What To Do When Life Won't Let Up | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren

Key Takeaway

Trust life doesn't mean everything is perfect—it means being flexible enough to move with challenges rather than fighting them. When you accept 'this is the curriculum' life is giving you, you stop wasting energy resisting what's already here. Instead, you can respond more intelligently and build capacity for the next challenge. The practice isn't about being happy all the time; it's about being cool with whatever's happening right now.

Episode Overview

Dan Harris, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren explore the concept of 'trust life'—accepting whatever life presents as the curriculum you need, whether or not you believe in a metaphysical universe. They discuss how to apply this philosophy during challenging times, from cancer diagnoses to work stress to parenting overwhelm. The conversation examines the difference between the immediate effects of meditation practice, long-term habit change, and the spiritual dimension of seeing your whole life as meaningful. They also answer listener questions about work-life balance, obsessive thinking, and meditation versus napping.

Full Transcript

Transcript of What To Do When Life Won't Let Up | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. How we doing? We've got a fascinating and often very funny discussion today and we cover a lot of ground. ground. ground. How can you be cool with literally anything that happens? Does everything happen for a reason? Is there any truth to that old cliche? We also take your voicemails with questions on work-life balance, obsessive thinking, and meditation versus napping. versus napping. versus napping. This episode is part of an occasional series we do here on the show called Meditation Party.

It features two of my old friends, Jeff Warren and Seb E. Selassie. If you are not familiar with those guys, here's a little bit more information about them. Seb describes herself as a writer, teacher, and immigrant weirdo. She is the author of a great book called You Belong. She's based in Brooklyn in NYC. Jeff Warren is also a writer and meditation teacher. He and I co-wrote a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics and he hosts his own podcast called The Mind Bod Adventure Pod. Jeff is based in Toronto.

He's my favorite Canadian as I often say. Three quick housekeeping notes before we dive in. dive in. dive in. First, this conversation first aired back in 2024, but we're bringing it back because it's really good as you will hear. Second, if this episode leaves you wanting more, wanting more, wanting more, I've got good news for you. We're doing a three-day meditation party retreat IRL at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. It'll be going down October 16th through the 18th, so it's a weekend event. It's really fun.

We teach a bunch of different flavors of meditation. We take a lot of questions from the crowd and there's also plenty of time to just chill and socialize, play pickleball, whatever you want to do. We even do a dance party. dance party. dance party. You will find a link to register right there in the show notes or you can just go to eomega.org. Third thing to say and then I'll shut up. Jeff and Seb are two of the featured teachers over on my newish meditation app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris.

Harris. Harris. I know I know I know looking at the news these days, you can feel quite powerless in the face of world events. Like what can you do about it? My view is that taking care of your own mind is actually essential. It's not self-indulgent. It's a community service because it allows you to respond sanely. So over on the app, we've got a growing library of meditations to help you train your brain with teachers like Seb and Jeff, but we also have created a community, a whole community with chat groups and weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions because the research is very clear that one of the best ways to create an abiding habit is to do it in the carpool lane.

So you can join the party if you go over to danharris.com. The app is free for the first two weeks, so you can try before you buy and if you can't afford it, just let us know, we'll give you a free subscription, no questions asked. Okay, we'll get started with Seb E. Selassie and Jeff Warren right after this. Seb E. Selassie, Jeff Warren, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Dan. Great to be here. Good to be here, Dan. I should have said welcome to the party.

I'm saying it now. All right. So segment one, we generally talk about talk about talk about we've been roughly calling it the [ __ ] over time, but it's these are all works in progress, the titles, but it's generally time for us to complain about [ __ ] And I I talked to you guys about this before we started rolling. I've been thinking a lot about something you said to me, Seb, or you have said to me several times. several times. several times. In fact, the last meditation party episode we did, which was from the retreat that we did in October of 2023, the last episode that we posted was some snippets from that retreat and one of the first things we talked about in that episode was this tattoo you got that says trust life.

And I remember, if I'm honest and you won't be surprised, seeing that for the first time and thinking, "What the [ __ ] does that mean? Like what does that even mean?" You know, like that just seems like, you know, empty words. But then I this is always what happens to me when I'm dismissive. It has become like a earworm for me and something I've been thinking about a lot. I've had a lot of work stress for the last couple of years and and and in complaining to you about the work stress in the past, Seb, you have brought up trust life and [snorts] I think and I apologize now, I think historically I've not really taken it in and I still don't know what it means, which is why I'm on this long ramble right now because I want to hear you talk about it.

But I have been interested to explore what maybe it means. You know, maybe there's a reason why I've got work stress because it's the thing I should be working on. And yet I I hesitate a little bit because that seems to dip over into the magical like the universe is serving me up the thing I need to work on and I'm not convinced the universe works that way, although I'm open to it. Anyway, enough out of me. I'd love to hear your responses and also like how you apply it in your own life.

Mhm. Yeah, thank you. First of all, I want to give credit to Loss Sarmiento, who's been on the show before and you know, I don't know if you know them, Jeff. I I know them. I've never met them, but I know them professionally, yeah. So this is their motto for life and they had asked me if I had sort of a mantra or motto that I live by and I thought about it and I I don't really, but now I've appropriated theirs. theirs. theirs. And so And so And so trust life comes from them.

I think it comes from the universe, but ultimately it came to me from them. And it's just been sort of a guiding post. I mean, I tattooed it onto my arm because of all of the challenges that have been thrown my way for [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] many, many years, maybe since I got to this planet in some ways. But definitely in the past few years, I've just had a tsunami of challenges, of health challenges, of relationship challenges. I've spoken about that on this show before.

At the same time, my life is really beautiful and I have a lot of lot of lot of resources and privileges and support and love and community including you both and and and that feels like a disservice to only look at the challenges and feel like life is against me somehow or the universe is out to get me in some way. Trust life allows me to be with and this is the practice, right? Be with what's happening with some measure of allowing, having the flexibility to move with the challenges.

