Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Stop Trying To Control Everything | Bonus Meditation with Sebene Selassie

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.---Get comfortable with uncertainty and cultivate trust in life, even in the most turbulent times.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 “Trust Yourself and Breathe.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening ad-free on Wondery Plus. This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy Friday, everybody. Time for a bonus meditation. This week, we're bringing you a meditation led by my good friend, Sabine Selassie. It's all about this phrase that she has tattooed on her arm that I have found very hard to understand and yet quite intriguing.

The phrase is, trust life. What does this mean actually? I'm attracted to it and also suspicious of it simultaneously. Seb's gonna guide a practice here to get this concept into your molecules. Just to say before we get started, if you wanna come practice with Seben A and with me and with our great friend and meditation teacher Jeff Warren. We've got two opportunities coming up, one in May, one in October, both at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.

We call them meditation parties because we do a lot of meditating but also a lot of socializing. There's even a completely optional dance party. You can get more information over on the events page at danharris.com. Here we go now with Sebenay Selassie. Hi, this is Sebenay. Wow, things have been bananas out there. Sometimes we want certainty about how things will turn out. But here's the thing, we can't really control life,

not just with our current situation, ever. There's uncertainty built right into existence. What we can do is get comfortable with uncertainty and cultivate trust in life, even in the most uncertain times. Let's try practicing that. Begin by settling in and getting comfortable. If you like, close your eyes or keep them open with a soft focus in front of you. Observing our breath is a great way to both witness change Keep them open with a soft focus in front of you.

Observing our breath is a great way to both witness change and build trust in the process of life. Let's begin by connecting to the breath. Take a few deep breaths in and out through the nose. Feel the air coming in and out of the body. In and out, in and out. Pay attention to how the breath feels and notice if there's any pause between the in-breath and the out-breath. Try it on your own for a bit. You don't need to do anything, and the body keeps on breathing.

Try bringing a sense of appreciation to the experience of breathing. Take a moment to notice what that appreciation of each breath feels like. Paying attention in this way slows us down out of the rush of trying to make something in particular happen or figure anything out. But of course, the mind might be tripping you up, demanding that you think about all the things that you're afraid might happen. The mind thinking is not a problem. That's the habit pattern of our minds. Our minds think. You can simply notice that and bring your attention back to this intimate awareness

of breathing. Whenever it feels like things are uncertain, we can return to the practice of trusting life one breath at a time. You can open your eyes now and begin to move your hands and feet. Thank you for your practice today. May you continue to trust life breath by breath. Thanks again to 7A. You can find more meditations like this one over on the 10% happier app. And if you want to learn more about the meditation party events we're doing at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck in both May and November go to

danharris.com and you can get your tickets we'll put a link in the show notes.