Finding your bliss

Summary

TED Radio Hour: "Finding Your Bliss"

Host: Manoush Zomorodi (NPR)
Date: December 5, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of TED Radio Hour explores what it means to find “bliss”—to seek grounding, meaning, and joy in a turbulent world. Through conversations with emblematic thinkers and practitioners including Krista Tippett, Dan Harris, Chris Anderson, and Stefan Chow, the show investigates profound questions about living with uncertainty, cultivating loving-kindness, harnessing generosity, and reconnecting with childlike joy. Listeners are inspired to move away from goal-driven resolutions and instead embrace open questions and mindful practices as paths to deeper fulfillment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Living the Questions with Krista Tippett

[02:39 – 14:49]

• Navigating Uncertainty:
  Krista Tippett, host of "On Being," discusses reaching a crossroads in her 60s, grappling with what her “service” should be as her life structure changed.
  “What is my work going to be to do? ... Some of the things that came to me that might be my service didn't feel possible with... the way my life was structured.” [03:46]

• Rilke’s Wisdom:
  Tippett shares inspiration from Rainer Maria Rilke, advocating for patience with “all that is unresolved” and encourages living into questions rather than rushing to answers.
  “Try to be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart... treat your questions like locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.” [05:26]

• Dwelling with Big Questions:
  She explains this attitude as a foundation for facing the vast, open questions of our time (ecological, political, spiritual, etc.), both personally and globally.
  “We are being shaped as much by the questions we're carrying as by the answers we have it in us to give.” [07:29]

• Letting Go and Renewal:
  Tippett describes evaluating what is “life-giving” versus “depleting,” leading her to wind down her organization and embrace unexpected love at 64. “There was just too much that I was carrying in the old structure... what in the way I'm living now and working now depletes me, and what is life-giving?” [10:45]

• Love in Later Life:
  The gift of falling in love later in life brings freedom from the urgency of major life decisions—the focus turns not to duration but to deep quality and shared vulnerability. “When you're 65, you know [your mortality]... but also that I can potentially, you know, we have 20 or 30 years left. And to make a commitment to that is such a different quality of commitment...” [13:39]

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2. Asking the Right New Year’s Question

[17:09 – 21:14]

• Beyond Resolutions:
  Krista Tippett recommends abandoning typical New Year’s resolutions in favor of carrying a “New Year’s question.” “Don't make a resolution. This is a radical alternative to the New Year's resolution. Ask a New Year's question.” [18:57]

• How to Engage:
  Instead of an answer, focus on what emerges through the process of living with the question.
  “If we're looking for an answer, we may be disappointed... We're looking for what emerges in us.” [19:30], [19:38]

• Letting Questions Evolve:
  Questions themselves can—and should—change as you change. “You may find as you move forward, that the question itself needs revising... So the question is alive too.” [20:57]

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3. Loving-Kindness and Changing the Mind with Dan Harris

[21:24 – 35:40]

• Facing the Inner Critic:
  Dan Harris, former news anchor and author, discusses “the inner narrator” that creates dissatisfaction by judging oneself and others.
  “We have this little inner narrator that chases us out of bed in the morning and is yammering at us all day long, constantly... not focusing on what's happening right now.” [21:34]

• Breakdown to Breakthrough:
  A very public panic attack led Harris to meditation, which he first ridiculed but later embraced. “My nationally televised freakout ultimately led me to meditation, which I had actually long rejected as ridiculous.” [22:08]

• Leap into Self-Reflection:
  Harris describes his humbling “360 review,” which exposed his negative tendencies and spurred him toward deeper self-exploration.
  “Then came 26 pages of beat down... He is intentionally intimidating when it serves him. I was called emotionally guarded, a diva, and an authoritarian.” [24:43]

• Loving-Kindness Practice:
  Harris details his skeptical approach to “metta”—loving-kindness meditation—and how it reframed his internal dialogue and relationships.
  “The practice really involves... calling to mind somebody really easy to love...[then] yourself... then a neutral person... then a difficult person, and then finally all beings everywhere.” [26:45]

• Being Kind to Oneself:
  He highlights the therapeutic value of self-compassion, even for skeptics. “When you see your demons... you should put your hand on your heart and say, it's okay, sweetie, I'm here for you. And I was like, hard pass... I just talked to myself the way I would talk to a friend...” [27:56]

• Broader Social Relevance:
  Harris responds to critiques that meditation is individualistic, arguing for its broader accessibility and necessity as a supplement—not a replacement—for systemic change.
  “It's not either or. It's yes and.” [31:44]

• Results and Mind Training:
  After years of meditation, Harris receives a second, far more positive 360 review.
  “He's genuinely curious and interested. He's less negative... Dan is so much kinder and more compassionate than he used to be.” [34:52]

• The Core Realization:
  Reflects on impermanence, service, and what truly matters. “There are very meaningful things you can do to be of service, which will make you happier and the people around you happier...” [35:03]

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4. The Infectious Nature of Generosity with Chris Anderson

[38:11 – 50:16]

• Investigating Generosity:
  TED Head Chris Anderson explores generosity as a contagious social good—one that can spread like a positive virus. “If you can find your way to be generous... I guarantee that it will increase your own happiness.” [38:46]

• Experimenting with Giving:
  Anderson recounts giving $10,000 each to 200 randomly selected people worldwide. Most recipients chose to give much of it away—a behavior that amplified happiness for all involved.
  “The majority, I think nearly two thirds of that money was basically spent generously. People spent it on friends, on organizations, on others, and did so with great joy.” [40:54]

