How To Live Well—Even Amidst Failure, Uncertainty, Loss, and Physical Pain | Kieran Setiya

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

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Practical ways to lead a good life.

Kieran Setiya is the Peter de Florez Professor of Philosophy at MIT, where he works on ethics and related questions about human agency and human knowledge. He is the author of Midlife: A Philosophical Guide and Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. He also maintains a Substack newsletter, Under the Net.

In this episode we talk about:

How Kieran became interested in practical philosophy (and philosophy more generally)
A brief history of philosophy
The connection between philosophy and self-help
Whether Buddhism is a philosophy?
The upside of missing out (as opposed to FOMO)
Kieran's mild beef with the Stoics
techniques for dealing with grief and loss
Why living well is not the same as feeling happy
The connection between Plato, Aristotle and contemporary influencers today
How to deal with physical adversity
Navigating failure
Kieran's case for meditation
Operationalizing the cliché of "enjoying the process" rather than the outcome
How to deal with the injustices of the world

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:18.9	Hey, hey, how we doing everybody?
0:27.2	I think a common assumption that many of us, myself included, might make, is that a good life definitionally excludes things like failure, chronic pain, grief, uncertainty, etc., etc.
0:34.5	But for millennia, philosophers have been thinking often in very practical ways
0:39.5	about how you can lead a good life that includes all of the aforementioned vexations.
0:47.0	Kieran Sedia is a professor of philosophy at MIT. He's written a couple of books, including
0:52.0	Midlife, a philosophical guide, and life is hard, how philosophy can help us find our way.
0:59.3	In this conversation, we talk about how Kieran got interested in practical philosophy and in philosophy more generally.
1:05.7	We do a brief history of philosophy, what's it for, the connection between philosophy and self-help, whether Buddhism
1:12.1	is a philosophy, the upside of missing out as opposed to FOMO, Kieran's mild beef with the Stoics,
1:19.6	techniques for dealing with grief and loss, while living well is not the same as feeling happy,
1:24.9	the connection between Plato, Aristotle, and the contemporary
1:29.2	influencers of today, how to deal with physical adversity, how to navigate failure,
1:34.9	Kieran's case for meditation, operationalizing the cliche of enjoying the process rather than
1:40.4	always lurching toward outcomes, and how to deal with injustice in the world.
1:46.5	This is the final week of our ambitious month-long series that we've been calling the reset.
1:51.4	Every week this month, we've been tackling one area of your life where a reset may be in order.
1:57.2	Last week, it was all about resetting your life and career this week.
2:00.6	It's about your relationship with change and uncertainty in the future. week, it was all about resetting your life and career. This week, it's about
2:01.1	your relationship with change and uncertainty in the future. Today, it's Kieran, and coming up on
2:06.6	Wednesday, the great Bray Brown. Today's episode comes with a custom-guided meditation called
2:11.3	How to Live with Loss. It comes from our teacher of the month, Vinnie Ferraro, who has certainly
	...

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