<p dir="ltr">When it comes to your demons, your baggage, you have a choice: transform or transmit.</p> <p dir="ltr">Sister Dang Nghiem, MD, ("Sister D") was born in 1968 in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, the daughter of a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier. She lost her mother at the age of twelve and immigrated to the United States at the age of seventeen with her brother. Living in various foster homes, she learned English and went on to earn a medical degree from the University of California – San Francisco. After suffering further tragedy and loss, she quit her practice as a doctor to travel to Plum Village monastery in France founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, where she was ordained a nun in 2000, and given the name Dang Nghiem, which means adornment with nondiscrimination. She is the author of a memoir, Healing: A Woman's Journey from Doctor to Nun (2010), and Mindfulness as Medicine: A Story of Healing and Spirit (2015).</p> <p dir="ltr">In this episode we talk about:</p> <ul> <li dir="ltr">The "beginning anew" practice: what it is, plus why and how it helps. </li> <li dir="ltr">Is focusing on yourself self-indulgent?</li> <li dir="ltr">The four kinds of people, according to the buddha</li> <li dir="ltr">The concept of "soulmate" in a Buddhist context</li> </ul> <p dir="ltr">Related Episodes:</p> <ul> <li dir="ltr"> <h2 dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.danharris.com/p/buddhist-strategies-for-reducing-91d?utm_source=publication-search"> Buddhist Strategies For Reducing Everyday Addictions (To Your Phone, Food, Booze, And More) | Sister Dang Nghiem</a></span></h2> </li> <li dir="ltr" style="font-size: 12pt;"> <h2 dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.danharris.com/p/this-episode-will-make-you-stronger-a48?utm_source=publication-search"> This Episode Will Make You Stronger | Sister Dang Nghiem</a></span></h2> </li> <li dir="ltr" style="font-size: 12pt;"> <p dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>"<a href="https://www.danharris.com/p/being-enough?utm_source=publication-search">I am enough</a>"</strong> (guided meditation by Sister D)</span></p> </li> </ul> <p><strong> </strong></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></p> <p><strong><br /> <br /></strong></p> <p dir="ltr">On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up <a href="https://www.nyimc.org/event/heavily-meditated/">here</a>! </p> <p><strong> </strong></p> <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><br /> <br /></strong></p> <p dir="ltr">To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit <a href="https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris">https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris</a></p> <p> </p>
Actionable Insights
1. Practice Self-Beginning Anew
Engage in the four-part Buddhist practice of “Beginning Anew” with yourself daily, not just in relationships, to foster a healthy self-relationship and enable better interactions with others. This practice is crucial because “if you can’t transform your demons, you’re just going to transmit them.”
2. Reframe Self-Care as Interbeing
Understand that focusing on your own well-being is not self-indulgent but essential for collective progress, as individuals make up society and personal transformation contributes to global change. As stated, “not thinking of yourself, not taking care of yourself is incredibly selfish.”
3. Be Your Own Soulmate
Learn to “remember, know, take care of, and master oneself” by attending to your body, feelings, thoughts, pain, suffering, trauma, and conflicts, which builds inner strength and allows you to help others. This aligns with the Buddha’s teaching that caring for your own well-being is a necessary step to caring for others.
4. Counter-Program Inner Critic
Actively rewire your inner dialogue and counter-program against your inner critic, as scientific evidence shows this improves inner well-being and has positive psychological and physiological benefits, including for overall fitness, career, and happiness. This helps to stop the detrimental automatic negative rumination of the default mode network.
5. Water Your Own Flowers
Regularly express gratitude and acknowledge the positive seeds within yourself, thanking your body, mind, and efforts, to build inner strength and move from a scarcity mindset to an “enoughness” mindset. This practice helps you appreciate yourself and recognize goodness in others.
6. Express Self-Regrets Honestly
Acknowledge and apologize to yourself for unskillful thoughts (self-sabotaging), speech (negative self-talk), and behaviors (self-harm, avoiding challenges), recognizing negative coping mechanisms and committing to doing better. This fosters self-healing and transformation, which benefits future generations.
7. Admit Your Own Wounds
Practice deep listening to yourself to acknowledge and express deeply entrenched hurts and traumas, even those from childhood or caused by others, that you may have denied or swept under the carpet. This vulnerability with yourself builds internal strength and helps you heal.
8. Find Inner Resolutions
Seek concrete resolutions to address unskillfulness and cultivate strengths, understanding that “the way out is in” by returning to yourself through mindful breathing, deep relaxation, and self-awareness. This helps to heal problems at their root and build trust and confidence in yourself.
9. Practice Loving Speech & Deep Listening
Use loving speech (inspiring understanding, confidence, uplifting, compassionate, honest) and deep listening (without judgment, anchored in breath/body) towards yourself and others as the foundation for all self-care and relationship practices. This helps to listen to what is said and unsaid, verbally and non-verbally.
10. Embrace “Cheesiness” for Freedom
Overcome skepticism about seemingly “cheesy” practices like speaking lovingly to yourself, understanding that embracing such practices can lead to greater freedom and is supported by scientific evidence for psychological and physiological benefits. As the meditation teacher said, “if you can’t be cheesy, you can’t be free.”
11. Shift to Enoughness Mindset
Cultivate an “enoughness” mindset by recognizing and being mindful of what you already have, rather than operating from a scarcity mindset of “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t have enough.” Knowing you are enough and have enough is considered the “most wealth.”
12. End Cycles of Transmission
Recognize that whatever pain, trauma, or unskillfulness you cannot transform within yourself will be transmitted to others, including future generations, through genetic and environmental factors. Actively work to heal and transform these patterns to stop perpetuating suffering.
13. Simplify Life for Authentic Insight
Counter the trend of becoming “robotic humans” by simplifying your life, making time to sit quietly, walk in nature, and listen to yourself and others. This cultivates authentic insight, strengthens relationships, and preserves your humanness and spiritual being.