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

Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing today?

My guests today are going to make a case that is both enticing and I suspect for some of you a little bit hard to swallow, at least initially, because my guests will present a radical antidote to the anger and overwhelm that so many of us feel these days.

Potentially hard to swallow, though, because said antidote is compassion.

Many people wince when you argue for compassion these days.

I hear this all the time.

You know, why should I develop my own capacity for warmth when what's truly needed is for

other people to be nicer?

My guests will argue convincingly in my view that a basic understanding of both modern

science and ancient Buddhism leads inexorably to compassion as the medicine for what ails you.

It doesn't make you weak.

It doesn't make you a dormant.

It makes you happier and

healthier. My guests are John McCransky, who's a professor of Buddhism and comparative theology

at Boston College, and he's also an ordained Tibetan Buddhist Lama, and Paul Condon, an associate

professor of psychology at Southern Oregon University and a research fellow at the Mind and Life Institute.

Together, John and Paul have written a book called How Compassion Works, in which they lay out how to practice what they call

sustainable compassion training. There are lots of incredibly useful little nuggets in this conversation.

We talk about their sales pitch for compassion, even at a time when, as stated earlier, most of us really want other people to be nicer.

The connection between attachment theory and compassion, why compassion is your natural state, how their model helps you access warmth without forcing it, and how to apply compassion

practice to burnout, conflict, and difficult emotions.

I should say if you want to learn more about how to apply compassion to your daily life,

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