A Buddhist Secret for Calm, Energy, and Handling Obnoxious People | Trudy Goodman

How to stay calm and steady in uncertain times. Trudy Goodman https://www.trudygoodman.com/, Ph. D., is the founding teacher of InsightLA https://insightla.org/ and cofounder of The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. https://meditationandpsychotherapy.org/ Trudy has trained in mindfulness and Zen since 1973, holds a graduate degree in developmental psychology from Harvard, and is widely known for her role as the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series The Midnight Gospel https://www.netflix.com/title/80987903. In this episode we talk about: How to trust yourself Why Trudy is interested in this topic of self-trust Why Trudy doesn't love the word "enlightenment", but does want to make the concept more accessible What self-love does — and doesn't — look like, especially in a Buddhist context Staying steady in uncertain times Intuition and trusting yourself The importance of getting out of your own bubble and differentiating between your opinions and values The connection between forgiveness and trusting yourself Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: InsightLA https://insightla.org/ How to Thrive in Love: Buddhist Secrets to Transform Your Relationships with Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman https://jackkornfield.com/sp/how-to-thrive-in-love/ Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025! To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Harris?

  For both of us, the cold weather is now officially back. I, however, am not dreading it this year because I've got Bombas. They make socks, slippers, and footwear that keep me warm and cozy and snug all winter long, and everything they make is great for gifting. So I'm also not stressed about the holidays. Bombas makes slippers for staying cozy inside, and now they make footwear for going out and about, from fuzzy sundae slippers for lounging around in to water-resistant suede booties that can handle the winter. Bombas socks are a winter go-to as well. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for warmth, fuzzy socks and plush gripper socks for cozy vibes at home. They also, of course, make socks that you can exercise in. I am a heavy user of Bombas socks for working out.

• 0:44Dan Harris?

  I also wear them when I'm wearing sneakers out and about because they look good and they're really, really comfortable. And the best part about Bombas, for every item you purchase, they donate an essential clothing item to somebody facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated with over 200 million donations and counting. Head on over to bombas.com/happier and use the code HAPPIER for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash happier and use the code HAPPIER at checkout.

• 1:18Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 1:32Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing today? Today on the pod, we've got an eminent Buddhist teacher talking about a trainable skill that she says can lead to increased calm, equanimity, energy, and an increase in your ability to deal with difficult people. What is this trainable skill? It is learning to trust yourself. Now, I want to say right here from the jump that this may sound a little funny, trusting yourself in a Dharma context, given that the Buddhists argue that the self is an illusion, but my guest is going to help us unpack that. Said guest is Trudy Goodman, PhD. She's a founding teacher of Insight LA and co-founder of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy.

• 2:16Dan Harris?

  Trudy has trained in mindfulness and in Zen since 1973. She holds a graduate degree in developmental psychology from Harvard, and she is widely known for her role as the voice of Trudy, the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series Midnight Gospel. I also want to say about Trudy that she's somebody I've gotten to know a little bit personally in the last couple of years, and she's just fucking awesome. In this conversation, we talk about how to trust yourself, why to trust yourself, why Trudy is interested in this subject, why she doesn't love the word enlightenment, but she does want to make the concept more accessible, which I'm here for, what self-love does and does not look like, especially in a Buddhist context, how to stay steady in uncertain

• 2:57Dan Harris?

  times, the role of intuition, the importance of getting out of your own bubble and differentiating between your opinions and your values, the connection between forgiveness and trusting yourself, and much more. And check this out, if you want to practice the skill of trusting yourself, which is a subtle art, if you want to practice it, this episode comes with a bespoke, a custom guided meditation called How to Listen to Yourself. It is guided by 7A Selassie, who's our teacher of the month over on danharris.com, which means that she will be doing custom meditations to go along with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes this month. She'll also be doing some live guided meditation and Q&A sessions only for paid subscribers.

• 3:38Dan Harris?

  We do those every Tuesday at 4 Eastern, so head on over to danharris.com and sign up. P.S. And this is cool, if you want to meditate with me and with Seb in person, we will be at the Omega Institute on the weekend of October 24th. There's a link for you in the show notes. You should come to that. Okay, we'll get started with Trudy Goodman right after this.

• 4:00Dan Harris?

  My wife Bianca just went on a major shopping spree on Wayfair.com, one of our favorite spots to buy stuff for the home and a longtime sponsor of this show. Thank you, Wayfair. Bianca did the readout on what she bought. A lot of kitchen stuff, like platters, serving platters, and espresso cups. Basically, she's prepping for all of the hosting we are going to do throughout the holiday season. We love to host. It's something that makes us very happy and it's much easier when you've got some great stuff that you've acquired through Wayfair.com. We love Wayfair and Wayfair has something called Wayfair Verified, which helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Products are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection.

• 4:45Dan Harris?

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• 5:16Dan Harris?

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• 6:01Dan Harris?

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• 6:17Dan Harris?

  Trudy Goodman, welcome to the show.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dan. Glad to be here.

• 6:20Dan Harris?

  I consider it a form of malpractice that you have not been on until now. I have no idea why that is, but I'm happy to be remedying it now.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Better late than never, right?

• 6:29Dan Harris?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Right?

• 6:30Dan Harris?

  I heard something recently, like, what's the best time to plant a tree? And the answer is 20 years ago, but the second best time is today.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's great. My friend Yvonne Rand, who had a zendo in Muir Beach, she had some calligraphies from Suzuki Roshi, a Zen master of the last century, who founded Tassahara and the San Francisco Zen Center. And it says, "Never say too late."

• 6:55Dan Harris?

  I like that.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:56Dan Harris?

  Well, when you were talking to one of my ACE producers, Marissa Schneiderman, about what we were going to talk about today, your answer was trusting yourself. And so I'm curious, why that?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  I picked that because for me, as a woman of my generation, coming to really trust myself in a world that didn't necessarily celebrate me and my accomplishments, the same as some of my male colleagues at the time, learning to trust myself and my perceptions was really important, both professionally and personally. One of the things that I've been writing about is what happens when you don't trust your perceptions? Like, in my last marriage, that came up as an issue, where I listened to my beloved instead of to my own intuition, when I should have trusted my intuition.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  So trusting yourself feels central also to the project of living the best life that we can and waking up to be able to use all of who we are in the service of that life. I guess I just was very unconfident when I was young. I know that you are interested in Buddhist practice. And we talk about the strategies of disconnection from experience, being greed and hate and delusion or ignorance, not in the sense of not having knowledge, but in the sense of ignoring what's actually happening. But I feel that for women,

• 8:37Speaker 01

  those three things should be more like low self-esteem, anxiety, self-doubt. These are the things that over, really working with thousands of people over the last decades, I've seen in myself and in many of the people who come.

