How To Handle Constant Exhaustion (Without Blaming Yourself) | Jay Michaelson

A conversation with meditation teacher Jay Michaelson about what to do when you're constantly tired, fried, and running on empty. If you feel exhausted seemingly all the time—whether it's a low hum or something louder—you're not alone. In this conversation, Jay Michaelson, our Teacher of the Month for February, talks with executive producer DJ Cashmere about the relentless fatigue so many of us are experiencing, and what actually helps. We talk about: Why your first move should be self-compassion (not self-blame)—especially in a culture obsessed with sleep optimization The important oscillation between being with difficulty versus reaching for an antidote HALT: the acronym that can save you (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) How to investigate exhaustion without trying to fix it right away Practical antidotes: screen hygiene, micro-naps, and yes, brain machines How our Stone Age brains are being hijacked by tech companies Why nap shame is "pure garbage" and you should kiss it goodbye The social conditions causing exhaustion that are beyond individual control The through-line: this isn't about becoming superhuman or gritting your teeth through exhaustion. It's about relating to it differently, being kinder to yourself, and using whatever tools actually work—even if they feel unconventional. Jay's guided meditations and live AMA sessions are available throughout February in the 10% with Dan Harris http://app.danharris.com/ app. Find more from Jay at jaymichaelson.substack.com http://jmichaelson.substack.com/. Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter 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 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.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

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

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hey, gang. Here's a question. Do you feel constantly exhausted? Not just underslept, although many of us feel that too, myself included, but also generally fried? Today, we're going to hear from my friend, Jay Michaelson, an incredible meditation teacher, author, lawyer, and more, about how to deal with this general sense of fatigue being frazzled. Jay's got tons of practical strategies and not just the obvious stuff. We get into self-compassion, which he takes beyond mere cliche or bland exhortation. We talk about the disutility of feeling shame, about using modern technological devices, which most of us need. We talk about something called micro naps,

• 1:01Dan Harris?

  and then something I had never heard of called brain machines. By the way, Jay is our Teacher of the Month over on 10% with Dan Harris, my new meditation app. That means he's crafting guided meditations for the app and also participating in some of our weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions, which we do every Tuesday at 4:00, and you should join us. If you want to check out the app, you can head on over to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial, and if you can't afford it, just hit us up at [email protected], and we'll give it to you for free. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and then we will be right back with Jay Michaelson in conversation with the executive producer of this show, DJ Cashmere.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Hot flashes, rage crying, forgetting words mid-sentient. Yeah, we know. Menopause is a lot. Midi Health gets it. That's why Midi offers virtual healthcare specially tailored to women's needs. Built for women by women. Every symptom, every stage, every question. Visit joinmidi.com to get started today. That's join M I D I dot com. Individual results and coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Your joints help you keep doing what you love. Give them daily support with Ancient Nutrition Multi-Collagen Protein. Two scoops deliver 20 grams of collagen from 10 types, including clinically studied eggshell membrane. Plus, vitamin C and probiotics to support skin, hair, nails, and joint health. Visit ancientnutrition.com/protein and use code PROTEIN for $15 off. That's ancientnutrition.com code PROTEIN.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Jay Michelson, welcome back to the show.

• 2:43Speaker 04

  Great to be here.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  So today's question is about just being exhausted. How to handle just this constant, whether it's a low hum, or whether it's a little louder than that. There's this constant feeling that so many of us have, and so many of us in our virtual community that we're building have of just being fried.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  Seemingly all the time.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  My first immediate response is both coming from me and a bit of Dharma advice, which is compassion and self-compassion. Like, the first step, I have noticed myself that I can blame myself for being tired. Like, I should somehow be better at it, especially because now there's like a whole industry of sleep advice and sleep counseling, which is good, right? But then, if you're not succeeding at it, right, that must be your fault, or you're not being disciplined enough, or you're just whatever, you're wired badly, whatever it is. And then, when I get tired, I think when most people get tired, we're not at our best cognitively, right? So even if we've absorbed a lot of good tips and meditations

