This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing?

Of all the interviews I have done recently this one

the one you're about to hear has lodged in my cranium more prominently

than perhaps any other interview.

Dr David Ross Marion is an associate professor

at Harvard Medical School

and he's the founder of the Center for Anxiety,

which side note sounds like a super fun place.

Dr. Russ Marion's thesis is that anxiety is,

and these are his words, a gift and a blessing.

He contends that it is possible not only

to manage your anxiety, but also to thrive with it.

His view is that a major contributor to the current epidemic of anxiety that we're

seeing in our culture is that we have grown increasingly uncomfortable and intolerant of discomfort.

But discomfort of course is a non-negotiable part of being alive.

So how do we get more comfortable with being uncomfortable? how do we thrive with anxiety?

We're going to talk about all of that with David Russ Marin, plus the difference between stress

and anxiety, the role of medication in all of this, how anxiety can be transmuted into love and the spiritual aspects of anxiety.

David is just out with a new book called Thriving with Anxiety, Nine Tools to Make Your Anxiety

Work for You. I got an enormous amount out of this

conversation and I suspect you will as well. A heads up before we get started

...