Newsletter Articles
Fear Shrinks the Mind
Editor's Note: Sharon Salzberg is one of the most loved teachers in the Ten Percent ecosystem and in the broader meditation community. For the next couple weeks, we’re celebrating the publication of her new book, Finding Your Way. Thanks, Sharon, for all you do to help us wake up and get real!
Think of the last time you were lost in fear. The last time you were harshly unforgiving of yourself. The last time you felt trapped. The last time a craving was so strong that all reason and common sense fled (remember, for example, those old infatuations). The last time any sense of potential change collapsed and you fell into hopelessness. Those are times we experience limited options, the blunting of our creativity, a feeling of disconnection, the dimming of our vision of what is possible.
Finding Peace with Work
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.
Get Outside the Little Cave of Your Brain
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.”
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?’.”
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.”
This curiosity and connection can also help us be with the inevitable pain of change, together. Gay says:
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.
Check out the full interview in the app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Stress of the Inner War
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.
Learning to Stress Better
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.
How to Be Kinder to Yourself, Simply.
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.
Rick Rubin on The Creative Life
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.
How to Keep Your Meditation Practice Fresh
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:
The Moldy Fridge of Shame
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:
How to Meditate with Your Kids
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.
The Mindful Way to Healthier Habits
You want to exercise more, sleep better, or eat healthier, and you do, for a little while. But it’s hard to keep up a new habit, so you flake a little. And then, if you’re like me, you might resort to drill sergeant mode, operating on the assumption that the only route to success is white-knuckled willpower.
But that kind of willpower doesn’t work.
Being Bold Doesn't Mean Being Fearless
As a 12-year-old in Brazil, I found myself navigating the choppy waters of my parents' recent divorce. The storm had passed, leaving a silence that echoed through the halls of our once lively home. One morning, my tears and a stomachache became my silent rebellion against the world: "Mom, I can't go to school today."
Why am I sharing this personal journey with you? Because I understand I’m not alone; many of us carry the weight of anxiety through much of our lives. And because I also want to share that it doesn't have to be this way.
Mike D from the Beastie Boys on Loving-kindness
In a candid interview between Dan and Mike D of the Beastie Boys on the 10% Happier podcast, the musician opened up about loss, grief, and the power of meditation in helping him stay open to life’s ups and downs.
World Meditation Week: 7 Days of Practical Meditation
This year, we're bringing World Meditation Day down to earth with a week-long celebration of free meditations and live content unlocks.
For seven days straight, we're celebrating the power of meditation and mindfulness with practical techniques that you can apply to your everyday life.
Starting on Monday, May 15th and culminating on Sunday, May 21st with World Meditation Day, we invite you to join us on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth through free daily meditations.
Becoming a Parent is All About Letting Go
I cried so much in the months after I had both of my two kids.
I cried in banks, in coffee shops, and lord knows every room of my house. I’m not actually sure who cried more – me, or my colicky babies. It wasn’t quite post-partum depression –I prefer to describe it as the everyday gut-wrenching, confusing, disorienting, sleep-deprived vertigo of parenthood.
Meanwhile, here I was, a meditation practitioner for almost two decades, with no clue about what my carefully cultivated spiritual practice had to say about this massive life shift.
The Science of Distraction
Do I have your attention right now?
I hope so, but even if I do, I won’t keep it for very long. As you read this newsletter, chances are that you’ll miss up to half of what I say. And on top of that, you’ll finish reading it, convinced that you didn’t miss a thing.
Reducing Eco-Anxiety
There are days when I feel that climate change is the only thing that matters, and that the tragedy of it is unbearable. At least I know that I’m not alone. According to a 2020 study by the American Psychiatric Association, over half of Americans said they were somewhat or extremely anxious about the impact of climate change.
So what can we do?
Looking for a specific topic or article? Search here to find more: