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Kara Swisher has been covering Silicon Valley longer than most of its billionaires have been rich — and she’s watched them turn a simple fear of death into a multi-billion dollar industry of expensive, largely unproven interventions. After her own stroke at 49, she decided to investigate: what actually works, what’s a grift, and what does the science really say about living longer? The result is a new CNN documentary series that’s part BS-detector, part genuinely hopeful look at the medical breakthroughs that could change everything. This conversation covers both.

We talked about:

• Why biohacking culture is basically a men’s eating disorder dressed up as science

• Bryan Johnson, Peter Attia, and what Silicon Valley gets catastrophically wrong about longevity

• The supplements, therapies, and interventions that are mostly hype (peptides, hyperbaric chambers, red light therapy, full-body scans)

• What VO2 max actually measures — and why it’s one of the few metrics worth tracking

• GLP-1 drugs: the real promise behind the Ozempic headlines

• The mRNA breakthroughs that could produce a pancreatic cancer vaccine

• Why your relationships are a more powerful longevity drug than anything you can buy

• The case for boredom, friction, and putting your phone down

• How thinking about death every day can make you happier and less afraid

In this episode we talk about:

• How to burn off your mind’s conditioning

• The suffering that comes from clinging in a world characterized by relentless change

• What selfless listening is, and how to do it

• The liberation that comes from equanimity

• Some of the incredibly valuable lessons he’s learned from 12 years of meditation

• How to make better decisions for your future self

• How to have boundless compassion without being a pushover

• Why  being able to see perspectives outside of your own is a sign of intelligence and mental strength

• And much more

Related Episodes:

• Jack Kornfield & Yung Pueblo On: How To Meditate When You’re Freaking Out, the Limits of the Thinking Mind, & Balancing Self-Interest with Compassion

• The Dharma of Instagram

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I’ve been guilty of the phone-as-social-shield move for most of my adult life. You know what I’m talking about. You get in an Uber, pull out your phone and stare at it with great intensity in order to avoid making eye contact with another human being. But if this is your go-to move, you are leaving a lot of money on the table, happiness-wise.

Amir Levine, the psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author of the bestselling Attached, has coined the term SIMIs—Seemingly Insignificant Minor Interactions. SIMIs include the chat with your Uber driver. The nod to the guy at the gym you only vaguely recognize. Saying something to the person in the elevator about the weather. And they’re all good for your brain.

There’s a famous experiment called the Cyberball study, where study participants play a simple video game of catch with two other characters. When the other characters stop throwing the ball to the study participant, brain scans show that areas associated with physical pain light up. In other words, being ignored hits the same neural circuitry as getting hurt. And the kicker: they tried paying people money to not care when the ball stopped coming. It didn’t work. The brain doesn’t negotiate on this one.

The reverse experiment is equally interesting. When you’re hyper-included—when everyone keeps throwing the ball to you—your sense of meaning goes up, your self-esteem goes up, your sense of control over your life goes up. All from a video game of catch.

What Levine argues is that every small human interaction is a mini version of this. Your social brain is constantly collecting data, evidence for or against the hypothesis that connection is available to you. When you chat up the Uber driver, you are not wasting time. You are, on a cellular level, telling your brain something true and important: other people are out there, they’re responsive, and the world is less lonely than you might fear.

As I have often joked, my factory settings are firmly at “frosty New Englander,” so none of this is natural for me. But exercising my SIMI muscles has made me noticeably happier. As Levine explains, being genuinely connected to others reduces mortality by 50%. We spend a lot of money on peptides and cold plunges. SIMIs are free.

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Check out my full interview with Amir Levine where we dig into attachment styles and how to identify yours, and explore all the ways it impacts your health, relationships, and self-esteem.

Also out now is my conversation with meditation teacher Pascal Auclair. I always love having him on the pod and this time we talked about the four ways your mind gets stuck, how to break free plus a bunch of other Buddhist insights that will stick with you.

And tomorrow Pascal will be hosting a live meditation and answering your questions in the 10% with Dan Harris app. That is tomorrow, Tuesday, June 16 at 4 p.m. ET. Whether you want to chop it up with Pascal or lurk with your camera off, all are welcome. Drop your questions for him in the event post on the app here.

