Greater Good Science Center

Eli is a psychologist, certified yoga teacher, longtime meditation facilitator, and author of the book, Micropractice.

He earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Greater Good Science Center, and the Mind and Life Institute.

He also spent months living in monasteries, sat long meditation retreats, taught yoga from the US to rural Madagascar, and he's trained in contemplative traditions within the cultures, communities, and lineages that sustain them.

But what I really appreciate about his work is Eli's commitment to understanding how these practices could become accessible to everyday people who might never have the opportunity to spend a week on retreat or in a monastery across the world.

This is the Point of Relation.

Rick Hanson, PhD, is a psychologist, senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times bestselling author.

A leading expert on positive neuroplasticity, he founded the Global Compassion Coalition and co-hosts the Wellbeing podcast.

Rick has taught at meditation centers worldwide and spoken at institutions like NASA, Google, and Harvard.

Now we come to what I believe is one of the most important parts of creating a meaningful future, deciding what a life well lived means to you today.

Researchers writing for UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center describe meaning through ideas such as feeling that our lives matter, making sense of our experiences, and having worthwhile goals.

These sources of meaning can come from our relationships, everyday experiences, and the things we value.

So imagine yourself five years from now.

And that's clearly not nice.

So I was thinking about all this and One definition of niceness comes from Emiliana Simone Thomas, and she's from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center.

And she writes that being nice involves assuming that other people like us want happiness and don't want to suffer.

That's kind of a Buddhist definition, too.

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Funding for this episode was provided by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center as part of its Spreading Love Through the Media initiative, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Elliot Hijaz is our assistant producer.

Sarah Roberson Lent is our managing editor and created the episode art.

Here's Emiliana Simon-Thomas.

She's the science director at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, and a leading expert on the psychology and neuroscience of compassion, kindness, gratitude, and happiness.

She also co-teaches the center's Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work courses.

If you are trying to work out a conflict with someone, it turns out if you go for a walk with them, it goes better.