It's the 10% Happier Podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, gang, today it's a conversation about how to deal with difficult emotions, difficult

feedback, and the difficult parts of your own personality.

And this approach involves something called spiritual cross-training.

If like me, you do not love the term spiritual, you can just think of it as cross-training

for your mind, for your brain.

As my guest, who is a Zen Buddhist teacher and also a professional conflict mediator, as she

will argue, it's not enough to just meditate if you have no way to apply your meditation

out in the world.

In other words, if you haven't developed any sense of interpersonal hygiene.

And said guest has tons of practical tips for getting started in meditation, which, by the way,

she argues you're already doing anyway, more on that soon. And she also has tips on how to get along better with people, including people who are saying harsh things to your face.

Diane Musho Hamilton is a longtime Zen practitioner and teacher.

Musho is her Zen name.

She is also, as mentioned, a professional dispute mediator where she helps resolve everything from

simple neighborhood disputes to complex multi-party negotiations to highly charged conversations about race, gender,

and religion. She is based in Utah, where she was raised in the Mormon or LDS Church, but she's now much more identified with Zen Buddhism.

She's also the author of many books, the latest of which is called Waking Up and Growing Up, Spiritual

Cross Training for an Evolving World, which she co-authored with Gabriel Wilson. That book

actually comes out in a few weeks, but you can pre-order it now. In this conversation, we talk

about what she means by spiritual cross-training. We talk about cultivating emotional maturity,

...