• Happiness Returns Multiply:
  The experiment showed donating money creates a much larger total happiness impact than simply keeping it.
  “It was estimated that the donation had effectively created a more than 200 times multiple amount of happiness that their $2 million would have given them personally.” [42:14]

• Generosity Beyond Money:
  Generosity can also mean sharing knowledge, attention, connections, hospitality, or simple acts of kindness; it's not limited to monetary giving.
  “There are many, many ways you can share what you do have.” [43:25]

• Making Generosity “Go Viral”:
  Even a small uptick in “infectiousness” greatly increases the spread of good deeds.
  “The math here is really quite extraordinary... a small difference in infectiousness can actually lead to a thousand fold difference in impact.” [45:57]

• Net Giver or Net Taker?:
  Anderson suggests self-evaluation: are you a net giver or taker in the world? Purpose and happiness are closely linked to generous engagement.
  “If it was the case that most people in our world were net givers rather than net takers, the future is probably going to be okay.” [46:50]

• Legacy and Role Models:
  Anderson reflects on his late mother—her refusal to judge and commitment to giving as a lasting influence.
  “No one who really gives to the world ever really dies. What they have done will have its own ripple effects.” [49:34]

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5. Rediscovering Childlike Joy with Stefan Chow

[50:30 – 54:45]

• Play as Purpose:
  Photographer Stefan Chow recounts how play is essential, citing Confucius:
  “It is better to play than to do nothing.” [50:55]

• Playgrounds and Perspective:
  Sharing both his daughter’s and his own playground experiences, Chow emphasizes the need for adults to rediscover wonder and exploration. Through an aerial photography project, he captures playgrounds from above, revealing details only visible from a new vantage point.
  “We need to be looking at the final details in life... the little tidbits in life that makes life interesting. And more importantly, this project has also helped me to see through the eyes of a child again.” [53:23]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Krista Tippett:
  “We are being shaped as much by the questions we're carrying as by the answers we have it in us to give.” [07:29]
  “This is a radical alternative to the New Year's resolution. Ask a New Year's question.” [18:59]

• Dan Harris:
  “We have this little inner narrator that chases us out of bed in the morning and is yammering at us all day long...” [21:34]
  “The radical disarmament of your inner critic is... to give him a hug, be like, thank you, I don't have to listen to you.” [28:56]

• Chris Anderson:
  “If you can find your way to be generous... I guarantee that it will increase your own happiness.” [38:46]
  “No one who really gives to the world ever really dies. What they have done will have its own ripple effects.” [49:34]

• Stefan Chow:
  “It is better to play than to do nothing.” (Confucius) [50:55]
  “We need to be looking at the final details in life... that makes life interesting... to see through the eyes of a child again.” [53:23]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Living the Question – Krista Tippett: [02:39 – 14:49]
• Ask a New Year’s Question (Not a Resolution): [17:09 – 21:14]
• Dan Harris on Loving Kindness & Mind Training: [21:24 – 35:40]
• Chris Anderson & The Infectiousness of Generosity: [38:11 – 50:16]
• Rediscovering Playfulness – Stefan Chow: [50:30 – 54:45]

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Takeaways

• Uncertainty and questioning are not weaknesses but essential tools for living a fulfilled life.
• Bliss doesn’t come from answers or control but from living deeply into meaningful questions, opening oneself to love at any age, and being gentle with oneself internally.
• Kindness (to self and others), generosity, and play are practices proven (by science and experience) to boost both individual and collective happiness.
• Finding your bliss is less about seeking solutions and more about participation, curiosity, patience, and the courage to give and explore.

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Listeners are left with permission—and encouragement—to embrace “living the question” as the most reliable route to bliss in a world full of unresolved challenges.

Transcript

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

Hey, it's Minouche here. Before we start the show today, I want to make sure you know it's a special week here at NPR because a couple days ago was Giving Tuesday. So we at NPR celebrate it every year, but we've never had a year quite like this one before. You've probably heard that federal funding for public media was eliminated as of October 1st. That means NPR is now operating without federal support for the first time in its 50 plus year history. This is a big change and a big challenge, but it's one that we can overcome together. We at TED Radio Hour are so grateful to you, dear listeners, for sticking with us week after week as we dive into technology, neuroscience, human behavior, nature, all the topics that help us make sense of and find meaning in our world today. And we especially want to thank listeners who've already stepped up to donate, like Belinda from California who says, my life has been enriched through programs like TED Radio Hour. I I don't always donate, but today I feel compelled to do what I can to support this network so that content can continue being available to all. Thank you for all you do. Thank you, Belinda, for listening and for donating. You can join Belinda, make your Giving Tuesday gift right now by signing up for npr. It's a simple recurring donation that gets you perks like bonus episodes from some of NPR's podcasts, including including Ted Radio Hour. Join us at plus.NPR.org thanks again for your support and let's get on with the show. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

[Dan Harris]

Our job now is to dream big.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Delivered at TED Conferences to bring about the future we want to see around the world to understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

[Chris Anderson]

You just don't know what you're going.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

To find challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like.

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Why is it noteworthy and even change you.

[Krista Tippett]

I literally feel like I'm a different person.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yes.

[Krista Tippett]

Do you feel that way?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Ideas worth spreading from TED and npr.