• 3:50Speaker 04

  and stuff like that, we don't use them because we're depleted, right? Back when I was a lot younger, I used to run marathons, you know, like, you're a different person at mile 20 than you are at mile 2, right? Could be a little bit of a moment of insight to what we mean about non-self and impermanence, right? You just change the conditions that you're under and you become different, right? You're a different person if you're, you know, like halt, hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, or all four, if you can manage that. And if people don't know that, just the HALT thing is also really helpful for being in relationship and self-regulation. Like you check in and if you're feeling one of those four things, you might consider halting, right? And not taking that step, not writing that email. So again, you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, because you're

• 4:34Speaker 04

  just not at your best. So when we're not at our best, I may be telling you right now, self-compassion is good, but you're not really going to feel that necessarily in that moment. So that's my first, like, the first response, I would say, is, okay, here's where it is. And is it pleasant? It's definitely not pleasant. All right. I like feel a little self-compassion for this being. And maybe that gives you a little bit of comfort just in that, right? And self-compassion is not self-pity. It's not like going into a story about, oh, it's this fault, it's that, it's the other. It's just like, okay, this current moment situation has a little bit of suffering in it. The second thing I would say, and it's going to like shape the way I want to talk about this, is what I think is like a really important oscillation in mindfulness

• 5:19Speaker 04

  practice. And it's the oscillation between being with the difficult thing on the one hand, and seeking an antidote on the other. And there is no, like, perfect recipe for which of those two is right at any moment. It just has to be, you learn how to do a bit of discernment over time, and that's how you do it. So let's say if you're in meditation, you know, you're sitting still, and, you know, you got a bunch of pain coming up, let's say like knee pain or something like that. So generally, what you want to do is try to practice with it, which means, can you just be present with what's happening? You feel it, you notice if it's changing, you do all those kinds of things. But you don't want to do that if that's all you're doing, you're just in agony,

• 6:01Speaker 04

  or certainly not if you're at risk of injury. So at some point in there, you switch over, you switch from being with the difficult thing to To getting an antidote for the difficult thing. In regular life, I think we more likely just like reach for the antidote right away, which is fine. That's how what's what we're wired to do. If you poke a microorganism, it'll recoil like it's not going to sit there and be present with the feeling of being poked. It's going to try to get out of there. So it makes sense that we do that, too. It can really be helpful, though, to try to do that two step, do that oscillation. Like, can I be with what's happening right now? Sharon Salzberg, a friend of the show, has said, you know, said one time,

• 6:45Speaker 04

  it's not what's going on, it's how you relate to it. So tiredness, feeling exhausted, feeling burned out or drained, like, those are not pleasant things, right? But you can still relate to those sensations in a way that is mindful, self compassionate, attentive and wise. Like, you can grow wise even in relationship to the difficult thing. So what might that look like? So part of it is just, okay, here's where I'm at. This is what's true. I'm not denying it. I'm not running away from it. Another key teacher of mine, Sylvia Borstein, sometimes says that this isn't what I wanted, but it's what I've got. Not as a, oh, this is terrible. I didn't want this and I got it. It's like, okay, but this is what I've got. That cliche, it is what it is. This is what it's pointing to, and it's not a cliche.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  This is what's happening, right? Right now, it's like this. Right now, there's feelings in the body, feelings in the mind. And you could even, if you have a moment to do it, do a little bit of mindfulness of what's really happening. So like, what's happening in the body? What are the feelings that you're feeling? Is it in the muscles, just in the eyes? Is it? Part of this is like diagnostic. Like, you might notice that you're dehydrated, for example, and go get a drink. So it's like the two sides work together. But part of it's just investigating what is and building metacognition around these sensations. That's the whole enchilada of meditation, right? If you can just, all right, I can be present with these difficult feelings, whether, again, body or mind or emotional, whatever they are,

