Your Drive to Improve Is Blocking Your Joy | Kate Bowler

Key Takeaway

When life throws you curveballs, finding joy isn't about building the perfect routine—it's about creating space for surprise. Ask yourself: what truly delights you? Not what should delight you, but what makes you embarrassed to admit how much you love it. That's your compass. Joy arrives not through optimization, but through service, connection, and being present enough to notice when grace sneaks through the back door.

Episode Overview

Kate Bowler, author of 'Joyful Anyway,' shares her journey from stage-four cancer diagnosis to discovering joy in unexpected places. She challenges the modern obsession with optimization and metrics-driven living, arguing that our industrialized approach to self-improvement actually blocks joy. Through personal stories and research, she explores the difference between happiness and joy, and offers practical ways to put yourself in the path of joy even during difficult seasons.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Your Drive to Improve Is Blocking Your Joy | Kate Bowler from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hey gang, welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host Dan Harris. Today we're talking about how when you live an overly regimented, optimized, metrics driven life, it can be what my guest calls a joy blocker. That's one of the things we're going to talk about. We're also going to talk about the fact that we all have, whether we're aware of it or not, a kind of deep hunger or ache. And that deep hunger or a can actually be a kind of compass and tell us what we want to live for, what we want to fill that hole with.

My guest is Kate Bowler, PhD, who is a four-time New York Times bestselling author. Uh her latest book is called Joyful Anyway, and is that that's the book we're going to focus on in this interview. She's also a a podcaster. She's got a podcast called Everything Happens. This interview is a ton of fun. There's a lot of laughing and joking and also a lot of profoundity. I think you're going to enjoy it. Kate Bowler after the break. A few things before we hear from our sponsors.

I highly recommend that you head on over to danh harris.com to check out my newish meditation app 10% with Dan Harris. Right now we're in the middle of this really cool series where every Sunday the legendary Dharma teacher Sharon Salsberg is leading a live session where she does some teachings on the Buddha's eight-fold path. You can think of the eight-fold path as the Buddha's foundational list. It's his cookbook for leading a happy life. Sharon does some teaching on one aspect of the path. She guides a meditation and then she takes your questions.

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Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/happier. betterhelp.com/happier. betterhelp.com/happier. That's betterhp.com/happier. Kate Bowler, welcome to the show. I'm so glad to be here. Glad to have you here. If you're comfortable, I' I'd love to start with a little bit of your personal backstory. You don't come to joy through the front door. door. door. That's a great way of putting it. No, I had to climb through a back window and then find a fire escape. We're laughing about it, but it's but the story is tough. Again, if you're comfortable with it, I I' I'd love to hear it.

hear it. hear it. Sure. I had like a pretty straightforward hope for my life. I just wanted to be an academic. I just like really wanted to be a professor in a tower with many gargoyles. And my parents were university professors. And so when I got this job at Duke University, like right out of grad school, it was it was like beyond anything I could imagine. And it was just one of those seasons of life where it feels like it's three steps forward, five steps back, eight steps forward.

like you're just you're trying very hard to do the math and some things come together and some things come apart. So I really wanted to have a baby and yeah I was struggling through years of infertility and I really wanted to do a good job at this like amazing opportunity but I found I had really terrible chronic pain that meant that I lost use of my arms for a couple years which was not like peak season for voice dictation at that time. So it was just like everything was more than a grind, more than a slog.

It was like always pressing against the limits of despair. And then I just had this one season where all of a sudden everything came together. I had this like perfect little smooshy baby that smelled like applesauce and cookies. And I had married my high school sweetheart and like things I I published my first book. It's called Blessed. I was so excited. And it just like a whole season in the sun where everything was really beautiful and my life felt like it was adding up to something meaningful to me.

And then I started getting weird stomach pain and I went to the doctor for 6 months and was sent home with like Pepto-Bismol. And then one day I was like, "No, I'm serious. Like the pain is truly unbearable. I'm not leaving until you uh until you get me a a different scan." And then I got a call in my office the next day that I had stage four colon cancer and that I probably wouldn't like live through that year or the next. And that was like the very it was like that really marked the end of a life that I really loved and that I thought I had worked for.

Well, you had worked for it and yet life knows how to throw a right hook. In this case, several of them. And yet you're here, which I'm happy about. happy about. happy about. I'm actually a hologram and this is a very realistic AI experience. Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. The tech is good. It's amazing. Wow. So when was the diagnosis? And I I don't know much about the stages of cancer notwithstanding the fact that my dad was an oncologist. Um but I think I think four is not Yeah, you can't graduate to five.

Five is just not is not aliveness. Yeah. Four is like it's spread everywhere and is likely just it has spread beyond the original organ. And stage four colon cancer was at the time not a great prognosis. I spent really 2 years very intensely doing chemotherapy and imunotherapy. So they kept giving me sort of 3 months and then I'd get another scan and I'd find out if I'd get another 3 months to live. And it just kind of went like that vine to vine for several years.

And then eventually they realized, wow, this imunotherapy is really working. And it was it's just very funny that like when you survive something that terrible, it's not like anybody comes to your door with like confetti and it's like surprise, you're going to live. It's just like a very incremental sense that expectations are slowly being changed around you. And by the time I got to five years, I was like, "Wait a minute. I think I'm really going to live. So, live. So, live. So, it's been nine almost 10 years since about so about five since I have not had to be in like very very active treatment.