I'm Minouche Zamorodi. As a public radio listener, you may be familiar with this voice.

[Krista Tippett]

So I started saying, like, what is my calling here? How is that changing? How can I best be of service in this world that is unfolding?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Krista Tippett is the creator and host of the podcast On Being. She's known for asking big, often metaphysical questions of scientists, philosophers and thinkers. For over 20 years, she's brought her special brand of warmth and inquiry to listeners, giving them permission to think beyond the everyday and more about meaning and what we're all doing here on planet Earth.

[Krista Tippett]

The questions that are still gonna be with us, you know, long after the news cycle moves on.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

But a few years ago, Krista had a big birthday and it left her asking tough questions of herself as an empty nester. An older woman, she wondered if her life's work needed to change. Should she take herself in a new direction?

[Krista Tippett]

What is my work going to be to do? And I, you know, I was in my 60s, right? I turned 60 in 2020, and my children were suddenly well and truly launched. So other questions that I started to ask were, well, in this way, I'm working now, you know. Cause some of the things that came to me that might be my service didn't feel possible with the way I was living and working and the way my life was structured.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Krista was filled with so much uncertainty at a time in her life when she expected to have a clear path forward, but didn't. So at that moment, she turned to her favorite poet to remind herself that uncertainty is part of life's process. Rainer Maria Rilke's words had gotten her through other life crises, you know, when.

[Krista Tippett]

I was in my 20s and living in Germany. And Rilke, his Letters to a Young Poet is a book that, you know, in the early 20th century, which I think a lot about now. You know how Rilke was writing in the last young century, which, like ours, was moving towards lots of rupture, towards transformation. And he received some letters from this young military cadet and his longing was like, who will I be right? He was impatient with not knowing, with all the uncertainty and these longings that just come with being young.

Rilke said, try to be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart. Dwell with what is unresolved. Don't treat it as something that you have to rush to an answer for. Because if those questions are big and important enough, what you want is to be able to live the answers that they would give you.

And the fact that you're so full of longing and yearning and confusion about them probably means that you need to live these questions to know what it would mean to live your way into the answers. And he, you know, he said, treat your questions like locked rooms or books that are written in A very foreign language.

[Krista Tippett (TED Talk)]

Really.

[Krista Tippett]

The wisdom in this is that when to rush to an answer would be to deny the gravity of the question.

We just have to sit with the question and figure out what the question would teach us and where the question would lead us.

[Krista Tippett (TED Talk)]

Like us, Vrilka was a citizen of a young century with spectacular potentials for creating and destroying.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Here's Krista Tippett on the TED stage.

[Krista Tippett (TED Talk)]

And it's come to seem to me that the great challenges before our young century are vast, aching, open questions. Ecological, racial, economic, spiritual, political. Vast, aching, open questions for which we will not have anything like answers anytime soon.

So I find myself returned anew to this wisdom that when we find ourselves in this situation, we are called to honor and dwell with the questions themselves.

And it is a deep, deep truth in science, as in life, that at any given moment, we are being shaped as much by the questions we're carrying as by the answers we have it in us to give. Those moments when a new question rises up in us, stops us in our tracks, those are pivot points. Those are moments when the possibility of discovery breaks in. So the invitation here is to engage the adventure of a new reverence for the questions that are alive in you, the questions that are alive in the world around you.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

You know, it was right after the pandemic that you gave this talk, but I think the key offering that you gave, which was practices for how to live. Well, you asked us to live the question. That was the one that stuck with me because I think people get exhausted by all the questions they have, and very often, sometimes they just want rules.

You know what I mean?

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Krista Tippett]

Well, I think we get exhausted by all the questions because we treat questions like things that demand immediate answers. And one thing about this living the question sensibility is it has a long view of time. This is not the fake, real time of, like, the Internet that we live in, right? Like it is dwelling. It is not treating time like some kind of bully that tells me I must have an answer, I must have an action plan. It's not how time works. It's letting things emerge. And what we're learning about how vitality functions in the natural world, this is all emergence. You know, we've really wanted to believe that our strategic plans we can live by, but, you know, not grasping for the first thing that feels like an answer, but moving with curiosity towards it and testing it.

And not feeling like it's a failure.

If it turns out that what that was meant was to be an investigation. But it's not the answer.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Between politics, economic ups and downs, and accelerating technology, it has been a long, complicated year. Many of us are looking for something, anything, to help us just feel a little bit calmer. And so on the show today, ideas to help you get grounded back on track and maybe even edge towards something like bliss. There is no cure all, but together, they might help you tinker with your own life and end the year with a bit more peace of mind. Which is what Krista Tippett found when she surrendered yet again to living the question. And she began asking whether the nonprofit she'd been running for nearly two decades was sustainable as she entered her 60s, and what might come her way if she let go of the old.

[Krista Tippett]

There was just too much that I was carrying in the old structure. And so a set of questions that became really important to me that I also think can be useful for any of us and maybe really foundational if we're thinking about making a move is what in the way I'm living now and working now depletes me, and what is life giving? And, you know, I think that can sound kind of privileged because, like, at any given time, any job has depleting aspects. Sure, yeah. And parenting has depleting aspects. And, you know, so it's not that I'm looking for a life without struggle, but are the things I'm struggling with now the right things for me to be struggling with now?

[Chris Anderson]

So.