• 8:56Dan Harris?

  It may be more prominent among women, but I see myself in every single one of those.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  You do?

• 9:01Dan Harris?

  Alternative defilements that you just listed.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Alternative defilements. We have so many to choose from.

• 9:07Dan Harris?

  Yes, exactly. The menu is vast. I mean, anxiety is a huge feature of my life. Self-doubt, low self-esteem at times, for sure. So I am in no way questioning the role of sexism in our culture in making that more acute among women. It seems unisex on some level.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think that we're humans together.

• 9:30Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And one of the benefits, I think, of beginning to trust yourself and trust your perceptions is you can start to see that commonality of human experience and not be so identified with your particular circumstances, situation, moment, all of those things. And also, I feel like for meditation practitioners, people who really want to learn to meditate, trust is really important. Trust in what you see, hear, taste, smell, touch. My first teacher was a Korean Zen teacher named Venerable Sung San.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Sansanim, we used to call him. And we were, you know, in a gathering where he gave a talk and then people asked him questions and somebody, he was always teaching us to have great faith. And somebody asked him, what is great faith? And he held up his pinky. And he said, do you see this? Do you see this, Dan?

• 10:38Dan Harris?

  I do.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  This is great faith.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So that's a very Zen condensed way of saying, trust what you see, trust what you hear. And it's also good meditation practice because then you ground yourself in this moment, what you see, hear, taste, smell, touch, think, feel, right now. And that's the most trustworthy and powerful. This moment, this day, is the most powerful one. We know this because the future is a dream. It hasn't happened yet, you know? And the past, very dreamlike. We travel a lot these days.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And when I think of, you know, two nights ago where I was and who I was with, this wonderful teacher colleague of mine that I've been blessed to teach with, Anam Tipten, I think, was that only two days? You know, it has a dreamlike quality. And one of the great meditation instructions that I think is useful for all of us to begin to develop some equanimity about our experience is just think of all of it as a dream. Because tomorrow, this, our being together, which feels so clear and vivid right now, it's going to feel dreamlike.

• 12:05Dan Harris?

  Your husband, Jack, used to have a auto signature on his email, but it's from the Diamond Sutra that you should think of all of life as a flickering lamp and a dream and...

• 12:15Speaker 01

  So you should view this fleeting world, a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream. Yeah, that's the end of the Diamond Sutra.

• 12:29Dan Harris?

  And so what you're saying, I think, is that, given that there are so many aspects of modern life that militate against intuition and trusting ourselves because we are thrown into a state of toxic comparison to other people via social media because some of us, depending on what type of body we occupy, the culture is telling us that we may be hysterical or wrong or...

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:53Dan Harris?

  Because we are disconnected from our bodies because most of the time we're in our phone. There are many ways in which we are not listening.

• 13:03Dan Harris?

  To the rhythm and music of being alive, to our bodies, to the world around us. If I'm defining the problem correctly, if I'm hearing you correctly, one of the remedies is basic mindfulness, mindful awareness, trusting the reality of what's happening right now, the sensations in your body, the activity in your mind.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you. You said that much faster than I did.

• 13:30Dan Harris?

  It's much easier to sum up than to articulate in the first place, just to be clear.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  And also, you know, when you look at what is the point, you know, people talk about enlightenment or awakening and what is that too? I mean, is that some story about the future that I'll be there someday? Or is that something that only special other people get to experience? So trusting that who you are and your life in this moment has all the ingredients you need to be fully awake. That's another piece of it. That's a maybe deeper dive into what trust can be. That we just let all those things that, what did you call it? The menu of defilements, the things that get in our way.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Let them just loosen their grip a little bit and dissolve a little bit so that we're not constantly looking at everything through the lens of me. How is this going to benefit me? How has this threatened me? How is this going to advance? All of that. It's like looking at the sky through a straw. So I think trusting that the contents of this right now, us here together, are the contents of our awakening. Where else would it be happening?

• 14:53Dan Harris?

  Okay, so I'm hearing two things. I just want to make sure I.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm enjoying your summing up.

• 15:00Dan Harris?

  It's really because I think one of the reasons why, in my opinion, one of the reasons why I've had some success as an interviewer is I'm a little bit dumb. I need to make sure I understand things for myself.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  It's a kindness to your listeners, too.

• 15:15Dan Harris?

  Yes, well, there's them, the two.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I mean, they're here with us, too.

• 15:19Dan Harris?

  They are. They are asynchronously, but they're definitely here with us. Okay, so there's not trusting yourself in the, let's call it conventional term of,

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:30Dan Harris?

  I'm disconnected from, and I use this term poetically, my heart, listening to my body, listening to my intuitions.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Your feelings, your emotions.

• 15:39Dan Harris?

  Exactly.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:40Dan Harris?

  And so mindful awareness, present moment awareness, just basic understanding of what's happening right now is a non-negotiable building block toward learning how to trust yourself. But you're also saying that on a deeper level, if we want to get enlightened, and I'm not sure how many listeners are even entertaining that notion, but if, if we want to have some sort of profound spiritual progression, even in that word progression is where we get mixed up. It feels like we're building to something, but if you're going to get enlightened, it's always going to be now.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  It's only ever here.

• 16:17Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  It's only ever going to be here.

• 16:20Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  And I think I just am trying to, in a sense, make a little more accessible, the idea of enlightenment or awakening, or that this is not something that people should assume is only for other people, because we all have the innate capacity for awareness. We have this. It's, we're born with the ability to be conscious. And that is an amazing gift. Maybe one of the most overlooked gifts that we have is this gift of consciousness, that we get to have perceptions and be awake and alive and conscious. And the other thing

• 17:03Speaker 01

  that I think is also, is one of our overlooked human superpowers, is that we can direct our attention wherever we want.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  We're not really taught about that, how to do that. It's not part of our training, wasn't part of our parents or grandparents' training to teach us how to do that. But that's also really important, especially when things are hard.

• 17:29Dan Harris?

  Let me just stay with enlightenment for a second. In the Buddhist sense, to the extent that I understand it, enlightenment is often defined as the uprooting of greed, hatred, and delusion.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 17:39Dan Harris?

  You're just no longer experiencing negative emotions. And wait, you're making a face like I might have put a foot.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Well, I would just stop right there. It's not that you don't experience negative emotions.

• 17:51Dan Harris?

  Right, right. You're not identified with them. You're not clinging to them.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 17:56Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 17:58Dan Harris?

  So we think of an enlightened person as she or he is floating through the world, pixie dust trailing from their rear end. And we think, well, that's not something that I can achieve. And what I think you're saying is actually, right now, if you are in your body, pleasant or unpleasant or otherwise, you are not in the spinning stories of your head, which are.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  They may be spinning, but you're not caught in them.

• 18:28Dan Harris?

  You're not caught in them. And that's an awakening right there.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. I know, as far as that fantasy of tripping through the tulips, pixie dust, all of that, I've had the pleasure of studying with some of the most revered meditation, we don't say masters anymore, meditation teachers in the world. And they're not like that, none of them. They're just not. I've met people who really are very awakened and the ones that I love are very honest about their experience, that they're still human, they have humanness. Somebody asked a late, great Japanese roshi, Maisumi roshi.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  He was giving a talk and a man was in the audience who was just very, very drunk.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  He was very provocative and he said, so Roshi, what's it like to be enlightened? And Roshi looked at him and said, very depressing.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  And I love this story because in that moment, he was looking at somebody quite troubled.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And it was sad. Do you see what I'm saying?

• 19:47Dan Harris?

  My wife has a tattoo on her left arm that says, right now, it's like this.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. So in that moment, that's what it was like.

• 19:59Dan Harris?

  And so in any moment, if we're in touch with what it's like, that's a form of enlightenment.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I like to use the word awakening because it's less fraught than enlightenment. Enlightenment has this once and for all quality and some of the texts seem to promise that and it's can be really confusing. Jack gives a talk called Enlightenment's Plural.

• 20:20Dan Harris?

  Yes, I've heard that talk.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:22Dan Harris?

  I read the essay, actually.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  So, you know, that to me makes more sense. So I like to say awakening because the whole point is to stay awake and nobody, maybe outside of retreat, protected circumstances, could say that they're really awake 24/7, that they never get distracted and unmindful, even for a moment. I certainly can't say that.

• 20:47Dan Harris?

  I can't say it either.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:49Dan Harris?

  Let's just go back to the beginning of this discussion. We were talking about trusting yourself and you talked about your history of not trusting yourself. We established that the first step on this path is to hone your capacity just to be awake. I'm wondering, is that necessary but not sufficient? What is required after you've learned how to wake up a little bit in your life? What else might be required in order to have trust and confidence in yourself?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  I think to be more ecumenical about it, Pope Francis gave a TED Talk in 2017. And in that, I was so struck by it that I actually took some notes of it. He said, what we really need is a revolution of tenderness in the world. We have to talk sequentially because we live in linear time, but it would ideally be together. That next step that you talk about, to me, would be infusing awareness with some tenderness or kindness or love. And if you really practice staying awake, it will come naturally. Because what you begin to see is, as I was talking about earlier, the humanness, that

• 22:02Speaker 01

  we're humans together, shared humanity. And those things that get in the way of our realizing our shared humanity, they tend to fall away somewhat. And when you start to be able to, to see that, you naturally feel a kind of, I don't know, it is like a kind of compassion, like, look, we're, we're in this together. We were born in these bodies and we live in these bodies and we're vulnerable in these bodies, so we're in this together. And I'm at a stage of life where I say, our bodies age. I could look in the mirror today and say, fine, let's stop right here. I'm good.

• 22:44Dan Harris?

  I'm good, meaning I don't want to keep changing or I'm good?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm fine. I don't need to get older. I'm fine, right here.

• 22:50Dan Harris?

  I'm as old as I want to be.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  I'm as old as I want to be. I'm old enough to have a little experience of life, little wisdom, a little tenderness. I'm good right here. But it's kind of like saying, I really want to keep my baby teeth. They're so cute. I don't want those serrated permanent teeth to come in.

• 23:10Dan Harris?

  The word that Stephen Batchelor, the Buddhist writer, who I believe studied the same Korean Zen method that you referenced earlier, the word he sometimes uses in this regard is poignancy.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  It's a beautiful expression. I love that word and I love where he uses it in that intimations of the sublime chapter in, I forget the name of his book.

• 23:30Dan Harris?

  Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:32Dan Harris?

  Or Buddhism Without Beliefs?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  No, it's even another one.

• 23:36Dan Harris?

  After the Buddha? Those are the three books by him that I know.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  They're all good. They're all good. It'll come back to me.

• 23:41Dan Harris?

  After Buddhism is actually one of his books by.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  It was before that one. But I think poignancy is a beautiful word to describe the bittersweetness of our existence as humans together. And I have this quote that I want to read because it has to do, again, with this sense of what is awakening? What does it mean? This is a quote from Helen Prejean, and she is the one who the movie Dead Man Walking was made about her.

• 24:08Dan Harris?

  She was a nun.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Yes, she was a nun. And she said, and I love this, she said, "My whole faith now is making love present in the world and letting love be in my life. What counts now is being with people, especially those people who are most excluded, death row inmates and their families." That was her mission, to work with the most excluded, feared, maybe hated, people. When I was talking earlier about just letting the self as a point of reference loosen up a little bit, I think of that. I think of, oh, how can I, you know, Sharon Salzberg wrote a book with the most beautiful titles.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  It was called A Heart As Wide As The World.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Like, how can I just embrace more and more and more of the good, the bad, the ugly? Hold all of it in my heart with some tenderness? I feel like that's a really beautiful way to live.

• 25:12Dan Harris?

  But I could see a potential misunderstanding and perhaps even a potential pitfall in here. Because if you're saying that one way to trust and confidence in yourself is through increasing your love quotient, people who have low self-esteem can fall into sort of ruinous, toxic altruism where they're people pleasing as opposed to having a healthy relationship.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Well, that's a huge pitfall, is imagining that you're supposed to love other people more than yourself, put other people first. And a lot of spiritual teachings do actually encourage that. Having healthy boundaries and knowing.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  What is my limit? Where am I going to start to feel I'm over giving and resenting it? I mean, this is an issue for every parent certainly to consider. I'm coming back to a story from the Buddhist scriptures, the teachings. And this is a story, you probably know it, about King Pasanadi Kosala and his wife, Queen Malika. I think Malika asks him first. It's kind of like, I don't know, it's a little bit of Snow White, too. Like, who do you love the most in the world? Who do you love the most? And he says, I think myself.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  And then he says, well, your majesty, how about you? You know, who do you think is the dearest one to you? And she reflects and she said, I would have to say myself.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  They're a little bit, maybe a little freaked out because it's not very romantic. And they go and they talk to the Buddha. And the Buddha says, there is no one on this earth more worthy of your love than you yourself. He's not saying there's anyone less worthy. He's really saying it's okay to take care of yourself. It's not only okay, it's really the foundation, like trusting yourself. So when I talk about love, I don't just mean being selfless. And that can devolve into being a doormat or over giving, which I certainly have done in my life. And there's a lot of the spiritual teachings that kind of condition you to do that.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And that's where I think Western psychology has a huge contribution to make. Where we really learn about how to be a healthy self.

• 27:44Dan Harris?

  What does self-love look like to you? Because speaking of pitfalls, one pitfall or misunderstanding when it comes to self-love could be narcissism.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. Self-love does not look like being self-referential in the way that I was talking about earlier, where you just, all roads lead to yourself, basically. You tell me something and I'll just link it right back to me and my experience. You know, what's that joke? How are you doing? How are you feeling about me? Or I forget it, something like that. Okay, it can devolve into things like that. In some of the texts, they talk about self-cherishing as a really bad thing, because they're really talking about being selfish and only thinking more always about yourself instead of about yourself and the other,

• 28:38Speaker 01

  yourself in a relational context, context of whether it's family or a group or community or country or planet world, but yourself in a relational context. And I think of self-love as respect. Self-respect is probably a better word. Having self-respect. Because if you really have self-respect, you're not going to be harming yourself so easily. For example, people who fall into addiction, self-respect is a helpful way out among 12-step and many other supports for getting sober.

• 29:18Dan Harris?

  The self in the Buddhist context is such a tricky notion.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  It is so tricky and everybody gets their knickers in a twist about that one. Because self, subject, object, they're kind of one thing at a certain point with perception. But this is getting into the weeds. I don't think we have to worry about it. The sense of me is not going to go away. It's just, is that always in charge of everything I do? I'm not trying to annihilate myself. Does that make sense?

• 29:49Dan Harris?

  It does make sense. And I think that is a, this is becoming a theme. Another pitfall or misunderstanding of the Dharma is a self-annihilation. It becomes a kind of self-hatred. It can become that.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  And listen, again, one of the things, I've worked with thousands of people, both as a psychotherapist and a meditation teacher, because at this age, you know, I've been doing this for 50 years. And so, practicing and studying and then later teaching, if there is one thread, it's people are so hard on themselves. And self-hatred is always a possibility. That's where I think the loving kindness practices and the joy practices, you know, really deliberately cultivating joy. What is it Wendell Berry said? Be joyful even though you've considered all the facts?

• 30:38Dan Harris?

  I love that. That's really good. I'm writing that down.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's from, um, I think the Mad Farmer. He says, put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Hear the songs that are yet to come. This is my favorite part. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. And I think that's one of the ways that we can steady our hearts in uncertain times is to cultivate joy. These little moments, the moments of laughter together, the moments that Thich Nhat Hanh called the non-toothache.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  How many times are we grateful and happy that we don't have a toothache? Right? And then he also said, another important thing in terms of steadying the heart in uncertain times. One of our Insight L.A. teachers, Insight L.A. is the nonprofit that I founded here in Los Angeles. One of our teachers, Li Anh Chi Tron is Vietnamese and she came on a very traumatic boat to escape from Vietnam. And Thich Nhat Hanh always said about the people who had to escape in those boats and pirates and storms and very vulnerable and overcrowded.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  And he always said, if one person in that boat could stay calm, everybody in that boat had a better chance of survival. Our boat is small here in this world, but if we can just stay calm and appreciate the non-toothache moments and cultivate joy, I do believe we're really helping the world.

• 32:32Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Trudy Goodman talks about intuition, how to know if you're listening to yourself, the power and importance of community, and the importance of getting out of your own bubble and differentiating between your opinions and your values.

• 32:51Dan Harris?

  This time of year, you know what I love? Overshirts. I think that's the technical term for them. These kind of heavy shirts that are like part sweater, part shirt. You can wear them over another shirt or as I'm doing right now, over a T-shirt. And you know who makes and sells great overshirts? Quince, our longtime sponsor. I was on quince.com the other day and I bought the overshirt that I'm wearing right now. It's a handsome shirt that I love and it will be a go-to for me. And it literally just came in the mail right before I walked into my studio to record this ad, so I'm very excited about it. Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather.

• 33:32Dan Harris?

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• 34:14Dan Harris?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was us. 10% happier. It's the best way to support this show. For both of us, the cold weather is now officially back. I, however, am not dreading it this year because I've got Bombas. They make socks, slippers, and footwear that keep me warm and cozy and snug all winter long. And everything they make is great for gifting, so I'm also not stressed about the holidays. Bombas makes slippers for staying cozy inside, and now they make footwear for going out and about. From fuzzy sundae slippers for lounging around in to water-resistant suede booties that can handle the winter.

• 34:59Dan Harris?

  Bombas socks are a winter go-to as well. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for warmth. Fuzzy socks and plush gripper socks for cozy vibes at home. They also, of course, make socks that you can exercise in. I am a heavy user of Bombas socks for working out. I also wear them when I'm wearing sneakers out and about because they look good and they're really, really comfortable. And the best part about Bombas, for every item you purchase, they donate an essential clothing item to somebody facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated with over 200 million donations and counting. Head on over to Bombas.com/happier and use the code HAPPIER for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash happier and use the code HAPPIER at checkout.

• 35:46Dan Harris?

  I'm curious about how that redounds to trusting yourself. Would the mechanism be there that if you're calm, you have a regular IV drip of joy, that you're less caught up in the culture's messages to you about how you shouldn't trust yourself?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And you're better able to discern what's actually going on and you're less distracted. I want to talk a little bit about intuition because that's very linked to trusting yourself. And I was at a gym in a class. The teacher said, let's go, we're going to do these sideways leaps, like preparing for snowboarding. I mean, I was already 75. I was not going to go snowboarding, but I loved the class.

• 36:30Dan Harris?

  Just to say, you don't look 75.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not anymore.

• 36:33Dan Harris?

  I know.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  I'm 79 and three quarters.

• 36:35Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  You know, the older you get, and who knows, by the time people listen to this, I might even be 80, but it's like kids, the older you get, you start counting

• 36:47Speaker 01

  three quarters. So she took us outside on a cement sidewalk to do these leaps. And as we went outside, I heard a distinct voice in my head that said, let's skip this one. And I wanted to do it. And I was going really fast. And my foot caught in a little crack in the sidewalk. And I slammed down and broke my back. Every time I override my intuition, it's a disaster. For your intuition to talk to you, you need to trust your perceptions and be listening a little bit. By listening, I just mean being present. Because I was distracted by, oh, yeah, let's go. I mean, it was not a subtle message.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  I do not always hear voices. That was maybe one of the only times, a few times in my life. But there was another time. And I'm telling this story because when I emerged from my last divorce, and yes, I have had more than one. When I emerged from my last divorce, from somebody I adored, a wonderful Zen teacher. We were co-teachers. Our lives were completely entwined. But there were problems toward the end of our marriage. And I had intuitions about them. But then when I would talk to him, you know, he would look me in the eye and talk to me. And he was so clear and I loved him. And it didn't cross my mind that he was lying to me.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  But he was. He felt he needed to. I'm not judging or explaining or excusing. That's not the point of the story. The point of the story is I overrode my intuition. Right. And so when we came apart, when we went apart, I thought, how am I ever going to trust myself again? Over and over, I just steamrolled over my trusting my intuition. And how am I going to choose a partner ever again? Certainly, this is the end of my love life, blah, blah, blah. My mind telling me all these very sad stories. And I'm sharing this because I think a lot of people might wonder, how do you discern that inner voice from fear? Is it the voice of fear?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Or is it trustworthy intuition? What I did was I started to just listen. And if it meant suddenly veering off my path to stop at a coffee shop because I had that random idea, I did it. I listened. I had a dream about some cousins that I hadn't seen forever. And I thought, I called them. I visited them. I think we were all wondering why I was there.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  But the point was to listen to that impulse because it wasn't a fearful one. It was just my way of signaling and other people, you can try this signaling. I'm here and I'm listening to the messages that are appearing in my consciousness. And not long afterwards, I was a visiting teacher, a resident teacher for the Santa Fe Insight Meditation Community, and I was invited to teach, co-teach with my beloved colleague, Phil Aronel, with whom I founded this institute for meditation and psychotherapy, the first one in the world. And we really were close. The conference was in Marco Island, Florida, and you had to fly into Fort Myers.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  So I was at that time living in New Mexico. We met, he was from Boston. We met in Fort Myers. We drove down together. We taught for the week with a couple of colleagues and then it was time to drive back to the airport. And I didn't want to get in the car. I didn't have a premonition, you know, I just had this feeling. But because I was doing this practice of listening to my body, which my body didn't want to get in the car. I didn't get in. And you may have guessed the end of this story, which is really tragic. I had to drive back with another colleague. It was inconvenient. He said, well, I'll go with Phil. You take my rental car. I said, I can't, I'm not on the contract.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  So he grudgingly stayed with me. I think I just made up, I just said, well, I want to go for one more swim before we go back to winter. And Phil was killed in a head-on collision on the way to the airport. I would have been sitting right next to him. A truck crossed the median and just plowed into the oncoming traffic, driven by a 15-year-old without a license. So I feel like trusting my intuition literally saved my life.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  And I think that's maybe to come right around to the beginning of this conversation, maybe that's why I place so much emphasis on trust.

• 41:39Dan Harris?

  A moment ago, you talked about the fact that some people get hung up on like, how do you know? If you're listening to yourself, how do you know you're not just listening to the fear voice? I haven't read it, but there's a book called The Gift of Fear that some female friends of mine have referenced to me. Because apparently in this book, it talks about the fact that sometimes our bodies are trying to.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Oh, listen, fear is our friend.

• 42:02Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Sure. And part intuition can reveal itself as fear too. You know, if I'm, I don't know. I mean, what is the classic example in a dark alley alone? And I feel fear. I need to look behind me. I need to look around, right? It's it's our warning system. So I'm not saying don't have fear. I'm just saying sometimes the messages that we might be hearing might be fearful thoughts as opposed to trustworthy intuitions.

• 42:35Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  That's the distinction that I was meaning to make.

• 42:38Dan Harris?

  Just to complicate this even further, sometimes what may seem like intuition is in fact bias and bigotry.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. And that's again, where I think these practices of awareness come in so that we can begin to notice when we have those kinds of biases. And sometimes we can't, they're invisible to us because of the way we were brought up or our conditioning in different ways. And that's why we need community. That's why we need each other. I need you to say to me, you know, I think that thought or what you're saying is biased. I think you're expressing a certain kind of bias here or prejudice or judgment or something that might not be so wise. We need each other.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  We need each other for so many things.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Community is power. We're very vulnerable and powerless without each other.

• 43:38Dan Harris?

  I think of what I'm hearing you say, to bring it back to the central theme of this conversation, is that in an interesting way, this is a bit of a bank shot, but in an interesting way, having a good community, a healthy community, can help you trust yourself.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 43:54Dan Harris?

  Because they're calling bullshit on you.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Once again, you've said it faster.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  And probably clearer. But listen, Dan, I really appreciate you because I have intense ADD. My mind is like a fountain of ideas. And so to have somebody corral me and sum it up is a big fat gift.

• 44:18Dan Harris?

  Oh, we should do more of this. This is like the only skill I have. So we're a good match.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  I need to keep you with me every time I have to give a talk.

• 44:30Dan Harris?

  I do actually want to go back to something you said a while ago, and it's kind of linked to community. And I'm not sure I'm going to recapitulate it accurately, but it was something about how being loving.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:42Dan Harris?

  Having good relationships can loosen the grip of self in a way.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:47Dan Harris?

  Which I totally agree with. And then I was thinking, okay, well, that actually could help with trusting yourself because you're loosening a grip on the sort of less healthy aspects of self and better able to hear the sort of truer, more honest aspects of yourself. Am I in the neighborhood of accuracy?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And one of the things I wish is that as a community of humans, that we would be more, not just calling each other on our bullshit, but listening to each other and being curious. Why do you believe this bullshit? I think it's bullshit. You really believe it. I'd like to know more about that, what it means to you. Because without dialogue and conversation, I don't see how we're going to make peace in this world. And we need to. Uh, we kind of urgently need to. So I feel that's also really important. And it's one of the factors of awakening. You know, we have these seven factors of awakening. Mindfulness is the fulcrum.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  And then there's these sort of energizing aliveness ones on one side, which would be joy and effort and investigation is one, curiosity, right? Interest, joy. And then there are the calming ones, you know, tranquility and calm and equanimity. And equanimity contains wisdom because equanimity, I mean, the root meaning of equanimity is looking upon that bit of space between the skull and the brain where you're in, you can observe your experience, witness. And that witness consciousness, we sometimes call mindful awareness, loving awareness. Different traditions have different names for it.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  But it's really key to being able to catch ourselves and also be honest. So that if you call me out on some bullshit of mine, instead of getting defensive, I have a choice. I could actually get curious and say, maybe that's true. Maybe he's right. And then look into my own mind and see, could that be true? Could that be right? It's just another way that I feel being present and awake and helps us be in relationship with each other. And certainly

• 47:20Speaker 01

  having some kindness or being disposed towards some tenderness also helps. Cause I'm not ready to pounce on you. When you say something I don't like.

