How to Keep Your Cool in a Room Full of Chaos Gremlins | Jeff Warren

If you've ever found yourself immediately abandoning your adult composure the second someone around you gets upset, we've got your back. In today's episode, the inimitable Jeff Warren returns with a practice to help you stop absorbing everyone else's stress and start holding healthy boundaries without turning into a jerk. Jeff — who is both a dear friend of Dan's and one of the funniest meditation teachers alive — walks you through how to stay grounded in your own body even when the people around you are melting down. This meditation is especially helpful if you tend to: Fix other people's problems without being asked Rush to make everything okay the instant someone frowns Get overwhelmed by other people's moods Lose your boundaries around demanding or sensitive humans (including the tiny ones) To get more meditations from Jeff and our other teachers — plus join our weekly live sessions (every Tuesday at 4pm ET) — you can sign up at DanHarris.com. Related episodes: Working With a Brain That Doesn't Behave | Jeff Warren https://open.substack.com/pub/danharris/p/working-with-a-brain-that-doesnt?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web 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 Thanks to our sponsors: AT&T:   Happy Holidays from AT&T http://www.att.com/. Connecting changes everything. Airbnb: Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host http://airbnb.com/host. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm Jake Stauk, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  We guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets, and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com/tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.

• 1:04Dan Harris?

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

• 1:19Dan Harris?

  Hey, hey, happy Sunday, party people. Today, we are bringing you a brand-new guided meditation from my great friend, Jeff Warren, who's both hilarious and very wise. This meditation is all about how not to be so susceptible to emotional contagion, how to be the calmest person in the room during a shitstorm. In other words, it's about boundaries. You can get more meditations from Jeff and my other meditation teacher friends if you sign up at danharris.com. Subscribers also get access to our weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions. We do those every Tuesday at 4:00. Enough shilling for me. After the break, a meditation with Jeffrey Warren.

• 2:02Speaker 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.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. 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.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Hey, I'm Jeff. So, I'm a grown-ass adult who moves through the world with great confidence and self-sufficiency, and the very second my tiny, six-year-old son squeaks with unhappiness, I fall all over myself trying to make him happy. So yeah, I'm a people-pleaser, especially with him. The antidote to people-pleasing is boundaries. It's about pausing, coming back into our own bodies, and learning to handle our discomfort. Then, from this more autonomous place, we can hopefully make a more appropriate response. So this meditation can help, even if you're not a people-pleaser, because, my friend,

• 3:42Speaker 04

  you are still a social animal surrounded by annoying humans. Let's go. Okay, so, eyes open or closed, whatever's comfortable for you.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  And a few slow, deliberate breaths. Stretching up on the inhale.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  And settling down on the exhale.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  And just breathing here, being a body.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Letting everything settle for a few beats.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  If you'd like to help with this, you can rest your attention on the out breath or some other soothing sound or sensation.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Mind wanders, come on back.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Patient, not in a rush.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  Okay, so we're interested in this issue of boundaries. How many of us make other people's business our own and then lose ourselves in the process? So how does this happen for you?

• 5:36Speaker 04

  Maybe you have a demanding person in your life, so to avoid drama or discomfort, you just give them what they want, whatever that is. Or maybe you just want to be liked.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Or maybe you were taught to always put others first, so you never really learn to attune to your own needs and feelings. I can relate to that.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  Or something else.

• 6:04Speaker 04

  The instruction is to imagine some real situation where you're feeling this pressure. And then get curious. What does that feel like in your body?

• 6:23Speaker 04

  As an example, when my kid is freaking out, it feels intolerable. This contraction in my face and heart that makes me just wanna jump out of my skin.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  Maybe for you, it's more subtle: physical pressure, resentment, feeling of spacing out.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  What does this kind of social pressure feel like in your body?

• 7:07Speaker 04

  So there's two parts to this. The first is recognizing the experience in our bodies. The second is learning to feel that without acting on it, being bigger than the impulse.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  And we can practice that right now. So some person or situations kind of pulling us out of our center. Instead, we come back, rooting our attention down in our bodies.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Feeling your feet or your seat underneath you,

• 7:52Speaker 04

  lifting your spine, feeling the support of the ground. And it's like, yeah, I'm not going anywhere. I can stay right here inside this feeling all day long.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Nice. So we're exploring what it feels like to ground in our bodies. That urge to react, to pacify, to just get something over with, that can still be there. But now it's happening within this larger bounded container of your body.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  So sometimes to get solid, I kind of imagine my skin shrink wrapping around me. Kind of satisfying tautness.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  No matter what's happening, whatever urges come up, the urges will pass and still we're just sitting here.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  Endless situations will try to pull us out of ourselves. So there may still be a lingering sense of one of these for you. Practices to come down out of thoughts, out of any knee jerk responses, and connect to this bigger field of body sensation.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Maybe the steady breath

• 10:12Speaker 04

  or the edge of your skin.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  Maybe the weight of your body.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Mind wanders, come back to that.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Nice. So you're just sitting and savoring the sense of your own autonomous physicality. And that's one key to healthy boundaries: knowing where you end and someone else begins. So keep sitting there.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Breathing, feeling, patient as sensations rise and fall.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Sitting in your own sovereignty.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  Okay, that's the practice, friend. Go ahead and open your eyes if they were closed. So when you're feeling pulled out of yourself, instead, pause, breathe, and come back to your body.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Sit by sit, life situation by life situation, we're learning to tolerate our own feelings of discomfort in the face of someone else's unhappiness, whether that's real or projected.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  And over time, equanimity grows.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Thanks for being here.

• 13:15Dan Harris?

  Thank you, Jeff Warren. You're the best. And thank you, dear listener, for meditating with us. If you want to get more meditations from my meditation teacher friends, as I mentioned at the top here, you can sign up at danharris.com. We also do live meditations every Tuesday at 4:00. I'll be live tomorrow with Jeff, who's our Teacher of the Month this month. That will be really fun. You should join us. And finally, thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson 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.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  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.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 14:55Speaker 06

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