[Krista Tippett]

So over a period of like a year and a half, kind of to my surprise. Cause one of the things I thought is that maybe everything I'm doing needs to get bigger. There needs to be more of it. But that's where the question of depletion came in. And what would be life giving?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Krista ended up winding down her organization, doing fewer podcast episodes, and began writing another book when suddenly some of the questions she had didn't matter very much because she unexpectedly fell in love.

[Krista Tippett]

I did. I fell in love at 64. And it's the greatest thing ever.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Is it different than when you were younger?

[Krista Tippett]

Oh, yeah. It's almost like being a teenager again. You know, what it makes me think of is you have all these big life question marks when you're in your 20s and your 30s and your 40s and say you fall in love, you're in relationship with someone, and they probably have all those same question marks, and, you know, do you have children? You know, all of these things add so much complexity on top of the complexity of loving. And this matter of loving and being loved is something that we can work on in ourselves across a lifetime. And I want to say that I did decide to work on that at some point. In fact, I was single for many years. And the decision I made was to really give myself over to all the kinds of love, take them as seriously as we take this longing for, you know, the one. And like, I'm not perfect at this. It's not something anybody gets perfect at. But I do feel like it's something I worked on. And I've met a man who also has taken serious, seriously the matter of loving and being loved. And then to find that when you don't have any of these big life decisions ahead of you, right. When there's not a question of whether even you can get pregnant, which is such a great liberation.

But also that I can potentially, you know, we have 20 or 30 years left together, and who knows? And when you're 25, you also do not have a guarantee that you will live another day. Right?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yeah.

[Krista Tippett]

At any age, we are mortal and we are fragile and all kinds of things can happen, but you just don't believe it. And that's fine because it helps us just stay so, like, audacious. But when you're 65, you know it.

[Krista Tippett (TED Talk)]

Right.

[Krista Tippett]

So, like I'm in this new stage of my life professionally, but also in this love. And we know that we will both die and that one of us may die first and that also that our loving each other, you know, will probably entail caregiving and to make a commitment to that is such a different quality of commitment than anything I've ever done in my life. And it, it's really beautiful and it's not sad. This is the matter of loving and being loved. And I'm ready for it to mean that.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

When we come back, more with Krista Tippett and a suggestion for how you might want to approach the new year on the show, searching for and maybe finding your bliss. It's the TED RADIO Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zumarodi, and we'll be right back.

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

There are a lot of great NPR shows out there, but we all know who's the best. Ha. NPR is celebrating the most memorable podcasts and episodes of the year and you get to crown the winner of the People's Choice Award for Best Best Podcast. Be sure to vote for TED radio [e-mail] peopleschoice thank you and may the best pod win. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Minouche Zumarotti. On the show today, searching for and finding your bliss. We were talking to Krista Tippett, host and creator of the show on being so with all the wisdom that you have gathered over the years, what advice do you have for people, especially as the year comes to a close and they look forward.

[Krista Tippett]

I think whoever we are on every side of all of our divisions, we're feeling like we live in a world where there's so much uncertainty and because I believe in the power of questions to just orient us and help us walk forward in ways that speak to the world we want to live in and want to make.

I think a question right now is from where I sit in the world I can see and touch what amidst all that is breaking, wants to be born that I can attend to.

And really let that question be a companion.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

All right, so for somebody who's like, wait a minute, I thought I was just gonna make a resolution to go to the gym more often. Can you give them an example?

[Dan Harris]

Right.

[Krista Tippett]

Don't make a resolution.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I love it.

[Krista Tippett]

This is a radical alternative to the New Year's resolution. Ask a New Year's question.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Ask a New Year's question. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you will find the answer.

[Krista Tippett]

And it's not your question for two weeks. It's your question until next year. It's your question until January 1, 2027, and then you can take stock.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Right.

[Krista Tippett]

I'm not saying that it doesn't lead you to do things along the way, but you hold it, you hold it, you hold it. You let it ripen.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And if you don't find the answer, that doesn't mean you failed.

[Krista Tippett]

No, I mean, I think saying that what you're looking for as an answer is too narrow. If we're looking for an answer, we may be disappointed. It's like, what are we looking for?

[Krista Tippett (TED Talk)]

We're looking for what emerges in us.

[Krista Tippett]

What we start to see. Because if we're looking for things, we're gonna see things we didn't see.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Okay, so can I posit mine?

[Krista Tippett]

Yes.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Okay. So I think mine is going to be for 2026. How do I stay more open to people and ideas that just come my way? Instead of trying to grab them, I'm just gonna let them come to me. Yeah.

[Krista Tippett]

So here's how the question then becomes a really good friend. Because what that means. Good question. So what that means is when you have your reactions, which you will have, you will ask, okay, how do I stay open here? And that means you're gonna have to develop some skill sets and some new reflexes. And you may also, in this process, learn that you need to turn to other people to help you with this. Right. So you will learn new things you don't know right now that you want to learn. You know, there's a lot of richness to it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Here's what I love. I can't be wrong. I'm definitely going to achieve it. Right.

[Krista Tippett]

You can't fail at the implementation.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Exactly. So that's what the goal is here. 2026. Don't have a goal. The goal is ask a question and.

[Krista Tippett (TED Talk)]

Then be in it.

[Krista Tippett]

That's right.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Love that. Thank you.

