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

Oct 1, 2025 1h 7m 33 insights
<p dir="ltr">How to stay calm and steady in uncertain times.</p> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.trudygoodman.com/">Trudy Goodman</a>, Ph.D., is the founding teacher of <a href="https://insightla.org/">InsightLA</a> and cofounder of <a href="https://meditationandpsychotherapy.org/">The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy.</a> Trudy has trained in mindfulness and Zen since 1973, holds a graduate degree in developmental psychology from Harvard, and is widely known for her role as the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80987903">The Midnight Gospel</a>. </p> <p dir="ltr">In this episode we talk about:</p> <ul> <li dir="ltr">How to trust yourself </li> <li dir="ltr">Why Trudy is interested in this topic of self-trust</li> <li dir="ltr">Why Trudy doesn't love the word "enlightenment", but does want to make the concept more accessible</li> <li dir="ltr">What self-love does — and doesn't — look like, especially in a Buddhist context</li> <li dir="ltr">Staying steady in uncertain times</li> <li dir="ltr">Intuition and trusting yourself </li> <li dir="ltr">The importance of getting out of your own bubble and differentiating between your opinions and values </li> <li dir="ltr">The connection between forgiveness and trusting yourself</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p dir="ltr">Join Dan's online community <a href="http://www.danharris.com/">here</a></p> <p dir="ltr">Follow Dan on social: <a href="https://bit.ly/3tGigG5">Instagram</a>, <a href="https://bit.ly/3FOA84J">TikTok</a></p> <p dir="ltr">Subscribe to our <a href="https://bit.ly/3FybRzD">YouTube Channel</a><strong><br /></strong></p> <p dir="ltr"> </p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Additional Resources: </strong></p> <ul> <li dir="ltr"><a href="https://insightla.org/">InsightLA </a></li> <li dir="ltr"><a href="https://jackkornfield.com/sp/how-to-thrive-in-love/">How to Thrive in Love: Buddhist Secrets to Transform Your Relationships with Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman</a><strong><br /></strong></li> </ul> <p dir="ltr">Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more <a href="http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025">here</a>!</p> <p><strong id="docs-internal-guid-711c9a41-7fff-dc95-8b27-b578cfc4c8fa"><br /> To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit <a href="https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris">https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris</a></strong></p>
Actionable Insights

1. Cultivate Self-Trust

Actively work on learning to trust yourself, as this trainable skill can lead to increased calm, equanimity, energy, and an improved ability to deal with difficult people.

2. Practice Basic Mindfulness

Engage in basic mindfulness and present moment awareness to reconnect with your body and intuition, trusting the reality of current sensations and mental activity.

3. Intentionally Direct Attention

Recognize and utilize your overlooked superpower to intentionally direct your attention, especially during challenging times, as this skill is crucial for navigating difficulties.

4. Practice Healthy Self-Love

Cultivate healthy self-love by setting clear boundaries and knowing your limits to avoid overgiving and resentment, recognizing that you are worthy of your own care.

5. Develop Self-Respect

Foster self-respect as a form of self-love, which serves as a protective mechanism against self-harm and supports recovery from challenges like addiction.

6. Cultivate Tenderness with Awareness

Infuse your mindful awareness with tenderness, kindness, and love, as this practice naturally leads to recognizing shared humanity and fostering compassion for others.

7. Deliberately Cultivate Joy

Actively seek and cultivate moments of joy and laughter, even in difficult times, to steady your heart and contribute positively to the world.

8. Actively Listen to Intuition

Cultivate presence and actively listen to your inner impulses and perceptions, even seemingly random ones, to strengthen your intuition and distinguish it from fear.

9. Process Emotions Before Forgiveness

Trust yourself to fully feel and process difficult emotions like anger before attempting to forgive, as these feelings are present for a reason and will change when acknowledged.

10. Engage in Curious Dialogue

Cultivate curiosity and actively listen to understand why others hold different beliefs, as this dialogue is crucial for fostering peace and mutual understanding.

11. Separate Opinions from Values

Differentiate between your transient opinions and your unchanging core values, allowing you to be more open to differing viewpoints while remaining steadfast in your fundamental principles.

12. Leverage Community for Bias

Engage with your community to receive feedback and identify your own unconscious biases, prejudices, or judgments, which helps cultivate greater awareness and wisdom.

13. Cultivate Supportive Community

Build and engage in a healthy community where members can offer honest feedback, as this external perspective can help strengthen your self-trust.

14. Maintain Calm for Others

Strive to maintain personal calmness, as even one calm individual can significantly improve the chances of survival and well-being for everyone in a shared challenging situation.

15. Embrace Shared Humanity

Recognize and embrace the shared humanness and vulnerability of all people, as this perspective helps dissolve barriers and fosters a natural sense of compassion.

16. Trust Sensory Experience

Ground yourself in the present moment by trusting what you see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, as this moment is the most trustworthy and powerful reality.

17. Perceive Life as a Dream

Cultivate equanimity by viewing all experiences, including past and present events, as having a dreamlike quality, recognizing their impermanence and fleeting nature.

18. Embrace Innate Awakening

Trust that your current self and life in this moment contain all the necessary ingredients to be fully awake, making the concept of awakening accessible and immediate.

19. Release Emotional Clinging

Understand that awakening involves not clinging to or identifying with negative emotions, allowing them to pass without becoming entangled in them.

20. Maintain Continuous Awareness

Recognize that awakening is an ongoing process, not a final state, and continuously strive to stay awake and mindful throughout your daily life.

21. Reject Self-Hatred

Be cautious not to misinterpret spiritual teachings as a call for self-annihilation, which can devolve into harmful self-hatred.

22. Recognize Fear as Warning

Acknowledge fear as a potential component of intuition and a valuable warning system that prompts you to be aware of your surroundings and potential dangers.

23. Curiosity Amidst Disagreement

Approach conversations with those you disagree with from a foundation of self-trust, allowing you to remain curious and open without abandoning your own core values.

24. Integrate Heart, Awareness, Science

Combine practices of the heart and awareness with scientific understanding, especially regarding brain research, to gain deeper insights into human behavior and societal dynamics.

25. Relax with Three Breaths

Take three deep breaths, inhaling the aliveness of the moment and exhaling any tension, allowing your body to relax with each out-breath.

26. Acknowledge Difficult Feelings

Gently notice and name any feelings of heaviness, tension, sadness, worry, grief, or anger in your body, making room for them to be present.

27. Breathe with Loving Kindness

Imagine your breath as a loving, faithful companion, breathing in kindness and trust, and then breathing out connection and compassion to yourself and others who are suffering.

28. Recall Joyful Moments

Deliberately call to mind small moments of joy or pleasure, such as a kind smile or the sound of rain, to uplift your spirits and remember that joy is always present.

29. Mindfulness as Remembering

Engage in mindfulness as a practice of ‘remembering’ to counteract feelings of disconnection from yourself and others, which can alleviate separation anxiety.

30. Connect with Nature Daily

Regularly put down your devices and spend a few minutes outside, observing the sky or connecting with the earth, as nature is an ally and helps you reconnect.

31. Cultivate Empathy for Perpetrators

Even when acts are unforgivable, cultivate empathy for the person who committed them by understanding the generational patterns of abuse that may have influenced their actions.

32. Consistent Practice Yields Results

Understand that self-trust and spiritual practices require consistent and dedicated effort, as their benefits are realized only through active engagement and commitment.

33. Begin Practice at Any Stage

Start practicing self-trust and mindfulness at any point in your journey, as the benefits are immediate and continue to unfold throughout the path.