Now, I just have to get sort of every 6 months I have to go out to the hospital and have some stuff scraped out and then they look concerned and then they're like, "You'll be fine." It has not ever gone back to easy, but I have lived so much longer than I ever thought I would. So, it's given me a really long time to feel both deeply grateful and also right back to being a human being with regular human being problems and the same like boredom, irritation, and like grouchiness at my f fellow faculty members like constantly.

That's on the one hand not surprising but on the other hand a little surprising and awesome that you're admitting it that you can have this like profound brush with mortality not like a car almost hit you in the street like 5 years of I'm swinging as you said before vine divine I don't you know this is my last 3mon tunch it's existential for a protracted period of time which in itself is got to be a massive trauma and then when things settle back down to something approaching normaly you're right back at like being bored and impatient.

impatient. impatient. Should I be skinnier? You know, like you're just you're like, should I be skinnier? Am I reading enough? What's my summer challenge? You know, just like all the regular crap of like, you know, do I have enough supplements in my they're now $30 water. So, it's it's pretty wild. I mean, they always like to say like it's the dying who teach you how to live. But but I'll tell you like I I just think that there's an ongoingness to life that will constantly require that you come back to the same question, which is what carries you through both the very difficult times and then the times in which you're just looking into middle distance and saying, "Is this it?

Is this it?" Is this it? Is this it?" Okay. Okay. Well, that so that brings us right back to the to the subject duour of joy because so you've now had this experience of having brushes with joy which I want to hear more about in you know a [ __ ] show and in regular life which turns out is also a [ __ ] show. Yes. Yes. You know me completely. That's exactly right. Yeah. It it definitely opened up a question because you know my my research interest um that I've really been working on my whole career is about American stories of health, wealth, and happiness.

And so when I got stuck when I was like continued to live and got stuck back in a regular sort of like I don't want to say malaise but like that itchy regular hungry feeling you get by being a person. It did make me wonder like, man, is there like another quality of experience that we can have that isn't just trying to get back to sort of like contentment or even regular happiness. And I just noticed that I have had these really surreal experiences in the very worst moments of my cancer experience.

Like, and I just mean like surreal surreal moments of what I look back and realize like, "Oh my gosh, that was joy." And they were just so dumb. Like, I say dumb cuz they were so unusual that I felt embarrassed like explaining it to people. Like, I was 48 hours from my horrifying life-changing diagnosis. I was heartbroken. [clears throat] I was so angry. I was couldn't plan for a Christmas or a summer. And yet I had this for a little stretch this really bizarre surreal feeling that felt like this like lift.

Like I felt temporarily whole. I felt love. I felt love like everywhere. I felt love from other people. I'm very Jesusy. Felt love from God. I felt like I couldn't even be mad at people I wished I was mad at because I just like thought they were so beautiful. It was like falling in love with the world all over again. And looking back, I was like, well, that wasn't happiness and that wasn't contentment. So like, what is it about these weird I had stumbled like into a pocket of joy.

So what is it about weird joy that's so unusual that can happen in the very worst of times and then sometimes just like on a very normal Tuesday? Tuesday? Tuesday? I want to pursue that question, but let's just step back for a second and define some terms. What is the difference between joy in your mind? because I find that in my experience of hosting the show for more than 10 years like that people have very different definitions for the terms we're going to discuss today. So, but in your mind the difference between joy and happiness.

Yeah. Well, I can't wait to like I hope secretly argue about our definition of happiness because I'm I'm curious about what you'll say. I just want to say in advance that I I will win. You know, it's my show. I like I like your determination. I like your It will be my source of joy. You're like, "And even if I don't win, I will edit around it." Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Postprouction dunking on you. It's going to be awesome. I look forward to feeling demeaned and confused when I listen to it in the future.

future. future. Well, here's my best goound of like the distinction between joy and happiness is that happiness has a like a a distinct experience of ease. Joy is a very big bright feeling. Happiness has a relaxed quality to its um appearance. It will feel very contextual, meaning that it will be built out of many small loadbearing things like how much sleep you've had and the nice cup of coffee in your hand and you the ability to call a nice friend later on. It'll be like a like a Jenga tower of of many small incremental things, some built and some just as the word suggests hap as in happen stance.

So it will very often feel like the things that are happening to you. If happiness has this ease to it um joy is not relaxing at all. Joy is like a big bright enlivening feeling. It will like happiness engage your reward system. But it also very strangely engages your stress system which helps explain why it can appear at like very counterintuitive times is you could have it you know in a big crisis or like at a funeral and the pastor has mispronounced your dad's name for the fourth time and the first it was sad and the second you feel this weird twinge and by the fourth you feel this like weird hysterical like oh my gosh she would have loved this.

This is ridiculous. Why am I laughing? I could hate myself. Like Joyy's sudden appearance is in part because we've got this feeling in joy like everything is okay and nothing is okay. And for some for one moment cuz joy is just is extremely temporary. It will feel like temporary wholeness. temporary wholeness. temporary wholeness. Let's stipulate that everything is temporary. But happiness has a little bit more of an edifice to it. Whereas joy joy joy comes along at surprising moments and h and is m big more it's much more of like a big burst of something rather than the lowslung ranch house of happiness.

Amazing. I think too what is kind of unusual about joy is it comes to us not just as like a lovely feeling a lovely temporary feeling but it's almost like it it it carries the weight of a story it will convince us for a moment that it is good for you to be is good that it is good for you to be alive alive alive because you can go from zero to 100 in a moment of joy it's has an an amazing ability ility to then quiet despair or stories that tell us that it will never be okay because suddenly it was it really was okay.