[Krista Tippett]

And also, you may find as you move forward, that the question itself needs revising. Like, this question wasn't particular enough Right. Or like I want to give this question some nuance or I, I've learned some things, so I know, I really know I can give the question some focus. So the question is alive too.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was Krista Tippett, the host and creator of On Being. You can watch her full ted [e-mail].

On the show today. Finding youg Bliss. Which can be hard to do when that voice in your mind never seems to stop nagging you.

[Dan Harris]

We have this little inner narrator that chases us out of bed in the morning and is yammering at us all day long, constantly sort of wanting stuff, not wanting stuff, judging people, judging ourselves, comparing ourselves to other people instead of focusing on what's happening right now. That was a huge wake up for me. I was like, oh yeah, that's just, it's what's making me unhappy and unpleasant.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Dan Harris has been on a years long journey to be just a little happier. It started back when he was a news anchor.

[Dan Harris]

I worked at ABC News for 21 years. It was a very stressful job.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Here he is on the TED stage.

[Dan Harris]

In fact, I had a panic attack live on the air in 2004. The good news is that my nationally televised freakout ultimately led me to meditation, which I had actually long rejected as ridiculous. I was raised by a pair of atheist scientists. I'm a fidgety, skeptical guy. And that kind of led me to unfairly lump meditation in with aura readings, vision boards and dolphin healing. But the practice really helped me with my anxiety and depression. And so my goal became to make meditation attractive to my fellow skeptics. And I saw that there was all this science that suggested it's really good for you. And that kind of provoked me to get interested in Buddhism and meditation.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Dan ended up writing a best selling book called 10% happier. This led to hosting his podcast and building a business, all with the goal of bringing some inner peace to people who were skeptical about meditation too. And on a personal level, Dan felt like he'd really grown. So after a few years, he made an interesting choice.

[Dan Harris]

Well, the story's pretty embarrassing actually.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

He requested a 360 review.

[Dan Harris]

I wanted to get the 360 in part because I was genuinely curious about how I was doing.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

A 360 is pretty common in the corporate world. Consultants interview all your colleagues about you and then compile a report on how you come across in the workplace.

[Dan Harris]

And I should say that my version of the 360 was much more intense than the normal corporate 360 because I included my wife and My brother, a few of my meditation teacher friends. So it was the colonoscopy version of a 360 review. I didn't think it was gonna be that big of a deal. That was an underestimation and humiliatingly so. And when I read the 360, it just, you know, melted me.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Do you remember reading some of the harsher notes?

[Dan Harris]

I will never forget reading that document because adding to the embarrassment of the moment, I was so confident and so sort of cavalier and careerist about this move that I had video cameras rolling on me and my wife as we read it together.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Oh, no, no, no.

[Dan Harris]

Yes. The first 13 pages were dedicated to my sterling qualities. People talked about how hardworking and intelligent I was. Then came 26 pages of beat down.

He's self interested and self involved. It's a joke that whatever we show Dan, he doesn't like. Some reviewers noted that I had a penchant for being rude to junior staffers. He is intentionally intimidating when it serves him. I was called emotionally guarded, a diva, and an authoritarian. There's a flavor of the prima donna in Dan. He likes people to be serving him, and his is more important than other people's agenda or time. Some people even question my motives for promoting meditation. It got so bad that at one point, my wife, who was reading it with me, got up and went to the bathroom and cried.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That is brutal. I will say, though, I have to admire your diligence because after the 360 review, you signed up for a nine day silent retreat. Man, some people would be like, I don't want to think about this, but you went to a place where all you could do was think about this.

[Dan Harris]

Yes. Just to say that after I got the 360 review and, you know, people were saying really harsh things about me that I was over committed in my professional life and that was making me really unpleasant to be around. So I read all of that and my first instinct was, I'm gonna go into the fetal position and never come out. And then pretty quickly, I started to have a series of conversations with people in my life that helped me turn this around. So one of the many things that I did was to sign up for a nine day silent meditation retreat in which we were practicing a kind of meditation called loving kindness Meditation. The ancient word for this is meta M E T T A. Another translation of metta is friendliness. And we have this tendency, I think most of us, to think that we are hardwired for a certain kind of temperament. But actually, the data around this Kind of meditation and other related practices show that these are not factory settings. You can boost your capacity for warmth. And so that's why I wanted to do that retreat.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Okay, can we talk more about loving kindness? The steps that you are supposed to go through?

[Dan Harris]

My first impression of this practice was extremely negative. I sometimes say that it struck me as Valentine's Day with a gun to my head. The practice really involves, well, the seated, formal meditation version of this is. So I sit in a chair and close my eyes and start by calling to mind somebody like, really easy to love. And you repeat four phrases. May you be happy, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease. And then once you've done that with an easy person, we move into yourself. Usually the next step is a mentor, then a neutral person, somebody you might overlook, then a difficult person, and then finally all beings everywhere. And this kind of bicep curl for your brain can impact your capacity to feel love for yourself and for other people. And that's pretty radical.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

One of the things that your teacher told you, correct me if I'm wrong, when you were struggling was that you needed to start with yourself, giving yourself that kindness first.