• 8:15Speaker 04

  I can be present with this, these difficult sensations, then maybe I can be present with other difficult. Sensations like when someone says or does something hurtful. Or when I really, really, really want something and I may act in a way that's not so skillful or that could cause harms to others. That's what I mean by the whole enchilada. Like after the Buddhist enlightenment, he still got stung by mosquitoes all the time. If you ever want to go down a fun Buddhist rabbit hole, there's now concordances of all of the texts and you can just look up bugs and they have a lot to say. They didn't have like bug spray in the sixth century BCE in northern India. And they sure had a lot of bugs, right? The point being like bad stuff still happened, right? And obviously I chose a trivial example like mosquitoes, right? But real bad stuff happened too.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  People died, there were wars, there were, right? But because he had done what he did and got to be all enlightened and stuff, he was able to be a little less reactive or not at all reactive to it and have that spaciousness. So that's what I mean by the whole enchilada. Can we be present with the difficult stuff? The difficult aspects of our experience with not wallowing into them, but not pushing them away either. Okay, but that was one side. At a certain point, it does become skillful to reach for the antidote. So like the general, I'll pause after this to see if you have a question or anything. But just notice like the goal is not to just sit there and grit your teeth and be some kind of superhuman who can be present with anything. It's just like, try that for a while.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Get curious about this feeling of exhaustion. It might even be, you know, again, it might be something else. It might be hunger or it might be dehydration or something like that. But just like seeing where is it in the body? What's happening? What's my feeling tone? What's the mind? Is the mind really like dull, which it often is? Sometimes I'm also, I'll also notice I'll be feeling sad. And then I'll look inside and I'm actually really tired. And if I don't do that, I can go off into long stories about why I'm sad, right? Which usually don't end well because they're sad stories. And I can go down a whole rabbit hole of self psychoanalysis, which is generally not a good practice anyway. And then only later realize, oh, actually I was tired. There's this great line in A Christmas Carol by

• 10:30Speaker 04

  Dickens, where Scrooge sees the first ghost that comes to him on Christmas Eve. And he says to the ghost, you are a piece of undigested meat. In other words, I'm having a nightmare because like I'm having a digestive problem. That's what you are. Like, it would be great if I could do that, if we could do that whenever that happens, right? I'm feeling bad and aversive and lousy. And you train the mind to look inside. Maybe it's not even that. Maybe it's just a piece of undigested meat. Maybe it's actually just feeling tired or again, yeah, hungry or angry.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Okay. So before we get to the antidotes, you've already laid out two really helpful moves we can make. One is to start with self compassion. The other is when it's feasible is to be with what's happening, investigate it a little bit before trying to fix it or solve it. On the first point, the self compassion point, we've talked about this on the show for years and years. And I would just say like, for me personally, it wasn't until several years worth of those episodes that I even started to dip a toe in those waters. Can you just say a little bit about the actual move? What is the move, the self compassionate move to make if I'm,

• 11:46Speaker 03

  whatever it is, walking down the hall and dreading the bedtime routine because I want to be going to bed myself, for example? What is the self compassionate move there?

• 11:54Speaker 04

  That's some really good hashtag relatable content.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  I just pulled that out of thin air, Jay.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know where you got that from.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Every day.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. My daughter goes to bed late and so I have even a different story when it's, I can't wait for bedtime to happen actually. So I can be free because like she goes to bed so late, I only get like an hour of like time to myself in the evening. So yeah, I think, I forget which guest it was that Dan had many years ago about self compassion. Just talked about the fierceness of compassion.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. Kristin Naft probably.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. Kind of like reframing it a little bit. I think even without gendering it in a way, like we have this like association of compassion with, oh, that's touchy feely or that. And sometimes it can be and touchy feely is great. I like hugs. I like blankets. That's fine. But it can also be seen in a different light. I'm not going to, oh yeah, I can curse now, right? I'm not going to fucking let these stories that I've inherited from my culture, my family or whatever. Own this mind like fuck you like I'm not compassion can look like that it can really be like I get here's this long story that I

• 13:04Speaker 04

  internalized when I was nine years old or whatever and I'm gonna stand up to it and it can actually feel like that it's not like I don't have to get like too far on that side where it's like war and battle or whatever but it can be bravery and fierceness um it's like no this situation sucks there are other situations that suck more I'm not playing the Olympics of suffering right like you're having to put your kids to bed is not as bad as some person in prison somewhere but okay that we're not playing that game we're just saying like this situation sucks and that's all I'm recognizing and just like one of the moves that is classic in in self compassion is like imagine it's someone you care about right who's feeling that like how do you feel toward that person of course you'd see someone you love or a family member friend whatever and