So it's not about denying the challenges and trying to paint them over with rainbows and kittens. So it's it's really meeting what's there and the multitude of feelings, which sometimes I have trouble with. You know, it's hard. Last year, I think I spent a lot of time really in shock about the end of my marriage and not able to fully process and that's probably some wisdom to to have some titration to be able to feel the feelings when I was ready to feel them. them. them.

But that's also about trusting life and allowing the experience, but really keep moving towards the freedom, the joy, and the love that's already here. So that's sort of been my orientation to trust life. It's not about saying that everything is perfect or definitely not happy all the time, but there's some way that I can see that there are there are there are balancing forces all the time and I I really feel like it is something that we can take into not only our personal reality, but into what's happening in our collective right now, too.

now, too. now, too. Really being able to feel all the feelings and have our responses to what's happening and also move towards whatever can support us in making the change that we need to make and taking care of ourselves, taking care of our community, trying to support with the positive things that we want to see in the world. Is it your view that there's a metaphysical or magical component here where I the phrase I'm about to utter catches in my throat in some ways because I think it's often used in unthinking rote ways, but everything happens for a reason.

Do you think of trust life as existing within that zone? Why are you laughing? You're looking at each other and laughing. Because I think that Jeff and I share a love of some systems of understanding and knowledge that lean towards this and there is a lot of debate and even controversy even within something like astrology, which is one of the main systems that I use, about the nature of free will and determined futures and you know, there's there's a lot of conversation about that. But yes, there is there are there are there are long studied, tested models and systems of understanding how life plays out that inform my inform my inform my belief in trust life as a living philosophy.

Yes. And we should do a whole show about astrology. I don't you know, it's like I I I'm careful about talking about this. I mean, you know, if anybody just looked at my Substack, they know that I'm all about astrology, but it's hard to talk about it in polite company or in the public because there's so there's so much misunderstanding. You know, like people think that astrology is just sun signs and astrology is actually very complicated math. complicated math. complicated math. And so if you don't want to go into the depths of it, you're just going to have this it's the way people thought about meditation for, you know, decades in in Western scientific Western scientific Western scientific communities.

communities. communities. I do I to bring you in at some point, Jeff. So I'm I'm I'm really happy to be a uh fly on the wall here. That fly will get swatted at some point, just just to be clear. I probably should say this again to you and both of you cuz I'm watching you choose your words very carefully, which is uncharacteristic uh in a good way. You don't have to be careful around me. You might be projecting out into whoever's listening and worrying about what they're thinking, but I'm I operate under the Joseph Goldstein, and he got this from Samuel Coleridge, willing suspension of disbelief.

What the [ __ ] do I know? I don't know anything. I come at things skeptically, but I I'm not judging you negatively for believing in something that can't be or having a suspicion of of something that can't be proved because science may not have caught up to it yet. So, don't hold yourself back for me. It's not I'm holding myself back from you because we we've had this conversation before. conversation before. conversation before. It's more that we would need so much more time and probably an expert in the fourth chair to really break down the complexity of astrology.

It's not just astrology, there are other systems. And the the debates around it and the pushback, and I don't feel knowledgeable enough to sort of make that argument here. But I've done enough of my own homework to be able to study it without those that skepticism, right? But if I had to whittle what you're saying down, it's something along the lines of yes, I 7A view the trust life mantra through the lens of some degree of mystery and magic that I do think the universe is giving me what I need to work with.

And yes, and that is in some ways, dependent upon your study of things like astrology. Is that a rough fair summary? fair summary? fair summary? exactly right. Yes. And I would say, just as somebody who doesn't yet know whether astrology and related fields of human endeavor are actually accurate in any way, it seems like you could practice trust life without necessarily buying into the fate {slash} destiny or universe giving you what you want aspect of it. For me, trusting life is has been useful in within the context of my own travails just to think of like whether it's I'm getting this these challenges because I need them, that's one thing, but they're here, so why fight against them unnecessarily, and why not view them as tests that are worthy of taking and passing and challenges that are worthy of taking on.

Yes, and that's the most important skill to build, actually, is that attitude towards all of life and experience that well, if it's happening, it's happening. There isn't a sort of it's meant to happen, but it is happening. And so, to be to be in contention with it is bananas. bananas. bananas. And serves no one and nothing. Exactly. Okay, so I'm a big giant banana smoothie because I'm in contention with a lot of this stuff. Um and yet I that's why I think why trust life keeps weaseling its way into my consciousness.

my consciousness. my consciousness. could help you, Dan. Yeah. Yeah. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] I'm kind of in between the two of you. I think of it primarily as an attitude, but I'll build on that. Like, the basic attitude for me is this is the curriculum. curriculum. curriculum. This is the thing I say to This is the thing I say to myself. I don't say trust life, I say this is the curriculum because this is the curriculum life is giving me moment by moment, and I can't deny it because it's right here.

And in the past, I have spent a lot of time fighting the curriculum. I do not want to learn this lesson now. I'm not ready. I don't have the capacity. the capacity. the capacity. It's too bad, and I've been run over by the curriculum, but it is still the curriculum. And now I just have um I can really feel there's been a sea change the past sort of year in my life, you know, with the intense challenges of parenting. parenting. parenting. They're amplified by the kind of neurodivergent piece of both my wife and I being um having different kinds of nervous systems that get easily blown out under the stresses of parenting, and uh so there's lots of overwhelm.

And and then to say nothing of the global situation, which is just prayed so heavily and hugely. It's constantly on my mind, constantly on my heart, and so just to put that out there, I know Seb pointed to it to it seems grotesque to talk about trust life or that somehow things are meant to happen as they're happening when there's so much tragedy and horror happening right now. And yet, this is the curriculum because this is the curriculum that life is giving us right now. And so, when we accept that this is here, that, you know, obviously the the follow-through is that it can lead to an increased capacity to respond in more intelligent ways.

And the collective practice of continually saying, for me, this is the curriculum of opening to it, of letting it be here. It's let me see each of these different challenges as the thing that I needed to learn to get me to the next level of what I can give back. And so, I wouldn't take back a single one of them, a single one of my uh you know, suicidal periods, my intense physical injuries, my you know, different personal traumas and things that have happened because every one of them has forced me to look at and learn something about this conundrum that is now.