[Dan Harris]

Well, that's exactly right. I didn't want to do what my teacher was recommending. In fact, she said, you know, when you see your demons arise, you know when you see your capacity for anger or desire or self aggrandizement. She said, you should put your hand on your heart and say, it's okay, sweetie, I'm here for you. And I was like, hard pass. I don't want to do that. And couple of days into the retreat, I was really struggling. I did it. I put my hand on my chest. I didn't call myself sweetie. I just talked to myself the way I would talk to a friend. I was like, all right, dude, I know this sucks. It's hard to see this stuff. You're good. Just keep going. And that approach, I later learned, is really backed up by the science that you can talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend. You don't have to use sweetie if you don't want to, and that this will have beneficial psychological and physiological ramifications. And so the radical disarmament of your inner critic is. Is to give him a hug, be like, thank you, I don't have to listen to you. Exactly. But I appreciate the impulse. It is the organism trying to protect itself.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And the idea being that the only way to feel love and kindness towards others in the world is if you can do it to yourself. Because why?

[Dan Harris]

It's not as simple as saying you can't love other people if you don't love yourself. Because I think we all know people who are very hard on themselves but extremely generous and. But it's harder to love other people if you're constantly running yourself down. Even though that might feel like a humility, you know, I'm keeping myself in check. It actually is a kind of self centeredness because you're just stuck in your own head in this dialogue. If you can cut that off, well then you have more availability and bandwidth for other people. And there's another piece of this. When you see how much suffering you're doing it just naturally and inexorably leads to increased empathy and compassion for other people and when your relationships improve. We know that from so much data here, so many studies, that that's probably the most important variable in human happiness is the quality of your relationships. Self love, properly understood not as narcissism, but as having your own back is not selfish. It makes you better at loving other people. I consider love to be anything that falls within the human capacity to care, A capacity wired deeply into us via evolution. It's our ability to care, cooperate and communicate that has allowed Homo sapiens to thrive. And it is a failure to exercise that muscle. It is a lack of love that I think is at the root of our most pressing problems. From inequality to violence to, to the climate crisis. Obviously these are all massive problems that are going to require massive structural change. But at a baseline, they also require us to care about one another. And it is harder to do that when you're stuck in a ceaseless spiral of self centered, self flagellation.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

There's something ironic about this though, Dan, is that I can't help but think, despite the eastern roots in meditation, that in some ways this is a very individualist approach to, to societal, systemic problems. You know, I bet people would have a hell of a lot more loving kindness if there wasn't, I don't know, police violence in their community if they had enough to eat, if they could pay for their housing. Do you feel like this is a message for a certain segment of the population and that in some ways, gosh, we have a whole lot of other things to fix in addition to trying to be more at peace with ourselves?

[Dan Harris]

Well, I think you're onto something very important there. I don't think meditation alone is gonna fix our massive systemic problems. We need systemic political policy level approaches to all of this. The one part that I Am not sure I agree with though, is that this is a message for just a narrow band of society. We know these practices work. So why should only wealthy white people who shop at Whole Foods? And by the way, I say that with no hate in my heart to those people because I am one of those people. But why should we be the only people who benefit from this? I think it's beautiful that these practices are being taught in foster care and prisons. This really should be for everybody. It's not either or. It's yes and.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

But Dan, I have to say, to get to this point, you've gone through what feels to me like an exhaustive amount of therapy and meditation and different strategies and I mean, the whole other part of you, the part that's hard charging and asks difficult questions as a journalist, the part of you that wanted to start a business, do you feel like that part can coexist with this more, dare I say, mellow person?

[Dan Harris]

Definitely. First of all, just to say you don't have to do all the stuff I'm doing. I'm coming back with things that you can fit into your life in really easy ways. You know, this loving kindness meditation practice is something you can do for a few minutes before you go to bed or first thing in the morning and it will help you. The second thing to say is that by no means am I not ambitious anymore. What I do find though is that I am better at connecting to the more positive end of my motivations. I'm a little more focused on, you know, can I make things in the world that really do help people and that in the process give me what I need to live to keep motivated and happy, which is some level of remuneration, you know, payment. And I view that as like kind of an exchange of love.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Hmm. Okay, so tell me where you are in this process. Are you practicing it every day? Have you seen results?

[Dan Harris]

Well, the most tangible piece of evidence is that three years after I got my first 360, I got a second 360 with many of the same people contributing, and it was radically different. He pauses and listens, makes sure he's hearing things correctly. There's real compassion in that, especially knowing that he has strong opinions where he's able to watch what he's feeling and shelve it if he has to in order to be there for the other person. He's genuinely curious and interested. He's less negative in day to day interactions. In the last few years, he's become very emotionally intelligent, he's very self aware asks about feelings and if he could do something more or less. Dan is so much kinder and more compassionate than he used to be. The way his ego has shrunk is really quite remarkable.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

You talk about how it is a radical notion that the mind can be trained. What has surprised you about the power of the mind, what you can teach your own mind?

[Dan Harris]

There is no you the way you think about it. Yes, if you Minouche, look in the mirror, you'll see a reflection of a human being. That's true, but on some really fundamental level, all the atoms that make you up right now are going to dissolve. And the fact that life is short and unpredictable and chaotic means that what you really have is right now. There are very meaningful things you can do to be of service, which will make you happier and the people around you happier, and to be of use to yourself and others in a way that will make whatever time we have as good as possible.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was Dan Harris from our conversation in 2023. Dan is the author of 10% happier and hosts the 10% happier podcast. You can see his [e-mail] on the show today. Finding your bliss it's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zamorodi. Stay with us.

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zumarodi. On the show today, finding your bliss. Because after a year of ups and downs and stress and national politics, or maybe your family's politics, you might be ready for an easy way to feel just a little bit better.