• 47:33Dan Harris?

  You pounced when I started misstating the truth of enlightenment slash awakening earlier.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Did I pounce?

• 47:39Dan Harris?

  No, you didn't really.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  I didn't really pounce.

• 47:41Dan Harris?

  In your, in your defense. You're taking us somewhere, maybe a little counterintuitive and maybe even somewhat discomfiting for some listeners. I think that's where you're taking us because we're talking about trusting yourself and we live to state a truism in divided and polarized times. It seems like partly what you're advising us to do as part of trusting ourselves is.

• 48:06Dan Harris?

  To reexamine our opinions and views.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Well, to have the confidence to be curious about someone else whose opinions and views differ from ours and whose opinions and views we might hate

• 48:20Speaker 01

  or strongly disagree with. I was at a neighbor's house. I had listened to a political commentator that I don't agree with at all.

• 48:32Dan Harris?

  You willing to say who this person is?

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Okay, so I was listening to Tucker Carlson.

• 48:37Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  And I then was so interested in what he was saying that I subscribed to his newsletter thing because I thought I never hear people in my bubble

• 48:50Speaker 01

  due to the algorithms and the social connections. I never hear people believing the things that Tucker Carlson believes.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  So I said to my neighbor, have you ever listened to Tucker Carlson? And she said, why would I do that? With a kind of sneer. Which could have been me another time, but I thought we need to actually get curious and try to claw our way out of the silo the algorithms put us in to hear what other people are saying. And even if it sounds outlandish to us,

• 49:32Speaker 01

  to realize, okay, a lot of people believe this. And then can I talk to some of them? Can I listen? Can I be open? I know that if we exchanged pictures of our kids or if we talked about what it was like to lose someone we loved, we would be completely on the same page. So how do we drift so far apart? Or more importantly, how do we get back together?

• 50:04Dan Harris?

  Right. I've had a sort of round trip on this same issue, just to tell a little story of my side.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Please.

• 50:12Dan Harris?

  I really fancied myself to be a quite even handed and fair minded journalist and spent a lot of time in interviewing everybody from cult leaders to terrorists to murders to people who are on the completely different side of the.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Many people you disagree with.

• 50:29Dan Harris?

  Yes. And I thought, I think with some justification, that I treated everybody fairly. I think that's not totally untrue. And but Trump undid me. And I realized when Trump appeared on the scene that I was, I had lost, I think objectivity is an unattainable standard, but I had lost some sort of balance.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:58Dan Harris?

  So I really, I went on a mission in around 2016, 17, 18, 19 to just, I never really got into Tucker Carlson, but I started listening to, one example would be Ben Shapiro, who's a very popular right wing podcaster. I in fact, got so interested in him, I went and interviewed him. And I still to this day retain this practice of listening across the spectrum, but.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Great.

• 51:21Dan Harris?

  At first, it was really disorienting. I felt like a kind of self gaslighting.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  That's a great expression. I like that.

• 51:28Dan Harris?

  Yeah. And that's really what it felt like. And it was bumpy.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  That's ignorance, delusion, self gaslighting would be part of that.

• 51:36Dan Harris?

  Yes. Yes.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  But I want to hear the story.

• 51:38Dan Harris?

  Well, it's, there's not that much more to it, other than that eventually what I came to see is there's a difference between your opinions and your values. And so I got much looser around my opinions on the issues du jour, but much more confident in my like, nobody's going to talk me out of my view that cruelty is uncool.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Same here. Nobody's going to talk me out of the idea that, you know, a drug addict shouldn't be in charge of the treasury. I believe that. And I'm not going to unbelieve that. But I still want to learn. I still want to, it's a life koan right now. It's really a huge question. How do we come back together and relate to each other?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  When cruelty is happening.

• 52:32Dan Harris?

  Yes, and even more sort of acutely for this discussion, a life koan is how do you retain your curiosity about people with whom you disagree without taking off the table your right to say, this is wrong. Yeah, this is, I'm not down with this.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  What happened?

• 52:52Dan Harris?

  Yes. In some ways, to take it back to trust and self-trust and self-confidence, like, this is a bit of an advanced practice, I think, is like, you, you need to have a little bit of a foundation of self-trust before you.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Before you venture into those waters. Absolutely.

• 53:08Dan Harris?

  Before you start ingesting a bunch of.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely, because, you know, it's very convincing. And again, this has very much to do with the algorithms and what we see. People say, well, I've done my research, but the research that they did is flawed. This is where science is really important, and scientific method is really important. We have the ability today to merge the practices of the heart and awareness with science, because lots of things are being known about the brain and learned about the brain. Those are real things. For example, we know that

• 53:54Speaker 01

  power, a lot of power damages certain parts of the brain, the empathic centers of the brain. Dr. Kelly, he's proved it behaviorally, and then I have the name, I forget the name of the scientist who's proved it with neuroscience. This is very, I think, important, wonderful research. I also don't want to end this without doing a little bit of practice of some kind together with people. I know that people who are listening or watching, you know, they might be in their cars, they're going about their day, they're not necessarily going to stop and close their eyes and meditate. But I think I have a practice that people can just do wherever they are.

• 54:38Dan Harris?

  In a free-range style. You want to describe it?

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Well, why don't we do it?

• 54:42Dan Harris?

  Let's do it.

• 54:46Dan Harris?

  Before we do it, though, let's sneak in a quick commercial break. After the break, you will hear Trudy lead us in a guided meditation that you can do wherever you are, eyes open or closed. We're also going to talk, by the way, after the break, about the connection between forgiveness and trusting yourself.

• 55:06Dan Harris?

  My wife Bianca just went on a major shopping spree on Wayfair.com, one of our favorite spots to buy stuff for the home and a longtime sponsor of the show. Thank you, Wayfair. Bianca did the readout on what she bought. A lot of kitchen stuff, like platters, serving platters, and espresso cups. Basically, she's prepping for all of the hosting we are going to do throughout the holiday season. We love to host. It's something that makes us very happy, and it's much easier when you've got some great stuff that you've acquired through wayfair.com. We love Wayfair, and Wayfair has something called Wayfair Verified, which helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Products are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection.

• 55:51Dan Harris?

  You can shop thousands of products across every style and every budget at Wayfair, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season. Don't just take my word for it. Wayfair has more than 20 million verified five-star reviews. Lots of people out there use and love Wayfair. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.

