Ten Percent Weekly

Stress, these days, seems to be inseparable from work. There’s a rapidly growing litany of desk-work-related maladies with catchy rhyming phrases such as “online spine,” or “tech neck,” not to mention “screen apnea,” where we suspend breathing or breathe shallowly as we email, text, or Zoom. And that’s just for people who work at computers! Regardless of what we do to “earn a living,” it can take a toll. 

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Editor's Note: Poet and author Ross Gay was a recent guest on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, and spoke with Dan about the power of joy, delight, and connection. Gay recently released a new collection of essays, The Book of (More) Delights. This was a continuation of a project that began when he decided to spend a year writing out moments of delight throughout the day. He explains the difference between delight and joy:

“I think delight is occasional. Delight is the hummingbird buzzing by your ear. Whoa!  That's delight. …Joy is something that is always present, and it's available to us, and you kind of enter it, or it finds you. But it doesn't feel like it requires an occasion… I think of joy as our fundamental connection.”

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He goes on to describe how delight can be contagious and provide opportunities for connection.

“This sort of contagion of moods is a real thing—our own moods and other people's moods... I'm not just delighted inside of the little cave of my brain. I'm delighted because I'm observing things outside of the little cave of my brain. And often those things are like these instances of sweetness. It's the witnessing of a kind of sweetness outside of myself…People are so inclined after they hear about this, they're like, ‘After I read your book, I did that for a little bit.… I talk to my kid and I ask what's delighting them.’ And it is my experience that when people are like, ‘yo, this is what I love’, that I'm inclined to be like, ‘oh yeah, what do I love?’.”

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Another key element and outcome of this practice has been strengthening a sense of curiosity. Gay shared a conversation he had with Sharon Salzberg:

“I was talking with Sharon Salzberg a few days ago, and she said something along the lines of, ‘Despair is the result of knowing everything.’ But curiosity, wondering about how it's going to go, is something else... Not knowing how it's going to go might provoke all kinds of feelings. But when I feel curiosity, it invites a sense of, ‘okay, well, I guess I should check. I guess I should see.’ In the smallest way, we can all relate to this in our relationships. If I just know how a conversation is going to go, why am I going to have it? As opposed to being like, ‘well, I wonder how it's going to go. I guess I better fess up to the fact that I don't actually know everything about this other person.”

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This curiosity and connection can also help us be with the inevitable pain of change, together. Gay says: 

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One of the ways that I think of joy is something that isn't separate from or an alternative to sorrow, but it's something that actually emerges from sorrow. Joy doesn't actually exist absent of sorrow. And one of the expressions of joy is the way that we help each other, how we carry each other through our sorrows. It's a kind of ground that things change—everything we love is going to be gone. Joy is as likely to make you weep as it is to make you dance—neither of which are more or less evidence of joy. But it does feel like joy comes from both, or joy might make you want to do both.

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Check out the full interview in the app or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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Having spoken with hundreds of couples on applying meditative wisdom to their relationships, I have some bad news and some good news.

Several years ago, I woke up one morning with a case of vertigo so bad that I couldn’t stand up, walk, or move my head without waves of nausea and vomiting. It turns out I had an inner ear infection and had to be on bed rest for several weeks. During this time, I kept asking myself, “how did I end up here?”

The answer was that I was stressed–not necessarily from the external world, but from a battle that was taking place within me. The problem boiled down to this: after more than a decade of toiling away and climbing the ranks in my dream job, I didn’t want to be there anymore.

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We can't change the fact that there are stressors in the world and that there are things that are going to make us upset. We're going to have illnesses. We're going to have difficult periods in our lives. But we can change our response.

Most people struggle with self-judgmental thoughts. It’s really very common! There’s a curious thing about these thoughts: if someone else were as mean to us as we are to ourselves, we would not let them get away with it. And yet, not only do we allow these self-judgments to be internally spoken – often, we believe them.

It is possible, however, to cultivate more kindness for yourself, even accepting yourself no matter what—even if you mess up, even if you're imperfect.

I finally realized that I needed to stop and focus on understanding who I was, rather than trying to find happiness outside of myself, especially in someone to complete or validate me.

When you throw out a word like creativity, many people immediately assume they are left out of the conversation. Maybe you’re one of these people. Maybe you’re thinking: I’m not an artist; what does creativity have to do with me? But today we’re talking about creativity in a much broader sense of the word. If you’re moving through the world and making choices—about career stuff, parenting, how you treat strangers, whatever—that’s all creativity.

With meditation, like other healthy habits (exercise, for example), you want to find the right mix between familiar, reliable tools on the one hand, and newness, variety, and growth on the other.  If you’re constantly flitting among practices and teachers, you’re unlikely to get into a groove.  But if you don’t mix things up, that groove can become a rut.

The ratio of routine to variety is different for each person – you’ll probably experiment for a bit before finding the right balance for you.  In terms of ingredients, though, here are five suggestions for finding your fresh:

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What can you do if you get walloped by an attack of shame? Seized by the talons of a poisonous inner critic? When you’ve had a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day,” as the classic children’s book puts it? These are my favorite tweaks:

A powerful way of lowering stress for both ourselves and our children is to practice a little bit of meditation together. Doing this will bring greater calm, connection, and ease for the family as a whole. Many of us have zero opportunity to meditate independently, so meditating with our children is a great way of giving ourselves a moment, too.

You don’t have to stop your thoughts in order to meditate. That’s just a myth. And in fact, some of the most valuable parts of meditation come precisely when you notice that you’ve been distracted.

Getting to know your barriers to rest—the stuff that comes up when you let go of busy mode—can support your ability to unwind. Here are a few ideas to explore as starting points for finding relaxation…

In a way, every moment of mindfulness is a moment of coming out: accepting what’s true, having the courage to be ourselves.

I wasn’t always grateful for my body.

Over the years, I have spent an incredible number of hours critiquing this place that has been my home throughout my entire existence.