And this is where it does get mystical or you know, however you want to put it, the longer I live, the more there's a sense of coherence to that. The more certain things that have happened in the past, challenges that I've had to work with, they make sense now from this place of more maturity, of more integration, and it's as if they were all selected somehow. You know, it's like the organic mysterious process of life has created a kind of it's hard to even talk about this, but there's a kind of a coherence and a logic that makes meaningful sense.

And I feel like I live more and more inside that. And that comes from that view of seeing that this is the curriculum. But do you see what I'm saying with the higher level thing? It's not um yes, these are the things that happen, and these are the things that you're supposed to have learned. And yet, the kinds of challenges that I face now, it's as if I were ideally trained by my past to meet them. And not just in myself, but in the what I see in in the people around me in my community.

And so that's that's a kind of trusting life. life. life. And this points to seeing your own life as a spiritual path. You know, it's the conversation that Seb and I had on the way up here around being your own teacher and choosing to relate to all the things that you've that have happened in your life as your teachers. And all the people you have met to begin to put you into that position of true, I don't know what you want to call it, uh responsibility, autonomy, centering you in your life as your own teacher.

I do see what you're saying that you I think I see what you're saying, which is that this is the curriculum, which I love, by the way. That's a tattoo in and of itself. Um is a great MO for any sentient being, and you can use it just as an equanimity practice. This is what's happening right now. Can I be cool with it? Whatever is happening. And the higher level, which I think is the phrase you used, is optional, which is that over time, you might come to see that there is something magical, mysterious, metaphysical about it, but that's up to you.

Yeah, it's up to you. And all and also, even if you don't even need to go to the metaphysical place, like the thing I hear again and again, and I see again and again, is someone meets a life challenge challenge challenge and they've decided to turn it into someone else's healing. You know, whether it's your kid dealing with a rare illness, and you suddenly create a parent support group around it. Or you, you know, whatever it is, you see it again and again. It's the way we make meaning of our lives is to take the thing that was challenging and transform it.

That's how you make meaning out of your own suffering. You transform it into something that you can then pass on to somebody else in some way. And I just see that played out again and again and again. And that's the same thing I would describe as that sense of coherence, the sense of now the arc of your life has there's more meaning to it because of those things. those things. those things. You know, if they didn't happen, it wouldn't have that. Yeah, you asked me last night if I regretted something about the way I responded to my cancer early on, and I can't even comprehend the idea of regret anymore because anymore because anymore because it happened.

it happened. it happened. You know, that that that's just that's the nature of the reality I'm in. Maybe in a parallel universe it didn't happen that way, but that's how it happened, and and and I don't think I could understand the lessons I'm learning now then. Right. Right. Right. to experience everything that I experienced to be at the point where I am now, where I can say, oh, I really need to work on control. And I looked at that years ago, but I'm at the point where I am now able to release control and fear and all of the, you know, my bugaboos in the way that I need to release them now.

You know, it's making me think I sometimes I think about the effect of practice, the effects of practice in life as these three parts. And they're kind of like different time scales. So, the effect, say like you do a meditation, there's an effect in the moment where, you know, you can be feeling tense or you can be feeling bereft, and you can do a practice of a few minutes or and it can actually shift things a little bit. You feel more open, you feel more settled.

And so, there is an effect in the moment that's really valuable. And sometimes people who don't understand meditation, they think it's all about the effect of the moment, you know. But we know that more attention by, you know, more experienced teachers is that the effect over the second scale, which is the effect over months and years, you know, where you're training your nervous system in a sense to be permanently more open, more available, more sensitive, more responsive. So, we understand that to be true, too, is that this is the scale of like habit change, but there is this other scale and that's the scale of your whole life.

And this is the what I would call the kind of spiritual dimension of practice in some way. And it's you practice and the more you're practicing, the more you start to feel like you're coming into relationship with the whole, the whole of your life, the whole arc of your life having a meaning, the whole arc of the that your network, the community connections, the whole arc of the planet, uh just existence itself, whatever you want to describe, there's this sense in which it gets more and more integrated into what feels like one thing that you're in and there's no words to I'm kind of trying to point to what it is, but this is where I think practice goes and I think different people will talk about it in different way, but I think trust life is one way to talk about it.

Isn't there a way to understand that third part without any and again, I hate I hate to be the guy who keeps doing this, but without anything so. mysterious. I mean, obviously there's a lot of mystery in it. But the answer is of course there is because there's a way for every single human being on the planet to come to that understanding and they're going to come to it in their own way. And for some it won't have anything to do with those things. It'll be seen entirely through an ecological lens or through uh a science lens or through a some humanistic lens and it's complete in and of itself.

That's the point I'm making. You don't need to buy into anyone's cosmology to come to that place. You have to make it your own. But people do that. Yeah, I mean, any science class will get you to the fact that we're all connected. We're all part of a whole. I mean Yeah, when I hear an ecologist talk about and people talking about the environmental movement, I just hear it's the same thing coming back, just spoken about in a slightly different way. I love that, the three tiers and and that place of this third spiritual understanding is so we were talking a little bit about this that, you know, sometimes people misunderstand the word ease as sort of a fruit of the practice because they mistake it with easy.

But it's not that things aren't uncomfortable or there's no suffering left. You know, the end of suffering doesn't mean pain goes away. But you have a relationship to it that's more easeful and that yes, doesn't need a cosmology, but I would make the case for these other ways of knowing and seeing the whole that, you know, have enchantment and soulment of the universe and mystery. They're also just fun. Yeah, totally. That's I would much one case for Yeah, I'd much rather live in an enchanted magical universe I want to live in a dead ball.

dead ball. dead ball. We live in a dead ball. And when you when you tap into these very these very these very tried and tested methods of understanding enchantment, it's like they give you a window into Oh my god, isn't that so cool? Like you can see these patterns and you can see all of these these these things that you can't see with your ordinary knowing and senses. See, this is this really really important piece because, you know, we first come into it, you think this is about what's objectively true or real.