Pascal is our Teacher of the Month for June and we’re dropping brand new guided meditations from him every Sunday. Check out our growing library of meditations here.

Upcoming event in person:

Tickets for the next Meditation Party are available here! Jeff Warren, Sebene Selassie, and I are doing another version of our annual retreat this Oct. 16-18. It’s at the Omega Institute in upstate NY. Think four big sessions of meditation, conversation, and Q&A—with plenty of free time to hike the 240-acre campus, play some pickleball, shoot hoops, or just relax by the lake. You can also drop into yoga or tai chi classes, and on Saturday night there’s even a dance party (totally optional, I promise).

Sign up for the 10% with Dan Harris app

Paid subscribers to the new 10% with Dan Harris app get:

• Guided Meditations: A library of guided sessions to help with stress, anxiety, focus, sleep, annoying people, and more.

• Meditation Challenges: Structured programs to deepen your practice with clear goals, daily guidance, and community support.

• Live Meditation and Q&A Sessions: Every week, meditate live with me and some of the best meditation teachers on earth. Ask questions. Get actual answers.

• The 10% Happier Podcast: Subscribers get access to ad-free versions of my pod. Both the new episodes and the entire archive, stretching back almost 10 years.

• Community Connection: Join conversations with thousands of other practitioners who get it. Share your struggles, celebrate wins, get support when you need it.

Join the party.

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In this episode we talk about:

• What attachment theory is

• The four attachment styles — anxious, avoidant, secure, and fearful avoidant — and how to identify which one you are

• Why your attachment style is not fixed and how it can change

• What happens in your brain when you’re ignored or excluded

• How being securely connected can extend your life

• The five pillars of a secure life

• How to right-size a relationship with someone unreliable

• Small, seemingly insignificant daily interactions as vehicles for change t

• Two rules of secure engagement that can defuse almost any argument

• Why anxious and avoidant attachment styles each have genuine superpowers

• How to build your “attachment topography”

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

We talk about:

• Sister D’s Buddhist version of the 12 step program, which is a combination of two canonical buddhist lists: the 4 Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path

• How willpower doesn’t fit into the Buddhist path of understanding and working with addiction

• How to change addiction at its root

• Practical applications of mindfulness

• Self-compassion

• The importance of social support

• Her thoughts on our relationships to our phones

• And more

Related Episodes:

• This Episode Will Make You Stronger | Sister Dang Nghiem

• The Science Of Manifestation | James Doty

In this episode we talk about:

• What the Four Kinds of Clinging are — and why the Buddha thought this list mattered

• How clinging to pleasure actually makes pleasure harder to enjoy

• The “wrong views” that cause the most suffering — and how to hold your opinions less tightly

• Why clinging to rules and routines shows up in the most ordinary places (including who puts the onions in the pan first)

• What self-identification is, and why loosening it leads to less guilt, shame, and anxiety

• A simple bedside inquiry for getting underneath the concept of self

• Why catching yourself cling is a reason for joy, not self-criticism

Related Episodes:

• 5 Ways To Get Over Yourself | Pascal Auclair

• Seven Buddhist Ingredients for a Happy Mind | Pascal Auclair

In the face of this parade of horribles, the temptation might be to resort to anger, anxiety, or apathy. None of which is particularly useful in the long run.

Personally, I like the following alternative from the legendary Buddhist teacher Tara Brach. She’s adopted this question as a kind of daily diagnostic:

“What right now am I unwilling to feel?”

This inquiry is remarkably good at smoking out whatever you've been unconsciously avoiding. The moment you ask, your attention swivels to the thing—grief, fear, shame, helplessness about the news or your own life—that you've been trying to escape.

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Once you’re able to name what you’ve been avoiding you may reasonably ask “Okay, so what do I do now?”

Here are two of Tara’s strategies:

• Look beneath the anger. It’s easy to get seduced by outrage, but often it’s a shield for fear or helplessness. And if you go one click deeper than that, you might find something else: caring. You are mad or sad because you give a shit. Because, to use a loaded word, you’re capable of love. Tap into that. As I often say, it’s a cleaner burning fuel.

