Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Mindfulness Under Pressure | Twenty Percent Happier with Matthew Hepburn

Episode Date: October 29, 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. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Hey, hey, for today's Friday bonus episode, we're sharing something very exciting. A sneak peek from our new podcast, which is called 20% happier. 20% happier is my colleague Matthew Hepburn's latest plot to one-up me. Matthew is a meditation teacher and coach and has been a driving force behind a lot of our content on the 10% happier app. You may know him from his hit meditation, soothe anxiety to sleep. Here on the 10% happier podcast,

as you know, we feature long form conversations with deep Dharma teachers and mental health experts about the various ways you can do life better. But many of you have been asking for a long time for us to talk to regular rank and file meditators about how to strengthen your practice. And that's where this new show comes in. In each episode of 20% happier, Matthew will be working one-on-one within everyday meditator

as they seek to overcome some challenge in their life and or their practice. In today's clip, you're going to hear from Saeed, who talks to Matthew about how he's been using fear to motivate himself to meet his own high standards and how that sends his inner world into turmoil. That strategy may sound familiar to many of you. To listen to the full episode of 20% happier, you can 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 your screen. Having said all of that, let's listen now to this sneak preview. tab at the bottom of your screen. Having said all of that,

let's listen now to this sneak preview. 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 as I can be. But it's also the thing that hurts me. Yeah, I wish I could harness it for good in my life. And not just, yeah. And it wasn't just 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 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 would guess that like you said that project of adulthood in your life many ways has become to develop some control over, you control over 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, you know, 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. 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 I know that's the same thing that's driving me to achieve more or work harder or do good work, but 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 I've already attained. Well, that would be of letting go and not staying ready for the next seismic thing. Exactly. of letting go and not staying ready for the next seismic thing. Exactly. It would be silly of me to let go and just be like, yeah, I've got the thing that I need now.

Like, 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, 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 like, is it possible? And like, 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 wanna 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. question. Um, 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 I 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 argument and all that shit. Like it if it literally feels like I'm in a different realm. And I, those suit things bring me like a lot, a lot of pleasure in that. It does feel like a paradigm shift from like my normal life into like another dimension altogether. Well, one of the things that meditation is all about is using attention, like bringing our full awareness to the process of living

so that we learn from it. It's in many ways as as simple as that. What I have a hunch could be a really profound way to start some serious momentum creating 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 mine 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 to have everything together. And as soon as you start turning your full interest and curiosity and attention to actually really enjoying and understanding and appreciating what it's like to depressurize, when you start doing that, yo, your body is going to love that 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. Huh? Thank you to Matthew and Saeed. Again, that was a sneak peek of this new show, 20% Happier, new podcast, available exclusively inside the 10% Happier app. Download the app today and then tap on the podcasts tab to find out what happens next. We'll see you back here on Monday

with a brand new episode with Adam Grant. 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 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. 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-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently?

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