And for me as I've gotten older in my life, I I think I still interested in that question. I think more and more it's impossible to answer that question. What I can answer is what is actually subjectively healthy for me and when I choose to believe in an more interactive reality filled with mystery and wonder in which I'm like I'm playing inside it, my life is vastly more pleasurable. It's more I have more capacity to help others than if I believe in a universe where I I can't know anyone else.

Everything is just a kind of uh rigid billiard ball structure or whatever it is. Like that's just having lived in a world like that, it doesn't feel it full it doesn't feel it full of possibility to me. So, I think that there is this basic freedom that we're allowed, which is to choose. And William James used to talk about this. He called it the will to believe. We're allowed to choose what we believe. And our beliefs have a profound found effect on our happiness and it's something that everyone needs to look at in their life.

And it's something that really when I was in a more science-y frame, I would have rejected outright as being like, who cares what you believe? What matters is what's true. But now more and more, I mean, the belief that the tools of science can show you exactly this to be true is itself a belief, you know, so I think having a stance of humility and then being interested in what your relationship is with the world is very very important. I saw a Benjamin Franklin quote today.

He said the older I get, the less I trust my own judgment. Seb, can you talk a little bit about how you've been applying the trust life mantra in your own life recently? Yeah, so I um you know, I'm pretty open about my cancer stuff in the past few years had really tough diagnosis and treatment and treatment and treatment and it was getting better, but now it's starting to turn. So, my you know, the kind of tests and scans are showing that I'm much worse off right now than I was 6 months ago.

It's not the worst it's ever been, but it's going in the wrong direction. direction. direction. So, I've had to really um work with this and not immediately go into the fear and control, which is how fear shows up a lot for me, sort of that like speedy amphetamine control energy of like, okay, now I need to like plan everything and control everything and do all the things to boost my immune system or system or system or research all the weird sounding diagnoses and um mutations of my genetic genetic genetic codes of cancer and that's not helpful.

You know, it maybe it it was helpful in the past and I I don't regret that because it helped me sort of manage where I was, but now I'm in in a very different place where I do need to lean into this trusting of life and trusting how things are and acknowledging the multitude of realities of my life. Yes, there's cancer, there's challenges with um in my body from the treatments I've had and I I work with those, you know, whether it's pain or fatigue or immune suppression, but I also have a lot of amazing things going on and I really want to not drain my attention away from those by those by those by worry and obsessive thinking and planning.

So, it's really finding that measure of not rejecting the feelings or the realities of what's what's here and what's coming, but also not having that take over all of these other aspects of life that are also here and true. I hear a combination of techniques there and I I could be you'll correct me if I'm wrong here, but there's a nice little mantra from Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher, who says a thing you can say to yourself in the when you're in the grips of something hard is um it's okay.

By which he does not mean everything's okay, but it's okay to feel this thing right now. So, I hear a combination of that plus just gratitude for the good stuff that is also there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of surrender. Like I've really been working with surrender because I've under start to understand more deeply how fear shows up as control for me. It's one of the ways. It's the main way it shows up for me. That surrendering and kind of lessening that grip of control.

So, I put my trust in my oncologist, who's a wonderful person and a great oncologist to do what she does instead of trying to be on top of that data and information and consult with her and ask her questions and know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening, but I can take care of myself in the ways that are best for me to take care of myself. So, you know, my practice, taking care of myself in terms of my actual body and energy and making sure I get enough sleep and I'm eating well and I, you know, working with my trainer, what whatever it is I need to do and spending time with my friends and feeling supported and feeling love and experiencing joy.

So, for me it's it's understanding myself, too. So, the it's okay and the gratitude are really important, but it's also knowing my patterns and being able to to work with them in ways that support me in the best way possible. So, it's okay gratitude plus like a a good owner's manual on your own mind body system. Yeah. Because somebody else's response to fear might be collapse, right? And that's okay, too, but then what do you need to do to make sure that that doesn't become the default and start to affect you negatively?

Listening to you talk, I I did a little bit of the typical making about myself for a second. Um You don't become an anchorman because you lack that propensity. Um I've made some oblique references to my professional stress over the last couple of years. of years. of years. And I think about it like it's interesting. I have a similar feeling about the last 2 years as I think I'm hearing coming through in your comments, which is the last 2 years have sucked on a number of levels and they've been two of the best years of my life.

life. life. I don't think they've been great because of the shitty stuff, more that all the practices I've learned over the last 14, 15 years just are having compounding effects. And so, that is I think more true than the shittiness of the situation. Does that Does that make sense? Yeah, you see the fruits of your practice in a much deeper way when you're fertilized that tree well with a bunch of [ __ ] Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. The greatest title for a Dharma book ever is I can't forget the name.

It's Ajahn something. Ajahn something. Ajahn something. Who ordered this truckload of dung? Ajahn Brahm. Ajahn Brahm. Okay. Great. Great book title. Coming up, we're going to take your questions. We've got some great voicemails from listeners. One's about work-life balance. We've got one about obsessive thinking. I might have called that one in with a ventriloquist we've also got one about a great question, meditation practice versus napping. Keep it here, much more meditation party coming up. Okay, welcome back to meditation party. We're going to take your voicemails now.

We love these voicemails by the way. All right. The first call is from Sana and it's about work-life balance. Take a listen. So, I really love periods of my life where my softness flourishes, where I can be present, move more slowly, have more mindfulness, feel my feelings. Often this is during very small snippets of my life where I feel like I can cocoon. I can build a bubble around myself and my family to truly just enjoy and be. and be. and be. Then the remaining 95% of my life feels tough.

tough. tough. Family crises, constant planning, to do, especially when you're you wear the hat of planning for your nuclear or your extended family, or you're in any sort of caregiving role. Uh work stress of managing and planning there, juggling commitments of being present and obligated to family and friends. Just saying it makes me exhausted. So, how do you balance that too? How do you live a life more in flow? But how do you code-switch between that and and and like the intensity of being on and being in planning, orchestrating, doing mode for both work and motherhood and family responsibilities responsibilities responsibilities while wanting to be in soft mode, in flow with yourself, grateful, open-hearted, inquisitive, curious?