• Do this when you feel helpless. When the world feels out of control, take action where you can. We all have our own little sphere of influence. Text a friend. Volunteer an hour. Small acts can change your internal weather. It’s the old maxim: “action absorbs anxiety.”

Finally, I want to acknowledge that sometimes we don’t have the inner resources to deal with whatever we’re avoiding. The avoidance is our nervous system trying to protect us. So if you don’t feel like it’s the right moment to make the move Tara is recommending, I get it. Sometimes the right move is to take a bath, take a walk, watch a show, whatever. And then when you’re ready, do the baller work of inner investigation.

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For more on how to keep your heart open and courageous, even in the face of global chaos, cruelty, and polarization, check out my full interview with Tara Brach.

Also out today is my episode with Scott Galloway on modern masculinity, where it’s gone wrong and the challenges facing men and boys today.

And over on the 10% with Dan Harris app:

Join me and Teacher of the Month Pascal Auclair tomorrow (Tuesday, June 9 at 4 p.m. ET) for a special live meditation followed by an open Q&A all about how to survive the news. We’ll share practical ways to stay engaged with the world without letting it wreck your nervous system. You can find details and leave your questions for us here.

Upcoming event in person:

Tickets for the next Meditation Party are available here! Jeff Warren, Sebene Selassie, and I are doing another version of our annual retreat this Oct. 16-18. It’s at the Omega Institute in upstate NY. Think four big sessions of meditation, conversation, and Q&A—with plenty of free time to hike the 240-acre campus, play some pickleball, shoot hoops, or just relax by the lake. You can also drop into yoga or tai chi classes, and on Saturday night there’s even a dance party (totally optional, I promise).

Sign up for the 10% with Dan Harris app

Paid subscribers to the new 10% with Dan Harris app get:

• Guided Meditations: A library of guided sessions to help with stress, anxiety, focus, sleep, annoying people, and more.

• Meditation Challenges: Structured programs to deepen your practice with clear goals, daily guidance, and community support.

• Live Meditation and Q&A Sessions: Every week, meditate live with me and some of the best meditation teachers on earth. Ask questions. Get actual answers.

• The 10% Happier Podcast: Subscribers get access to ad-free versions of my pod. Both the new episodes and the entire archive, stretching back almost 10 years.

• Community Connection: Join conversations with thousands of other practitioners who get it. Share your struggles, celebrate wins, get support when you need it.

Join the party.

Subscribe to Our Substack

Additional Resources:

• Prof G Pod

• Pivot

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

Thank you for having me here today. And congratulations. Graduating from an extraordinary institution like Williams is a huge achievement.

I’ve sat through plenty of commencement addresses where you get a few funny jokes and some gauzy inspiration, all of which you forget by dinner. If I’m honest, I’ve actually delivered some commencement addresses that fit this description.

But I’m keenly aware that this is a deeply uncertain time. You are heading out into a rapidly changing world, with a tight labor market and lots of questions around AI, climate, and the state of our democracy. If you’re feeling anxiety, I get it—and I share it.

So rather than serving up platitudes or moral instruction from some old guy who already has a job, I’m going to try to give you evidence-based strategies for navigating this complex environment, strategies that I learned after doing very dumb things in my own life. So, that’s my plan today: embarrassing stories and useful tools.

Let me frame this up with a concept from psychology called the Escalator Myth. This is the assumption that our lives will be an unbroken glide path toward perpetual success. It can be very easy, especially at an elite institution like this, to fall prey to this fallacy. Because, for many of you, life has been a series of wins, powered by your own hard work and good luck. The Escalator Myth can be exacerbated when you’re in a context like Williams, where you might look around at your peers and assume that everybody else is just breezing from one win to the next.

(As an aside, I have to admit that I only partially understand this dynamic, because I didn’t go to Williams; I went to Colby, obviously a vastly inferior institution.)

But the truth is, life is not an escalator. You will have setbacks. Everybody does. What I want to argue today is: you can use these setbacks to your advantage—to learn, grow, and propel yourself forward. As my longtime friend and meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, often says, “Don’t waste your suffering.”

