Name: 10% Happier
Rating: 4.3 (320 reviews)
Author: Dan Harris

What’s in it for me? Learn to manage your ego and in turn, better manage your life.

How many times have you become overwhelmed by emotions – so completely ruled by them – that in anger or desperation, you make a terrible decision that you later end up regretting?

Or how many times has something as simple as “waking up on the wrong side of the bed” completely ruined what could have been an otherwise pleasant day?

These blinks will show you how you can manage your emotions through meditation. In them, the author shares his own compelling personal anecdotes so you can better understand that the ancient art of meditation is far more than a new-age fad – it can truly change your life.

In fact, recent scientific studies have shown that mindfulness and meditation can have profound effects on your mental and physical health, and thus your well-being.

Meditating can even make you more productive – regardless of how you live your life – by helping you conquer your ego and manage your emotions.

In the following blinks, you’ll also discover:

why being selfish isn’t such a bad thing;
why you sometimes find yourself gazing into the fridge without being hungry; and
how meditation might save you from suffering a heart attack.

The ego is your inner narrator, or your sense of “I.” It’s the voice that tells you what to do.

We hear the word “ego” quite often. Your spouse might call you egotistical; your best friend is egocentric; and armchair philosophers invoke Freudian buzzwords, blaming personal shortcomings on the ego.

But the ego is far more nuanced than we give it credit for. In our everyday interactions, we often refer to the ego as the source of pride, conceit and amour propre, or self-love.

To most, the ego is the source of behavior that is self-serving or unconcerned with the well-being of others. To Freud, the ego represents a psychological mechanism that mediates between our morality and our base desires.

But these definitions of ego still don’t get to the heart of the matter. We can talk about deep desire or fiery pride, but we still can’t explain what’s going on in our heads when we do strange things like open the fridge without actually being hungry.

A better way to think of your ego – and certainly one that offers you the most insight into your behavior – is as the voice in your head.

Your ego comments on your actions and behavior from the moment you open your eyes in the morning until you drift off to sleep at night, telling you what to do and what not to do.

This isn’t the kind of “voice in your head” that is attributed to psychosis. Rather, you can think of it as a voice that manifests through your thoughts.

For example, your ego is the voice that tells you “I’m way too tired for the gym” even when you know that you could really stand to break a sweat. It’s what makes you obsessively check your emails a thousand times per day, or gaze into the refrigerator even when you aren’t hungry.

As you’ll see, the ego is responsible for a great deal of what you do. Luckily, taking steps to rein your ego in can make us happier and healthier.

Your ego’s ravenous hunger for more can never be satiated. It will always push you further.

The ego is never satisfied. It will always want, it will never be content and it will never be perfectly happy.

By design, the ego will always want more than it already has. When the ego is “fed” a new thing, this simply resets the baseline for desire; and immediately, the ego begins reaching for something more.

Control your ego by practicing mindfulness and becoming more compassionate toward others.

When we practice meditation, we learn a valuable skill called mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the ability to respond – and not react – to our surroundings as well as our impulses.

You don’t need to lose your edge or become a pushover when you tame your ego.

Some people dread the Buddhist concept of “letting go,” as they see it as going soft or becoming ineffective – an act of capitulation.

For example, the American author and psychotherapist Marc Epstein often recounts the story of his Buddhist patients who denied themselves orgasms during sex or refused to place an order themselves at restaurants as a means of not expressing personal preference.

Meditation is a simple way to increase mindfulness and compassion in everyday life.

At this point, we’ve talked quite a lot about meditation. But what is it exactly?

In essence, when you meditate, you sit comfortably and focus on your own breath.

Meditation does a body good, helping curb the effects of stress and even disease.

Meditation is not only good for the mind; it also can have profound positive effects on the body.

Humans still haven’t shed the “fight or flight” instinct, triggered in times of danger. While modern life has changed our daily threats, however, from prowling tigers to highway traffic, how stress affects our body hasn’t changed. Constant stimulation keeps us in a state of overload, which causes high levels of toxic stress chemicals to accumulate in our blood.

Accept your negative emotions, then separate yourself from them through non-identification.

Meditation, however, is not a cure-all. So what should you do to help stem the influence of negative emotions?

Psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher Tara Brach suggests that you simply acknowledge your negative feelings – that is, admit that you’re experiencing them, rather than deny them.

10% Happier summary