When It Comes to Habits, There Are Four Types of People. Which Are You? | Gretchen Rubin
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- The New Year is approaching and this is a time when many of us think about making and breaking new habits. So today we’re bringing on one of the smartest people when it comes to habits, best-selling author and speaker Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen’s contention is that before you embark on a self-improvement project, it’s crucial to have some self-awareness about what kind of person you are. She has devised a framework called the Four Tendencies, which helps you identify your personality type in order to gain powerful insights into how you make or break habits. Rubin is a lawyer by training and began her career clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Gretchen then went on to write a series of books that examine small and doable ways to boost our happiness in everyday life. These include: The Happiness Project, which spent two years on the bestseller list and sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide, and Better Than Before. We initially conducted the interview you’re about to hear back in 2017, when Gretchen released a book called The Four Tendencies. In this episode we talk about: How and why Gretchen developed the Four Tendencies framework How Gretchen’s framework can give each of us a recipe for successful habit change Breaking down the Four Tendencies: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, or Rebels How these Four Tendencies are an overlapping Venn diagram What “obliger rebellion” is and how to spot it in your relationships The value of forming an accountability group And why Gretchen sometimes calls herself a happiness bully Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/gretchen-rubin-99-rerun
19 Dec 20221h 1min
How Do You Love Without Being Attached? | Kevin Griffin
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Today we’re tackling some thorny dharma questions. For example: How do you love someone without attachment? How do you love yourself when the self is allegedly an illusion? Kevin Griffin is both a long time Buddhist practitioner and also a 12 step participant, and in another previous episode we talked to him about the nature of craving and addiction. In this popular episode from the archives, Kevin talks about his semi-skeptical take on loving kindness – that venerable if somewhat misunderstood Buddhist concept and practice. His book is being re-released this month, with a slightly new title Living Kindness: Metta Practice for the Whole of Our Lives. In this conversation, we talk about: Loving kindness versus living kindness The dangers of modern loving kindness practice The idea that you don't have to feel love all the time And we talk about a Buddhist text called the Metta Sutta. Content Warning: The interview includes brief references to addiction and other forms of suffering. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kevin-griffin-370-rerun
14 Dec 202255min
How to Call People In (Instead of Calling Them Out) | Loretta Ross
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- If you’re tired of the venom, preening, and predatory listening so common on all sides of our various cultural divides, this episode is for you. My guest today is Loretta Ross, who believes that “calling out,” which is quite common on social media these days, is adding way too much toxicity to the discourse and alienating people who might otherwise be allies. Instead, she believes in “calling in,” which steadfastly insists on a large measure of grace, and rejects the impulse to dehumanize. On today’s show, Loretta offers a compelling mode of engagement that is insistently open-minded and large-hearted, no matter where you stand on the political divide. Loretta describes herself as a radical Black feminist, activist, and public intellectual. She’s a visiting Associate Professor at Smith College, and she also teaches an online course called, Calling in the Calling Out Culture. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/loretta-ross-316-rerun
12 Dec 202257min
How to Stop the War Against Yourself | Tara Brach
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- It’s possible to actually be addicted to self-criticism, especially as a way to keep yourself safe. But evidence shows that’s not true, and today’s episode dives into strategies to deal with your own self-hatred. This is part two of a series this week on forgiveness. In our last episode, Jack Kornfield focused on forgiving other people and in today’s episode, Tara Brach talks about forgiving yourself. Tara Brach is a meditation teacher, psychologist and author of several books including Radical Acceptance, Radical Compassion and Trusting the Gold. Her weekly podcast is downloaded 3 million times a month. Tara is also the founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. In this episode we talk about: Why Tara says self-hatred “divides us from our ourselves” The benefits of learning the habit to stop kicking our own asses Simple meditations to help us with self-forgiveness Questions that can help us understand what really matters to us, and what we really want The power of seeing the profundity in mundane experiences A refresher on a fan favorite meditation technique: RAIN How to start trusting reality more than we believe the beliefs about ourselves Forgiveness vs accountability Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/tara-brach-534
7 Dec 20221h 13min
A Self-Interested Case for Forgiveness | Jack Kornfield