To illustrate my point, I’m going to tell you about two major, self-inflicted setbacks from my own life.

The first involves my career as a television news anchor. You may be aware that there used to be a thing called television, and on it, there were news programs.

When I graduated from college, I decided to enter the TV news business. And for a while, I really was on a kind of escalator. Right out of school, I got a job as a reporter in Bangor, Maine. I quickly moved to larger cities, like Portland, Maine, and eventually, Boston. Then, when I was 28 years old, I got a job in the big leagues, at ABC News, aka “the network,” the national news.

Shortly after I got to ABC, there was a massive, global story: 9/11. In the aftermath of the terror attacks, I volunteered to go overseas to cover whatever was going to happen next. I spent many years in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. I also spent cumulatively about a year in Iraq.

So, by my early thirties, I had been on an escalator for a while. I had earned my stripes as a combat correspondent; I was climbing the ranks at ABC; I was even getting the chance to anchor major broadcasts.

But then, the escalator collapsed. On a warm June morning in 2004, I had a full-blown panic attack, live on Good Morning America, in front of an audience of more than 5 million people. I was in the middle of delivering the headlines when my lungs seized up and I lost the ability to speak. Which is pretty inconvenient when you’re trying to anchor the news. If you Google “panic attack on TV,” it’s the number one result.

After the panic attack, I went to see a psychiatrist. He asked me a series of questions to try to figure out what had triggered my on-air meltdown. One of his questions was: Do you do drugs? I kinda sheepishly said, Yes. At which point the therapist leaned back in his chair and gave me a shrink-y look that communicated the following sentiment: OK, dummy, mystery solved.

Let me pause and give you a little backstory here. In the summer of 2003, after I had spent six months in Iraq, I came home and got depressed. I didn’t actually know I was depressed, but I was exhibiting some classic symptoms: I was having trouble getting out of bed and I felt like I had a low-grade fever all the time.

That’s when I did something toweringly stupid. I started to self-medicate with recreational drugs, including cocaine. I was never high on the air, but the therapist explained that my ambient drug use changed my brain chemistry and made it more likely for me to panic.

Sitting there in the therapy office, it all came crashing down. I realized how the reckless behavior in my personal life had jeopardized the career I loved so much. I felt foolish, ashamed, and scared.

To be clear, when you’re at the bottom, it’s not often immediately obvious that there might be an opportunity embedded in the disaster. It’s also not often obvious what exactly to do next. But I knew I had to do something. So I made two decisions. First, I quit doing drugs. And second, I agreed to come see this psychiatrist every week, indefinitely.

Gradually, doors started to open for me. The deeper I got into working with my own mind in therapy, the more curious I became about other ways to work with my mind. And that brought me to meditation.

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I initially had a bad attitude about meditation. I was raised by ex-hippies right here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. A childhood of forced nature hikes, granola, and involuntary yoga made me wary of anything New Age-y.

But then I saw the research that suggests short, daily doses of meditation can lower your blood pressure, boost your immune system, and literally rewire key parts of the brain associated with stress and focus. Even more intriguingly, I saw the evidence that meditation can help with anxiety and depression, which I had struggled with since childhood.

I started meditating, and it made a real difference. Specifically, I found that it really helped me not to be so yanked around by the voice in my head. I’m referring here to the inner narrator we all have. The voice that chases you out of bed in the morning, and yammers at you all day long. It has you constantly wanting stuff, not wanting stuff, judging people, comparing yourself to other people, and thinking about the past or the future instead of paying attention to what’s happening right now. When you’re unaware of this nonstop conversation that you are having with yourself—and which, if it were broadcast aloud, would get you locked up—it owns you. You act out every thought, every neurotic obsession, as if it were, in the words of my meditation teacher, a tiny dictator.

I was so enthusiastic about meditation that I even wrote a whole book about it called 10% Happier. When the book came out, one of my colleagues, a legendary news anchor named Barbara Walters, looked me in the eye and told me not to quit my day job.

