Do You Feel Like Everybody Sucks? Here's a 10-Minute Pain Reliever.

If the idea of "sending love to all beings" makes you roll your eyes, this episode is for you. Dan leads a guided meditation, suitable for all levels of experience. Originally recorded during one of our live sangha gatherings on Substack, which are open to paid subscribers at DanHarris.com http://danharris.com/. Tickets are now on sale for a special live taping of the 10% Happier Podcast with guest Pete Holmes! Join us on November 18th in NYC for this benefit show, with all proceeds supporting the New York Insight Meditation Center. Grab your tickets here https://www.nyimc.org/event/great-cosmic-joke/! Tickets are now available for an intimate live event with Dan on November 23rd as part of the Troutbeck Luminary Series. Join the conversation, participate in a guided meditation, and ask your questions during the Q&A. Click here https://troutbeck.com/culture/luminaries-series-conversation-meditation-with-dan-harris-2025/ to buy your ticket! 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 To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Thanks to today's sponsor:  BetterHelp: If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/Happier https://betterhelp.com/Happier.

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?

  Hello, everybody. Happy Friday. So, we're dropping a simple, straightforward meditation down the feed for you today. This is something that really has the power to turn your whole day around. You may have heard me say this before, but I initially found loving kindness, or meta meditation, to be, I guess you could say, unforgivably cheesy, but it really is now a crucial part of my practice. And not for nothing, there's a ton of science indicating that this practice really is good for you. So, today, you're going to hear me guide a loving kindness meditation. This comes from a live session that I did a few weeks ago for our paid subscribers over on Substack. We do these sessions every week now, every

• 0:59Dan Harris?

  Tuesday at 4:00 Eastern. We do a short meditation, then chop it up, take your questions, etc. The next session is Tuesday, October 28th at 4:00 Eastern. As always, it will be featuring our Teacher of the Month, 7A Silasi. Paid subscribers also get companion meditations with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes, which are designed to help you, as I like to say, pound the wisdom from our conversations directly into your neurons. One last thing to say before we get started here, very quickly, if you want to meditate with me IRL, I have a live taping of this podcast coming up on November 18th in New York City. My guest

• 1:39Dan Harris?

  will be the very hilarious and very thoughtful/soulful comedian, Pete Holmes. It's a benefit for the New York Insight Meditation Center. There's a link in the show notes if you want to come. All right, we'll meditate together right after this.

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• 3:25Dan Harris?

  Let's do 10 minutes of loving kindness meditation. What do you think? Not like you have a choice. So I don't know why I said, what do you think? Here we go. All right, so if you can assume the position, get comfortable.

• 3:42Dan Harris?

  The first person who taught me loving kindness meditation was this amazing teacher who's now a friend, Spring Washam. And she was saying specifically for this meditation, it can be good to get on the floor. Hard to do if you're at an airport, but if you're at home, you can do it. Or sit in a chair, stand up if you want, whatever, whatever works for you. You can even do this while walking, but here we go. Let's start by bringing to mind.

• 4:08Dan Harris?

  A really easy person. I was just playing with one of our cats, Curtis, who I think was mostly flirting with me because he wanted a treat. But anyway, I'll take it. So I'm going to go with a cat, but you can go with a little kid, a really close friend. And see if you can just bring the image to mind. If you're not good at visualization, don't worry about that. You can just generate a felt sense in your body. Either way, as clear a sense of this person or animal as possible. Once you have the image or the felt sense as stable as you can muster,

• 4:52Dan Harris?

  we're going to repeat four phrases. May be happy. May be safe. May you be healthy and strong in your body. May you live with ease. I like to alter the image to fit with the sentiment. So I'll illustrate on this next one.

• 5:33Dan Harris?

  This one, we're going to do ourselves. So you can picture yourself, the last time you looked in the mirror, or if it's easier, a childhood photo of yourself, or just a sense of yourself sitting or lying down. That sense you've always had of being a self, just tune into that, as illusory as it is. May I be happy? So specifically on this one, I imagine myself engaged in what we call a family hug, me and my wife and son. That's what I mean by tweaking the image to fit the phrase, "May I be happy?"

• 6:24Dan Harris?