I would love to know how to marry those two together better. I mean, I got there's an easy answer that, you know, suck it up, put your suit coat of armor on, and you know, life is meant to suck. Bear down. Bear down harder. What's the real answer, Jeffrey? I don't know there's a real answer. I I really appreciated the question though and the place from which it was delivered. She had a very awesome manner. But this is my life, so I mean, I think for me, the way I I can only just speak personally, the big big picture for me is that I have to just accept that there are times I'm going to be completely run over by my life, and often those are very long periods.

And I'm not going to have the space and perspective to be at my best and responding responding responding perfectly, and I'm not going to feel at ease. And ease. And ease. And actually, when I come to that recognition, the I'll just I'll recommend a book here cuz this this kind of helped me get there. It's a popular popular popular psychology book about acceptance and commitment therapy called The Happiness Trap by like an Australian writer. Acceptance and commitment therapy is basically like repurposed mindfulness. But the the happiness trap is if you think that when you're unhappy, you shouldn't be unhappy cuz you need to be happy, that's the trap, you know, you're now living in a world where there has to be the condition of happiness for things to be okay.

So, just accepting that there are going to be, you know, hard times when you're not happy and then times when you are happy is part of the outlook. But what's really interesting in that book that really helped me that I hadn't really thought about before was the commitment piece. And the commitment piece is basically saying saying saying at any moment there's an opportunity to move towards your values or move away from your values. And so in moments of extreme challenge where you're just getting run over by life, what I found was in a lot I had a background narration of like, this shouldn't be happening.

This shouldn't be happening. I want to be happy or I I this these things shouldn't be happening or this stuff with my kids shouldn't be happening. But when instead I could say, you know what, this is happening and this challenge is building my resources to be with future challenges or there's a strength capacity training here that I can kind of feel or I can kind of do this thing where I flip it around and right in this moment when everything's falling apart, I can kind of see that this is actually moving me towards in the direction of just like gleeful flowing with it no matter what and dancing with it or whatever.

Like, so at any moment you have this opportunity to kind of just just say, how can I experience this differently? I can't get away from the fact that this is extremely challenging. But is there a way I can make this the so it's moving me towards my values? Or maybe your value is so justice. Like I mean, I I can see more clearly this privation or this hard thing happening in the world or this injustice and that's moving me towards being able to speak out more strongly about it towards the future.

Do you see what I mean? And since I've been implementing this, because I don't have the time to sort of lubricate my life with a formal practice, I just do not have that, what I'm doing is more like moment to moment applying this accept that yep, this is unhappiness, that's okay. How can I make this this this something that's moving me in a direction that I want to move in. And that makes all the difference. I love that. We've never done an episode on ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy.

It's a thing I've mentioned in my presence quite a bit, so maybe we should get that happiness trap person on the show. As you were speaking, it reminds me of something that's helpful for me, which we actually talked about in the last episode briefly, the last episode that posted back in February that we'll put a link in the show notes if you want to check it out. Which is setting intentions, which you used a funny term when we were discussing it. You said initially you were just blanket annoyed by the notion of setting intentions, and I had the same I mean, this is a recurring theme.

I was dismissive when I first heard of intention setting because it just struck me as like classic new age paplum. But actually, it's it's like Babe Ruth pointing out of the ballpark and saying, I'm going to hit this home run. And it's just setting the direction. And I think for somebody like Sana, who whose voicemail we just listened to, or anybody else who's busy, whether you have kids or not, and you find yourself in these moments of stress or overwhelm, if you've set an intention first thing in the morning, and hopefully, I found it very helpful to set it before anything I do if I can remember it, right?

Before I meditate, before I exercise, before I go to bed, when I wake up. I would like to get better at setting it before even small things, brushing my teeth, whatever. And my intention is, I dedicate the benefit of whatever I'm doing now to all beings. Right? That That is, as I like to say, the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass. And that is the head out of ass removal mechanism for me on the regular. And to me, that sounds like commitment.

Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And I'm just thinking that there's another piece, too. piece, too. piece, too. I think a lot about those transitions. When something is really hard and the next hard thing is coming, I think about what can I do in the moment to have more softness around this, just the words that she used, or more smoothness. Like, and it's kind of an equanimity practice. Can I It's like you're a DJ, you're trying to put two songs together, and then one is really slow and one is really fast, and you know it's not going to be well, but nevertheless, you do it the best you can to kind of match the beats together so you can kind of smoothly go through it.

And for me, it's like, how can I suddenly decide to enjoy this moment in my body? How can I make my body feel more fluid or more sexy or more open or more supple in some way? And and just having that kind of intention can actually turn transform really challenging moments and really challenging periods into something very different. And so, I think the play part of that, like playing with implementing in-the-moment practices, that's definitely part of how I how I survive. I don't I don't know if you could get any sexier.

That would be dangerous. Don't Don't Don't I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm curious, Dan, how how is your like intention setting going? And how do you remind yourself to do that or I mean, it's a little bit that's why I got a tattoo, uh FTBOAB, for the benefit of all beings, way more earnest than I generally am in my life. Uh there are so many people that brought me in this direction. Spring Washam is a teacher that teacher that teacher that she's a meditation teacher.

She wanted me to get a tattoo on my chest, and I don't have that kind of courage. And also, Richie Davidson, who's an eminent neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, and he talks about how he he's very systematic of doing this intention before anything he does all day long. And he and I were speaking late 2023, and that's what kind of put this intention setting thing on steroids for me. And actually, we were talking late '22, late '22, late '22, and then 6 months later I got the tattoo, and I've just been trying to up my game for a while.

And it's a little bit of faith, you know, I I don't know that I'm I'm I'm giving this a lot of time because it's cutting against, for me, a lot of wiring for selfishness. And by selfishness, I mean that in a kind of in a broad way. It's not just that I'm I'm not going to give you my five bucks if you ask for it's like a self-centeredness, self-centeredness, self-centeredness, a reversion to what's often called in neuroscience circles, the default mode thinking about myself or ruminating or worrying, and having a broader view, which is so helpful to me and everybody else around me.

