10% Happier with Dan Harris

A Buddhist Secret for Calm, Energy, and Handling Obnoxious People | Trudy Goodman

October 1, 2025

Key Takeaways Copied to clipboard!

  • Learning to trust yourself is a trainable skill that can lead to increased calm, equanimity, and energy, despite the Buddhist concept of the self being an illusion. 
  • Awakening (or enlightenment) is not a future destination but is accessible now by being fully present and aware of the current moment's contents, rather than being caught in spinning stories of the past or future. 
  • Cultivating joy and tenderness, alongside basic mindfulness, is essential for steadying the heart in uncertain times and counteracting the cultural disconnection that fuels anxiety and loneliness. 
  • Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield have released a course on relationships, which will be available on both their websites. 
  • Dan Harris is planning future collaborations with Trudy Goodman, potentially including Jack Kornfield, and is promoting an upcoming in-person Meditation Party at the Omega Institute. 
  • Paid subscribers to Dan Harris's platform receive a custom guided meditation focused on cultivating the skill of trusting yourself, led by the teacher of the month, Sebene Selassie. 

Segments

Why Trusting Self Matters
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(00:00:36)
  • Key Takeaway: Trusting oneself is a crucial trainable skill for women navigating a world that historically did not celebrate their accomplishments.
  • Summary: Trudy Goodman chose self-trust as the topic because, as a woman of her generation, learning to trust her perceptions was vital both professionally and personally. She notes that not trusting intuition can lead to negative outcomes, citing a personal experience in her last marriage. For meditation practitioners, trust in sensory experience is fundamental to practice.
Redefining Enlightenment and Awakening
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(00:07:50)
  • Key Takeaway: Enlightenment is not about eliminating negative emotions but about not being identified with or clinging to them, and it is accessible now.
  • Summary: Trudy suggests that for women, the traditional Buddhist defilements (greed, hate, delusion) manifest as low self-esteem, anxiety, and self-doubt. True awakening means trusting that the present moment contains all the ingredients needed to be fully awake, viewing life as fleeting like a dream or flickering lamp. An awakened state is characterized by not being caught in the spinning stories of the head, even while experiencing human emotions.
Awareness, Tenderness, and Self-Love
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(00:20:27)
  • Key Takeaway: The next step after basic awareness is infusing that awareness with tenderness and kindness, which naturally arises from recognizing shared humanity.
  • Summary: Pope Francis’s call for a ‘revolution of tenderness’ aligns with the need to infuse awareness with kindness. Recognizing shared vulnerability and humanity causes the barriers to compassion to fall away. Self-love is defined as self-respect, which prevents self-harm, contrasting sharply with narcissism or self-cherishing (being selfishly self-referential).
Intuition vs. Fear and Bias
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(00:34:32)
  • Key Takeaway: Trusting intuition requires being present enough to hear it, and discerning it from fear or ingrained bias requires community feedback.
  • Summary: Trudy shared a near-fatal experience where overriding a distinct intuitive warning led to a broken back, and a life-saving instance where she heeded her body’s reluctance to get in a car. Distinguishing intuition from fear requires paying attention to subtle bodily signals, and distinguishing it from bias requires community input to call out blind spots.
Opinions, Values, and Community
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(00:46:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Trusting oneself includes having the confidence to be curious about opposing views while remaining firm on core values like the unacceptability of cruelty.
  • Summary: In polarized times, self-trust allows one to venture outside one’s echo chamber (like listening to Tucker Carlson) without losing conviction in core values, such as the belief that cruelty is uncool. This practice helps differentiate between flexible opinions and non-negotiable values. Healthy community is vital because members can honestly call out one’s biases, preventing self-gaslighting.
Forgiveness and Self-Trust
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(01:04:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Trusting yourself means allowing yourself to fully feel painful emotions like anger before attempting forgiveness, preventing toxic spiritual bypassing.
  • Summary: Rushing to forgive can be toxic if it means jumping over necessary feelings like anger or betrayal, which is a form of self-gaslighting. Trusting yourself allows you to honor the reason those difficult emotions exist and feel them fully until they inevitably change. Only then can one genuinely assess readiness for forgiveness, which may involve empathy for the perpetrator’s own suffering rather than absolving the act itself.
Book Publication and Future Plans
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(01:11:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Trudy Goodman is working on a book that she humorously suggests might be published posthumously, but she confirms she will return to the podcast when it releases.
  • Summary: Trudy Goodman is currently writing a book, prompting a lighthearted exchange about its potential publication timeline. She accepted the invitation to return to the ‘10% Happier with Dan Harris’ podcast upon the book’s release. They also discussed the possibility of a future conversation involving Trudy, Dan, and Jack Kornfield at Dan’s 80th birthday party.
Relationship Course Promotion
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(01:11:53)
  • Key Takeaway: Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield recently released a course focused on relationships, accessible via their respective websites.
  • Summary: A new course on relationships, created by Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield, is now available. Listeners can find access to this course on both Trudy’s website and Jack Kornfield’s website (jackcornfield.com). Dan Harris committed to including direct links to this resource in the show notes for the episode ‘A Buddhist Secret for Calm, Energy, and Handling Obnoxious People | Trudy Goodman’.
Closing Remarks and Gratitude
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(01:12:20)
  • Key Takeaway: The conversation concluded with mutual appreciation between Dan Harris and Trudy Goodman, followed by acknowledgments of the production team.
  • Summary: Both Dan Harris and Trudy Goodman expressed significant enjoyment of their conversation. Dan thanked Trudy, calling her amazing, and reiterated his appreciation for her insights. The segment transitioned into thanking the production staff responsible for the episode.
Paid Subscriber Benefits and Meditation
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(01:12:33)
  • Key Takeaway: Paid subscribers receive a custom guided meditation from the teacher of the month, Sebene Selassie, titled ‘How to Listen to Yourself,’ which focuses on cultivating self-trust.
  • Summary: Subscribers to danharris.com receive a custom guided meditation accompanying this episode, provided by Sebene Selassie. This specific meditation is titled ‘How to Listen to Yourself’ and is designed to help cultivate the skill of trusting oneself. Paid subscribers also gain access to weekly live guided meditations and Q&A sessions every Tuesday at 4 PM Eastern.
In-Person Meditation Event
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(01:13:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Dan Harris is hosting an in-person Meditation Party at the Omega Institute the weekend of October 24th, featuring Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren.
  • Summary: Listeners interested in meditating in person can attend the Meditation Party at the Omega Institute. This event is scheduled for the weekend of October 24th. Dan Harris will be joined by Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren for this gathering.
Show Credits and Theme Music
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(01:13:15)
  • Key Takeaway: The production team for the ‘10% Happier with Dan Harris’ podcast includes producers Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasily, with theme music by Nick Thorburn.
  • Summary: The producers credited for the show are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasily, with Lauren Smith serving as managing producer and Marissa Schneiderman as senior producer. Recording and engineering are managed by Pod People. DJ Cashmere is the executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands composed the theme music.
Lexus Advertisement
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(01:13:55)
  • Key Takeaway: Lexus is promoting its Golden Opportunity Sales Event, offering deals on select luxury models through September 2nd, emphasizing the feeling an automobile evokes.
  • Summary: The advertisement promotes the Lexus Golden Opportunity Sales Event, which runs through September 2nd. This event features offers on various select luxury models. The core message emphasizes that the true measure of an automobile is the feeling it provides to the driver.