And so when we want to look for experiences that kind of have this imprint of joy, we should look for moments like that that give us hope like maybe that lovely things like that will happen in the future. It will it will feel like delight because if it's not making you laugh or if it doesn't feel slightly fun like dude that's not joy that's just I don't know indigestion or indigestion or indigestion or like hallucinogenics I don't know it will delight you and it looks a lot like gratitude cuz it will immediately just make you say thank you thank you so much you earlier called yourself Jesusy does joy in your conception have an element of grace of grace of grace Oh my gosh, I love that you just said grace.

No one else would have said that. Yes. I mean, like the feeling like it's this like almost like the world is what it is and then when you experience a moment of joy, it feels like a mercy like oh like wow, I couldn't have orchestra. Thank you for it being outside of myself and visiting me. I think that's what makes it like a balm. like can heal parts of you you didn't expect because you can tell when you're experiencing a moment of joy that you're not manufacturing it.

And that's I think that's why that's why that's why it can feel holy in that way cuz it feels like it comes from outside of you as a gift. Whereas happiness often takes work. Yeah. I think happiness takes a lot of work. Are you saying we shouldn't do the work of happiness or that we should do the work of happiness but also try to and I think this is the phrase you use put ourselves in the way of joy too. I think I'm here to confront you on your happiness show tell you that happiness is a waste of time.

Just joking. I think I think I mean I think happiness is a tremendous amount of work and it's worthy work of doing. I think to the extent that we can change the small parts of our life that that ought to be changed to build up a happier life, I am for it because we can't manufacture joy because joy is a surprise. The best we can do is not try to build up joy. But but try to either put ourselves in the way of joy or try to just cultivate qualities that expand our capacity to be someone that joy happens to.

happens to. happens to. Yeah. What would that look like? I'm curious. curious. curious. It feels weird cuz I feel like we should be saying, "Well, the things that get in the way are of joy are sadness, but now we know that joy engages our stress system." So, we're like, "Oh, I I think you can be s I think you can be sad and still experience moments of joy at the same time it's happened to me and that was weird." So, it's not sadness. It's not even sort of prolonged periods of almost despair cuz a lot of people just go through very difficult seasons and are surprised by glimpses of joy.

I think it's going to end up being a lot of the features of our very optimized AI world that will end up producing qualities in us that are joy blockers. Because if joy is a surprise, if you think about all the stuff that makes us like a very good citizen of this new robot world, like most of those qualities, like hyperefficiency, making elaborate routines that no one can possibly interrupt. I know that because I have an elaborate morning routine, an elaborate evening routine, and if you give me like seven secrets to billionaire whatever routines, I'm going to read it.

Like, I love that stuff. But anything that makes us very planned, very efficient, very uninterruptible is quite likely to make us an increasingly joyless person. Yes, I've had big stretches in my life where I've been sort of like mirthless and militaristic in my own like approach to what I was calling happiness, but was actually just like optimization. Oh my gosh. Yes. I think that's so tempting and marketed so aggressively to us that it's almost impossible to tell the difference sometimes. What were some of your, if you don't mind me asking, what were some of your incredible optimizations?

optimizations? optimizations? Well, what I'm about to say is just so [ __ ] stupid that but it here it is that I had a whole period of time where I I I believed that I should meditate 2 hours a day. Um, and mind you, this is gets even worse. Uh really really embarrassing bad. What I'm about to say I just want to signal is bad. But my we had just had a baby when I was doing this. Right. So really bad really un kind. I wasn't doing it like while we were doing baby things together.

Maybe I did a few times but that wasn't generally my move. My move was I was working all the time which also by the way was uncharacteristic and thoughtless. I had two full-time jobs. uh one at ABC News and the other doing whatever this thing is that I do and I had crazy hours and I would sort of chop up my meditation into these little chunks that I would do throughout the day. And I told myself that this was a way to do it in a way that wouldn't, you know, interrupt my parental duties, but I don't think that a that was fully true and b it was like what's why?

What was the point? On top of that, I had a, you know, an exercise regime and would count calories and um I was a vegan and like, and I'm not saying being a vegan is a bad thing, um, but like it's a lot of work. And so I just was building I was building a real edifice of what I thought was happiness, but it was it was right back to your Jenga analogy. very easy to interrupt and ultimately did topple, did topple, did topple, especially when it's so close to things that have brought us like enormous work satisfaction.

For example, like the ability to break down really complicated things into tiny steps and then to do them a million times and then congratulations, now you're great at your job. It's so hard not to apply that same direct mentality to what Charles Taylor called the buffeted self. who you really are. I mean, we would say it in very simple terms like is a is a problem to be solved, is a project to be managed and it's totally hermetically sealed and nothing gets in except the things that I have built.

That kind of very intense metric driven, productivity driven, industrial self is, I think, the most common definition of what I think we all think of as selfmastery. So, and every time I think I'm not doing it, I'm usually back into doing it at the very moment. And again your point is that mode which it seems like both of us have a proclivity for towards I don't know what the right preposition is there that mode is a joy blocker I think it really is and that mode is that mode will look like selfmastery it will look like conquering all it will look great on Instagram oh my gosh we would look so And it will slowly suck out of us because while you're doing it, you are telling yourself the story that it's not a day, it's 24 hours.

