10% Happier with Dan Harris

Latest Episodes:

Fight Right: The Science of Healthy Conflict | Drs. John and Julie Gottman Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

Conflict doesn't have to suck. These iconic relationship researchers tell us how.

Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection is the name of a new book by esteemed guests Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Gottman.

They are the co-Founders of The Gottman Institute and have completed over 40 years of research with more than 3,000 couples. John is the researcher; Julie the clinician. They have written several books together, including Eight Dates and The Love Prescription.

Even though the majority of the Gottmans' research is on couples, the advice is applicable to all types of relationships.

In this episode we talk about:

The three principle conflict styles
Why we often don't understand what it is we're fighting about
Perpetual problems vs. Solvable problems
Why the first three minutes of an argument are key
The simple sentence to use at the beginning of an argument
How to downregulate defensiveness in an argument
Why the Gottmans' believe there is no such thing as constructive criticism
Why apologizing quickly isn't always the right move
When a fight might spell the end

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Full Shownotes: http://tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/gottmans-726

From The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs | Dan Harris Feb 02, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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We're dropping a fun little treat in your feed today: it's an episode of The Puzzler, a new podcast from writer A.J. Jacobs, who was my guest on Ten Percent Happier at the beginning of December. His new book, also called The Puzzler, is all about his exploration of the world of puzzles – everything from word games to jigsaw puzzles to Sudoku and beyond – and how what he calls "the puzzle mindset" can really improve your life.

So then he asked me to be his guest on The Puzzler, a daily podcast that he hosts, with so-called "celebrity" guests trying to do puzzles. I've said before that I'm not really a puzzle guy, but A.J. is a delight and it was a lot of fun getting to be on his show – and that's the episode we're sharing with you today. You can find "The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks, A.J., for having me.

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The Science of Breathing | James Nestor Jan 31, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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You may be breathing wrong. Here's how to fix it.

At times, self-improvement can seem like a never-ending hallway filled with limitless shame and insufficiency. So when something as simple as the breath falls into this category, it seems only natural to meet that news with some resistance. Our guest today, James Nestor, argues that many of us, of all things, are breathing incorrectly but that by fixing our breathing, it can help with both physical and psychological ailments.

Nestor is a science journalist who wrote a book called, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, which spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into more than 35 languages.

In this episode we talk about:

How Nestor got interested in breathing in the first place
Why we are the worst breathers in the animal kingdom
The importance of posture
The deleterious effects of mouth breathing
Why we need to chew more
The relationship between breathing and anxiety
The relationship between breathing and sleep
And we dive into a variety of breathing exercises

Where to find James Nestor online:

Website: www.mrjamesnestor.com

Social Media:

Book Mentioned:

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Other Resources Mentioned:

Related Episodes:

Three Lessons from Happiness Research | Emma Seppälä

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Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/james-nestor-rerun

Additional Resources:

Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install

Dan Savage On: How to Handle Disappointment in Your Relationships, How to Get Better at Sex, and Why a 'Couple' is an Illusion Jan 29, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Dan Savage has been writing the popular sex-advice column Savage Love for over thirty years. He also hosts the Savage Lovecast and is the author of numerous books. In 2010 Dan and his husband founded the It Gets Better Project, which was designed to give hope to LGBTQ kids. It was seen all over the world–and won an Emmy.

In this episode we talk about:

How to handle disappointment and jealousy
How to get better at sex
Why so many couples lose their spark and what to do about it
How to date in the era of apps
Why it's so hard for straight couples to talk about sex
Dan's contention that the idea of a 'couple' is an illusion

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For tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at Symphony Space: click here

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/dan-savage-723

The Science of Quitting: How, When, and Why to Do It | Julia Keller Jan 24, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Sometimes perseverance is overrated. An argument for strategic quitting.

Julia Keller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, novelist, and playwright. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from The Ohio State University and has taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She was the chief book critic at The Chicago Tribune for many years before quitting the world of daily journalism to write books.

In this episode we talk about:

The history behind why quitting gets such a bad rap
What happens in our brains when we quit
Why we don't give enough credit to quitting
The myth of perseverance
How to talk to our children about healthy quitting
The power of having a community of quitters

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Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular Episodes

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/julia-keller

Additional Resources:

Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install

The Science of Rescuing Your Attention Span | Gloria Mark Jan 22, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Our ability to focus is not lost, it's just changing. Here's what we can adapt.

Here's a horrifying fact: the average attention span has now declined to just 47 seconds on any particular screen. 47 seconds! How did this happen? How can we get anything done this way?

Today we're going to meet the scientist who's done this research, find out what's driving this, and what we can do about it. And the good news is we really can do things about this.

We're experiencing a fundamental shift in how we think, work, and focus. It shows up in our blizzard of notifications, zoom fatigue, task switching, and burn out.

