This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, gang. Okay. I have a lot to say in the introduction to this episode. This is a personal episode today, but don't worry. It's also very practical. You're going to hear me talk about what I learned about issues such as focus, feedback, the disutility of shame or self-criticism, and the value of expecting adversity, even though we all

want life to be an unbroken upward trajectory of seamless progress. These are all things that I learned,

or perhaps more accurately, relearned, when I was forced to reset or restart or resuscitate

my career last year.

Just let me step back for a second and give you some context.

Last year at around this time, I went public and announced that I was separating from the

meditation app that I co-founded.

That separation process was among the most difficult things that I have experienced as a

grown up.

It lasted three years. It brought up

all sorts of issues for me, including anger and anxiety and more. And yes, I will fully acknowledge

the fact that having a business divorce was one of the most difficult things in my life is proof

that my life has been charmed and privileged. I own that. And yet it was really hard.

The end result was that I left the app

that I had long considered to me my baby and restarted a new subscription service over on substack

called Dan Harris.com. A huge thank you to all of you who signed up for that thing. In the last year,

we've accumulated more than 200,000 followers,

many, many thousands of whom are actually paying, which allows me to pay my staff and pay all

the meditation teachers who contribute content. So I'm immensely grateful. And I should add that I'm

grateful not only to all of you, but also to the incredible people who work on my team,

one of whom you're going to hear from today.

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