• 56:23Dan Harris?

  This episode is sponsored by ADT. It is that time of year again. The kids are back at school. We're all back at work after the summer. We're back to the routine. ADT wants to help you get back to home. Enjoying little moments with friends and family is easier when you have one less thing on your plate. With their customizable systems that can be professionally installed, ADT has your home security covered. The ADT Plus app lets you access your full system from your phone. Arm, disarm, even check live camera feeds. ADT has the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry, so they can help protect your home 24/7. Their technology- Enables first responders to locate you faster in an emergency. This is your time to make your memories.

• 57:07Dan Harris?

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• 57:23Speaker 01

  So first, I want to encourage everybody to take just three deep breaths. I'm going to close my eyes and do it. You don't have to close your eyes because I don't know where you are at this moment. I'm just going to relax my body. One.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Two. I'm just breathing in the aliveness of this moment and breathing out any tension, letting myself relax with that out breath.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And then taking a moment to just enjoy the feeling of being present and a little bit relaxed.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  And notice if there are feelings of heaviness or tension,

• 58:21Speaker 01

  or any kind of sadness or difficulty that you may be holding in your body.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  To just notice that you can do it. You can do this any way that you are. And then see if you can kind of relax around that a little bit and name it. Oh, just gently acknowledging, oh, this is sadness. Or this is worry.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Or this is grief.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  This is anger. Just making room for it to be here.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Because when we make room for us to feel our feelings fully,

• 59:05Speaker 01

  they will change, they inevitably change, because everything does.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  And then, just for a moment, breathing in some kindness. Imagine your breath, as you breathe, don't have to be sitting still like we are, but imagine your breath as your most loving, faithful companion. After all, it's always here for you.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  And just letting your breath, the ebb and flow of your natural rhythm of breathing.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Just breathing in that trust that your breath will always be here as long as you're alive.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  And breathing out that sense of connection, kindness, compassion.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Maybe sending out your breath to everyone who's suffering at this moment in this life.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  And if that's you, remembering you're not alone in this.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  And then, once again, just breathing in

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  and experiencing the breath as loving you, taking care of you.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Even gently caressing you a little bit, when you can really sense and feel it.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  So you're breathing in the caring of the breath, you're breathing out some caring

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  for this life, for anyone who's suffering, for yourself.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  And then, finally, call to mind a moment of joy or pleasure. It can be a little moment.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Somebody gave me a kind smile earlier today. I loved it. Could be the sunrise. Could be the sound of raindrops, or you heard somebody laughing, children playing, whatever uplifts you.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Just call that to mind and just remember joy.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Remember joy. Because when we talk about these moments of disconnection with ourselves, with each other, with our country, with our leaders, whatever it might be.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  I think we're being asked not to turn away in frustration or despair, but to hold each other close. To take this moment, it can be any moment, to just take a deep breath, breathing in the caring, the love that is available to us, if it's only the breath being our most faithful companion.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  And then just breathing out, relaxing and opening to connecting with others.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  That's a practice that I want to offer, just to remember that joy and love, they are always here, even though they may get so buried by our distress.

• 1:02:37Dan Harris?

  As I use the word disconnection and thought that came up for me is that like, we have like a culture-wide separation anxiety that's happening right now. We're disconnected from ourselves, we're disconnected from each other. And given that connection is the sort of apex of what it means to be a human, it is the essence of what it means to be a human. That is a recipe for disaster on a micro scale with the epidemic levels of individual anxiety and depression.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  And loneliness.

• 1:03:12Dan Harris?

  And loneliness, and a macro scale with the division that we're seeing in the country.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Dan Harris?

  And so with that practice was kind of like a remedy for separation anxiety.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  It's remembering.

• 1:03:24Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  The classic definition of mindfulness is remembering. You know this, and how do we remember? We have to put down our devices for a minute, maybe a few minutes. Walk outside, look at the sky. Stand under a tree.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  If it's not too snowy, lie down for a minute on the ground and just feel the energy of the earth. I mean, really, it's our birthright to be part of nature. And nature is an ally, and it doesn't have to be wilderness, you know, it can be in the city. Just being outside for a few minutes. Looking at the sky is usually possible. Even in New York, there's some slimmer sky that you can look at. There's a little something poking out of the sidewalk. Soon there are going to be tulips, you know?

• 1:04:19Dan Harris?

  Duncan Trussell, the comedian who has his own podcast and has been on this show, calls you Trudy the Love Barbarian. What does that mean?

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Okay, so Duncan did something really cool. He took his podcasts with several spiritual teachers, and he, in connection with a colleague and Netflix, they made a series called The Midnight Gospel, and it's cartoons. Episode four features a character called Trudy the Love Barbarian. She carries a rose in her mouth, and anyway, she can be very fierce. And it's so fun, because I got to be the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian, and the dialogue is from our podcast that we did, Stuff I Said. So, you know, I'm riding along

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  on my horse, and then I'm saying these things about forgiveness, and then I slice the head off somebody who's an opponent. I mean, it's just fun. It's fun. Some of it's like 14-year-old fun, but it's fun. And I have to say, I loved doing it. And I want to put this out, because doing voiceover, you don't have to worry about hair, or makeup, or anything. You go in a booth, and you act, and they tell you what to do. Scream. No, louder. You just do it. It's so fun. So, I want to say to anybody watching or listening, if you need a voiceover artist... I'm here.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  And I would love to do it. And you know, it's kind of fun, like discovering late in life, something that you're good at, that you had no idea ever that you would be good at it. It was great.

• 1:06:03Dan Harris?

  I feel guilty. I've never watched it. I do need to.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Well, I have to feel even guiltier because I didn't watch all of it.

• 1:06:11Dan Harris?

  Just watch your bits.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Well, I watched up till my bit.

• 1:06:14Dan Harris?

  I see, I see.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  And then some of the graphics were so graphic. And I just thought, eh, I'll listen to more later. Yeah.

• 1:06:25Dan Harris?

  And then they put out a new show and you started binging that and then there you go. You talked about forgiveness there and I'm just, this might be a good place to end it, or maybe it's not. What connection, if any, is there between forgiveness and trusting yourself?

