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

Hey, gang, how we doing? This is a conversation between two journalists who cover, and I'm never quite sure what to call this, health and wellness, mental fitness, doing life better, whatever. Anyway, my guest and I both cover this stuff for a living, and today we're going to lift the curtain on the easy and evidence-based strategies that work for us in our own lives.

Mariel Sagata is a reporter and also the host of NPR's Life Kit, the award-winning podcast and radio show that is a dispensary of carefully vetted and non-judgmental tips to help you navigate your life. In this conversation,

we talk about how and why Mariel got interested in this stuff, exercise and sleep tips that

Mariel has incorporated into her own life, something called revenge, bedtime procrastination,

an expression I love and resonate with, sadly, and we'll also talk about how to work with it.

We talk about some key learnings from Ariel's experience with cancer. The link between fitness and

play, and why play is actually very important for human flourishing, how to assess how much play

you're getting and some tips for getting more of it. And the very subtle but

important question of letting go of outcomes, in other words, not pursuing all of this stuff with so

much of an agenda and actually enjoying the process, which is easier said than done for many of us.

Just to say, before we dive in here, this episode is part of our month-long Get Fit Sainly series where we cover all aspects of physical health and wellness through the lens of mindfulness and self-compassion.

Our little tagline is take care of your body without losing your mind.

For the first time ever, we are now offering bespoke meditations to accompany every episode just for paid subscribers over on dan harris dot com my substack

just a little context here for years behind the scenes in my little organization we've we've

talked about what we call the lecture lab model where the podcast is like a lecture in college

and the subscription product is like the lab where you get to practice the stuff.

We are finally, finally working to effectuate that vision. So we'd love your feedback as we

give this a try. The companion meditation for today's episode is all about the issue of letting

go of outcomes, which I talked about a few seconds ago. The meditation is guided by my friend Karalai, who's a phenomenal

Dharma teacher and who's also very funny. In her introduction to the meditation, she talks about

how we are so often driven by an unconscious agenda. We're doing this thing in order to get to the

...