This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, hey, how we doing, everybody? In my opinion, open-mindedness or intellectual humility is not valued nearly as highly as it should be in our culture.

Look around you. We seem to reward people for conviction, even when they're dead wrong. And when I hear people talk about the aspects of their

personality that they want to improve, usually it has to do with anxiety or addiction or

self-compassion or motivation. Rarely do I ever hear anybody embracing the aspiration to reduce

their clinging to their views and opinions. But the case for this is super strong.

Open-mindedness has been shown to reduce depression and anxiety and increase life satisfaction.

It can also mitigate conflict and create more highly functioning teams that produce better ideas.

Studies have shown that curiosity and openness are the key to both successful startups and American presidencies.

The Buddhists have been making the case for open-mindedness, or what the Zen people call don't-know mind, for millennia.

So today we've got a trio of meditation maestroes who are going to talk about the benefits of

acknowledging when you're wrong and the skill of developing a mind that does not grasp so

tightly at your opinions. We will also talk about whether openness and decisiveness can coexist,

which is a tricky question. This is the third in a special series of episodes we're doing where my

executive producer, DJ Kashmir, identifies an issue in his own life, in this case, his struggles

with being wrong, and then he goes out and talks to a bunch of teachers about how to deal with it.

If you missed the prior two episodes with DJ about how to handle anger and what to do when other people

are pissed at you. We will put links in the show notes here. So the structure of this episode is a

little bit different than our usual fare. You're going to hear me in conversation with DJ,

who is then going to play clips of his conversations with the teachers. Those teachers are Kyra Jewelingo, a former nun in the

plum village tradition started by the Zen master Tikna Han, Vinnie Ferraro, who teaches at the

Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock, and also in prisons, and Matthew Brentsilver, who teaches

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