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  That's a really interesting question. Let's see. Right away, I would say that forgiveness is very tricky. Everybody wants to forgive because it feels good and it's just more uplifting than having revenge fantasies and grudges and hate and stuff like that. So the tendency is to want to jump to forgiveness because it feels better than feeling the feelings that often come with being hurt or betrayed or feelings of anger and revenge fantasies and all that stuff. So I wanted to say that when you trust yourself,

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  you're going to be able to trust the importance of feeling your feelings fully and not jumping over them to forgive too fast, too soon, before you're ready. You can trust that the anger is there for a reason, like fear, like other emotions. They're not there for no reason. Trust they're there for a reason, that it's okay to feel them. They're not going to overwhelm, flood and destroy you.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  You can feel them. And through the willingness to just let them be there and have their being, they change. They inevitably change. I mean, I could work with you right now and demonstrate that if you want. I don't know if we have time. And then, then you can ask yourself, am I ready to forgive? Some acts are unforgivable. You can't forgive them. But maybe you can forgive the person who did them because you understand they wouldn't have abused you if they hadn't been abused. And they wouldn't have been abused if their parents, you know, these things cascade down the generations and you can have some empathy

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  or compassion on. But forgiveness, it's tricky. It takes some time and some care to not do it too fast. I know for me in the past, I wanted to be a spiritual person. And so I wanted to forgive because that's what a spiritual person would do. But that was so toxic because I was enraged. Then you're gaslighting yourself, actually, to use your great expression.

• 1:09:14Dan Harris?

  You're seventy-nine and three quarters as we do this interview. How proficient are you at this point in trusting yourself, given your history of not trusting yourself?

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  I'm much better at it. I'm much better at it. I also recognize the patterns of self doubt so much. And it came up for me, actually, I wrote an email to somebody where I became vulnerable in the email. And I sent it and it was somebody I admire and respect a lot. And then afterwards, I had this sort of wave of shame of, you shouldn't have pressed send. And all that self-talk of doubt. But I recognize it, it's so familiar. The feeling is familiar. And I just thought, no, it's okay. Trust yourself. You did it.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  And sure enough, I got the most loving email back. But that sort of spinning out, it could have lasted for hours before.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  I could have beat up on myself for quite a while. That doesn't happen anymore at all. The practice works, and I'll borrow a phrase from wonderful 12-step programs. It works if you work it.

• 1:10:32Dan Harris?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  We have a responsibility to work it.

• 1:10:35Dan Harris?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  And I feel we have a responsibility, thanks to our human birth. It's very precious to be born a human being and to have this consciousness.

• 1:10:47Dan Harris?

  Another thing that is said, I would think by the Buddha about this practice is that it's good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Dan Harris?

  So even for somebody listening who's just learning how to trust themselves, still good.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:11:02Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  It's great, and it will bring benefits at any point along the path. It's really great.

• 1:11:10Dan Harris?

  I have two questions I usually ask toward the end. One is, is there something you were hoping that we might get to that we haven't gotten to?

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  No, maybe just how happy I am to be here doing this with you. You know, I didn't know ahead of time what it would be like, and it's really, really nice.

• 1:11:30Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Dan Harris?

  Likewise, and you had to take an hour and a half Uber to get here.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:11:35Dan Harris?

  We're gonna have dinner afterwards, and so I'm grateful to you for dedicating this amount of time to do all this, so thank you.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Well, I remembered that your talk was the only meditation and mindfulness talk that my grandson ever liked. Am I allowed to say why?

• 1:11:50Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Because you dropped the F-bomb in that talk. Can't bring myself to say it when I'm under the camera. You said fuck!

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  And he was 12, and he just loved it!

• 1:12:06Dan Harris?

  It's funny, I have a 10-year-old, and he hears me swear so much that he doesn't think swearing is cool, because daddy does it.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Daddy does it. It's embarrassing and it's wrong.

• 1:12:16Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  But for Owen, sitting in the front row, and you being up on a stage at UCLA to say it, liberation, freedom!

• 1:12:28Dan Harris?

  Yes, well, I'm glad I could give that to Owen.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  So yes, I would ride an hour and a half to see you.

• 1:12:34Dan Harris?

  Oh, thank you. Final, final question.

• 1:12:38Dan Harris?

  Please just plug Inside L.A. or any other stuff that you're doing in the world, or have written, or website, or whatever, people who want to get more from you. How can I do that?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  I have a website. It needs updating. I would like it to eventually just have all my work on it offered for free for everybody to use, and that's my aspiration for it. It's trudygoodman.com. At least it has my calendar and recent things on it. And some guided meditations and blogs and stuff like that. I do want to plug Inside L.A.

• 1:13:11Dan Harris?

  Please, it's an amazing organization.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Wonderful, wonderful place to learn mindfulness and self-compassion and meditation retreats they offer. And I have to say, I have mentored many of the teachers there, and they're wonderful. There was not a bad apple in the lot among the people that I had the honor of teaching and uplifting into their. I always wanted Inside L.A. to be a platform for other people to grow and become teachers. I didn't ever want to be the queen of it. It's not my nature. I find that embarrassing. So Inside L.A., my website, I'm working on a book. I don't know, at this rate, it might be published posthumously, but when I say that, Jack gets really mad at me.

• 1:14:00Dan Harris?

  Will you come back on when the book comes out?

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Yes, I'd love to.

• 1:14:04Dan Harris?

  I'm planning to come to your 80th birthday party, which I got invited to, so

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:09Dan Harris?

  Maybe we can, maybe we can even

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:12Dan Harris?

  Do a conversation with me, you, and Jack.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  That would be super fun.

• 1:14:15Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jack and I just put out, put out a course on relationship. That was fun, too.

• 1:14:21Dan Harris?

  Where is that available?

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  That would be available on my website and on Jack's website, jackkornfield.com.

• 1:14:30Dan Harris?

  Okay. I'm going to put links to all these in the show notes for this episode, so people listening can go check all of this stuff out.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Okay. And by the time this comes out, I'll make sure it's on my website.

• 1:14:42Dan Harris?

  Good. This has been a delight. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Me too. I've enjoyed it so much.

• 1:14:52Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Trudy. She's amazing. Always love talking to Trudy. Don't forget that if you're a paid subscriber over on danharris.com, you will get a custom guided meditation with this episode. Today's guided meditation comes from our Teacher of the Month, Sebene Selassie, and it's all about how to cultivate the skill of trusting yourself. The meditation itself is called "How to Listen to Yourself." Also, only for paid subscribers, weekly live guided meditations and Q and A sessions every Tuesday, 4 o'clock Eastern. The next one is Sebene, along with DJ Cashmere. I'll be skipping that one, but you'll get Sebene and the executive producer of this show, DJ. And by the way, if you want to meditate with me in person and with Seb,

• 1:15:33Dan Harris?

  come check out Meditation Party, the weekend of October 24th at the Omega Institute. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on the show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

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• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on "Community Organizations." Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.