It's not a sunrise. You know, you're back to your morning routine. Like you, everything then becomes this very homeworky project driven story about who we are and what we're for. And then the second that breaks down, you become unable to do your homework. like then you I mean this this was a a a horrifying feeling I had very early on in being sick is like well if I can't be all these things and do all these things like am I failing I look around and all I'm doing is is frankly wearing out the people I love cuz now I have all these needs I'm in an unbelievably expensive medical treatment so now everybody is having to pay into a medical system so now wait now I'm impoverishing people I'm making people sad am Am I now the bad thing?

And the amount of shame that comes to people who can't be these self-conquering cyborg masters of the universe is that all those of us who take more than we can give, which will be all of us at some season of our life, will get the mistaken impression that we should have figured out the cure for being human and then we just didn't. So, it's a deep setup and it sounded like it really was in your case. Yeah. big setups for making the body blow of the diagnosis even worse.

Yeah. After I got sick, I think my first temptation was like, I have to outperform this. I have to just get back to that person who can be a giver, not a taker, you know? I was just like ruthless with myself. I'm still very prone to having like no mercy for myself, infinite mercy for other people, cuz other people are allowed to be human. But I got a plan. If we're establishing that the optimized metricsdriven as you said industrialized self is a joy blocker. It sounds like its cousin or its comorbidity which is ruthless self-criticism is another joy blocker.

blocker. blocker. Yeah, I think that's right. I just was thinking immediately about the way it's marketed specifically to women too that has a kind of perfectionism where we should be beautiful and now we have to age backwards. And I think this is especially where this like paradigm breaks down is if we think about happiness like this little Jenga tower where we're building up every small incremental thing to make a good life feel at ease all the time. I think a lot of women would add to that that they have to be a professional happiness manager for every person in their life, particularly their kids, and that if every single person around them isn't at ease, then they're also failing at being a woman.

a woman. a woman. Yeah, that tracks based on my female friendships and guests on this show. Okay. So th if those are the joy blockers, blockers, blockers, what can one do to put on one's self in the way of joy even when things are, you know, pretty deeply sub-optimal? One thing you can do which is really also counterintuitive is um service. There's like a really strange alchemy between giving and getting joy. It doesn't feel like that's very good math. It should be that when you give you have less because that's subtraction and you put in all this effort and wow somebody else reaped the benefits.

But there is like just wonderful studies about like just the incredible emotional emotional emotional lift and connectedness you get through community service by deep friendships by and in partly that's because joy is highly socially contagious. It's actually like harder to have joy alone. I've just known that when I've gone through really tough seasons, there's kind of an accidental narcissism to pain. You can just suddenly start to believe like of this this only happens to me. Of course, this happened to me. People won't understand how awful it is.

I am alone in this. And the second you start kind of being back involved in serving in other people's lives, like it's a lot easier then to forget your own partly untrue story of how you're the only person who suffered in the world and you just start to feel like caught up in other people's hopes and dreams and love. And so yeah, joy and service is a really is like a kind of a super highway to opening yourself up to more joy in your life. I think the other major one is trying to rest on the delight piece for a while where some sometimes we we think that we're kind of inundated with like pleasures.

you look around and you can watch a movie right away or you know like almost everything is instantaneous. But the problem is it kind of degrades our experience of what actually lights us up. And if you ask people like what delights you like makes you in a somewhat embarrassed way be like mo this is it. Like I think it's it's often very hard for people to answer. And if it's hard for people to answer, man, it's pretty hard for other people then to get into your life and to be able to offer you anything when you know you need a lift and they want to help.

I think it's worth pausing to ask like what truly delights you and only you because joy is not standard issue. It was made for you. It's not like one of my horrible metanite Christmases where like everybody gets the same bag of tube socks and like you get tube socks and you get tube socks. Like it will be weirdly individualistic. individualistic. individualistic. I'm a small business owner and like many small business owners, I got into this because I am passionate about something. In my case, I'm passionate about upleveling people's mental health through meditation and other modalities.

I did not get into this work, however, to manage payroll. That was not the thing that I was excited about when I started this business. And I think that's very common for small business owners. We start with a spark of insight and passion and excitement, but then we quickly get bogged down in details like payroll, which is why you need a good partner, and which is why I'm proud that one of our sponsors today is Gusto. Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses.

It's allin-one, remote friendly, incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. Automatic payroll, tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers comp, 401k, you name it. Gusto makes it simple and has options for nearly every budget. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/happier gusto.com/happier gusto.com/happier and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's 3 months of free payroll at gusto.com/happier. One more time, gusto.com/happier. One [snorts] of the things that's coming to mind, and this is kind of related to some of the things you talked about earlier as joy blockers, is like nondistraction.

nondistraction. I would imagine constant scrolling indoors with no natural light or nature at all does not put you in the way of joy. I mean, I get delighted every once in a while when I'm scrolling on TikTok. No question about it, but it's not the same thing. It's a kind of synthetic version. version. version. And I'm sure you and I have a similar position on this. There's a certain quality of attention that we kind of have to get into a better place of cultivating in order to even be aware of joy if it was coming in the room at all.

That's all true for sure. to me to me like the the protottypical example of example of example of joy as an act of grace from the universe or God or whatever you want to call it for me is sitting on the steps of a building in Harvard Square when I was a junior in high school summer between junior and senior year and there were no phones at that time because I am not young and so this was in the late 80s and I was just sitting there I I might have been talking to somebody.

