How To Handle Toxic Thoughts | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What to do when the voice in your head is an asshole.

Sebene Selassie is an author and meditation teacher. She writes the popular newsletter remind me to love and her first book is called, You Belong.

Jeff Warren is an author and meditation teacher. He writes the popular newsletter Home Base and is the coauthor, along with Dan, of a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And he is the co-host of the mind/bod adventure pod.

Aaron Schultz aka DJ DRM has crisscrossed the globe for decades playing his own unique brand of dance music. Aaron is also a longtime meditator and Dharma practitioner in the Dharma Drum lineage of Chan Buddhism, and is a passionate devotee of GuanYin Bodhisattva.

In this episode we talk about:

How to relate to sticky stories and emotions
How to face unpleasant feelings
The 5 hindrances (that’s a Buddhist list of the main problems that arise in meditation) and how sneaky they can be
The potential pitfalls of a “good sit”
The role of right effort in meditation
How expectations make us suffer
Neurodivergence
Working with shame (and how it differs from wise remorse)
The connection between dancing and the Dharma (and why Dan is too self-conscious to dance)

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On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here!

Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:19.4	Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing? Today, we're going to talk about how to handle it with a voice in your head is an asshole.
0:28.0	The ego can be a hatchery of all sorts of nasty beasts, self-criticism, self-aggrandizement, shame, desire, distraction, rage.
0:37.4	I could go on, but the real
0:39.6	question is, what do you do about it? My guests today are meditation teachers, also close friends
0:46.0	personally, Seminace Salasi, and Jeff Warren. Seb is the author of a book called You Belong.
0:51.5	Jeff and I co-authored a book called Meditation for Fidgeti Skeptics. Jeff is also the co-host of a podcast called You Belong. Jeff and I co-authored a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics.
0:55.0	Jeff is also the co-host of a podcast called the Mind Bod Adventure Pod.
0:59.9	In this conversation, we talk about how to handle the voice in your head, how to relate to
1:03.8	sticky stories and emotions, how to face unpleasant feelings.
1:08.0	We talk about a Buddhist list called the Five Hindrances.
1:12.2	Those are the five main problems that tend to arise in meditation and how to deal with them. We talk about the
1:17.5	potential pitfalls of a good sit, the role of what's called right effort in meditation, how hard
1:24.1	should you try, how expectations make us suffer, neurodivergence, working with
1:30.1	shame and how shame differs from wise remorse, and the connection between dancing and the
1:37.2	Dharma and why I am often too self-conscious to dance. This conversation was recorded live at the
1:42.9	annual meditation party retreat that Jeff Zeb
1:45.3	and I co-host.
1:46.3	We've got another one coming up at the end of October, October 24th through 26th at the
1:51.5	Omega Institute in upstate New York.
1:53.3	You can sign up at e-omega.org.
1:56.2	I will put a link in the show notes.
	...

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