• 13:49Speaker 04

  they're suffering you would feel unless you're like a horrible sociopath who might be the president of the United States you're gonna you're gonna feel compassion for that person and so likewise you just practice it that way and then just turn it on yourself this is another line that teachers say a lot imagine if you talked to other people the way you talk to yourself right they would leave right you would never do that right and so now imagine if you talk to yourself the way you would talk to another person if you got a text or something from a friend was like oh my god I'm so exhausted all the time you wouldn't be like buck up loser so imagine like you're talking to yourself the way you would talk to a friend who you really care about those are a couple of the ways the move could really look like

• 14:34Speaker 03

  Love it and then the second piece and then we'll we'll talk about anecdotes a bit of really just noticing what's going on before trying to fix it and maybe investigating a bit in order to free up space to deal with it differently I mean there was a it brings to mind for me just a couple days ago my wife and kids and I were at like a family party that was in a hotel ballroom and

• 14:58Speaker 04

  I'm already triggered

• 15:03Speaker 04

  I've already imagined how loud it is.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  It was loud. Yeah, yeah, it was loud. And this is an annual thing. We knew it was gonna be late, so we got a room in that same hotel to stay in so that we wouldn't also have the drive home afterwards. And we don't usually sleep, all four of us, in the same room. And so I just didn't get very much sleep. The kids were in the bed next to our bed and tossing and turning and noise in the hotel. And when I woke, I can't even say when I woke up, like, when the morning came and I was awake again. My, my two kids, six and three, they're obviously up first, the second an ounce of sunlight leaks in. And they're doing this thing where they're like whispering to each other and trying to not wake us up, but would forget that every couple of minutes. And I just remember, like,

• 15:51Speaker 03

  there was a moment where I was like, okay, like, this is it. You're not falling back to sleep again. You didn't sleep well last night either. You're gonna be really exhausted. And then just, just making a different choice. Like, literally, I was like, but it is pretty cute that they're sort of kind of trying to let us sleep. And yeah, I just, I just sort of reoriented. And I was like, I knew we had another long day ahead of us. We had one of my kids' birthday parties, like, literally that day. Like, it was just gonna be a lot.

• 16:16Speaker 04

  Forget what I've said about the oppression Olympics. You win.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Right, right. I won, I won, I won. Um, but anyway, this is, the story got way too long. But the point is that, like, in that moment of realizing how tired I was and how tempting it was to go down the cranky, tired, exhausted path, like, I just grabbed for a different story, a different orientation. Later on, you know, that afternoon, I'd had a pretty good day for how tired I was. And there was no becoming less tired. That just wasn't on offer. But I could orient to it differently. And I mentioned to my wife that I'd made this decision when we woke up. And she was like, yeah, I was confused why you weren't more cranky.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  I thought maybe you were on drugs. Yeah, no, that totally tracks. I forget. I think it's one of Joseph Goldstein's early books about insight meditation calls it like the practice of freedom. Right? That is that freedom and just that moment, even without the consequences, which were really positive, just the moment of freedom where you're like, I can make this choice. Right? And I find that's true, even just in the moment of mindfulness of being tired. Right? There's, oh, okay, there's, I'm hanging out, I'm with the tiredness, but like the part of me that's active right now is like this witness, right? This witness consciousness that's aware of the tiredness. And in that moment, I'm still tired, but I'm not like soaked in the tiredness. Like I'm not exhausted in that moment. There's that space of freedom. That space can feel really good.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Right? Like, it's actually a positive sensation. And sometimes it's not there because you're just that exhausted. But when it is there, there's that little bit of space and that is a little tricky when we talk about happiness, right? Because a lot of times, certainly in the classical Buddhist sources, but even just now in secular mindfulness, like happiness doesn't always mean happy. Right? It's like the happiness of there's a freedom from suffering, even if it's just momentary. There's the joy that comes from the capacity to be mindful and being with the witness instead of just in the sensation, the dreck, the dirt, the tough sensation. And then it led to all those positive consequences. Like you had a pretty decent day, maybe you were a little less reactive, whatever, like you got through it. For me, I would just have more coffee, but to each their own.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  And that's what I wanted to bring out, like, yes, the consequences, and even without them, like just that moment of freedom, when you're like lying in bed, you know, that connects well, I think, to that attitude I had toward compassion. Right? There's a little bit of fierceness in that. Yeah, I mean, I know exactly how to be grumpy. Right? I can just push autopilot or whatever and it's going to go and I can do that. But actually, like, yeah, I'm going to do this weird thing, which maybe doesn't feel as natural. And I'm not going to be always look on the bright side of life, but I can be just a little bit more mentally awake in a certain way.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  Love it. Okay, so we've talked about starting with self compassion. We've also talked about bringing some awareness to, maybe even some investigative energy to this feeling of exhaustion. What is it? What's the story? Where is it in my body? How am I relating to it? How might that be different? But then there is this third piece of there are things we can do to be less exhausted over time. And you know, you gave the important caveat already that in a cultural moment of optimization around sleep and every other phenomenon, it's a slippery slope to talk about anecdotes because it can quickly lead to self blame. I knew the sleep hygiene rules and I just didn't follow them and I suck or whatever. But with that caveat, what comes to mind for you is some of the best practices for