I can't remember. But it was one of those New England has these nights that are simultaneously hot, but just like a little bit of cool. So, it was just temperate even though it was July. And I just was overtaken with this sense of everything's okay, which I've had subsequently a few times on retreat and which if you strive for, you will never experience. But there was something about just the randomness of sitting there undistracted, open outside where yeah, I was joy ready in ways that modern life militates against.

against. against. That's so right. That makes me want to write down joy ready. I really like that. I think that that's right. like your eyes, you've got this aperture so that you've kind of let out all the granularity of everything. The the world as it is kind of filter in and then the world as it is all of a sudden gets recast as like it's almost like it's like falling in love where it's just like it's beautiful. It's just so beautiful. And then other times I think you kind of have to find the yes inside of a situation where you would otherwise want to say no.

had a very bizarre version of that when I was coming out of a very difficult surgery and I'd had a doctor I really hated hated hated and I was ready to go home and they you know me go through like the mostly checkout process and I was waiting for someone to come pick me up and I'm sitting like in a very normal going home room in the hospital and the doctor comes in he's like Kate I'm here to take a surgical drain out of your stomach and it was one the doctor I hated.

And two, I was not actually aware at that time that I had a surgical drain in my stomach. And I was like, "No." Like, no. I just The answer is no. Like, actually, I just have this nice smooth bandage on my stomach and everything's all tucked in and I've got my nice going home clothes on and I my stuff is packed. And the answer to you, sir, is absolutely not. And I don't really know what my plan was, like go home and do it myself. like what was I going to do with that new information?

And um everything in me was like absolutely absolutely absolutely not. But I knew that of course like I don't really get a choice. But if I don't get a choice, is there anything else there? And I just had this weird like sense I should just find a different answer than no. And he had his hands up in front of him cuz they were clean, I guess, cuz he was about to tear something horrifying out of my body. And just the way his hands up like that, it just reminded me of when I had this one brother-in-law.

He was this big beefy. He was into wrestling and um he was for a season very into up close magic. So he's always trying to like take coins out from behind my ear or like just like like constantly scarves on scarves out of sleeves that he wasn't wearing. And he was just like such a funny guy. But his hands up like that just really reminded me of like my brother-in-law's up close magic. So instead of saying no to this doctor, I was like, "Okay, you can take the surgical drain out, but I need you to do it as a magic trick." And he just like the look of deadness in his eyes as our eyes locked.

And it was just like a full confrontation. And then without saying a word, he spun out and then he like comes in, "Knock knock. Kate, I'm here to take a surgical drain out of your stomach and I will do it as a magic trick." And I was like very like we had like suddenly grand ceremony between us. So I arranged myself on the hospital bed and like you know pulled my shirt up and there's this bandage and he's pulling off a bandage and he's like look and I do really appreciate it when you're going through something tough if someone gives you like a very specific description and he said you you're going to feel a deep pinch and you're going to feel a hard pull.

So so hard like I'm going to have to hold on to the side of the bed. And so I closed my eyes and I felt a very deep pinch and then it felt like an anchor being rested from the sea floor like my insides are becoming my outsides. I said, so I open my eyes and there's this doctor holding what appears to be like 200 million feet of tubing in his hands and I can see that he has an enormous bright red spray, what is obviously my blood because he did something wrong.

And we stared at each other in utter horror and then he just goes, "Tada!" like the like the him being committed to the magic trick like absolutely put me over the edge. I was h like like truly like joyful about that for like a week and then like and I what I what I learned in that insanity is that like sometimes even when you can't say no see if you can find the yes but in the yes this is the bit about the randomness of joy there is a weird kind of magic that that happens where what was supposed to be a horrific experience ends up being a doctor who regularly comes to my lectures now then I so I I see I see him every now and then.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Tada indeed. Tada indeed. Tada indeed. I've really taken that to be like uh is there a tadada here somewhere? Yes. Somewhere Somewhere Somewhere in the things that I'm not going to be able to control. Okay. But so that strikes me as a kind of a cousin of gratitude which is a term that you used earlier and all of that feels to me like a trainable skill. I know we're saying that joy is grace, you know, like we you can't manufacture it, but having a like a background attitude of not taking stuff for granted, of looking out for delight and things that you're glad about.

That feels like the opposite of a joy blocker. blocker. blocker. I'm like going writing down background attitude now because that's really good. I totally agree. Yeah, I do. I think that there's like in any good and beautiful thing that happens, I do think there's a little window of where there's possibility for action and play and engagement with what's happening. So, in these background attitudes, I agree. I think finding a little movement where it looks like there's none. And I think we see it in um I mean, this is partly why I'm kind of in love with Alan Alda.

Are you also in love with Alen? I feel like everyone should be in love with Alan Alda. I'm in like with Alan Aldo. He's not somebody I think about much, but maybe you can tip me over. This is about to change for you because this man in response like he did, you know, he had a long of course amazing, impressive career in acting, but um was a science communicator for a really long time. And so he started this incredible program with a university in New York to teach improv skills to doctors and science communicators of all kinds and realize that the more you can add play and responsiveness in frankly like very emotionally fraught conversations, the more you can find little windows of possibility possibility for like misunderstanding.

Is there something I can make the truth more evident to you? But also, I think just for like meaning making in what otherwise feels like, man, like I just get handed a diagnosis or I just get handed the life I have. So, I loved the idea that there's just so much when we're trying to like respond to reality that if we can reframe it a little bit closer to play and delight, I think it it's it's easier for us to bring our full selves into a situation that can otherwise feel very brittle and frankly like quite traumatic.

