Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - What Is Happiness Anyway? | Bonus Meditation with Jay Michaelson

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

What is happiness? Investigate how happiness is created, what it’s really like, and learn to access the simple happiness of right now.About Jay Michaelson:Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, including his newest, The Secret That Is Not A Secret: Ten Heretical Tales. In his “other career,” Jay is a columnist for The Daily Beast, and was a professional LGBTQ activist for ten years. Jay is an ordained rabbi and has taught meditation in secular, Buddhist, and Jewish context for eighteen years.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “What Is Happiness.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, I want to tell you about my friend and fellow storyteller, Kelly Corrigan. I enjoyed being her thought partner on her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, where we discussed being a lifelong learner, the value of intellectual humility, and how to improve your communications with other Homo sapiens. Now Kelly is running a special series dedicated to being well. This 10-part series delves into the multifaceted aspects of well-being, asking the most essential questions. What does the data show?

How important is context, community, and class? How important is our DNA, our childhood, our schooling? With the expertise of renowned specialists, Kelly is challenging junk science and questioning the culture of Big Pharma on well-being. She's joined by familiar voices like Astaire Perel, Frances Collins, Atul Gawande and Lisa Feldman Barrett, among others, who provide rare insights into the actual science of health and happiness. Tune into Kelly Corrigan Wonders wherever you are listening to this podcast.

I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And we're the presenters of British Scandal. And in our latest series, Hitler's Angel, we tell the story of scandalous beauty Diana Mosley, British aristocrat, Mitford sister and fascist sympathiser. Like so many great British stories, it starts at a lavish garden party. Diana meets the dashing fascist Oswald Mosley. She's captivated by his politics, but also by his very good looks.

It's not a classic rom-com story, but when she falls in love with Mosley, she's on a collision course with her family, her friends and her whole country. There is some romance though. The couple tied the knot in a ceremony organised by a great, uncelebrated wedding planner, Adolf Hitler. So it's less Notting Hill, more Nuremberg. When Britain took on the Nazis, Diana had to choose between love or betrayal. This is the story of Diana Mosley on her journey from glamorous socialite to political prisoner.

Listen to British Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy Friday everybody. How we doing? Time for a bonus meditation. We talk on the show a lot about happiness. It's baked right into the title of the show. But have you ever actually stopped to ask yourself what happiness really is? That is the question posed by our meditation teacher du jour, Jay Michelson. In this practice, he's going to push you to look a little deeper into the notion, the concept of happiness and whether it can coexist with other feelings.

It's a very interesting question, worth exploring. And Jay is a great guide. Just to say a little bit more about him, he is a rabbi, a lawyer, a journalist, a former LGBTQ activist, a novelist, and a meditation teacher. Oh, by the way, he also shows up on CNN commenting on any number of things. So he's a great example of the fact that you can go deep, deep, deep, deep into meditation and also stay very, very, very active in the world. His newest book is called The Secret That Is Not a Secret, 10 Heretical Tales, and he has a great newsletter called Both And, which is available on Substack.

Here we go now with Jay Michelson. Hi, this is Jay. When we're feeling happiness or joy, it needs no definition, it's just the feeling of happiness. But we don't really want to be happy all the time. That would be weird. Human life has its ups and downs. It would be really odd to just feel happy all the time at cemeteries or reading news

of injustice or war. So what is happiness, then? Let's do a little guided meditation together to take a look. We'll begin by settling the mind, resting in the body, coming to rest in the present moment. Go ahead and close your eyes, or leave them open if you prefer, and find a stillness in your posture, a comfortable position where you won't have to move around much for the next little while. Maybe take a nice deep breath just to start.

All right, let's bring to mind something you really want. Something that you're pretty sure will really bring you happiness. Choose something that's real for you. Whatever it is for you, bring it to mind. Get in touch with the yearning. That's a big part of what it is to be human, to yearn for something or someone. Getting in touch with what you really want and what it feels like in your mind and your body to want it. Now, next step.

Shift your imagination to what it would be like to have that thing. What would it feel like to have that be real in your life now? Take just a moment to feel that. And then see if you can put some words to this feeling. Maybe contentment, love, acceptance. explore that for a bit. You might also notice that any feeling can coexist with this kind of happiness, this natural ease, the mind resting. You can feel profound sadness for the suffering in the world, or among people you love. And yet, it's still now, still this moment, still here. This kind of happiness isn't a feeling that comes and goes. It's the ease of the mind at home with itself.

See if you can explore this a little bit. Thought comes up, rest in the mind, and see how it feels in the body. Go ahead and open your eyes if they've been closed and do a quick check. Is it now? Is it here? See you next time. Thank you Jay. You can find more meditations from Jay and other great teachers over on the 10% Happier app. Just download the app wherever you get your apps to get started. And just to remind you, Jay has a new book called The Secret That Is Not A Secret, 10

Heretical Tales. He's also got a great newsletter on Substack called Both Hand. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.