Resolutions For A 10% Happier New Year

Summary

All Of It: Resolutions For A 10% Happier New Year Host: Alison Stewart | Guest: Dan Harris | Release Date: January 2, 2025

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Introduction

In the January 2, 2025 episode of WNYC's All Of It, host Alison Stewart delves into the perennial topic of New Year's resolutions with special guest Dan Harris, the acclaimed host of the podcast 10% Happier. The episode, titled "Resolutions For A 10% Happier New Year," explores effective strategies for setting and maintaining resolutions, ensuring that listeners not only make meaningful changes but also stick to them throughout the year.

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Setting the Stage: Importance of Resolutions

Alison Stewart opens the discussion by highlighting the common practice of making New Year's resolutions and introduces the idea of integrating community engagement through the All Of It book club. She promotes Richard Price's novel Lazarus Man and invites listeners to participate in a conversation with the author at the New York Public Library.

Key Quote:

Alison Stewart [00:15]: "Now that it's officially January, it's time to start making New Year's resolutions."

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Crafting Effective Resolutions

Dan Harris emphasizes the importance of making resolutions that are specific, achievable, and positive. He contrasts vague goals like "get fit" with more concrete objectives such as "exercise three times a week." Harris also advises against setting too many resolutions to prevent overwhelm and potential failure.

Key Quotes:

Dan Harris [01:46]: "It should be specific and achievable and positive."

Dan Harris [02:19]: "Specific and achievable. And don't do too many. Don't try to boil the ocean because that is a recipe for frustration and perhaps failure."

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Understanding the Challenge: Evolutionary Barriers to Habit Formation

Harris explains that human brains are wired by evolution to seek short-term rewards and avoid immediate threats, making long-term habit formation inherently challenging. However, he offers hope by citing extensive research on effective behavior change strategies.

Key Quote:

Dan Harris [03:04]: "Natural selection bequeathed us minds that are really good at looking for food or avoiding threats. ... That's the bad news, the good news is we can make change."

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The Role of Self-Compassion in Achieving Goals

One of the most profound pieces of advice Harris shares is the necessity of self-compassion. He argues that treating oneself with kindness rather than harsh self-criticism enhances the likelihood of achieving resolutions. Self-compassion involves speaking to oneself as one would to a supportive friend, fostering a positive internal dialogue.

Key Quotes:

Dan Harris [04:40]: "The hardest one to do? ... to employ self compassion."

Dan Harris [04:57]: "Self compassion is the ability to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend."

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The Power of Small, Manageable Goals

Harris advocates for starting small to build momentum. For instance, committing to meditate for just one minute daily can lead to sustained habit formation. This approach leverages the brain's preference for short-term wins, creating a sense of accomplishment that fuels continued effort.

Key Quotes:

Dan Harris [06:16]: "Smaller resolutions help us get some wins quickly up on the board to create a sense of momentum."

Dan Harris [07:19]: "If you get a minute on the board, a couple of days, a week, a couple of things happens. One is you feel like you've accomplished something that creates motivation."

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Harnessing Social Support and Accountability

Dan Harris highlights the significance of social support in maintaining resolutions. Whether through joining groups, such as a book club or running group, or simply sharing goals with others, external accountability can significantly enhance commitment and consistency.

Key Quotes:

Dan Harris [07:23]: "Joining a group where you're doing the thing you want to do with other people...provides an enormous amount of accountability."

Dan Harris [08:28]: "Social support ... is really, really helpful."

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Listener Interactions: Practical Applications and Personal Stories

The episode features several listener call-ins, where individuals share their resolutions and seek advice on sticking to them.

1. Van's Resolutions: Embracing Internal Family Systems

   • Resolution: Practice compassion towards all internal parts and understand personal triggers.
   • Advice: Harris explains the concept of internal family systems, encouraging Van to flexibly apply self-compassion without setting unrealistic standards.

   Key Quote:

   Dan Harris [10:13]: "Develop the habit of talking to yourself in the right way in those right moments."

2. Angeline's Question: Triaging Multiple Resolutions

   • Issue: Balancing multiple goals without becoming paralyzed.
   • Advice: Focus on one or two resolutions, possibly intertwining them with existing habits or social groups to enhance sustainability.

