How To Handle Dilemmas, Drift, Indecision, and Difficult People | Gretchen Rubin

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing? I say this all the time, but it bears repeating. One of the hardest parts about self-improvement or getting happier or spiritual growth, whatever you want to call it, one of the hardest parts is remembering to do all the smart shit you hear about on podcasts or read about in books, remembering to actually do all that stuff.

Because we we listen to a podcast or we watch a great video or we uh read a great book. And then we go back into our lives and we're just, you know, drifting along on the very powerful habit patterns. I suspect you might relate to this. You get your mind blown by a scintillating conversation or a fascinating read, but then you get sucked back into the habit patterns of daily life and boom, the wisdom evaporates. In my experience, one of the best ways to counteract this is to have memorable little phrases that capture the wisdom and pop it into your mind just at the moment when you need it.

This is a a technique that my longtime meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, uses. He has these little catchphrases like dead end or is this useful? And they become earworms in the most positive sense of that term. They arise in my mind often at exactly the right moment. So now comes my old friend.

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