• 19:47Speaker 03

  being with that exhaustion, but also trying to transform it a bit.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I want to quickly add one other caveat, which is like, there are also social conditions that cause this exhaustion, some of which are well beyond our individual agency and control. Right? And you know, you and I are still relatively privileged people, right? And we still experience a lot of exhaustion. Now imagine you had to take a second job because there's not a livable wage in this country and you can't get health insurance. I forget, there was a teacher who we worked with, who you might remember which, which one it was, I'm blanking at the moment, but who's like, let's not let our capacities for self care get in the way of critique of an unjust society. You and I are maybe not the most egregious victims of that injustice, but like, we do suffer as a result of it. We do live in capitalism.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  We do have this sort of, so they're like, that's just the second caveat. This doesn't solve anything, but it's just an awareness of, and that also, I guess it can solve one thing, right? It can address that self blame, right? There's a meme that's around or something like, it's natural to be unhappy in a society that's structured the way that ours is, that's like draining your dopamine all the time if you're online, you know, and it's driving us to work ever harder, this or that. And yeah, we don't want to just inhabit a victim space like all the time. But also we want to recognize, yeah, some of this is larger than me. Right? And likewise, the stuff we're not going to talk about, like sometimes it does, like the end of that poem by Rilke, like you have an experience and you realize you have to change your life.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  You may actually realize that something has to change on a larger scale. We're not going to talk about that now because we're talking about like immediate antidotes in the situation that you're in. But often it's Taking a look at that situation. Yeah. Okay, so all right, that was a long caveat. I thought it was worth making. And I think also, like, we do know, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here on get more sleep and make sure to have square meals. And so, yes, of course, you should be doing that. There are some, you might think about like, small incremental steps that mindfulness can help with. So, for example, just screen hygiene, right? Not having the phone in the bedroom, like, things like that. I know people have heard this stuff before. But where I think it's helpful, again, is like, inserting the mindfulness lens into that situation.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  It's just a very natural, animalistic thing to want to stay on your phone and do something. Like, that's why it works, right? There's a lot of really highly paid people who are designing this thing to be as addictive as possible. And that's how they get paid. So, like, you don't stand a chance, right? If you know, in a certain way. So, like, where you can stand a chance is just recognizing that in the moment, where there's that desire to, like, check the social media feed or scroll on TikTok for one more time. Just see what's happening in that moment. Take the mindfulness and be like, okay, yeah, I see what's happening. I see that I want to do this. I also know that that want, those basic desires, again, for a dopamine hit or whatever it is,

