It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, hey, everybody. How we doing?

When you are exhorted to love your enemies, which is a common Hey, hey, everybody, how we doing?

When you are exhorted to love your enemies, which is a common Buddhist refrain, you may hear it as an appeasement.

Images of Neville Chamberlain might come to mind.

You might be tempted to think that loving your enemies means hurling yourself at their feet or co-signing on their terrible ideas.

But actually, it's nothing like that at all.

Loving your enemies turns out to be the wisest and most strategic possible countermeasure.

Not only psychologically, in that it can help reduce your anger and anxiety, but also,

as I said, strategically, in that it can help you make better decisions.

As you might imagine, this is a conversation I have to have all the time, since I'm often out in the public square,

making the case for love and compassion in a world that is filled with hatred and division.

When I make this case, just to be super clear about this, I am absolutely not arguing that you should go soft or be a dormant.

I'm arguing that you can take really firm and even stern action, but, and this is the key, that action does not have to be motivated by hatred or anger.

Sure, some amount of anger can be clarifying or energizing. It gets you off the couch, but it can very quickly curdle into a kind of constricted state. There's a reason they call

it blind rage. By contrast, there's some scientific evidence that a state of warmth or loving

kindness actually increases your peripheral vision. So that's what I want for you in these difficult times.

To be able to stand up for what you believe in,

but to do it from a place where you're drawing on the cleanest burning fuel,

which is love, as cliched as that may sound.

Which brings me to my guest today,

who's one of the most effective proponents of this argument in the world.

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