But the book got so popular that it spawned a podcast, a meditation app, and more books. All of which allowed me to retire from the news business and focus full-time on helping people improve their mental health.

And none of this would have happened had I not hit a low point with the panic attack. In the moment, I thought my life was over, but it turned out to be a massive opportunity.

But again, life is not an escalator. So even though my panic attack spawned a whole new career, it didn’t mean that my life became a nonstop parade of rainbow-barfing unicorns.

Which brings me to embarrassing story number two.

Four years after 10% Happier came out, I had an audacious and, in hindsight, incredibly dumb idea. I wanted to get a sense of how I was doing after my years of meditation and self-improvement, so I signed up for something called a 360 review. It’s a diabolical tool used in corporate environments. An anonymous survey of your bosses, your peers, and the people who work for you. The goal is to get a panoramic sense of your strengths and weaknesses.

In my zeal for self-improvement, I opted for the colonoscopy version of a 360 review, where I included not only my colleagues, but also my wife, my brother, and two of my meditation teachers. In all, 16 people gave anonymous interviews, and I received a 39-page report filled with blind quotes.

I knew there would be tough stuff in there — that was the point. But I was so clueless about how bad it would be that I had a camera crew present as I read the report, with my wife by my side.

It started off reasonably well. The first 13 pages were dedicated to my strengths. People called me smart, hard-working, and caring.

But then came 26 pages of beat-down. People called me self-centered, emotionally distant, stubborn, dismissive, and even sometimes “authoritarian.” It was so brutal that at one point my wife got up and went to the bathroom and cried.

Before I tell you what happened next, let me pause for a second and acknowledge what you might be thinking. If this guy was Mr. Meditation, how could he be such a jerk? And if he was still screwing up, what hope is there for me?

I actually think this story should, in a strange way, be reassuring. Personal growth is nonlinear. (In other words, it’s not an escalator.) Even if you are doing a lot of the right things, including meditation and therapy, you will still make mistakes. Perfection is not the point.

Okay, so… back to the story. On that fateful day when I was reading my 360 review, I didn’t have any of the perspective I just gave you about how progress is messy. I was yet again in the fetal position, curled up in shame and fear. I thought maybe I needed to quit the meditation game and go back to TV news, where it’s safe to be a jerk.

But eventually, I decided: no, this is actually an opportunity. I’m going to lean in and try to address the issues that were identified in the report.

My initial approach was to engage in a mad dash to fix all of my relationships. I was fortunate, in that I had the resources and personal connections to work with all sorts of experts, therapists, and coaches. But honestly, even after doing a lot of work, I still found myself getting unnecessarily snippy and defensive with people.

So, at wit’s end, I went on a nine-day silent retreat to practice a kind of meditation that is supposed to boost your capacity for warmth. It’s called “loving kindness,” which initially sounded to me like Valentine’s Day with a gun to your head.

Making matters worse, my teacher kept insisting that if I wanted to be less of a jerk to other people, I needed to start by being nicer to myself. The notion of self-love sounded barftastic, the kind of cliche that you get from influencers and spin instructors. In fact, the teacher said that anytime I noticed myself suffering, I should put my hand on my heart and say, “It’s OK, sweetie.” Hard pass.

However, a few days into this retreat, I was really struggling. I was down on myself about the 360 and my lack of progress. It was getting dark in my mind. So, in desperation, I did it. I put my hand on my heart. And while I didn’t call myself sweetie, I did talk to myself the way I would talk to a good friend. Dude, I know this is hard, but you’ll get there.

And I hate to admit this, but it actually helped. Turns out, there’s real science here. You might believe that you need an internal cattle prod in order to get anything done. But this can lead to what a friend of mine calls a “toilet vortex.” You’re brutal to yourself, which impacts how you treat other people, which makes you feel even worse, and down you go.

Studies show that if you can switch from an inner drill sergeant to an inner coach, you are more likely to reach your goals. In other words, the thing we’re doing to keep ourselves safe is actually holding us back.

Think about it. A good coach doesn’t let you off the hook. They will point out your mistakes. They’re just not jerks about it.

