Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Keeping Things in Perspective | Bonus Meditation with La Sarmiento

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

Our busy lives rarely afford us time to reflect on what’s truly important. Remembering what matters most empowers us to engage meaningfully.About La Sarmiento:La Sarmiento is the the guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington's BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Sanghas and a mentor for the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and for Cloud Sangha. They graduated from Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Community Dharma Leader Training Program in 2012. As an immigrant, non-binary, Filipinx-American, La is committed to expanding access to the Dharma. They live in Towson, MD with their life partner Wendy and rescue pups Annabel and Bader.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Finding Purpose: What Matters Most?” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. dot com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Happy Friday, everybody. Time for a bonus meditation. One of the problems that many of us have, and I'm speaking personally here, is that we can lose a sense of perspective or proportion. We can get so focused on the problems in our lives,

the quote unquote problems that we miss the forest for the trees. What I'm going to say next will probably not surprise you, but meditation can really help with this. So let's do a practice specifically designed to help us tune into what actually matters the most. And our teacher, Du jour, is La Sarmiento, who's the guiding teacher of the insight meditation community of Washington's BIPOC and LGBTQIA plus Sangas, and is a mentor for the mindfulness meditation teacher certification program and for Cloud Sanga. Here we go now with La Sarmiento. for Cloud Sangha. Here we go now with La Sarmiento. Welcome to another day on the planet. This is La from the Buddha. Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. So often our lives are filled with commitments and responsibilities that tend to overwhelm and exhaust

us. How much of our days are filled with what is meaningful for us? In this meditation, we will reflect on our current experience of being human and explore how remembering what matters most gives us agency over how we engage with life. Let's begin. Feel free to move or stretch into a posture that your body would most appreciate right now. Take some fuller breaths as you allow your eyes to close or create a soft gaze downwards.

Let your body feel the support of the surface beneath it. It may feel like life is happening to us instead of us remembering that we have choice in how we relate to what is happening. I often ask myself three questions to check in with myself. As you hear each question, take some time to reflect on your experience at this juncture of your life. Do I feel connected or disconnected? Am I feeling grat or disempowered?

If you happen to feel disconnected, the satisfied or disempowered, see if it's possible to offer yourself some kindness and compassion. It can be through phrases like, may I be kind and gentle doing the best I can? May I know that it's okay to have feelings? See if it's possible to connect to or to remember what matters most to you at this time of your life. We'll explore this by asking a few different questions. First, what is it that you most want to experience or express right now? What is it that you want to pay most attention to? at this time of your life. Whether you have a clear sense or not of what matters most, appreciate yourself for taking the time to begin this contemplation.

You may want to take some time to journal about it if you wish. Now what could be one thing that you could do today that would be an alignment with what matters most to you? Let your eyes open if they've been closed and gently reorient yourself to your space. Take good care of yourself and each other out there. Thank you, L'O, you can find more meditations like this one over on the 10% happier app. other out there. 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 ad- with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.

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