The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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There we go. Great. So hello and welcome everyone to this edition of Happy Hour,

lovely to be with you. So for today's practice I wanted to bring in this idea that we always bring in actually at the end especially when we do a dedication of merit that we do this practice not just for our own sake, but we do this practice, the practice of cultivating our hearts, our minds, towards kindness, mindfulness, awareness, equanimity, all these beautiful qualities of the heart

that we do it not just for ourselves, but we do it for others.

For those we are entangled, those we are those we love, those we care about,

our friends, our family, those we are entangled with and all beings everywhere. We do this practice

not just for ourselves but for others and there's a beautiful aspiration in both doing it for ourselves and for others.

There's so much goodness in that.

So I recently heard some research actually and let's see if I can quickly find the name of the researcher I was necessarily going to talk about it, but now I feel inspired.

Yes, David Yeager, Dr David Yeager, who's done a lot of research on this and the one of the aspects of the research it shows that

not just for meditation but for worldly actions one way to to help motivate

ourselves and especially motivate young people in the world.

It's not just the benefit that they get out of it, not only that for example they'll graduate

and they'll have high-paying jobs or whatever it might be but that that their work

their their study their cultivation of skills is of benefit to others is benefit to greater good and as I was listening to this

research I thought yes of course yes and especially his research shows that when

things are tough if if we're just doing it for

our own sake and and their challenges or maybe there is a lack of success and and

there's a different mind makes a different kind of meaning out of it that oh you know I failed and and when it's personal when it's

feels more perhaps personal and just for myself or maybe selfish,

it has a different orientation.

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