For me, learning self-love—as cheesy as that may sound—became the unlock for an upward spiral, the opposite of the toilet vortex. When I stopped criticizing myself so much, my relationships improved. And because relationships are the most important variable in human flourishing, I got even happier, and up I went.

Three years after that horrible 360, I got another one. And it was completely different. People talked about how much I had changed, how I had become so much more open-minded and warm.

Yet again, I read the report with my wife by my side. But this time, no camera. When she finished reading, she said, “Congratulations, now you’re boring.”

Okay, so those are two embarrassing stories from my life. Let me end with three concrete takeaways:

1. Find ways to self-regulate. For me, therapy and meditation have been key. For you, it might be nature and exercise. But find what works for you to calm your nervous system, and try to make sure you do it with some consistency. This is a great way to manage life’s ups and downs.

2. Learn how to talk to yourself. Most of us have a brutal inner dialogue. I find it both amazing and reassuring to know that it’s possible to rewire your inner talk-track. We all have the capacity to be a supportive friend to other people. Turns out, you can direct that towards yourself. And if you want to supercharge it, put your hand on your heart. (I always make sure no one is looking when I do this, but it genuinely helps.)

3. Don’t waste your suffering. I’ve told you my embarrassing stories, but as you move through the world, you will have your own. When your escalator malfunctions, after taking whatever time you need to lick your wounds, see if you can eventually wake up and remember that there is always an opportunity hidden in the wreckage. I’m not trying to romanticize suffering or argue that everything happens for a reason. I’m saying pain is inevitable, but growth is possible.

I am genuinely rooting for you as you head out into a complex and fascinating world. I hope you find it encouraging to consider that while so much is out of your control, training your mind is fully in your control.

If I can do it, anybody can.

Thank you.

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Paid subscribers to the new 10% with Dan Harris app get:

• Guided Meditations: A library of guided sessions to help with stress, anxiety, focus, sleep, annoying people, and more.

• Meditation Challenges: Structured programs to deepen your practice with clear goals, daily guidance, and community support.

• Live Meditation and Q&A Sessions: Every week, meditate live with me and some of the best meditation teachers on earth. Ask questions. Get actual answers.

• The 10% Happier Podcast: Subscribers get access to ad-free versions of my pod. Both the new episodes and the entire archive, stretching back almost 10 years.

• Community Connection: Join conversations with thousands of other practitioners who get it. Share your struggles, celebrate wins, get support when you need it.

Join the party.

Additional Resources:

• Billy on Billy: An Audio Memoir

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

In this episode we talk about:

• What “spiritual audacity” means — and where the term comes from

• Why shutting down emotionally feels like self-protection but isn’t

• How caring is a more effective fuel than rage

• What lovingkindness meditation is — and how to do it

• The RAIN practice — and how to use it on difficult emotions

• Why small, local acts of service count as activism

• How to use your imagination to feel compassion for people you can’t stand

Related Episodes:

• Tara Brach Has A Counterintuitive Strategy For Navigating Tumultuous Times

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Moreover, these rough patches can, in the long run, be beneficial. You can use life’s ups and downs to sharpen your skills and deepen your understanding. As my meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein often says, “Don’t waste your suffering.”

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In my case, the issue is largely biochemical. For 20 years, I was taking a low dose of Zoloft, the antidepressant. Last fall, however, I had to stop taking the medication because my doctor suspected it might be contributing to my long-standing insomnia. Shortly thereafter, my mental health took a hit. My episodic bouts of anxiety started to get way more intense. Minor hiccups at work would register in my body as terror. Worse, I began to tip over into genuine despair, which I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. (Oddly, this was all happening just as I was finally starting to sleep well. It was mildly head-spinning to be well-rested but also unhappy.)

The good news is that all of the practices I’ve learned over the past two decades have been enormously useful. Meditation, exercise, rest, they all help. So does reaching out to the people in my life. (As you may know, one of my favorite expressions is, “Never worry alone.”) I’ve been blown away by the kindness I’ve experienced. Honestly, while I love to help my friends when they’re struggling, allowing myself to receive help has been both extremely challenging and also very moving.