And of course, that's essentially the same thing on some deep level. And do you do you feel like it is I'm going back to the cosmology stuff, but do you feel like it is then having impact when you set that intention, or is it mostly for you to rewire? I'm not there yet. I'm open to it, but I I it's not what's going through my head. It's more like um it's not in the neighborhood of petitionary prayer for me. It's more like yes, I wish all beings could be free from suffering, and that's genuine wish, but I'm not sure that my wish is connected to any specific outcome, and I'm cool with that.

The only outcome that I that I that I do have some attachment to is like can I make me more fluid and sexy like Jeff. But don't you also like I mean you the intention of your work and you know you know you know Yes. Yes. Yes. that you want your work to benefit others. others. others. Yes. So I've gotten in my head many times about the selfish motivations in from for my work and then I try to remember that in my tattoo FTBOABA stands for all beings and I'm definitely part of that no matter how down on myself I might get and so that's an interesting dynamic tension too like wanting to profit in a broad sense from what I'm doing and also really keeping my eye on the prize which is genuinely being a benefit and so I get that wrong all the time but it is something I play with.

Should we do another voicemail here? We've got We've got We've got a call that came in from a Glenn who is asking about something that hits home for me obsessive thinking or overthinking. overthinking. overthinking. Take it away Glenn. Hi, my name is Glenn and my question for Dan and the team is I'm sure that all of you have gone through where your mind constantly keeps turning different questions. I think Dan and you've brought it up before where maybe after the 14th or 15th time that your brain could stop thinking on a situation.

I'm probably at 25 to 30 times times times either thinking of things I did or mainly trying to decide on different [clears throat] situations with my job or family. Just interested in how you guys guys guys if you've dealt with that issue of constant constant constant turnover turnover turnover of situations in your mind and have been able to solve that [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] or at least uh make progress towards that. Thank you. Never. Never. I was just thinking poor bastard. I mean who deals with that?

even? even? even? [gasps] [gasps] [gasps] You know it's funny the first thing that came to me listening to Glenn is this practice that I don't remember the name of this scholar. He's a Buddhist studies scholar but an American white American who studies Khmer Buddhist practices. So these are Theravadan practices that come from Cambodia that grew out of the Khmer Rouge and you know the atrocities that happened in there. So Cambodian Buddhism was sort of shifted um by that period and this practice developed called stirring and stilling where these really intense and you can find them online maybe we can link to them these really intense almost singing but in this very deep soulful moving profound chants around suffering and the core teachings of Buddhism and they were meant to actually stir actually stir actually stir the emotion and stir the sentiments of these teachings and then you stilled into practice.

into practice. into practice. And I remember when I first learned about that years ago I was so fascinated by that concept and realized that I could use stirring in various ways to help me then sit. So a lot of times when things are just really just the rumination is really strong or the emotion is really strong I'll dance and then I'll sit. [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] Or I'll jump on my trampoline and then I'll sit and it's made such a huge difference for me rather than just trying to go to the cushion or for me to the mat cuz I do a lot of lying down.

There's this way in which I honor that energy and I allow it to come and then I can more easily kind of be with it in a more spacious more spacious more spacious way and there's something energetic about that that that is is very powerful and and and there's a vocalization part of it that's part of it too. So I do tend to like play music and sing and dance and then sit. I think you're making me when you're describing this you're making me understand more clearly how I respond in those situations and because I'm hyper overthinker over ruminator in the Dan camp and I traditionally early on in my life I just didn't have a way to turn it off.

I was I understand where Glenn's coming from. I just would go around and around and and then you know you do develop capacity through mindfulness to kind of watch or observe it and so much of it happens under the radar you don't even realize it's happening so being able to notice it can make a difference to begin to kind of pop out and sometimes you can just watch it and let it play out but often that's not enough. And it's to pick up Seb's point it's like there's a certain momentum of energy already there and in order to really meet that you need to meet that with action.

And whether the action is external like you move your body you dance you jump around. What I often do is I have a kind of ritual when that's happening and my ritual is with the I Ching. I we've talked about the I Ching in the past here. Can you say what it is? Yeah the I Ching is a ancient Chinese kind of divination system. Some people talk about it the first computer and it's basically a kind of almost like little mini fortunes that you get. You get one of 64 sort of little pithy wise kind of framings of ways to kind of reframe a situation.

They're all just blanket wise anyway because they kind of are steeped in kind of Daoist philosophy and and I find them quite appropriate to the situation but even if it wasn't that there wasn't appropriateness there's always something there that you can take away from it and just the act of doing that it just completely stops the rumination on it. I'm like okay cool. I don't need to know anything else than that that kind of gives me the framing I need. Because I also know the whole question of getting it right or wrong is an illusion.

There is no getting it right or wrong. There's only what's happening in this moment. Like you just make a decision and then something happens and then you're in a new moment and there are new set of choices in front of you that you couldn't have anticipated even one moment back. So part of it is that I recognize I'm not going to get to the answer through the rumination most of the time. Not saying it doesn't happen on occasion. Most time it's just going around and around.

So I just to stop the going around around I decide I know the answer. It's this and then that action stops the energy and then I can go on to the next thing and live my life and I use it all the time and I have zero kind of rumination stuff really anymore around there's nothing I can't stop that. Isn't to say I don't have still deep preoccupations that I wonder and and worry I do of course but that surface quality of like just being totally obsessed by it is it gets shifted.

And it doesn't have to be an I Ching. Could be a tarot thing or it could be a sudden shouting something out. I mean I'm just having some kind of ritual some kind of thing that you do to express the energy of it to feel like there's a sense of finality and then to be able to move on is the move. I'll throw some other possible tactics out because I mean everybody's going to have different things that work for them. them. them. Along those lines Jenny Taitz is a clinical psychologist from the West Coast who was recently on the show and she recommends that when you're having repetitive thoughts sing them out loud.

Oh love it. And it can get you to not take them so seriously. Couple of more mindfulness e things from Joseph Goldstein. One is just use a little mantra in your head of up and out. out. out. Just let it go. Up and out. And the other is other is other is and I think Glenn made a reference to this this this is this useful? Just you know is this useful? Do we need to be on as Glenn said number 25 of my run throughs of all the horrible things that might happen because of X or Y.