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. The allure of resentment, of holding a grudge or nursing your rage can be super powerful. In today’s episode, Jack Kornfield, one of the great western meditation masters, talks about Buddhist strategies for not holding grudges and the self-interested case for forgiveness. This episode is the first of a two-part series this week on forgiveness. In this conversation we talk about: What forgiveness is and isn’t Whether forgiveness is a single act or an ongoing process The cost of not forgiving A forgiveness practice you can try in your meditation Whether it’s possible to respond to the misdeeds and transgressions of others with force and love at the same time Whether there are things that are unforgivable And Jack’s contention that forgiveness involves a shift in identity Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jack-kornfield-533
5 Dec 20221h 4min
Could This Practice Improve Your Sleep, Sharpen Your Mind, and Decrease Unhealthy Cravings? | Kelly Boys
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Today we’re taking a run at something that is simultaneously a contemplative cliché and also a deeply desired psychological outcome: getting out of your head and into your body. So many of us want an escape route from the spinning, looping, fishing narratives and grudges in our head and our guest today has some very practical suggestions to help us do that. Kelly Boys is a mindfulness trainer and coach. She has helped design and deliver mindfulness and resilience programs for the UN, Google, and San Quentin State Prison. She is also the author of The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What's Right in Front of You Today we’re going to talk specifically about a type of meditation that Kelly teaches called Yoga Nidra, which has been shown to help you sleep, improve your working memory, and decrease cravings. In this episode we talk about: The difference between Yoga Nidra and mindfulness meditation, and how Kelly seeks to combine them The value of being able to both observe and high-five your demons Working with our “core beliefs” about ourselves and the world The calming power of drawing your attention to the back side of your body throughout the day Working with “opposites” as a way to get unstuck in difficult moments What Kelly means by the blind spot effect Setting intentions Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kelly-boys-531
30 Nov 20221h 3min
Your Anxiety Questions, Answered | Judson Brewer
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- The subject of anxiety never seems to lose its relevance. In this special episode we answer listener voicemails with one of the world’s leading experts on anxiety. Dr. Jud Brewer is the Chief Medical Officer at Sharecare and the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center. He is also the New York Times best-selling author of Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind and an expert in the field of habit change and the science of self-mastery. In this episode we talk about: The current levels of anxiety in our culture Why fear and planning can be helpful, but worrying is not The role of curiosity and kindness in short circuiting anxiety How to differentiate between anxiety and excitement Whether we can try too hard to treat our anxiety And why as a society we are moving away from distress tolerance Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/judson-brewer-530
28 Nov 20221h 7min
The Surprising Power of “Healthy Embarrassment” | Koshin Paley Ellison
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- We’ve all got parts of our personality or our past that we’re ashamed of. We might refer to these parts of ourselves as our demons, our baggage, or our secrets; no one is immune. So, how do you want to deal with this situation? Stay coiled in shame and denial? That only makes the demons stronger. An alternative, per my guest Koshin Paley Ellison, is to approach your stuff with “healthy embarrassment.” That allows you to work more skillfully with your baggage so that it doesn’t own you. And once you’re cooler with yourself, that can improve your relationships with other people, which is probably the most important variable for your happiness. And healthy embarrassment is just one of many extremely useful things we are going to talk about today. Koshin Paley Ellison is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and Certified Chaplaincy Educator. He is the co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, an amazing place which, among other things, trains people to be volunteers in hospice centers. Koshin is the author of a new book called Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion, which centers on a classic Buddhist list called The Eightfold Path, the Buddha’s recipe for enlightenment or, as Koshin puts it, “the most awesome combo platter.” In this episode we talk about: What is The Eightfold Path and how it fits into another Buddhist list, The Four Noble Truths How to use the list to do life better The danger of perfectionism in putting the list to use in your life How to bridge the gap between what we say we care about and what we’re actually doing with our lives How sitting with your pain can lead to freedom The utility and pitfalls of gossip How we can look at the idea of “killing” in many different ways, including how one can “kill a moment” or “the energy in a room” How the concept of “right effort” can help us find the balance between not doing enough and overworking ourselves How being uncomfortable is a sign of real engagement with our practice And Koshin’s addition of the concept of “mystery” as another aspect of the eightfold path Full Shownotes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/koshin-paley-ellison-528
23 Nov 202251min
