PODCAST reviews

HIDDEN BRAIN

Episode: “A Better Way to Worry”

“Our stock response when we hear a blaring alarm is to do one of two things,” host Shankar Vedantam says. “Turn it off or run in the opposite direction.” In this fascinating conversation with clinical psychologist and Future Tense author Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, Vedantam explores what happens when we engage with our internal alarms with curiosity. DennisTiwary offers a third response to a blaring alarm in your mind: Anxiety doesn’t need to be soothed. Instead, it can be honored. The paradox of anxiety, Dennis-Tiwary says, is that when you unpack the information anxiety presents, and take wise action based on that information, anxiety dissipates. – KR

ON BEING WITH KRISTA TIPPETT

Episode: adrienne maree brown, “We are in a time of new suns.”

Awe

The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

Dacher Keltner • Penguin Press

WORKWELL

This friendly conversation between host Krista Tippett and influential author and steward of compassionate change adrienne maree brown is abundant with wisdom for our times. brown is a deep believer in the power of imagination to change the world, but also a realist about the challenges before humanity right now. The way Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic and Unlocking Happiness at Work, says we need an “ecosystems approach” to burnout. “There’s certain personalities at risk of burnout for sure,” she says, “But then there’s also organizations that need to play a role.” In this discussion with Deloitte Chief Well-Being Officer Jen Fisher, Moss ac- she navigates the duality of hope and anxiety with grace in this conversation offers a strong reminder that we can hold space for both at once. She says, “We have no idea what we could be, but everything that we have been is falling apart. So it’s time to change. And we can be mindful about that. That’s exciting.” – AWC

Episode: “Understanding and Overcoming Burnout with Jennifer Moss” knowledges that shifting the entrenched causes of burnout is a tall order for managers. Still, she says, making “tiny, incremental changes” based on listening and empathy, that give employees greater agency and flexibility, can help a lot. So can the compassionate boundaries we choose for ourselves, to savor our whole lives, not just our jobs. – AT

“Awe is about our relation to the vast mysteries of life,” writes Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor, researcher, and founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Amidst the positive psychology-led study of various emotions, awe—that expansive feeling we get from watching a baby take their first steps, or singing with a choir, or gazing into a dark sky rich with stars—was long ignored, until Keltner began investigating its significance. What he has learned over the last nearly two decades, and what he shares in this book, is vital to the science of human flourishing. “How does awe transform us? By quieting the nagging, selfcritical, overbearing, status-conscious voice of our self, or ego, and empowering us to collaborate, to open our minds to wonders, and to see the deep patterns of life.” Awe itself represents one such pattern: Through collecting “awe stories” from 2,600 people around the world, his research team found that we all share similar sources of awe (e.g. nature, moral goodness, birth and death), regardless of factors like culture and language.

Keltner’s book explores awe from four perspectives: the scientific, the personal, the cultural, and “the growth that awe can bring us when we face hardship, uncertainty, loss, and the unknown.” Awe is self-transcendent, reducing activity in the brain region that perceives ourselves as separate and self-interested. If we were instead more in touch with our “small self,” the self that exists within a wondrous universe, how would our orientation to purpose change? Our sense of love and belonging? What societal transformation would be within reach? Keltner takes us through all these and more possibilities in this book that is not only scientifically rigorous, but heartfelt and thoroughly inspiring. – AT

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3 Practices To Come Home To Yourself

Between our inner critic and external messages about what a “good” body looks, feels, and acts like, we can be so hard on ourselves. But our bodies do so much for us. With this practice, we take a moment to offer gratitude for the body that will accompany us through life. Elaine Smookler guides a lighthearted and compassionate body scan to bring a spirit of curiosity and appreciation to what’s happening in our body right now.

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When we try to ignore or push away strong emotions, they have a tendency to hang around uninvited in our tense shoulders, shallow breathing, and tight jaws. With this practice from Sharon Salzberg, we gently turn toward uncomfortable sensations and feelings. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but when we bring nonjudgmental awareness to difficult emotions, we can see how they arise, change, and go.

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to Remind Yourself That You Are Enough

Self-criticism and doubt does a number on most of us at many points in our lives (and in some cases, at many points throughout a typical day). Finding our way back to compassionate connection with ourselves is often a winding and unpredictable path, but it can begin here. In this practice, Jenée Johnson guides us through five affirmations that can help us let go of comparison and remember our inherent worthiness. – AWC ●