What I'm about to say is a little bit of a conversational bankshot, but the what you're saying reminds me of the emphasis that you hear in Zen Buddhism on spontaneity. That if you're not so stuck in the swirling stories of your mind, mind, mind, past, future, what are people thinking of me, etc., etc., that you can be more awake and aware in the moment and therefore more responsive. All of which seems like another way to be joy ready. I really like that. Yeah. And people are thinking though, Dan, I'll just tell you that they like you and it's going really well.

So, you don't have to have that thought anymore. But in case you were wondering, I'm just doing consumer response. response. response. I can tell you I get plenty of the opposite feedback on the regular. So, no. Uh, my opinion is declarative and I'm a professor. So, you're welcome. Exactly. This is an argument I'll let you win. you win. you win. Thank you. I felt right. It felt right when I was saying it. Okay. So, your book, which is called Joyful Anyway, talks a lot about how to put yourself in the way of joy.

Um, but you also you talk about um something called the ache. I'm curious what you mean by that. What is the ache and how is it related to joy? I was looking for the right kind of historical and philosophical just like emotional framework. For many of us, the default state coming into our desire for joy is like, why does it feel like there's a kind of bittersweet longing inside of us so often? I mean, sometimes it feels like Hungry Hungry Hippos, which was a game I was very good at.

It really struck me as a question that felt almost inappropriate to ask for someone like me who has been just has so much to be grateful for and has [clears throat] been given back so much. And so it just I wondered like why is it that I feel the ache is this feeling of like longing of of restlessness of incompleteness. And it can either be seen in a theological framework as a kind of like missing piece and then you find your rest in God. So I teach in a seminary so it's not like I'm not like ready with all these responses.

So I just kind of went looking for why it is that that language and that sort of indictment of the human condition is so common. Very often, frankly, the language that's used for it is is often like a a musical analogy. it feels like the blues or in Portuguese sa or this kind of like truths you can only sing in a minor key. And so I think we either have to decide when we feel like that that again we're a problem to be solved and it's just like another thing to fix about it or it's a glitch in the system and there's something wrong with us.

And I'm not saying there's not anything specifically wrong with me. Not that I'd want that, but I'm saying that's not necessarily untrue. But if there is this ache inside like does this mean that we're more or less capable of experiencing joy. Okay. So, I kind of went talking to like as a series of historians and theologians and psychologists and I loved my conversation with Father Ron Rollheiser who's um professor and spirit priest and he was like, "Look, Kate, this thing that you're kind of describing as a sort of character flaw is so universal in the human condition." He's like, "Kate, as babies were born crying, there's a lot of crying in the middle.

There really is a lot of crying at the end. So you can either decide this is this is an incompleteness or you can say that this ache this too has a kind of holiness to it. It's an engine and you can either use it to sort of kind of endlessly snack forever is to have these endless hungers or you can point it use it to point yourself toward these like deeper more satisfying more satisfying more satisfying still lovely things on offer that really I found it very encouraging to think about the ache that's inside of all of us how very normal it is especially around middle age to feel like I don't know what completeness feels feels like and then to start using that to reach for things that are more satisfying than like what you describe as like the million synthetic versions on offer.

So I I can see how in a again to use your phrase Jesusy context the ache would be described as the god-shaped hole. hole. hole. Oh yes, they would. Yeah. Well, if you think that there's a solution to it, but it's less a hole that then has to be plugged and more a a quality of being alive. What what I was trying to get to there is that so in Buddhism there's this idea of the hungry ghost. I'm sure you're familiar with this. Yeah. But tell me, but for the viewers and listeners, these kind of mythical creatures that have huge stomachs but very narrow necks.

So this just incredible insatiable hunger that can never be sated. That is the way many of us are. And that hunger [snorts] is based on a misconception, a fundamental misconception that there is something solid there to be hungry. That the self that we're building up and defending ultimately in the Buddhist view is an illusion. And so you can uproot the ache right there at the level of the self is I believe the Buddhist proposition. So anyway, I'm saying all that just to hear how that goes down with you based on the fact that you're a professor of religion.

I think you're totally right. every good like solution comes from an analysis like a like a like a an indictment of the human condition and that at that level the the Christian framework would be we're trying to decide just how much our hunger is one theological interpretation is that it is entirely just evidence of our sin and our fallenness and shows them that we have to be utterly redeemed or in this version that you know father Ron and others proposes is that it's it's It's a much more much more much more neutral neutral neutral um um um not indictment but just description of our desire to be to be set on a journey as long as we're pointed in the in a particular direction.

And I I think in that in that case I had previously imagined it much more like in the Buddhist framework as a kind of indictment against hunger itself. I just remember the feeling of when I moved from kind of being a cancer patient all the time to feeling like I was back to being a person. I wondered why the hunger kind of came roaring back to life. And it didn't feel like it was, you know, just for like, you know, weight loss and diamond medallion status and for that kind of thing.

It felt like this like roaring desire to be alive, but that aliveness felt almost identical with almost just wanting to eat the whole world. And that that also just felt like being back in love in a different way. The ache in some way felt identical to being in in love like you were feeling joy in the achiness. There's this this quality of wanting more that's so specific to us being on this path. Like let me give you an example about like the way that ache isn't necessarily a negative.