[Chris Anderson]

In the hurly burly of modern life, it's just so easy to kind of sleepwalk from one stress to another and not be ourselves, not really be our deepest selves.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Chris Anderson is the head of the TED organization, yes, the very one that partners with NPR to produce this show. For 20 years, Chris has brought big ideas from all over the world onto the TED stage. But there's one idea in particular that he's been investigating himself the surprising benefits of generosity.

[Chris Anderson]

So if you can find your way to be generous, not necessarily money through whatever it is, if you can find a way of doing it, I guarantee that it will increase your own happiness.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That is the argument Chris makes in his book Infectious, the Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading. And actually, you start by saying that, you know, we think of infectious as not necessarily a good thing, but in your case, you think it's the most important thing that should be spread.

[Chris Anderson]

It became clear during the pandemic that, that you don't have to be big to have an impact on the world, and especially when we're in a connected world, as we are now, where the whole world is connected through the Internet. And so the question is, what else could become infectious? The thesis of the book is that many good things can become infectious. We pay attention to threats and we are more quickly roused to action by something that we think is dangerous or makes us angry. But we also do respond to kindness and to acts of generosity. We respond to other people's suffering. We're profoundly and deeply social species. And so it's really worth paying attention to what will make the good stuff spread as fast as or faster than the bad stuff is spreading online. We all know that nastiness spreads through social media, et cetera, et cetera. Are there ways that we can get generosity itself to become infectious?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yeah. And to test this, you partnered with psychologist Elizabeth Dunn to do a social experiment where people got large sums of money. And then you followed up to see what they did with it, to see if they would Be generous and give it away. And to measure what kind of effect it had on them.

[Chris Anderson]

Yeah, so that was really fun. So we had an anonymous donor in the tech community, and the idea was that we'd recruit 200 people at random from different countries, different income levels, and give each of them $10,000, no strings attached. The rules were you can spend it however you like. You just have to tell us what you spend it on. And the amazing thing that emerged is that the majority, I think nearly two thirds of that money was basically spent generously. People spent it on friends, on organizations, on others, and did so with great joy. There have been lots of sort of social science experiments where, you know, social science students are given 10 or 20 bucks and you get similar types of effects. But no one had ever tried it at this kind of level. And so I think it genuinely surprised psychologists in the field. And I got a chance to speak to some of the people who received the money. Afterwards, they just said, look, I got this money and I realized it had been a gift. I ought to do the same. To me, it's just really encouraging that if people are triggered by generosity, give and you shall receive. It's actually, it's a deep part of who we are.

[Announcer]

Yeah.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And this study was published in late 2022, and it was estimated that the donation that was made had effectively created a more than 200 times multiple amount of happiness that their $2 million would have given them personally. How does one begin to equate that happiness? Dollar ratio?

[Chris Anderson]

Basically, more money does make people a bit happier, but the effect quickly tails off. You essentially have to double the amount of money. Someone has to make a noticeable difference really, to their happiness level. And so if you have money and you give it to people who don't, that is a massive amplification of happiness. And actually it actually increases your happiness. So there's that as well. So it wasn't just the 200 people who got the money and the many people who they spent money on who benefited. It was actually the donors themselves got extra happiness from it. A win, win, win, win, win.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So you have that experiment, but you really do take pains in the book to say this is not just about giving away money. It can be about giving away attention, knowledge, connections, hospitality. And I think that, you know, was kind of reassuring to me. You don't have to be loaded in order to be generous, that there are many, many ways you can share what you do have.

[Chris Anderson]

Yeah, absolutely. And especially in this connected age, I mean, how many people are there out there? Who get joy from, I don't know, sharing their art with the world or music or just storytelling or wisdom. I mean, whatever you most want to know, you can find someone who's probably devoted their life to that and is willing to share it. And I think one of the tragedies at the moment is that even though that is happening in spades online, there is so much of that it is slightly overshadowed by the uglier side of the Internet. And the book, in a way, is a plea for us to help tilt the playing field just a bit. What I think is some of the keys to that is just for people to be a little more creative and a little bolder.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Here's Chris Anderson on the TED stage.

[John Sweeney]

Many of the most beautiful gifts are gifts of time and attention and hospitality and access and just simple acts of human kindness. But all of them start right here with a generosity mindset, a willingness to pay attention to something that you wouldn't ordinarily pay attention to.

So, you know, you're walking down the street, you notice out of the corner of your eye someone in need. You know, do you turn and look at them? It's actually surprisingly uncomfortable to do that. We usually don't. John Sweeney was in this situation. John's with us from Ireland. Hello, John. A few years ago, he was walking down the street and he noticed a woman in need. He turned, he looked at her, he got in a conversation, he ended up buying her a hot drink, a hot meal. You posted about this on Facebook. That post went viral. It sparked countless acts of generosity right across Ireland from adults and children alike. Now what is it that makes something go viral? What's, you know, the first thing to say is that the difference between.

Non infectious and infectious is less than you think. The math here is really quite extraordinary. Think of it this way. If 10 people hear of an inspiring story and they're inspired to share it, on average with nine other people, that story actually will pretty quickly fizzle away. But if it's just that bit more compelling and they share it with 11 other people and that pattern continues, that story goes viral. So just a small difference in infectiousness can actually lead to a thousand fold difference in impact.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

You do suggest that people ask themselves a pretty tough question. Am I a net giver or a net taker? Basically like a sort of, you know, profit losses, bookkeeping for how you interact with the world.

