How To Stop Getting Dragged Around By Your Anxieties, Thought Loops, and Insecurities | Sebene Selassie

0:04Sebene Selassie:This is the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:18Sebene Selassie:Hello, everybody. How we doing? So today we've got something special. It's a sneak preview of a new audiobook that I worked on with the meditation teacher, Seben A. Selassie. It's called Even You Can Meditate, and it's officially out on Audible. You can listen right now by visiting audible.com slash Dan Harris to grab a copy of the book, and I will drop that link in the show notes as well. I'm very excited about this audiobook. Seben and I worked really hard on it. You can think of it as a practical rescue plan for anybody who feels too distracted or overwhelmed to start or restart a meditation practice.

0:53Sebene Selassie:It guides you through various traditions and techniques to help you find the style that actually will work for you, for your life, for your brain, et cetera, et cetera, so that you can derive all the benefits that come from an abiding meditation habit, like reduce stress and improve sleep. Speaking of habits, by the way, the book comes with tons of practical evidence-based hacks for booting up a habit that will actually stick. So what you're about to hear in this little preview are two sections from the book. The first is an introduction where Seb and I talk about what we're going to be doing in the book, why intention matters, and how to adapt these practices to work for your particular brain.

1:31Sebene Selassie:The second section dives into mindfulness itself, what it is, what it isn't, and why the word is actually kind of a misnomer. We also get into some practical stuff about posture, stillness, and the so-called five hindrances, the very predictable challenges that tend to come up in meditation, like desire, aversion, restlessness, doubt, et cetera. Okay, before we dive in, two quick things. First, just a little bit about my co-author, 7A Selassie. Many of you, I think, will know who she is, but if you haven't heard of her, she's an author and a teacher and a three-time cancer survivor and a very close friend and an awesome person.

2:08Sebene Selassie:Second, and this is very cool, over on my new meditation app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. We're going to be running a five-day Even You Can Meditate Challenge. It will run from March 23rd through the 27th. Every day we'll feature a different practice from 7A. These practices will be good for newbies and experienced people alike. And during the course of the challenge, Seb and I will do two live online events where we will guide a meditation and then take your questions. So if you want to join the challenge, all you have to do is download my new app and you can find that app at danharris.com.

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5:59Hi, Seb.

6:00Dan Harris:Hi, Dan.

6:01Sebene Selassie:So how did you get into meditation?

6:04Dan Harris:My brother became a Hare Krishna when I was in high school. And the benefit of that was that I got introduced to Eastern philosophy really young. And I started trying out meditation. I actually taught Probably a very bad meditation class in high school for my East Asian Studies history class.

6:25Sebene Selassie:I'm laughing because I can just see you doing that.

6:29Dan Harris:Because you know I like to boss people around.

6:31Sebene Selassie:Yes, exactly.

6:33Dan Harris:But that led me to majoring in comparative religious studies in college. And I focused on Hinduism and Buddhism, particularly early Buddhism, which is the foundation of mindfulness teaching. So I've been at it a long time. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm great at it, but I have been studying and practicing for a few decades now.

6:55Sebene Selassie:I always get very suspicious when somebody tells me they're good at meditation. That's right. Just for any skeptical secular listener or a listener who has a pre-existing religious faith, what can we say about Buddhism that might put them at ease?

7:11Dan Harris:Well, first of all, it's not a theistic religion, so there's nothing to really believe in. The Buddha taught a set of teachings that, again, are the foundation of mindfulness meditation and many other practices. And so there's a way to enter into this philosophy that doesn't require signing up to any religion.

7:31Sebene Selassie:There's an expression I love about Buddhism, which is it's not something to believe in, it's something to do. And it can be adopted by people who are like me, you know, agnostic, or by anybody with any religious belief. So how have these practices helped you?

7:47Dan Harris:Oh my goodness, how have they not helped me? So I came to them young, as I said, so I was a hot mess, you know, really lost in a lot of ways. I have a certain amount of family trauma, like many of us. I was born in Ethiopia, and we came here under challenging circumstances that continued. And so for me, the practices were really a lifeline because I was looking for some kind of relief.