   Key Quote:

   Dan Harris [14:05]: "You don't want to have too many. So one, maybe two, especially if the two are related in some way."

3. Charlotte's Perspective: Intentional Living Over Traditional Resolutions

   • Resolution Concept: Shift from resolutions to daily intentions, emphasizing present-moment awareness.
   • Advice: Harris agrees on the importance of actionable steps, recommending mindfulness meditation as a practical method to cultivate present-moment awareness.

   Key Quote:

   Dan Harris [21:11]: "Mindfulness meditation ... has been shown to be good for anxiety, depression."

4. Harold's Goal: Community Engagement

   • Resolution: Increase involvement in community-based wellness programs despite initial laziness.
   • Advice: Harris encourages leveraging social support and aligning personal goals with community benefits to enhance motivation.

   Key Quote:

   Dan Harris [15:10]: "Connection to other people ... is what makes us thrive."

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Strategies for Success: Habit Stacking and Environmental Optimization

Dan Harris introduces habit stacking as a method to seamlessly integrate new habits into existing routines. By anchoring a new behavior to a well-established one, individuals can reduce inertia and build consistency. Additionally, optimizing one's environment—such as keeping exercise gear visible—further facilitates habit formation.

Key Quotes:

Dan Harris [16:42]: "Habit stacking ... help us get some overcome some inertia when it comes to habits."

Dan Harris [17:35]: "Starting really small ... optimize your environment."

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Flexibility and Adaptability: Editing Resolutions as Needed

Harris underscores the importance of flexibility in pursuing resolutions. Life is unpredictable, and being willing to adjust goals ensures that they remain attainable and relevant. Adopting a mindset that allows for occasional setbacks without self-judgment fosters resilience and long-term success.

Key Quotes:

Dan Harris [17:41]: "Flexibility is one of the big aspects that the experts in human behavior change talk about."

Dan Harris [24:25]: "Failure is just proof that you've tried something. You should be patting yourself on the back and what did you learn from the failure?"

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Embracing the Fresh Start Effect and Continuous Improvement

The conversation concludes with Harris addressing the inevitability of setbacks, encouraging listeners to embrace the fresh start effect—the psychological boost from temporal landmarks like New Year's Day. He advocates for viewing failure as a learning opportunity and maintaining a commitment to gradual, meaningful change.

Key Quotes:

Dan Harris [24:25]: "Change is possible. Messy, marginal change over time is possible. Perfection is not."

Dan Harris [19:10]: "Any day can be a fresh start. Monday morning, your birthday, the start of a new month."

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Conclusion: Empowering Listeners to Achieve Their Resolutions

Throughout the episode, Dan Harris provides actionable insights and compassionate advice, empowering listeners to set realistic, meaningful resolutions and equipping them with the tools to sustain their commitments. By emphasizing self-compassion, social support, and practical habit-forming techniques, All Of It delivers a comprehensive guide to making the New Year both happier and healthier.

Closing Invitation: Harris extends an invitation to listeners to join his seven-day meditation challenge at danharris.com, offering guided meditations and live check-ins to support their mindfulness journey.

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Final Thoughts

All Of It effectively blends expert advice with personal narratives, creating a relatable and informative episode that addresses the common struggles associated with New Year's resolutions. By focusing on evidence-based strategies and fostering a supportive community, Alison Stewart and Dan Harris provide listeners with the confidence and resources needed to pursue their goals sincerely and sustainably.

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Additional Resources:

• Dan Harris's Meditation Challenge: danharris.com
• Book Club Featuring Richard Price: wnyc.org/getlit

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Note: The episode transcript includes several timestamps and call-ins, which have been integrated into the summary to highlight key moments and user interactions.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

Listener support WNYC Studios.

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Now that it's officially January, it's time to start making New Year's resolutions. Might I suggest that one of yours could be joining our get lit with all of it book club? And you can start right now by reading this month's pick, Lazarus man by Richard Price. It's set in east Harlem in 2008 and it tells the story of the aftermath of a tenement building collapse that leaves many people dead, injured and missing. Richard will be in conversation with us at the New York Public Library on Tuesday, January 28th at 6pm Tickets are free, but they do tend to sell out fast, so get yours now. Find out how by checking out the book and by heading to wnyc.org getlit Again, that's wnyc.org getlit but if you don't, you know what, you don't have to wait that long to hear from Richard Price. He will join us tomorrow on the show to preview his novel. Now that's in the future. Let's get this hour started with how to make your New Year's intentions a reality. We've been speaking on the show today discussing what waits for us in 2025. We've been talking about the best advice we've been getting or we've talked about new things that we can learn. Now we're going to get some guidance on how to stay the course and how to help us out and share his insights is Dan Harris, host of the podcast 10% happier. Dan, welcome back.

[Dan Harris]

Thanks for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

Can you describe for us what you consider to be sort of a well crafted resolution?

[Dan Harris]

It should be specific and achievable and positive. So let me just put some meat on the bone here. Instead of saying I'm gonna get fit, which is non specific, you might want to say I'm going to exercise three times a week. And notice that all of that is positive. It's approach oriented. It's not I'm going to stop being a jerk, which is not a bad resolution, but you might want to reframe that too. I'm going to make sure I send three gratitude based emails a week.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you notes.

[Dan Harris]

Yes, exactly. Specific and achievable. And don't do too many. Don't, don't try to boil the ocean because that is a recipe for frustration and perhaps failure.

[Alison Stewart]

Listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. So tell us and your fellow public radio friends, what is your goal, your intention? Okay, we'll use the R word. Your resolution for 2025. How have you first days been? What shifts have you made? How are you planning to make sure you stick to your resolutions? 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. You can also reach out to us on social media at all. Why is it hard for us as human beings to stick with these new intentions?

[Dan Harris]

Evolution. Yeah, evolution. Natural selection bequeathed us minds that are really good at looking for food or avoiding threats. Basically, short term wins. That's what kept us alive on the savannah. That is not what helps when it comes to the long term. Wood chopping, patient, slow work of booting up an exercise habit or a reading habit or whatever it is. So that's the bad news, the good news. There are two pieces of good news there. One is if you're the type of person who has tried to create, I don't know, a meditation habit or an exercise habit and repeatedly failed, you do not need to tell yourself a whole story about how you're dysfunctional. You're uniquely broken. Actually, you can blame evolution. Fairly, you can blame evolution. The second thing here is that there's now been a ton of research into what works to boot up a habit. And so over the last eight or so years of hosting my own show, I've interviewed many, many of these experts and kind of whittled down the 10 takeaways that are evidence based and doable. And so the good news is we can make change. We have to do it the right way. Most of us do it the wrong way. Which is why by the end of this month, most of us will have bailed on our resolutions.

[Alison Stewart]

All right, what do you think, in your opinion is the hardest of those 10? You said you had about 10 different resolutions, right? 10 different ways to follow your resolutions. What is really the hardest one?

[Dan Harris]

The hardest one to do? Yeah, I honestly don't think any of them, any of them is particularly hard. But I think perhaps the most challenging would be to employ self compassion. Do you know what self compassion is? You familiar with it?

[Alison Stewart]

I think I do at this point. Yes.

[Dan Harris]

Yes. After your year, self compassion is the ability to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. Most of us believe in our marrow that in order to succeed at something, we need to kick our own butt. We need to be brutal. We need to have the sort of liberal use of an internal cattle prod. In fact, what the data show very clearly is that you are more likely to reach your goals if you talk to yourself the way a good coach talks to his or her players. A good coach doesn't let the players off the hook, doesn't flinch when he or she has to point out that a mistake has been made. They're just not jerks about it. And you can do this to yourself for yourself. We all have the capac capacity to be a good friend, a good mentor. That capacity can be channeled and directed toward yourself. So it's about learning how to develop the habit of talking to yourself in the right way in those right moments. But this is really hard for most of us because we so deeply believe that we need to be brutal in order to get up off the couch. And it's a very threatening notion that we should change that.

[Alison Stewart]

Why should people stick to smaller resolutions? You mentioned that in your first answer.

[Dan Harris]

Let's go back to evolution. Because we know we're good at short term wins, right? So smaller resolutions help us get some wins quickly up on the board to create a sense of momentum. So, for example, if your goal is to start a meditation habit, I get asked about this all the time because I've written some books about meditation. How do I do it? Or more, more often. I've tried so many times and I failed. I often say one minute counts and one minute counts daily. Ish. So aim for a minute. Most days I'm trying to lower the bar as far as possible. But if you, if you get a minute on the board, a couple of days, a week, a couple of things happens. One is you feel like you've accomplished something that creates motivation. And then you, you also. And this is. It takes on an identity aspect. You feel like I'm the type of person who meditates. And that story, once it gets swirling around in your prefrontal cortex, can be very powerful.

[Alison Stewart]

You can also say to people, I meditate. Yeah, I did it once, but I did it.

[Dan Harris]

You know what? You're bringing up another key thing here, which is the role of other people.

[Alison Stewart]

That's important. Yes, let's talk about that.

[Dan Harris]

Because just saying to other people, I'm going to do something provides an enormous amount of accountability. And if you want to make it even more powerful, you will join a group where you're doing the thing you want to do with other people, like joining a book club or a running club or in the meditation world, we talk about a sangha, which is a community of people who meditate together. Because if you have committed to showing up at a certain place at a certain time, you are much more likely to do it because many of us might be perfectly willing to let ourselves down, but we're not so willing to let other people down. And there are other benefits that accrue from doing things with other people. They can make it more fun and making it fun is a huge part of this. They can give you encouragement and be a source of enthusiasm. So social support or doing this in the HOV lane is really, really helpful.

[Alison Stewart]

And that's also to your point of making it positive, it doesn't have to be a negative thing you're thinking about.

[Dan Harris]

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean I think about for myself, you know, I'm 53. The pregame is over like so I don't want to spend. And you, you know, as having had a brush with. With all kinds of things. Yeah. Real. With real health problems that nothing is. Nothing is guaranteed. Right. This we are Life seems like a solid movie that's going to go on forever. But it is not. And every once in a while that becomes abundantly clear to us. I think for most of us, even when we get the shock of the reality, the truth of impermanence, we tend to revert back into the denial for which we've been so successfully programmed again by evolution. And you want to, it's to the best of your ability to make things that you're doing in this limited time on the planet as enjoyable as possible.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Van is calling from Midwood. Hey Van, thanks for calling all of it.

[Van]

Hey, thanks. Got nervous for a second. Even though you're always nice.

[Alison Stewart]

It's all good. It's all good. It's all good.

[Van]

Yeah, I love your podcast and yeah, you, you got me off from being self critical. But so basically my, my two ties into my two resolutions. I'm gonna practice basically showing compassion to all my parts. All my parts are trying to help me. I just need to understand why and how. And then the other thing I'm gonna practice is everyone's every action someone does that triggers me. I'm gonna look inward and see what within me caused that extreme reaction in myself and try to understand that.

[Dan Harris]

That's amazing. You said your name is Neil Van. Van.

[Alison Stewart]

Van.

[Dan Harris]

Sorry, how did I get Neil Van? Just to say, in terms of your nervousness, you're talking to a guy who had a coke fueled panic attack on national television in 2004. So I get nervous. So no judgment here. I love your resolutions. Let me just unpack them a little bit. Because he used some terminology that some people in the audience may not know Van was talking about how he's gonna have compassion for his parts. This is a term from a. A school of psychotherapy called internal family systems, where they talk about the fact that we all have parts of our personality. So you have a jealous part, you have an angry part, you have a creative part, you have a generous part. And they're all sort of competing for salience in the mind. They're all competing for who's gonna get the steering wheel.

[Alison Stewart]

Just anything inside out.

[Dan Harris]

That is exactly it. The inside. The inside out is internal family systems. And so many of us don't like these various parts. We might call them our demons. And we then rebel against them. We get into self loathing, we compartmentalize. When in fact the move for dealing with the aspects of yourself that you don't like. For me, it's anger and self centeredness is to high five them. It is to say, welcome to the party, thank you. I know you are just some ancient neurotic program that is trying to. It's the organism trying to protect itself. I learned this when I was five as a way to survive. And I'm still using it, but unskillfully. And so this kind of warmth or love that you can show toward the various problematic parts is really helpful. One tweak I would say for Van is if you say you're gonna do it every time, that is probably you're setting the bar too high, possibly because I would like you to have room to screw up. Flexibility is a big part of the science of behavior change. So maybe it's, you know, 60% of the time I'm going to attempt to be cool with my demons when they rear their heads, et cetera, et cetera. Just Van. So that you don't feel by February 1st that you've been so horrible at this that you're gonna give it up.

[Alison Stewart]

What if someone has shared the resolution with me? How can I go about helping that person?

[Dan Harris]

Are you asking for a friend or is it generally somebody's asking, somebody has. She's looking into the control room like somebody in there is the culprit. Yeah. You can occasionally check in with them on how's it going. And that accountability piece is really helpful. And I think there's probably a good way, in a bad way, or a more helpful way, in a less helpful way to hold people accountable. You know, shame is usually not a great motivator. And then I would say the most, the most in my. Based on the interviews I've done, my senses, because I'm not. I'M not the scientist here. I'm the guy who interviews the scientist. But my instinct is the most helpful thing you could do is to do it with the person to give them what psychologists call social support, which through the data, we know is such an important way to help people start habits.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Angeline online, too. She has a question. Hi, Angeline, thanks for calling.

Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. I had a question about when so.

[Van]

Many of us have so many different.

[Alison Stewart]

Resolutions, so many goals we've been meaning to get to, and how do you go about, you know, triaging those when it can be, you know, paralyzing to be like, well, I want to exercise more and I want to be a better friend and I want to learn to crochet. And how do I.

[Van]

How do I do all of those at once?

[Alison Stewart]

Is it better to just start one or.

[Dan Harris]

My sense is you want to. And again, this is based on having spent some many years interviewing the leading experts in this field is that you don't want to have too many. So one, maybe two, especially if the two are related in some way. So if the exercise could be done as part of a running group so that you're both keeping in touch with friends and exercising, which by the way, will. Will help you make that exercise habit a more of an abiding one. But I would be careful not to set too many.

[Alison Stewart]

In our family, we have. What's one for you? What's one for the family?

[Dan Harris]

Oh, that's it. A resolution for yourself and one for the family.

[Alison Stewart]

One for the family. And it's small. It's enough. It's enough to keep you busy, it's enough to keep you engaged. And it also kind of goes back to having something to check in on. Is this for me? Is this for the family?

[Dan Harris]

I like that. And I also think this is one of my little. Sorry, I'm gonna get on my high horse for just a second.

[Alison Stewart]

Go on.

[Dan Harris]

We live in such an individualistic culture and everything, and now with social media and other forms of technology, we're driven further and further into these isolated worlds on our phones. What we know about the human animal is that what makes us thrive is connection to other people. And so the fact that you're setting up these resolutions as one for me, one for the collective, that actually is enlightened self interest, because I'm here. The family, the health of the family is really good for the individuals in the family.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest is Dan Harris, host, the podcast 10% happier. We're talking about setting goals to shape yourself. Excuse me, me. How to shape your goals to set yourself up for success and how to stick to the changes you want to make this year. Our number is 2124-6696-9221-2433. Wait, what? What is it? It's 212-433. WNYC. We'll have more after cook break. You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Dan Harris, host the podcast talking about how to keep our resolutions going. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC is our phone number. We want to know what are your resolutions. Okay, you have a tip called habit stacking, which is so fascinating. First of all, what is it?

[Dan Harris]

Okay, so I want to be clear. This is not my tip. I'm not the scientist who came up with this. I'm just the reporter who's interviewed a lot of these guys. But habit stacking is a great way to make habit formation easier. And since habit formation is diabolically difficult for we want anything we can find to make it easier. So we all have habits we're already doing. You brush your teeth at a certain time. You make your coffee at a certain time, whatever it is. So those habits have their own power and momentum. Can you harness the momentum of those habits to boot up a new habit? So I'm gonna meditate for a minute right after I brush my teeth, or I'm gonna meditate for a minute right after I make that cup of tea in the minute it takes for the tea to cool down. That has been shown in the labs to be a great way to help us get some overcome some inertia when it comes to habits.

[Alison Stewart]

You also talk about editing and amending these resolutions that we make. Why is that important?