It can feel very similar to like when you look at your kid and in it is so much fear that you can't protect them from the world and then so much love and like I'll eat you up. I love you so. And you'll never look at them and think like and that was great and we did it and we loved each other and we actually had enough memories. I had six core memories with you like that's we're fine. Like there's this thing about the nature of I think our hungers is that there will never be enough and that the moreness of love makes more which will always be tinged with both hunger and pain and love.

And [snorts] I think framed in that way the ache doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing. It can just be this kind of engine that is propelling us that we just have to we but we do have to set the compass. It's a positive spin on the hunger in that it points you in a direction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That maybe it's not a hole you can ever fill, but you can improve your life by listening to what you're hungering for and and and would the right word be pursuing it.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I and and I think in that Christian framework, we would call that desire to kind of slowly refine that hunger so that we're consuming the things we should be consuming. We call that sanctification, but we kind of are hoping that it has a kind of a refining quality that as we go we like hunger for more and more of what's lovely. lovely. lovely. Well, actually there is a Buddhist analog to that. So, tell me. Yes. I I do want to be careful because you actually know what you're talking about and I'm a little bit like the guy who slept at a holiday in last night when I'm talking about Buddhism.

But um I do I'm going to do my best here. In Buddhism like the problem is hunger or thirst as it's sometimes translated. I think the ancient word for it is tanha. So it really is actually thirst but this unquenchability this uh you know insatiability that is the problem. But there is also chanda which is the ancient word for like a healthy desire for enlightenment. So it would be I think the Buddhist analog for sanctification. I have heard of Chanda, but I yeah, not a Buddhism scholar, but that's very I do I think it sounds like both frameworks have a kind of the hero's journey aspect in which we have this narrow window of what's possible and we have like a set of beautiful things, virtues that we're like hoping that we can cultivate and in doing so it kind of like it pushes us along a path.

Well, so let me see if I can say how this has worked for me and you and you'll or how I think it's worked for me and just tell me if this sounds like it kind of fits the paradigm you're proposing here. I I've had several experiences again like on usually on meditation retreat especially in the early days where there's a homesickness or a loneliness or both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not just that I miss my family which I do. It's a kind of much much more like primordial pining and it's not just like ah I'm eating this dish and it could use some more salt.

It's much more fundamental. fundamental. fundamental. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have learned over time to tune into that and and realize that what I'm really thirsting for but in the Chanda sense is better and fuller relationships. relationships. relationships. That's beautiful. And especially now when we've got this sort of very strange buffet in front of us and people are not sure what to want right now. I [clears throat] mean one enormous worry I think we should have is for people who've decided not to want anything. The amount of like nealism in our culture right now of people who feel because they're so hopeless that it doesn't matter what they hunger for.

the amount of like online gaming what that reflects about people's lack of belief that it matters if they save for the future because no one cares about their work and AI is going to take their job like this this spinning story of like how nothing we do matters and you can just and then just like take what's there just take what's there has created a a real confusion for a lot of us about like what is worth wanting right now and does it matter and so anything I think that furthers our conversation about how we can hope that our hungers can fuel us and sustain us for like for relationship, for love, for like these little cousins of joy, like for hope, for delight, for service.

Like those are these things that like I I think we can tell that they're we're headed in the right direction when we start to see that they want a future for us and for other people. like they inherently make us more self-sacrificing, more in tune with like the the world and other people. The ones I really worry about are the desires that are just these like endless small flames and they're burning everybody up. I saw a video the other day on Tik Tok. I've said this publicly before, but I'll just say it again.

I'm not a hu I don't have Instagram on my phone because it makes me miserable. But I actually like Tik Tok because I've trained the algorithm to only feed me comedy clips and animal videos and emotional squirrels becoming friends with somebody. Amazing. somebody. Amazing. somebody. Amazing. So it actually is for the 15 minutes a day that I do it. And I actually don't find myself wanting to do it for much more than that, but for the 15 minutes a day that I do it or maybe sometimes on a particularly lazy day 30, it is really actually fun.

Anyway, I saw a video the other day um of this guy saying they keep saying AI is gonna like take our jobs. Like when will that happen? I I want it to take my job. That's a funny version of it. But I do think the nihilism that you're talking about gives us Trump, you know? It's like this burn it all down Jokeresque let's elect the orange line guy because it's all a game and none of it matters. Yeah. None of it matters is a really terrifying terrifying terrifying poison in the water right now.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And And And it's hard to convince people what hope is for specifically like and what hope will mean. Hope will mean that democracy is held up by trusted institutions. Hope will mean people can have valuable [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] opinions based on expertise and education to be in service of the broader public. Like I'm really hoping hoping that like we're going to we're going to soon see the tides turn that like we need the things that shelter us and our communities.

And I'm I'm just so worried about the amount that hopelessness is causing people not to worry about the institutions that are crumbling around us that like genuinely need our support. Like the news, like higher ed. higher ed. higher ed. Yeah. And like the government itself. like the government, like voting processes, like people who sign up to work at the ballot. I I cry every time I see people I always I would started voting. I'm only just gotten American citizenship. And citizenship. And citizenship. And where are you from originally?

Oh, I'm I am the most Canadian. Yeah, I was going to guess that. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you just got American citizenship. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Because I didn't want to be ejected from this country for free speech is why I did that. I just cry looking at the people volunteering at the voting booth. Like this is just a small acts of hopefulness in the way that all of our small actions contribute to trusted communities. One of the things that should really worry us honestly is like the the decline in a certain kind of volunteerism rates.

