This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, hey, how we doing? So today we're going to talk about some quick and simple practices from neuroscience and

Buddhism designed to rewire your brain, change your genes, transform the annoying little

tasks you have to do every day, and boost your overall okayness quotient.

I've got two guests today. My guests are Richard Davidson,

PhD. Everybody calls him Richie. In my view, Richie is truly a historic figure. He's the neuroscientist

who pioneered the research into what meditation does to your brain. He's a professor of

psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,

where he also founded an incredible center called the Center for Healthy Minds. Ritchie has a new book

called Born to Flourish, which he co-authored with my other guest today, Cortland Dahl, PhD,

who is a scientist, author, translator, and meditation teacher. In this conversation, we talk

about what it really means to flourish, how difficult emotions such as anxiety, fear, or grief

can actually coexist with well-being. Why flourishing is a trainable set of skills, not a

personality trade or a self-improvement project.

We get an introduction to the Healthy Minds Framework and its four pillars, Awareness, Connection, Insight and Purpose.

We talk about why short informal micro practices, free-range meditation, as I sometimes call it,

can actually, according to the data, be just as effective as formal meditation.

And we talk about how to cultivate purpose, which is a really important contributor to overall mental health.

Real quick, before we dive in, I just want to put in a plug for my new app, 10% with Dan Harris.

We've built a really awesome community of people who believe that

taking care of your own mind is essential if you want to do good things in the world.

I think about it as an upward spiral. You train your mind, which makes you happier and less

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