[Dan Harris]

I think what you want to be able to do is find ways to make sure the thing is working for you. The there's nothing etched in stone. If you start out the year by saying, I'm going to exercise three times a week, well, life may teach you that that's not feasible. And so you may have to go to 2. You may actually go to 4. But flexibility is one of the big aspects that the experts in human behavior change talk about. You want to be able to be flexible not only with your goals, but also in the effort to achieve your goals. You want to have room for error. So one of I used this phrase earlier, but I love it. Daily ish is really nice because if you tell yourself, I'm going to do something every day, inevitably for most of us, you will miss a day. And at that time, at that point, the voice in your head is likely to swoop in and tell you a whole story about how you're a failure. So what you want to do is defang the voice in your head by saying, no, no, no, no, no, daily ish. I have a day that, that, that I can miss. James Clear, who wrote a best selling book about habit change, has something called the never miss twice rule, which is it just means I'm not gonna do if I, if I decide I'm gonna do a thing, if I'm gonna exercise three times a week, I won't miss, I won't miss again.

[Alison Stewart]

Right, right. This is a question someone has texted to us. Question for Dan. Any suggestions on how to go about social support for introverts? I want to start exercising and every time a friend offers to do it together, I cringe. But I also think, wow, this could really help me.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, so this is, I want to be honest, I'm an extrovert. So you should take what I say with a grain of salt. And my understanding of introverts is based on living with one, my wife and, and doing a little bit of reading about it. Introverts still need social contact. We all, as humans need social contact. It is, I think the fact that we're not getting enough of it is probably at the root of our epidemic levels of anxiety, addiction, depression, suicide, loneliness. So if you're an introvert and you cringe a little bit about doing something with somebody, this might be a good little challenge. I mean, maybe your, maybe your resolution is, hey, 50% of the time I get those invitations, I'm just going to accept it, see what happens. And I wonder if perhaps you might like it. Another thing you can do, and this is less for the call, for the person who typed in the question and for those of you who might think to yourself, well, yeah, social supports, really powerful, but I don't know anybody. There are many groups you can sign up for. You want to sign up for a meditation group, go to the New York Insight Meditation Center. Or if you want to run, there are running groups all over the place. Just go online, you can find these groups and join them and lots of good things can happen as a result.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Charlotte, calling in from Westchester. Hi, Charlotte.

Hi, Alison. Hi, Dan. I love calling into the show. And Dan, I just have to say, I run to your podcast pretty much every day. Of the week. And it's really become like a moving meditation for me. So thank you for that.

[Dan Harris]

Thank you.

[Alison Stewart]

And yeah, I'm a yoga instructor, so a lot of what I talk about to my students and to myself is about being present in the moment. So my, you know, my theme for my class this week and thinking about New Year's was less about future projecting and future thinking, but just really about being intentional in every moment. So rather than resolutions, I like to think of them as New Year's intentions where it's just, you know, every day being more intentional and, you know, then, then those future thinking thoughts, that manifestation will happen because we're just living intentionally every day.

[Dan Harris]

I mean, I think it's beautiful. The one, the one thing that's coming up in my head, I'd be curious to see if, if, if you think I'm wrong about this. Is there, there's a way of talking about being in the present. It's kind of like the apex predator of spiritual cliches. It's like you have to be in the now and, and, and you can hear this and find it frustrating because back to evolution. Evolution really wired us for this hyper vigilance. We're thinking about what's next, we're ruminating about the past, we're looking for food, we're making judgments, whatever that that is the, the nature of the mind. And so if somebody tells you, hey, you should be in the moment, it can feel unfeasible. And so I actually think it's very helpful to give people instructions for how to do that. One great way to learn to be in the moment is mindfulness meditation. And there's a ton of science that shows that it's good for anxiety, depression. It can change key parts of your brain. And in mindfulness meditation, you pretty much sit, try to feel your breath coming in and going out. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again. And this process of humiliation, of seeing how wild the mind is and having to start over and over and over, that is. And we know from the brain scans that it's changing the part of the brain associated with the capacity for focus and that we need. It's not enough to exhort people to be in the now. We need to teach them how to do it. Otherwise they're going to hear it as a meaningless cliche. That's my fear.