  May I be safe and protected from any harm?

• 6:33Dan Harris?

  Same thing, you can imagine yourself in a safe scenario.

• 6:40Dan Harris?

  May I be healthy and strong in this body?

• 6:48Dan Harris?

  Really trying to connect the words to the

• 6:53Dan Harris?

  image. See if you can really let it land.

• 7:00Dan Harris?

  May I live with ease in the face of whatever comes up?

• 7:09Dan Harris?

  Crucial point you may have heard me make before, you don't have to feel any kind of way.

• 7:16Dan Harris?

  This is an exercise, it's a practice. Sometimes the opposite of loving kindness emerges, totally fine, just keep going with the reps.

• 7:28Dan Harris?

  Next category of being is a mentor. Benefactor.

• 7:38Dan Harris?

  Be a family member, a teacher.

• 7:41Dan Harris?

  Mentor at work. If you don't know anybody who fits the bill, a role model from public life or history. Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, etc.

• 7:56Dan Harris?

  May you be happy.

• 8:04Dan Harris?

  May you be safe.

• 8:12Dan Harris?

  May you be healthy and strong.

• 8:19Dan Harris?

  May you live with ease.

• 8:37Dan Harris?

  Next, it's a neutral person. Somebody you

• 8:43Dan Harris?

  see all the time, but don't really have any strong feelings about. Often say the barista, dry cleaner.

• 9:01Dan Harris?

  This one can be hard to get a mental image of, but it's good.

• 9:06Dan Harris?

  It's a good exercise, really tuning up the mind.

• 9:12Dan Harris?

  May you be happy.

• 9:19Dan Harris?

  May you be safe.

• 9:30Dan Harris?

  May you be healthy.

• 9:41Dan Harris?

  May you live with ease.

• 9:55Dan Harris?

  Okay, this is the trickiest one. We're gonna go to a difficult person.

• 10:04Dan Harris?

  If you've done this with me before, you've heard me recommend that it might be best not to start with the artist person. But if you want, you can go there and just remember sending

• 10:15Dan Harris?

  well, benevolence to a difficult person is not

• 10:20Dan Harris?

  cosigning on their bad behavior. As I often say, people who are happy or safe tend not to behave badly.

• 10:33Dan Harris?

  So when you have your person.

• 10:40Dan Harris?

  One trick Joseph Goldstein often recommends is, and he says this as a non-theist, so this is not a religious recommendation, but to take the God perspective. In other words, to imagine that you're sending from the perspective of

• 10:58Dan Harris?

  a benevolent POV,

• 11:03Dan Harris?

  looking down from a great height.

• 11:10Dan Harris?

  May you be happy.

• 11:18Dan Harris?

  May you be safe.

• 11:29Dan Harris?

  May you be healthy and strong.

• 11:34Dan Harris?

  Getting healthy people

• 11:37Dan Harris?

  tend to behave well. Truly healthy people.

• 11:42Dan Harris?

  May you live with ease.

• 11:52Dan Harris?

  Okay, now, all beings everywhere,

• 11:57Dan Harris?

  you can imagine the planet floating in space, or you could just feel it somatically

• 12:05Dan Harris?

  in your body, kind of this omnidirectional

• 12:13Dan Harris?

  feeling of sending out benevolence.

• 12:19Dan Harris?

  May we all be happy.

• 12:31Dan Harris?

  May we all be safe.

• 12:44Dan Harris?

  May we all be healthy and strong.

• 12:55Dan Harris?

  May all beings everywhere live with ease.

• 13:04Dan Harris?

  And that was exactly 10 minutes. So when you're ready, you can rejoin what the Buddhists call samsara. Often at the end of a retreat, people say, "I'm back in samsara," which is like the daily cycle of wanting and not wanting the mundane world as opposed to the sort of more mindful world. Anyway, welcome back.

• 13:31Dan Harris?

  Thank you for meditating with me. As a reminder, we do live guided meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is with our Teacher of the Month, Sebene Selassie. Also, don't forget to sign up for the live taping of this podcast that I'll be doing with the comedian Pete Holmes in New York City on the 18th of November. There's a link in the show notes. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make 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 Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.