This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody how we doing. How we doing? So much human suffering is caused by the fact that we are stuck in our heads, captured by our thoughts,

suckered by our habitual rumination and ancient storylines.

Today we're going to talk about the science of getting out of your head,

of escaping what is called the brain's default mode network,

which my guests today refer to as the House of Habit.

Of course we need our default mode our capacity to behave habitually in order to

survive and in order to brush our teeth and tie our shoes without

undue cognitive demands. But if you are stuck in the default mode, you are missing out

on quite a bit and you are susceptible to many, many varieties of suffering

and unhappiness.

My guests today are Dr. Zindel-Siegel and Professor Norman Farb. They have a new book out called Better in Every Sense, and in it they describe

something they call Sense Foraging, which is a simple but very powerful practice designed

to use our senses to turn down the more noxious aspects of the default mode network

like being overly focused on ourselves or not receptive to change or newness in the world around us.

We talk about what sense foraging is exactly and how it can help us go from languishing

to flourishing, how shutting down our senses can make us more vulnerable to depression,

the differences and similarities between sense foraging and mindfulness, why counterintuitively

most of us could use a little bit more chaos in our lives,

how radical acceptance can be a starting point for sense foraging,

and the nine simple rules to sense foraging.

Just a little bit more about our guests before we dive in.

Dr. Zindel-Siegel is a distinguished professor of psychology in mood disorders at the University

...