An Antidote to Overwhelm and Anger | Father Gregory Boyle

This is the Ten Percent Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing today? These divided and polarized times in which we are living present some really thorny dilemmas.

How not to fall into overwhelm and despair, how to stand up for what you believe in without coiling into toxic rage, how to have compassion without being a doormat. My guest today has had a massive impact on my own life, both as it pertains to the political figures with whom I disagree, and also as it pertains to the people in my personal orbit with whom I have beef. Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who argues that we should move past our reflexive judgments and past our reductive concepts of good and evil and instead focus on whether the person whose behavior we are evaluating is healthy or not. Using that frame, he argues, you can learn how to resist without vilifying.

Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. It's the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. In 2024, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is America's highest civilian honor, and which was richly deserved, in my opinion. Father Boyle has written several books, including Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, and his latest, which is called Cherished Belonging. In this conversation we talk about Father Boyle's unique understanding of God, one that even an agnostic like me can get behind, how to build communities as a way to counteract polarization.

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