality of compassion from a distance. Our practice is about making a compassion response the default setting of our lives. This is the power of practice. This is what practice means. Instead of falling into indifference, instead of conditioning apathy, we practice compassion so that it becomes the habit of our mind and heart. Whenever we open to our own pain, our own difficulty, and we can do that mindfully, we develop in compassion. So let's get started.

Find a comfortable sitting posture, one that isn't slouched or slumped, but a posture that is upright and relaxed at the same time. You can close your eyes and take a few moments to settle. without narrowing the focus of your mind, simply be receptive, sit and know your sitting. Know what you're feeling. In the practice of compassion, we repeat certain phrases that express this intention of compassionate response. Frazes like, may I be at ease, may I be free of suffering. If you notice any discomfort, struggle or difficulty, these could be painful sensations

in the body or difficult thoughts in the mind. See if you can include them in the meditation, not pushing them away. Feel the body sitting. Feel the body breathing. Slowly repeating the phrases, may I be at ease. May I be at ease. May I be free from suffering. Notice each moment in a relaxed way, befriending the mind and returning to the phrases whenever the mind wanders. May I be at ease. May I be free from suffering? May I be at ease. May I be free from suffering.

May I be at ease. May I be free from suffering. When you are ready, open your eyes and take in the space around you. As we learn to open to our own pain, our own suffering, our own difficulties, of how to be with them with an open, receptive, compassionate attitude of mind, we then have greater strength and courage to be with the suffering of others because we've practiced it. Thank you for your practice. See you next time.

Thank you again to Joseph, one thing to say before we go. As you may know, this week we wrapped up the taming anxiety challenge over on the 10% happier app. Now that the challenge is over, nobody who took it will ever be anxious or worried again. All right, that's probably not true. But the techniques in the challenge are really game changers. And as our teachers noted, you do have to practice them consistently to reap the benefits. So we created a whole collection of guided meditations called Keep Taming Anxiety to help you practice everything you learned in the challenge. These meditations are designed to be repeated and revisited over time, helping you build

your capacity to respond to anxiety-inducing situations as they happen. So go check out the Keep Taming Anxiety Meditations. Over on the 10% happier app under the Singles topic, you can download the app wherever you get your apps or just click on the link in our show notes. We'll see you back here on Monday for a brand new episode on Monday for a brand new episode about minimalism. 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 1-3-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. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What is happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life.

We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App.