[Alison Stewart]

Can this be our segue to your seven day challenge?

[Dan Harris]

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I'm doing a free meditation challenge over at a little website called danharris.com, which sounds like it was founded by a total narcissist because he named the website after himself. So eventually I'll change the name of the website, but right now it's danharris.com. if you sign up there, you'll get an in your inbox for seven days, a guided meditation from me or from one of the great meditation teachers with whom I'm friends. And then several times. So the emails will come in the morning, you can do the meditation as you're at your leisure. And then in several of the evenings I will do live check ins so you can meet me online and I will answer your questions. And so this, and like I said, this is free and for anybody, I'm.

[Alison Stewart]

Going to ask you to give us sort of a preemptive talk. It's February 3rd. You've gone off your resum. You've gone off for your resolution. You've given it up. Give us a talk. What are you going to tell people?

[Dan Harris]

This is where self compassion is super helpful. And let me be the voice in your head. It is all good. You can always start again. New Year's. There's some power to New Year's because of what's called the fresh start effect, which has been identified by Wharton professor Katie Milkman. And so at big temporal landmarks, we do have more energy for the hard work of behavior change. But any day can be a fresh start. Monday morning, your birthday, the start of a new month. You can always start again. And failure, quote, unquote, failure is really important as part of this process. We should not vilify failure. Failure is just proof that you've tried something. You should be patting yourself on the back and what did you learn from the failure? What derailed you? And then what can you do differently when you restart? Change is possible. Messy, marginal change over time is possible. Perfection is not. But we can, we can, you can, anyone can get better over time.

[Alison Stewart]

Anything I haven't asked you, you think is important for our listeners to know.

[Dan Harris]

You know, there are some other tips for making it easy that I thought I might throw out there. We talked about habit stacking, but another thing that I think we talked about earlier that just might be worth double clicking is starting small. You know, like I said, one minute counts for meditation, but for exercise, just as a, as a starting habit to just put the shoes on, lace them up, step outside, you're done. So just as a start, starting really small is a, it just, it relaxes the nervous system. It's, it's easier to overcome Inertia. Inertia. And then you start to get this momentum. Another thing that's I think really helpful here for making it easy is optimizing your environment. So if you want to start exercising, keep the running shoes out and visible. If you want to have a healthier diet, hide the snacks and keep the apples and bananas out at eye level in the kitchen. Let's see what one other thing to say before we close here, unless you want me to keep going. But one thing that I would say is that a great way to make the habit last is to make it meaningful. Instead of being motivated by some extrinsic factor like some washed up ex anchorman on the radio telling you you should meditate. That's extrinsic. That's me saying meditation is good for you. And you're like oh man, maybe I should try it. What what we want is, is intrinsic motivation. It really should be coming from inside of you. And so if you can align your goals with what truly matters to you, you are much more likely to succeed. And there are ways to boost this. So for example, this is going to sound a little cheesy but every time I exercise I say to myself I am doing this to make myself happier and stronger so that I can make other people happier and stronger so that I can be around for my 10 year old son when, when or if he gets married. That makes that yokes this resolution to something much larger and makes it much more likely to succeed.

[Alison Stewart]

I think we've got time for one more call. Harold calling from Midtown. Hi Harold.

[Harold]

Hi. Great conversation today. Thank you so much. Dan really triggered something in my mind when you just spoke about the individualistic mindset of how somehow also related to our phones and we're living in a bit of a bubble or retreated and let's just take care of ourselves or our family. My resolution is two ideas of getting more involved in community based wellness for more people. In our case specifically our synagogue which is a big 20 blocks away. But that also comes into a bit of challenging laziness of just getting there. Once we're there. We'll be so inspired by so many programs going on there outside of any religious base. But they're community based their activities to help others. There's arts programs. And so it's a really inspiring one. Dan, when you spoke about this individualistic kind of mindset that we're socially slipping into phones, et cetera. And so that's what brought to mind and so top of mind for me is the laziness and just get out and get more active with the community.

[Alison Stewart]

Dan, thank you so much. He had great. Yeah, that was great. Dan Harris, the host of 10% happier and it's danharris.com yes, thanks for coming in, Dan.

[Dan Harris]

Thank you.

[Alison Stewart]

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