#346 The Gospel of Adequacy | Miguel Sancho & Felicia Morton
Often on the show, we bring on incredibly accomplished meditation practitioners or influential researchers who have deep things to teach us, based on their personal experience or professional pursuits. And while many of these people talk openly about their personal deficiencies, they are nonetheless speaking to us from the mountaintop, as it were. Today we are doing something entirely different. Over the years, we’ve had many requests to bring on “normal people.” That’s what you’re getting today. Normal people who survived something extreme, with the help of meditation and other modalities, and are here to talk about it in extraordinarily raw and honest terms.
Miguel Sancho is the author of a new book called More Than You Can Handle: A Rare Disease, A Family in Crisis, and the Cutting Edge Medicine That Cured the Incurable. We’ve all heard stories about parents of children with serious, and possibly fatal, illness. Often in those stories, the parents come off as saintly. Miguel takes a very different route. His book is both vulnerable and hilarious. His son’s illness forces him to wrestle with his personal demons, his marital difficulties, and his volcanic temper. He even tells us about getting evicted from the Ronald McDonald House. In the end, he lands on what he calls “the gospel of adequacy.”
Full disclosure: Miguel is an old friend of mine. We worked together for many years at ABC News, where he was a senior producer at 20/20. Together, we covered stories about Scientology, self-help gurus, and fundamentalist Mormons. Also joining us for this interview is Miguel‘s wife, Felicia Morton, who is the president of her own full-service public relations firm. We start with Miguel solo and talk for quite a while, then take a quick break and come back with both Miguel and Felicia. We talk about: the benefits — and limits —of meditation, what they learned about creating a healthy marriage, finding meaning in suffering, and letting go of ego and control.
We want to deeply thank and recognize mental health professionals for your support. For a year's FREE access to the app and hundreds of meditations and resources visit tenpercent.com/mentalhealth.
Where to find Miguel Sancho online:
Book Mentioned:
Where to find Felicia Morton online:
At the CGD Association of America
Social Media:
Other Resources Mentioned:
- Engraftment Syndrome
- New York Insight Meditation Center
- Sharon Salzberg
- Eckhart Tolle
- Jon Kabat Zinn
- 10% Happier, book by Dan Harris
- The Little Monk and the Samurai: A Zen Parable
- Jon Seskevich
- CGD Association of America
Additional Resources:
- Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live
- Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide
- Free App access for Frontline Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care
Send Us Your Voicemails!
One final item of business, and it is an invitation for you to participate in this show. In June, we’ll be launching a special series of podcast episodes focusing on anxiety, something I’m sure we’re all too familiar with. In this series, you’ll become intimately familiar with the mechanics of anxiety: how and why it shows up and what you may be doing to feed it.
And this is where you come in. We’d love to hear from you with your questions about anxiety that experts will answer during our anxiety series on the podcast. So whether you’re struggling with social anxiety, anxiety about re-entering the world post-Covid, or have any other questions about anxiety - we want to hear from you. To submit a question or share a reflection call (646) 883-8326 and leave us a voicemail. If you’re outside the United States, you can email us a voice memo file in mp3 format to listener@tenpercent.com. The deadline for submissions is Friday, May 21st.
