Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Joy Vs. Happiness | Bonus Meditation with Sebene Selassie

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

What if we told you that joy doesn’t have to be an accident? Learn how to develop joy in this guided session from Sebene.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.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Joy,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=8ab8948a-d112-423a-bf8b-78f1e6e2b291.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. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, happy Friday before we dive into today's bonus meditation, some personal and professional news. As you may have heard, I recently left my job as an anchor at ABC News to focus full

time on 10% happier, both this podcast and our companion meditation app. I had 21 amazing years at ABC News. I got to travel all over the world and witness history in real time. I'm also beyond grateful for the fact that my boss has supported my wacky little meditation side hustles so robustly. And then graciously agreed to let me step aside

when it was clear that that was the right thing for me to do. I'm incredibly excited to triple down on all things TPH. We get a lot of notes from all of you about ways we can up our game in various ways. We've been listening, and so we're working really hard on things like creating more meditation challenges, bringing our podcast guests into the app

to teach you how to apply the insights you hear on the show, and a few other things that I can't share just yet, but I'm pretty sure you're gonna love. One thing you may notice here on the podcast is that we will continue to run ads, including some different kinds of ads, some of them read by me.

The goal here, as you might guess, is to make sure that this recent turn in my career trajectory doesn't end up with me living in a flop house in Duluth. That's an in-joke for anybody who read 10% happier. Anyway, as a reminder, you can always get the ad-free version of the podcast over on the 10% happier app when you subscribe. I feel incredibly lucky to get to continue this work, and I want to say thank you to you, our listeners and subscribers for being here and making it all possible.

All right, let me now go ahead and set up today's bonus meditation, and I'm going to do so with a question. The question is, is there a difference between joy and happiness? Here's another question. Can we access joy right now in this moment, no matter what else is happening in our lives? In today's meditation, our teacher, Dujor, Sabine Selassi answers yes and yes. Sabine is a gifted meditation teacher. She's an extremely popular teacher on the 10% happier app where she leads the stress better course. She's also the author of an excellent book called You Belong, a three-time cancer survivor, and a very good friend of mine. So here we go with Seb.

Hi, this is Sebene, and this is a meditation to help you cultivate joy. And this is a meditation to help you cultivate joy. One way I think of joy is that it's different than happiness. Happiness has an opposite, unhappiness. Joy to me is a state of being that can happen even when things are difficult. I think of when my mom was dying. Such a hard moment, but I had joy in being able to be there with her in her final moments. I wasn't happy, but there was joy. Joy is possible in any moment.

Joy is appreciating the good in any moment, without pushing away or denying what might be unpleasant. Joy is the emotional equivalent of glass half full. This meditation will have you making facial expressions and even sounds, so if that makes you feel awkward, you might want to be in a private space to do this one. So let's see how we can cultivate joy in any moment. Find a comfortable position seated or even lying down. And see if you can find a balance between being alert and relaxed. If you're comfortable closing your eyes, you can close them now

or keep them open but with a soft focus on one point. Let's begin by spending a few moments gathering our awareness and allowing the mind to settle. As you rest awareness on the body, can you connect to the breath as a way to anchor and gather your attention? Take a deep inhale and a deep exhale. And find the breath as a way to reconnect to the body and to the moment if your mind gets lost. And how do you feel in this moment? Can you ask yourself what's happening right now? What do you notice in the mind or with your emotions?

How does your body feel? Not changing or trying to fix anything for present moment on purpose without judgment. And we're going to learn how to pay attention not only to what our default habits have us paying attention to, but also to cultivate new ways of paying attention, to notice the joy that's possible in any moment. Let's begin by thinking of something that makes you smile. Maybe something nice that happened to you, or something kind you did for someone else? Maybe picturing the face of someone who always makes you happy? Or remembering a joke? Scientists have shown that smiling releases the feel good neurotransmitters, dopamine and dwarfins, serotonin.

All are released when a smile flashes across your face. But don't believe them. Smile. And see, how does it feel? Do you feel any change in your body? In your mind or mood? Even if it feels awkward, it probably does. See if you can smile right now while listening to this. Take a deep breath in and now on the exhale let yourself really smile.

How does that feel? Okay, now we're going to laugh. I know, I know, I'm not that funny. So how am I going to get you to laugh? Well, you're going to fake it. There's a reason why they say laughter is the best medicine. Studies show that a sense of humor decreases stress and can lower mortality rates. There's even something called laughter yoga, but don't worry, I won't make you do that right now. But I am going to try to get you to laugh. If there's already something that makes you get all you can bring it to mind, if nothing comes to mind, we're going to start to this. Or this.

And can you let the smile that might be there or that wants to arise just be there? that might be there or that wants to arise, just be there. How does that feel? As we end this meditation, noticing any feelings of joy that might be arising in the body. Where do you feel that? Maybe in a sense of relaxation or ease, some warmth or energy in the belly or chest, or maybe that smile again into the body, appreciating this capacity we have in any moment. Cultivating joy can take practice, especially when we have a lot of challenges and stress in our lives. moment. So when you're ready, you can open your eyes. You can orient the space around you. And you can carry this capacity for joy with you throughout the day. Thank you for doing this silly and fun meditation.

See you next time. Thank you, Seb. We'll see you right back here on Monday for a brand new episode with Jay Michelson, part two of our series on climate change, or Eco-Ansiety, and Jay is going to come to the table with some provocative thoughts. 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 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 1-3-dot-com-slash-survey. 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 a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so- so expert experts.

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