All of this is a long preamble to a very practical tool I want to share with you. In moments when I’m really struggling, the following words have been popping into my mind:

“Feel the feelings, drop the story.”

This expression comes from the great Buddhist nun, writer, and teacher, Pema Chödrön. But the person who has really taught me how to make this move is my friend Sebene Selassie (also a meditation teacher).

Basically, the point is this: when you’re in the grips of a powerful emotion, it’s so easy to get stuck in all of your spinning stories. In my case, it’s often fretful prognostications about my career or family. Or a sinking suspicion that I will never, ever feel better.

In these moments, however, it can be massively helpful to simply use mindfulness to investigate the raw data of the physical sensations I am experiencing at the moment. For me, anxiety often registers as a feeling of having been punched in the chest. And depression lands like the flu. Tuning into these sensations gets me out of my head. It also helps me see that these emotions, which feel so monolithic, are actually made up of a shifting gumbo of physical and mental phenomena. If I stop resisting them, they will pass. Because everything does. This approach doesn’t magically erase your pain, but it can change your relationship to it.

The good news is that I’m finally, I think/hope, on a positive trajectory. Not only because I’ve doubled down on all of the skills I’ve learned, but also because my doctor and I have been experimenting with some new medications, which are showing signs of promise.

If you want to hear Sebene hold forth on how to feel your feelings and drop the story, I strongly recommend you check out this episode of my podcast. It was recorded live during the annual Meditation Party retreat, which we cohost with our mutual friend, Jeff Warren. We’re doing the retreat again this October. It’s really fun. We teach lots of different forms of meditation, but there’s also plenty of time to relax and socialize. There’s even an optional dance party. Tickets here. We see this event as a way to combine two powerful modalities: mindfulness and social connection. You’re invited.

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Also out today is my episode with dietician and Instagram sensation Jessica Knurick, where she debunks pernicious food myths and offers advice on how to navigate eating without going nuts.

And over on the 10% with Dan Harris app:

Join me tomorrow (Tuesday, June 2 at 4 p.m. ET) for a live meditation and Q&A on Zoom. Drop your questions for me in the event post on the app here.

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Paid subscribers to the new 10% with Dan Harris app get:

• Guided Meditations: A library of guided sessions to help with stress, anxiety, focus, sleep, annoying people, and more.

• Meditation Challenges: Structured programs to deepen your practice with clear goals, daily guidance, and community support.

• Live Meditation and Q&A Sessions: Every week, meditate live with me and some of the best meditation teachers on earth. Ask questions. Get actual answers.

• The 10% Happier Podcast: Subscribers get access to ad-free versions of my pod. Both the new episodes and the entire archive, stretching back almost 10 years.

• Community Connection: Join conversations with thousands of other practitioners who get it. Share your struggles, celebrate wins, get support when you need it.

Join the party.

Subscribe to Our Substack

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

Susa Talan is a meditation teacher trained in the insight tradition. She works one-on-one with students around their meditation practice, and she was the Teacher of the Month for April 2026 for DanHarris.com. You can get more guided meditations from Susa in the 10% with Dan Harris app.

In this live Q&A, Susa Talan shares:

• Why awareness isn’t hard — what’s actually hard is remembering to be aware

• The “what else is here?” technique for working with anxiety and heart palpitations

• Why you don’t need to understand why you cry in meditation — and what to do instead

• How to cultivate awareness all day long, not just on the cushion

• Why meditation has nothing to do with sitting still — and everything to do with the whole car ride

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Jeff Warren is an author and meditation teacher. He writes the popular newsletter Home Base and is the coauthor, along with Dan, of a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And he is the co-host of the mind/bod adventure pod.

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

In this episode we talk about:

• The 5 hindrances (a classic Buddhist list of everything that goes wrong when you sit down to meditate)

• Why your brain keeps wandering, numbing out, or picking fights with reality

• The difference between being tired… and just not wanting to deal

• How to catch yourself before you go full autopilot

• The “five recollections” of aging, sickness and death, and why they’re actually grounding

• The comparing mind

• How to step back and watch your thoughts instead of immediately buying into them

• Why the people in your life might be confused by the new, slightly calmer you

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

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But from the Buddhist point of view, accumulating hits of pleasure is looking for happiness in the wrong places. While the Buddha did not proscribe deriving pleasure from slices of pizza or going to a party, he did explicitly compare living for fleeting pleasures to licking honey from the edge of a razor. Delicious, but dangerous. In other words, you can’t get lasting happiness from things that do not last.