• 22:41Speaker 04

  are being instrumentalized by a very large corporation. And in that moment, there can be a little strength, right? But mindfulness can provide that bit of spaciousness to have that thought. Because if you don't have the thought, you're just already in there. So that's the only place where I'll talk about screens and sleep and stuff like that from a mindfulness lens. Because I think that the lens does add something to it. One thing I've been playing with, again, now, I can't tell you, it gets easier as the kids get older. But I've been playing with a lot of micro, micro naps. And I've noticed that if I, even if I'm at my desk chair and I'm working and I notice I'm really tired and it's not yet time for my 2:00 PM cup of coffee, because I'm an 8:00 AM and a 2:00 PM person.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  So I can just start meditating and I can fool myself into thinking I'm meditating, but really, I'm actually allowing myself to fall asleep. So I'm not, like, taking a nap. Which I also strongly recommend, but if possible, if your life and work life allows for it. And if anyone is still carrying around nap shame, you could kiss that baby goodbye. We don't need that garbage. That's pure garbage. There are plenty of cultures that have created their, structured their entire days around having a siesta in the middle of the day. So it is pure culturally constructed bullshit to like have any negative thoughts about taking naps. But I'm going to talk about this micro, micro nap. Like I've noticed if I can even get one moment of sleep consciousness,

• 24:08Speaker 04

  where like you start having a dream and some association that doesn't make sense. Oh, I must be falling asleep. Even if I just get that moment and meditation is how I do it, that can actually really help. And sometimes it might be more than one moment. Sometimes it might be a one minute micro nap, sitting in a chair. Usually it's not. Usually it's like really short because I'm actually still involved in what I'm doing. And I work at a desk, so it's easy for me to do. It'd be harder if I was a bus driver, but not recommended if you're driving a vehicle. I can do that little kind of micro nap. So just sort of pretending to meditate, I think can be something that's really helpful. So again, and these are antidotes, like I want to spend that time being with what is. I want to just see it for what it is. It's a set of sensations.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  And now I'm like, okay, but I do need to do something about this because I'm feeling really shitty. And this doesn't, or I'm not being able, I'm not able to work at my best or whatever it is, or I have to go pick my kid up at the bus. There's not a lot of, there's not choice to sit there and be mindful all the time. So the micro nap is number one. Number two, I am pretty sure that nobody on the show has ever suggested this before. I am a big fan of brain machines. The one I use is put out by a company called MindSpace and it's called, it's called for advanced meditators, the casina, which is a Buddhist meditation object, which is cute that it's called that. It's one of those things that like flashes. You wear these kind of goggles. You lie down, you wear some goggles.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  And what seems to happen is this process of entrainment where your brain gets used to like the rhythm of the lights, basically. And it can go then be adjusted up or down. So brain machines come with a variety of like pre-programmed patterns. So you can do ones that energize you, and you can do ones that help you fall asleep, that help you meditate, that help you relax. And it's funny, because I haven't really talked about this ever before. But I've been thinking about it because it is part, it's not my daily thing, but like when it's the middle of the day and I am really tired, but I'm also really stressed, right? So you're tired and wired. I can't just take a nap. And I will actually reach for the casino, the Mindspace Casino, and do a session, which could be 15 minutes. Sometimes that'll just lead to sleep, right?

