Why You Always Want More, And How To Fix It | Michael Easter

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Learning how to thrive with enough.

Michael Easter is the New York Times bestselling author of Scarcity Brain and The Comfort Crisis. He also shares his ideas on his popular newsletter, 2% with Michael Easter.

In this episode we talk about:

The evolutionary roots of overconsumption
The challenges of having an ancient brains in a modern world
The Scarcity mindset vs. the abundance mindset
Understanding what Michael calls the "scarcity loop" – and how to apply it to daily life
Tactical ways to work with habits and cravings
Understanding the scarcity loop, how it hooks us, and then how you can unhook using that same loop
And How's Michael's life changed after researching this book
Toward the end, we talk about Michael's previous book, the comfort crisis—and some Practical steps for embracing discomfort

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:08.0	Hello, everybody. How we doing? One of the primary bugs in the human operating system, one of our most annoying design flaws, is that we are insatiable. As the meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to ask people, how many great meals have you had, how many promotions have you earned? How many vacations have you taken?
0:44.8	And are you done yet? Of course not. And in this way, the pursuit of happiness, enshrined in America's founding documents, can become the source of your unhappiness. How did we get this way?
0:50.9	And what can we do about it? That's what we're talking about today with
0:54.2	the journalist Michael Easter. He's a journalist and also an author. He wrote a book called
0:59.0	Scarcity Brain. In this conversation, we talk about the evolutionary roots of overconsumption,
1:05.0	the challenges of having ancient brains in a modern world, the scarcity mindset versus the
1:10.7	abundance mindset, understanding what world, the scarcity mindset, versus the abundance mindset,
1:12.4	understanding what Michael calls the scarcity loop and how to apply it in your daily life,
1:17.0	tactical ways to work with habits and cravings, understanding the scarcity loop, how it hooks you,
1:23.0	and then how you can unhook using that same loop, and how Michael's life changed after researching this book.
1:30.8	Plus, toward the end of the conversation, we also talk about one of Michael's previous books,
1:34.9	which is called The Comfort Crisis and some practical steps for embracing discomfort in your life.
1:41.9	A few things to say before we dive in. As always, there's a guided meditation
1:45.1	that comes with this episode. It was designed by our teacher of the month, Christiana Wolf. It's all
1:50.2	about how to decrease your resistance to what's happening in your life. She has a very clever way
1:55.4	of teaching this, a kind of jujitsu move. These meditations, as you may know, are for paying
1:59.9	subscribers over at danharris.com. So you should sign up. If youitations, as you may know, are for paying subscribers over at Dan Harris.com.
2:02.0	So you should sign up.
2:03.5	If you do, you will get access as well to our weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions.
2:08.6	You can meditate with hundreds and hundreds of us live.
2:11.7	The next one is coming up on Tuesday, December 2nd at 4 p.m. Eastern.
	...

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