So try any or all of those Glenn and others. others. others. Let's do one last voicemail. This is from Adriana. from Adriana. from Adriana. [gasps] [gasps] [gasps] It has to do with napping. Hi, it's Adriana from Washington DC. Around 2 or 3 in the afternoon I start feeling like feeling like feeling like a nap would be nice. But then I tell myself a meditation session would be more productive. more productive. more productive. Sometimes I sort of combine the two. Am I ruining my meditation practice? Do I have to choose?

What a failure. I mean jeez. Can't believe we even played that voicemail. What do you think Seb? Well I'm thinking about that quote that's attributed to the Dalai Lama. I don't know if he ever really said it but he said that sleep is the best meditation. meditation. meditation. You know you would you would have to really know Adriana and know the situation to know what the right not that there's a right answer but know how to work with this because there's some people who fall asleep every time they meditate but they're not tired.

You know they're getting enough rest and it's it is some kind of conditioned habit avoidance usually or some kind of aversion to the practice. It doesn't sound like that's what's happening with Adriana. She's probably just tired just tired just tired and needs a nap and so that is a perfectly valid thing to do to maybe take that time to lay down and maybe start with a body scan and bring some mindfulness into the experience but take the nap. the nap. the nap. Also most people in our culture are tired.

Not me because I sleep really really well and I sleep a lot. My friend actually wrote a song for me in my 20s called Sleepy Salasi proclaiming the proclaiming the proclaiming the my great talent at sleeping. But you know a lot of us are under slept and so meditation does turn into napping. Finding that balance so that it's it really the the practice really becomes a place where you can learn and grow in that capacity of mindfulness so that you can carry it into the rest of your life, and it just isn't nap time, is is a balance that you have to strike, you know, and you have to find it for yourself.

Yeah, well said. I was just thinking of how much I I I love naps. love naps. love naps. How much I miss naps. I just don't get to nap now with the young kids, but you know, I think different times in your life you need different things, and sometimes the medicine you need is to give yourself that permission to have a nap, and to if if framing it as a meditation is a way to help you have the nap, then that's um And of course, meditation is a lot more than that.

So, yeah, good to try to find a time to practice at some point when you are alert, cuz you get a lot from that. Yes. Definitely pro napping, also pro meditation, and doesn't need to be a war. Just a couple of other things that might be helpful. One is if you don't want to nap for whatever reason, and you do want to meditate, walking meditation, much harder to fall asleep standing up or walking, although I have done it, but I find walking meditation can be great.

The other thing is I found, and this may be idiosyncratic on my end, is when I lie down to meditate, I'm actually much less likely to fall asleep than when I sit and meditate. So, something about giving myself the permission to lie down often precludes the falling asleep, but that may not be true for you. Anyway, we think you're doing great. All right, we're going to take another break. We'll be right back with some uh recommendations from the larger culture, [ __ ] we're getting into. That's coming up after a quick break.

All righty, welcome back. It's Meditation Party, the third and final segment. I love these kinds of segments where you hear recommendations. I'm always looking for recommendations. I like when my parasocial relationships uh blend into the curatorial. Um Jeffrey, what you got? got? got? Uh okay, so I just finished this book that [clears throat] was fabulous. It's called The Saint of Bright Doors by uh Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera. And it's a fantasy book. I'm I'm a big sci-fi fantasy junkie, and I had read about it in the New York Times that the reviewer gave it a glowing review.

And it is one of the strangest, most magical, challenging, transporting books that I have have read in ages. It's it's so unique. It's so steeped in a kind of mythical um South Asian view of the world, yet it's intensely modern. And so, it's about this character Fedder, the protagonist, who in the first page, as soon as he's born, his mother grabs his shadow and strangles his shadow, and he has no shadow. And and he's So, he's in this sort of mythical, magical space where there are devil doctors, and and he goes to the big city and ends up in these weird Kafkaesque scenarios, and it's a lot about administration and the mystery of these these doors that appear in these walls, and they know that no one understands, and he just and there's a whole scientific crew to sit and watch the doors, because when you look away you watch these things that are going to potentially become bright doors, and as soon as you look away, then suddenly there's a new door there, and it's it's just it's so wild, but it's like this overlay of the mythic and the and the modern.

And what I love about this book and just the larger you know, genre fiction is changing. It's been living in these kind of little ghettos with like a few experts, and and now it's just like the especially science fiction and fantasy, it's the amount of LGBTQ voices and people of color, and like there's so much energy and enrichment and invigoration happening, and I cannot get enough of it, and and it's happening across and everywhere, but it's really happening in the science fiction and fantasy worlds, and I just so appreciate this writer, and there's like a name another dozen writers I love, and um that are doing really interesting things in that space, but I thought I'd throw that one out there.

I wrote it down. I'm going to order that book. What do you got, Selassie? Sleepy Selassie. I have I have a few things. I took a clowning workshop a few weeks ago. weeks ago. weeks ago. And it might Your essay is great. By the way, Selassie has a Substack, Ancestors to Elements. We should just like name it, cuz you write these great essays, and your essay about clowning is riveting. Thank you. It was it was seriously my most popular post, which is so bizarre. so bizarre.

so bizarre. believe I missed this, but I'm I'm also just it's hysterical that this is your recommendation. recommendation. recommendation. So, I have a coach, Chela Davison, who's an amazing coach, and 2 years ago she recommended that I do clowning, cuz I wanted to work on my spontaneity. I have a really hard time being silly or goofy. Like I don't want to be embarrassed. So, I think I'm a pretty funny person, but it's all about wit. So, I had said, "Oh, I should try improv." And she was like, "No, too much language.

You should do clowning." clowning." clowning." And when she said it, I knew I should do it, but I waited 2 years. I signed up for intro to clowning all-day workshop. And I was the only new person. Everyone there was either already a clown in multiple senses of that word. They were had been taking clowning for, you know, 6 months or something. So, I was the only person who was brand new, and it was so revelatory. Like it should be my new spiritual practice. This clowning teacher might be my new guru.