[Chris Anderson]

Yes, and in a way, it's a simple thought experiment. We're all here worried about the future in different ways. If it was the case that most people in our world were net givers rather than net takers. The future is probably going to be okay. It's probably going to be wonderful. And there are many ways in which people can give and take, whether it's time. You know, as you say, many people are not in a position where they can give away a lot of money. They're struggling to get by, but they can be kind still. They can spread a little joy, they can be hospitable, they can share wisdom with other people. And there's obviously no complete way to calculate it. But I think a lot of people find that a helpful question to ask about themselves is, what does my own checklist look like? Is the work I'm doing every day, is that giving to the world, or is it extractive? Am I spending enough time generously with the people I love? Or indeed, with people who I don't yet know, but could give something to? Everyone finds their own answer to this question, but I would argue, I believe part of an individual's sense of purpose and of their own happiness to sense that they are a net giver rather than a net taker.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, it makes me think that we need more role models. And it reminds me of something you talked about in the book and in your TED Talk, which is that your mother, you said that she was a really hard act to follow.

And that that sort of weighed on you.

[Chris Anderson]

Yeah, I mean, my mother, you know, she was the Cambridge graduate who became a missionary's wife. My father was an ophthalmologist.

Went to Pakistan and then Afghanistan to do eye surgery, essentially, and in his mind, shared the love of God. And my mother went with him and worked in a little mud house and, you know, struggled to bring up kids with nothing, essentially, but did so with this spirit of deep kindness the whole time and an absolute refusal to judge anyone. So something awful would happen and we go, oof. That was terrible, terrible what she said. You can't say that. You can't say that because you don't know their story. And when you know their story, you may not want to say that.

I've certainly never got that out of my head. You know, I don't share the sort of fundamentalist religion that they had for a long time, but the notion of getting joy from a life when you're working for something bigger than you are, that I have held onto, and I just think it's profoundly true. And so, yeah, Mum passed away last year, and we miss her terribly, but her spirit lives on. And I think that's the beautiful thing about the world is that no one who really gives to the world ever really dies. What they have done will have its own ripple effects.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was Chris Anderson, the head of ted. His latest book is called Infectious the Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading. You can see his full [e-mail].

On the show today. Searching and maybe finding your bliss. And bliss, well, it can mean something completely different for a kid, right? It can be as simple as running around and exploring, which we grown ups rarely get a chance to do. But why shouldn't we? Asked photographer Stefan Chow from the ted stage in 2015.

[Stefan Chow]

China's most influential philosopher and thinker, Confucius or Kongzhi, once said, it is better to play than to do nothing. It is interesting how a man who lived 2,500 years ago still rings true to us today.

This is Jahan and Jia Han is my older daughter. When we brought her into the world, we wanted her to explore the things that we know and the things that we think we want her to learn. And most importantly, we also wanted her to play and to have fun. Just about a year ago, when Jia Han was 19 months old, we brought her to the playgrounds in Singapore and immediately she understood that the playground is a world created for her. The real world out there is a bit too complicated and too big for her. The doorknobs, the staircases are often too wide and too far away for a two year old. But then the playground is colorful, the formats are padded and there are slides that you can play around. She immediately understood that this was her world on that day itself. We brought her to six playgrounds and at the end of the day she attempted the largest slide of her life. I loved the determination on her face, that singular focus. And most importantly, there was an attitude in her that said with this I can do anything. That experience reminded me of my own experience when I was young with playgrounds. I remember when I was a child.

After school I would still be very restless and I have a lot of energy and all I would do is to go to the playgrounds, play, kick my friends off the monkey bars, and only return home when my knees and elbows are bruised and sweaty. And it also got back to me and wonder what do I make sense of this? Because since then I feel very detached from playgrounds. So as a parent and as a photographer, I decided to explore a photo project surrounding playgrounds and I decided to photograph them from the air.

We built a customized drone, put a camera on it, and then we fly up to the sky and I find an appropriate height to photograph the playground. Very often when we do the shoots at this playground, we get approached by children, by parents who are just very curious in what we are doing. I remember we were photographing one playground and a child came up to me and said, wow, you must be photographing my playground, right? I said, yes, are you photographing the seahorse? And I didn't understand him at first. But as we flew up towards the sky, I discovered that indeed there is a seahorse and there are two fishes just right in this playground. And I get reminded that we need to be looking at the final details in life, on the little tidbits in life that makes life interesting. And more importantly, this project has also helped me to see through the eyes of a child again.

And sometimes you even see playgrounds where you even have a small Mickey Mouse just looking at us. And I'm sure the original architect may not have intended for this, but everything just reveals itself when you're up in the air. Thank you very much.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was photographer Steve Stefan Chow. You can watch his full talk and see those beautiful [e-mail] thanks so much for listening to our show this week. If you liked it, if you got something out of it, please rate us on Apple or leave a comment on Spotify. We love hearing from you. This episode was produced by Matthew Cloutier, Harsha Nahada and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also also includes James Delahousy, Katie Monteleone, Phoebe Lett and Rachel Faulkner White. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Damien Herring and Simon Jensen. RC music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners, Ted, are Chris Anderson, Roxanne Hylash and Daniela Bellerezzo. I'm Manoush Zamorodi and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr.

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