• 26:16Speaker 04

  Which, again, if I was stressed out before and couldn't get a nap, I'm very happy with that result. Sometimes it'll just be a certain kind of like hypnagogic state where you're like half asleep, half awake, and I can wake up from that refreshed. Again, I'm pretty sure no one's recommended that before. I don't know why these devices aren't more popular. Mine is really cool. I don't get a commission. I don't have a referral code. Although maybe now they'll advertise on the show now that they've heard it hyped by me. But it's a tool that's in my toolkit that, as a parent in particular, has been so useful. And there are so many of those times where I just remember even as a baby, I'd be sitting there rocking the thing and just like desperately wishing I could sleep, right? It's like what you want more than anything.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  And you can see why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture by regimes that torture people. It's rough, right? And I am really reluctant to take medication for sleep. Not, I'm not stigmatizing it in any way, but I've just noticed in my body, like I'll often, when I've tried it, like I wake up with a little bit of a hangover or something. So again, if those work for folks, I don't want to like say anything bad about it. Just for me personally, I've chosen not to use them because like I haven't, maybe I just haven't found the right one for me that doesn't lead to a hangover. So I will reach for pretty much anything to help get sleep where I can get it.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  I love that. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna Google that when we jump here. I also don't get a commission and I have no idea what the scientific backing is, but I recently started using an app called Endel, E N D E L, and it's like a soundscape app. And primarily I use it for the sleep soundscape. It's like a, I don't know, fancy white noise, but there are all of these other options in there too, that I've found have been helpful around just like calming, or pulsing, or focusing, or whatever. And it's just, it's interesting to think about these different ways that we can have these like exogenous inputs on the nervous system. It doesn't all have to be us fixing it all the time.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think from a sort of, for people into meditation, sometimes you can feel like cheating a little bit, but I would just like to step back from that for a moment and say, if we just picture any day that you and I have, and contrast it with any day that any human being ever had for the first 10,000 years of our species's evolution, we are no longer living in some state of nature. I don't want to say that's impossible. I have friends who live off the grid, and they do live a very low tech life. And that is great, right? They've made a choice that works for them, and that's great. I've made different choices. Probably if people are listening to this, they've also made different choices.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  So we should like let go of this quasi-romantic self-shaming thing of, oh, but it's so bad that I do, it's so crazy. I have to use technology to make myself feel better from technology. Well, yeah. Or you can stop using technology. Like you could do that, but if you're gonna be in the world that most of us, certainly listening to this, are living in, I just don't see that objection as being very valid. Because it just, I've also noticed, I struggle seasonal affective disorder in the winter, right? When I'm not getting enough sunlight. I had an injury last year that, that disturbed my sleep for a while. Like it was very difficult to get through the night. And it's like really obvious to me,

• 29:37Speaker 04

  like the difference that either having something like enough sleep or not makes in my everyday. And short of that romantic notion of I'm gonna go live in a cabin in the woods, I think we should take the steps that work.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  I love that. Yeah. Yeah, I think about this all the time, that our lifestyle has evolved much more quickly than our nervous system. We're using these brains that were meant for a different time and place. And what does that mean for what we need?

• 30:03Speaker 04

  And even again, just back to the phones, right? Like, the same instincts that were really useful, right? Like, pattern recognition, you see some little thing and you get activated, right? Because that might save your life, because you won't be eaten by a leopard or something, right? It's the same very positive instincts that we have that have been, I guess I'll use the word hijacked, but you could say instrumentalized, utilized, monetized by tech companies. And it's, it's easy to like demonize the tech companies for that. Tech companies are made up of, they're usually headed by psychopaths, but they're, but they're made up of people who are people just like the rest of us, right? Yeah, like, the profit motive is what it is. And I think it's what we can do as individuals, as opposed to as a society, but just what we can

• 30:47Speaker 04

  do as individuals, is recognize that these same capacities of the mind that evolved to save our lives, that's why they're so strong in us. And that's why they're so capable of being used for monetary gain.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100%. I love this. We've done so many episodes on sleep and nervous system regulation, and this one went in, yeah, unexpected and fresh directions, which was just totally lovely. And we can link to a few of those others in the show notes if people are itching for more.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  I'm gonna quick email MindSpace and get a referral code so that I can get a cut.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Not really doing that.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  This has been a total pleasure. And yes, we're midway through the month, and you have a few more live sessions and guided meditations that'll be released over these next few weeks. It's just been a total pleasure. Is there anything else you want to point us to, just for, for more Jay?

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I just, on the lives in particular, I'm really, I love doing AMAs, Ask Me Anything. And I'm not gonna like, talk about my political work, or even my psychedelics work or whatever, but on, within the meditation space, or the spirituality space, I want to really invite people, even if it's not the subjects of the meditations or our conversations, to bring what they want to bring to it. And just on the regular sleep side, I'm actually gonna be publishing some sleep meditations that I've created on my own Substack, which is jmichaelson.substack.com, in the coming weeks and months. Let's not forget the obvious stuff, too, which is, it's good to get a good night's sleep.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  Awesome. Awesome. Jay, thanks for doing this. You're a star. Appreciate you. Right on. Thanks, DJ.

• 32:28Dan Harris?

  Thank you to Jay. Thank you to DJ. Great job, both of you. Don't forget to check out the new app, 10% with Dan Harris. You can get it if you go to danharris.com. There's a free 14 day trial if you want to try before you buy. Danharris.com. Join the party. Finally, thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. 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 Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.