It was so fun and horrifying at the same time. I saw a lot of the same stuff I see through meditation practice, you know, my judgment of other people, my performativity. performativity. performativity. But the final exercise, which I didn't even anticipate that I would have to do something in front of the whole group, I had to get across the room by getting people to laugh. laugh. laugh. But you can't talk, and you just have to be funny, and it's it is the most naked feeling. feeling.

feeling. And what happened is at one point she interrupted me and said, "What are you doing? People are laughing. You're not moving." moving." moving." And I had been giving all of my attention to the people who weren't laughing. laughing. laughing. This one guy especially I like locked in on him. He was not finding me funny. And that's where I went, and when I finally debriefed with her, she she said, "Go where the love is." "Why are you going where it's not?" And I was like, "Oh, man." Jeez.

Jeez. Jeez. It was deep, you know? It's like that is the story of my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um what is the practice of clowning though? Cuz you said, you know, an improv is about, you know, witty repartee and being responsive to other people, but clowning you said to me it's like something you do with your being. And what is the core thing there? thing there? thing there? I I still don't know. I mean, the funniest guy was a novelist who had wanted to get out of his head and was been practicing for some years, and all he did was just stand there with this goofy smile on his face, and he was the funniest person by far.

It was like he was transmitting humor. Is there face paint involved? Nothing. You're naked. I mean, not literally, but you you just have to, you know, I don't even know what I did. Like I did some movements, I guess. I I don't You're so in the moment. It's powerful practice. practice. practice. Super embodied, for sure. Yeah. So, clowning, everyone, try it. Two more things. One is the Barbra Streisand Streisand Streisand memoir memoir memoir on audio. It's 48 hours. And I'm not a fan, or you know, I didn't think I was, and some friends recommended it.

A few people had listened to it already, finished it, and said it's amazing. It is amazing. It can be tedious, but she is an incredible person, and the way she reads it is I felt like she must have dictated it, but she actually wrote it by hand first, and it's just the most entertaining. There's lots of tea. Like she gives, you know, a lot of opinions about people. It's it's fascinating. It's really, really good. Then the third thing, I think you talked about this, is the We Are the World documentary.

Oh, so good. Oh, I can't wait to see it. I'm the only one who's seen it. seen it. seen it. Richie for president. He's amazing. He is incredible. It's Yeah, and I don't know what was going on with Bob Dylan, but I'm really glad those black men helped him. They actually were basically teaching him to clown. It's true. Just to give some background, this is a documentary that's on Netflix. Um I think it's called The Greatest Night in Pop, and it's a behind-the-scenes of the We Are the World World World song, and the recording of that song, and the making of the video, and there's a crazy scene where Bob Dylan's basically having a very contained panic attack, where he's just shutting down.

He can't cuz he can't sing like everybody else in the room. They brought Bob Dylan, who doesn't sing, he just kind of declaims in a weird like monotone almost song way, and everybody else is like a diva, like a true diva, and he's like shutting down, and then Stevie Wonder and a few other guys take him over in the corner and write a part for him, which he ends up singing, and it's actually not bad. Yeah, it was beautiful to watch, actually. It was such a tender moment, and everybody's in my room.

It's my entire childhood in that room. It is incredible. Although Madonna and Prince both skipped it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love Prince, but I'm just going to say I hope you listen to the B-side of We Are the World, which would have featured, if you had noticed, Northern Lights, the Canadian We Are the World, with Bryan Adams, and and a whole bunch of and Corey Hart, and a whole bunch of like Canadian singers that came out cuz Canada had to do the same thing.

It was actually on the B-side of the We Are the World, but I don't think anybody listened to it. It's so adorable. so adorable. so adorable. Part of it was in French. Yeah, it's like a French couple of French Canadians like I was thinking that of that song. Loverboy. Loverboy. Loverboy. It wasn't it wasn't it wasn't in We Are the it's own song, which is a good song, by the way. I can't remember what it was called, but Google it. Northern Lights. There was a great Onion headline, "Perky Canada has own government, {comma} laws." laws." laws." I love Canada.

I do. I genuinely love Canada. Um all right, just a couple of recommendations for me. Um a couple of novels I read recently. Uh Devil Makes Three. I'm in the middle of that right now. It's Ben Fountain is the writer. Unbeliev- It's set in Haiti. It's unbelievably brilliant. Uh The Bee Thing. Anybody read that? No. I think it's probably going to win the Pulitzer this year. this year. this year. Yeah, I want to check that out. Yeah. It's very stressful, even though it's just a the life of an Irish family, but it's I found it very stressful, but it's also very beautiful.

And then I saw a movie that is my pick for best movie of 2023, American Fiction. Mm. I haven't seen it yet. It's incredible. Um really incredible. It is a movie that has all it it it made me laugh and it was very moving and it was very smart. And it was just kind of a trenchant observation on American race issues and also extraordinarily funny. Um yes, I highly recommend it. Have you guys seen Poor Things yet? I haven't. That's the one I have not yet seen.

It's incredible. incredible. incredible. We'll have to talk about that if we do the next one we do here. It's awesome. It's super funny and it's like someone described it as Barbie on steroids and it is that. It's very sexy. Yeah. Oh, we come back to that word again. again. again. It comes around. Guys, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, really fun. Good to hang out with I'll tell you the word that goes through my head when I listen to you guys talk. Proud. Proud of both of you as I listen to you talk, but proud to know you both.

So, thank you for doing this. Thank you, Dan. And we're we're having a sleepover this weekend. Seb and Jeff are staying at at our house for the weekend. So, much more. much more. much more. Ooh. Yeah, we'll talk to Pool party. Speaking of tea, we'll be spilling some tea. All right, thank you everybody for listening. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again to Seb and Jeff. Don't forget to check out our IRL meditation party retreat. It's at the Omega Institute coming up in October.

There's a link in the show notes if you want more information. It's super fun. Also, don't forget to go over to danharris.com danharris.com danharris.com to check out our new-ish meditation app. Jeff and Seb are regular players over on the app. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so incredibly hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Shneiderman is our senior producer.

DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.