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Real happiness, the Buddha argued, is not to be found in satisfying every desire, but in not being yanked around by desire. Which, of course, raises the question: how the hell do you do that?

Today a brilliant nugget from the great meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein. The next time you catch your mind wanting something — food, phone-time, a particular outcome, whatever — don’t act on it and don’t suppress it. Just watch. Notice the wanting mind.

If you keep watching, you’ll notice that the desire comes and then goes. Urges and impulses can feel overwhelming, but if you just sit with them patiently, they will eventually pass. Because everything passes.

And on the other side of desire is immense relief. Genuine freedom. The knowledge that you don’t need to blindly act out every desirous thought, as if it were, in the words of Joseph, a “tiny dictator.”

I found this little practice incredibly powerful. When I can remember to do it, that is.

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For more on why your desires are wired to disappoint you and where to look instead, listen to the full episode with Joseph Goldstein.

Also out today is my episode with Kate Murphy, on how to click with anyone, read every room, and stop absorbing other people’s stress.

And over on the 10% with Dan Harris app:

Join Teacher of the Month Cara Lai tomorrow (Tuesday, May 26 at 4 p.m. ET) for a live meditation and Q&A on Zoom. Drop your questions for her in the event post on the app here.

Upcoming event in person:

Tickets for the next Meditation Party are available here! Jeff Warren, Sebene Selassie, and I are doing another version of our annual retreat this Oct. 16-18. It’s at the Omega Institute in upstate NY. Think four big sessions of meditation, conversation, and Q&A—with plenty of free time to hike the 240-acre campus, play some pickleball, shoot hoops, or just relax by the lake. You can also drop into yoga or tai chi classes, and on Saturday night there’s even a dance party (totally optional, I promise).

Sign up for the 10% with Dan Harris app

Paid subscribers to the new 10% with Dan Harris app get:

• Guided Meditations: A library of guided sessions to help with stress, anxiety, focus, sleep, annoying people, and more.

• Meditation Challenges: Structured programs to deepen your practice with clear goals, daily guidance, and community support.

• Live Meditation and Q&A Sessions: Every week, meditate live with me and some of the best meditation teachers on earth. Ask questions. Get actual answers.

• The 10% Happier Podcast: Subscribers get access to ad-free versions of my pod. Both the new episodes and the entire archive, stretching back almost 10 years.

• Community Connection: Join conversations with thousands of other practitioners who get it. Share your struggles, celebrate wins, get support when you need it.

Join the party.

Subscribe to Our Substack

Additional Resources:

• Why We Click: The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

• Why action is the best antidote to AI anxiety — and what’s actually in your control

• How to use your meditation practice inside an MRI (and when it’s okay to just get sedated)

• Joseph Goldstein’s “dead end” technique for breaking out of repetitive thought loops

• Why certainty is not an indicator of truth — and how open-mindedness works in a polarized world

• The Buddhist take on alcohol, and Dan’s surprisingly candid answer about his own relationship with substances

• How to stop feeding the need for external approval — without toxic positivity

• Why mindfulness in Pali literally means “remembering” — and why you’ll always need to hear this stuff again
  

In this episode we talk about:

• Why desire and wanting can keep us stuck in cycles of dissatisfaction

• The difference between momentary pleasure and deeper happiness

• A practical way to watch cravings arise and pass without reacting

• Why “not wanting” can feel surprisingly relieving

• The Buddhist framework of gratification, danger, and escape

• How to think about contentment and the question: how much is enough?

• The difference between guilt and wise remorse

• How desire, lust, and craving can distort judgment

Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!

Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here

Sign up for Dan’s free newsletter here

Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

Additional Resources:

• Dharma Seed - freely offered talks from Western Buddhist Vipassana teachers

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