If you look at like about a quarter of Americans volunteer and they have those are very steady numbers since 1970s that we can track them. But the kind of volunteer has changed in which they're typically they they used to be people who volunteered in their community the same way every time. And now we have the same amount of volunteers but they're only doing intermittent volunteering. So people are not able to get the benefit from having these like long form secondary ties to communities that they otherwise don't necessarily feel tied to.

And what's so good about long form ties is it makes you buy in to the power of these communities and these institutions. And so I worry that people don't get like the long form view of just how precious and meaningful that their small acts of service are. Well said. Well said. Well said. Back to [snorts] your book again. Joyful. Anyway, there's a thing in the book that I just kind of leaped out at me. The idea of loving the people God puts in your way. And I was put in mind of that when you referenced unsolicited the uh election workers.

Oh, yes. I've had this like little habit of going on these really strange adventures because I um one of the things that delights me is going to visit world's largest things or like so I have this app that I look at called Roadside America which works in Canada and the United States and you just like pick a random thing and go see it and had a couple extra hours after I had given a commencement address in rural Pennsylvania and I talked to this poor old man driver like and I mean I don't mean old like just normal table.

Nice tablecloth. Go out to a four o'clock dinner old. I mean like translucent under sunlight. Old like should not be on the road. It is not safe for any of us old. And I took this poor sweet man on one of my little adventures. And we like I just boondoggled the crap out of that poor man. And we were like up and around and into a graveyard which he thought was to visit a member of my family which turns out I'd taken him to see what was supposed to be the most documented victim of spontaneous combustion which is of course not a real phenomenon but we were we were doing just ridiculous things and I was like this poor sweet man was so kind and told me about his unbelievable life which included taking care of so many foster kids and like just one of those hearts that like unfold like origami.

for me where they're just like there's more and more and more in there and I was like wait a minute like whoa how do I be you like what's your best advice for being 84 and also why did you let me take you to do all these ridiculous things when you were supposed to just take me to the airport and he said he was like look I just you know in referencing all the kids you taken care of and he just said you know when I felt my life going in a certain way like a a way I didn't want and I didn't plan.

I just found that if I just start to love the people that God puts in my way, if I treat not just things randomly, it's not just things as they come, but if I treat them like an assignment, I will always be busy. Love as an assignment. And then today, my assignment was you. And I was like, you beautiful rees very impressionable man. I took from that like the intimacy between joy and service and joy and surprise and joy and letting new things open up your heart and delight you and that you could then become someone who is even more and more grateful for the things that you didn't choose.

I thought that that love as an assignment is sounds like the the fastest superighway to joy that I had heard. It's really interesting because you know there is all this science around so-called micro interactions or Dr. Amir Lavine, the guy who wrote attached, calls them seamies, seemingly insignificant, minor interactions that these are like a if you're not paying attention to these, you're leaving a lot of money on the table happiness-wise. Like when we use the word random, we we mean it, I think, even if only mildly as a pjorative.

But to think of it more as an assignment whether you believe in God or not like karma for those of us who are non-believers karma just as a law of cause and effect has placed whoever is in front of you you know whether they are clearly in in the case of your driver in need of like a do not resuscitate bracelet or whatever they're in front of you instead of treating them as like obstacles or random or something to be ignored like oh no this is this is the assignment that's a very interesting approach to life.

When I see someone like that then respond to the world, there's a little bit more like pliancy in it. There's just a little more give. There's like that there's an openness to things not being not being not being like they were set on the calendar. And I am like as a as a person who is very defined by their calendar, who has plans, like I think that's an invitation to me to like let some things break in and be a gift. I think it also just reminds me that like when things go radically off course, one thing that is constantly constantly constantly meaningful to people is to be able to say, "Is there something here too for me?" even if nobody planned this and maybe nobody caused it, but is there still some small gift in here for me?

And I've spent, you know, the last really like since my diagnosis like listening to people tell stories of a life they didn't choose. And one thing I have found over and over again is like without having to say it was worth it, can we still find these treasures in the dark? And I think knowing that joy is one of those things that we have an enormous capacity for as people, like a huge capacity to be joyful no matter what. That we're in fact psychologically like well primed for it.

And that the world of course will give us endless opportunities to be disappointed and to be set back. But knowing that if even there joy can visit you, I think we would feel like a lot more peace in our hearts. Knowing that on this path we will find joy has found us again and again and again. That seems like a a rousing peroration on which we can probably close. That said, anything that we missed? No, I can read you texts from my mom though or just anything else going on in my life.

my life. my life. Folks, we're out of time. We got to hit a commercial break. Back into news anchor mode. Well, this was a total pleasure. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and also of the other books and of your podcast and of just like plug everything please? Yeah, sure. Um, my book is called Joyful Anyway and I have a podcast called and a substack called Everything Happens. Not everything happens for a reason, just everything happens period. And if anyone wants to find me on socials, it's I'm at Katec Bowler.

Katec Bowler. Katec Bowler. Prior books. Yeah, I'm most known for the book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved and a book called No Cure for Being Human. And I've written a lot of kind of devotionally books like day-to-day kind of things, little reflections called Have a Beautiful Terrible Day and one called Good Enough. And I think my favorite is the lives we actually have. Kate Bowler, great to meet you. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show.

10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one last thing before you go. Remember to sign up for my new app which is called 10% with Dan Harris. You can sign up over at danh harris.com. On the app, you'll find a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers.

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