Dr. Gloria Mark is the Chancellor's Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She has been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012. She's written a book called Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity

In this episode we talked about:

Four myths about attention and technology
The problem with frequent task-switching
The surprising (to me) value of rote or mindless activities
How to recognize when we are most distracted
How to design your day based on your attentional resources
How practicing forethought can help boost our attention and focus
And Her thoughts on digital detoxes

This episode is part of the latest installment of an occasional series we do, called Sanely Ambitious. If you missed last week's episodes, go check them out. We talked about the science of optimal performance, and also the science of failure, meaning how to fail well. Coming up on Wednesday we're gonna talk about what the research says about when to quit, not just your job, but any endeavor. We will put links in the show notes.

Related Episodes:

The Science of Optimal Performance—at Work and Beyond | Daniel Goleman

The Science of Failing Well | Amy Edmondson

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Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/gloria-mark

The Science of Failing Well | Amy Edmondson Jan 17, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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A Harvard Business School professor discusses how to get good at "intelligent failure."

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her latest book is called the Right Kind of Wrong. Her research examines psychological safety and teaming within and between organizations.

In this episode we talk about:

The problems of shame, perfectionism, and social media
How not to get caught up in analysis paralysis
The importance of self-compassion and a growth mindset
The benefits of worrying with someone else
Why redundancy is your friend
How to discuss failure without assigning blame
Why accepting your smallness can be freeing
Taking the time to learn from failure
The cognitive framework: stop, challenge, and choose
How to have a healthier relationships with anxiety and failure
Creating a culture of psychological safety
Recognizing that not everybody in society has the same permission to take risks

Related Episodes:

Self-Compassion Ain't Always Soft | Kristin Neff

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Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/amy-edmondson-2023

Additional Resources:

Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install

The Science of Optimal Performance—at Work and Beyond | Daniel Goleman Jan 15, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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How to boost productivity, empathy, and focus, while reducing burnout. From the godfather of Emotional Intelligence.

If you have any degree of ambition, one of the things you probably think about is how to perform at your best, or somewhere close, every day. How to keep your energy up. How to get into flow. How to stay focused and productive. How to play well with others.

Daniel Goleman— his friends call him Danny—-has been thinking and writing about optimal performance for decades. He's perhaps best known for his book, Emotional Intelligence. He's a Harvard trained psychologist who also wrote in the New York Times for a while. And in his youth, he spent many years studying meditation in Asia, alongside many of today's most intellectual meditation teachers like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg.

He's got a new book called Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day, co-written with Cary Cherniss.

In this episode we talk about:

How to train your mind for optimal states
How to reduce burnout
How to develop and deploy empathy in a work setting
How to give feedback
A productivity hack that involves only doing the easy stuff
The 4 parts of emotional intelligence—and how to get better at each
And the future of EI in a world of AI

This episode kicks off the latest installment of our occasional series, Sanely Ambitious. Over the next two weeks, we will be posting episodes on: how to focus in the midst of a pandemic of distraction, how to fail well, and when to quit. It's a great lineup.

Daniel Goleman's online Emotional Intelligence Program

Related Episodes:

A Radical Approach to Productivity, Self-Compassion Series | Jocelyn K. Glei

#494. How to Speak Clearly, Calmly, and Without Alienating People | Dan Clurman and Mudita Nisker

The Science of Emotional Intelligence | Daniel Goleman

#523. A Masterclass in Handling Yourself When Things Suck | Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Daniel Goleman

#436. Brené Brown Says You're Doing Feelings Wrong

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Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular Episodes

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/daniel-goleman-716

Glennon Doyle is Rethinking Her Relationship to Social Media, Hustle Culture, Intuition, Her Body, and Her Parents Jan 12, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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The author/podcaster talks about her nonnegotiables at a delicate time in her life.

Glennon Doyle is an author, activist, and the founder of Together Rising. She hosts the We Can Do Hard Things podcast and wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed, a Reese's Book Club selection, which has sold nearly three million copies.

Photo Credit: Alexandra Hedison

In this episode we talk about:

The concept of embodiment
Undoing harmful deep conditioning around hustle and diet culture
The role of Internal Family Systems in Glennon's life

Related Episodes:

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Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular Episodes

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/

Additional Resources:

Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install

How to Stop Obsessing Over Your Body and Eat Sanely in a Toxic Culture | Virginia Sole-Smith Jan 10, 2024

Show notes

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Plus, provocative and practical ideas about actually enjoying exercise, the real relationship between weight and health, the problem with weight loss, the morality of food, feeding your kids, and who "the real bad guy" is.

Virginia Sole-Smith is the bestselling author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture and The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. She also writes the Burnt Toast newsletter, hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast, and frequently contributes to The New York Times and other publications.

In this episode we talk about:

The actual connections between health and body size
The severe limitations of many of the most popular approaches to weight loss
Nuanced strategies for disentangling from diet culture
How to exercise without a hidden agenda of trying to wrench your body into a specific shape
The idea that food doesn't have a moral value
The relationship between men, exercise, food, and diet culture
How our kids are getting caught up in diet culture, and what parents can do about it
What Virginia's smartest critic would say about her contentions
Her take on Ozempic

Related Episodes:

Dharma teacher Cara Lai on mindfulness and exercise
Jud Brewer on "The Hunger Habit"
Evelyn Tribole on "The Anti-Diet"

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/virginia-sole-smith

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