8:13Sebene Selassie:You've also had not a few health crises in your life. I'll let you describe what those are. How have the practices helped you navigate all this stuff?

8:24Dan Harris:Yeah, so I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer 20 years ago at the age of 34. I'm going to be 55 soon, and I've lived with metastatic stage 4 cancer for 15 years now. So yes, the practice has also helped me navigate a lot of crises within that. I don't know what I would do without these practices because they are designed to help us deal with pain and suffering in a way that's not just distracting ourselves and trying to get away from the reality of our lives, but actually meet it with some measure of grounding, centering, and really capacity.

9:05Sebene Selassie:My concern going into meditation was that it was going to make me less ambitious or less effective, that I would lose my edge. What do you say to people who harbor that concern?

9:15Dan Harris:Well, you know, so much of meditation practice, particularly mindfulness practice, is about concentration. And so we can really talk about how much at peak performance are you really? And how much are you just running on fumes and using adrenaline or, you know, substances to get you going? There's so much proof that meditation actually helps you become more focused, more effective, more efficient.

9:41Sebene Selassie:You know, if you look around at the people who are adopting meditation in our culture, they're executives, they're elite athletes, they're prominent entertainers and journalists. Why? Because they want to have more focus. They want to be calmer. They want to be less emotionally reactive. And this is a set of ancient technologies that can really help you get there.

10:01Dan Harris:And I would add to that, they want to be happier.

10:04Sebene Selassie:Is it a panacea? Does it fix everything?

10:07Dan Harris:Cannot fix everything. We're in human bodies that age, that grow old if we're lucky, that get sick, that die eventually. So it's not a magical bullet for taking away pain. What it can take away is that extra layer of suffering that we add to the pain. The oh, woe is me, the why me, and really be with things as they are.

10:35Sebene Selassie:I would say it can actually pretty instantly make your life better. It just won't solve everything. In my experience, after a couple weeks of meditating, my life was better. I just saw improvements, and those improvements have compounded like a good investment over time. And yet, I retain the capacity to be a schmuck in thousands of ways. And so I'm not perfect by any stretch. But I'm so much better than I was 16 years ago when I started meditating. And those benefits did start to accrue quickly.

11:06Dan Harris:I just like the fact that you admitted for the record that you're not perfect.

11:12Sebene Selassie:That's my whole brand.

11:17Sebene Selassie:I think it's also worth saying that we all are coming to this from different spots. And we're really going to try to teach as many practices as possible to appeal to whatever your specific set of needs might be.

11:31Dan Harris:There's no right way to meditate, right? So some of these practices will appeal to you. Some of them will not. That's why we have so many of them. You can try different ones out. we have ordered them in a particular way that we hope that you can try because they are, as often referenced, graduated teachings that one builds on the other. So this is a deliberate order that we've created. So we encourage you to try them out in the order that we've given them, but then also to figure out which ones work for you and which don't and find the best way for you.

12:05Sebene Selassie:If you don't think you have it in you, at least not right now, to sit still, or if you have physical pain and being in one specific position is uncomfortable for you, like, stand up, lie down. Like, it's cool. There are lots of ways to do this.

12:22Dan Harris:Some people have this idea that you have to be in full lotus on a cushion or, you know, levitating to be in meditation. But actually, it's called practice for a reason. We're not practicing to become good meditators. We're employing this practice of meditation to help us be more aware, present, yet, dare I say, free in our lives. So yes, we can sit, but you don't have to be on a cushion. You can be in a chair. We emphasize, you know, sitting up straight or at least having the body open so you're not collapsed because that can affect your breathing. It can affect your sense of alertness. But besides that, we're not saying that you have to be in any particular posture.

13:08Dan Harris:Standing is a really good option, too. You know, I love to bring my awareness to my feet, partly because they're farthest from my head. It's a way to really feel grounded and actually be in touch with sensations. And then lying down is actually my favorite practice because the body is fully relaxed. Most of the time, we're holding tension in our bodies in order to keep ourselves upright. And so it can be sort of a struggle between paying attention and dealing with tension in the body. But when we're lying down, we can really release and then we can rest our full awareness on the body. And so that's what we'll be doing in one of the practices as well.