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Hello boys and girls. Ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. My guest today is Dan Harris who is Dan Harris after ABC news. Anchor Dan Harris had a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America in 2004. He knew he had to make some changes. He found himself on a Bizarre Adventure to rein in the voice in his head at the provoked his honor freaked out and found a solution to meditation a lifelong. Non-believer meditation was something Dan always assumed to be either impossible or
Useless 2014 Dan published the book 10% happier, which takes readers on a ride from the outer reaches of Neuroscience to the inner sanctum of network news to the bizarre fringes of America's spiritual scene and leaves them with a takeaway that could actually change their lives in 2017 Dan followed up with meditation for fidgety Skeptics subtitle a 10% happier how-to book 2016 Dan launch the 10% happier company. That's number 1 0 then percentage sign with co-founders been driven CEO.
And Derek has well VP of product. The company then was rebranded to 10% happier all spelled out in 2019. You can find out on Twitter at Danby Harris. That is Harris with One S on Instagram at Dan Harris and Facebook at Dan Harris ABC Dan. Welcome to the
show. Thanks for having me.
I'm so excited to dig into many many many things and it's going to be nonlinear because that is my want in terms of
The Mentos style interviewed approach and I'd like to begin with something. I found in the process of doing homework. And that is a quote. Feel free to correct this if it's not accurate, but here we go. This is from you. My career has been Guided by a motto bequeathed to me by my dad who is a successful academic physician and here's the motto. The price of security is insecurity. Could you please explain what this means and means to
You yeah, I have so much to say about
that. It really was my Guiding Light and still is in many ways. But in particular as a young journalist who was extremely ambitious and again, I don't necessarily need to use past tense on all this some of it is his present tense. But in my younger days in particular, I really believe that any success I was achieving as I was working my way up the ladder at ABC News etcetera etcetera.
Europe was directly correlated to the intensity of my anxiety.
And that motto handed down to me by my father who's an academic physician was until recently until he retired in academic physician at Harvard and varsity worrier. And you know long time hand ringer himself was just my my way of kind of
almost like venerating the constant worrying.
I later found out from my dad that he made that expression up not to put worrying on a pedestal not because he wanted me to be worrying all the time because if you think about it, it's maybe not the kindest thing to say to a kid. He in fact made it up because he wanted me to feel better about the fact that I was anxious and I think that was you
permission to feel the
anxiety, correct, you know, I mean, I was a really anxious
Kid and that carries into my adulthood I would say now here. I am 11 years post beginning meditation. I still believe it is true that a certain amount of stressing plotting and planning careful thinking.
Is necessary if you want to be great at whatever it is, you're you set your mind to your work parenting volunteer work relationships accept what I've now started to see very clearly and I'm imperfect at applying this but what I see really clearly is that we take the worrying too far. We take the insecurity too far and we cross the line between constructive anguish and useless rumination and really the self.
Where it is that I have generated through meditation imperfectly for sure has helped me balance that much more effectively
and we're going to go back to the scene of the crime or more accurately the scene of the car accident psychologically speaking back on air. We're not going to use that just yet. But because you mention this line and I'm going to suppose apply it metaphorically here, but I had never heard of something called.
Called and I've only read this I could not figure out how to pronounce it. But the yerkes-dodson law that I believe dr. Luana Marques brazilian-born out Harvard head told you about perfectly or imperfectly. Could you describe what the year Keys Dodson law implies or claims twos described in some fashion because I this is quite freeing to me. Yes. It's right that I read it
it really is. So
Lana Marquez came on my podcast right at the beginning of the pandemic and I wanted to do an episode about how to handle all of the stress that that I knew we were all feeling and we're going to continue to feel for a while and she talked to me about this. I think it's called the yerkes-dodson law. I was fucking that one
up before I said it.
I mean you can be forgiven. It's a weird. I think it's the name of two scientists hyphenated who came up with this idea.
With at a certain amount of anxiety Luna Marquez the aforementioned Harvard Affiliated anxiety expert was talking about the certain amount of anxiety. You can think of it as like a curve like a bell curve the a certain amount of anxiety is useful in that it gets us moving. It gets us protecting ourselves. It gets us doing the things we need to do. So that's the beginning part of the curve the upward slope at some point. It starts to slope downwards.
You can think of that as the point of diminishing returns where the anxiety is no longer motivational. It's paralytic and so walking that line seems to be in my own life. It seems it really has become one of the most important parts. And again, it's art not science and I have nowhere near perfect and I don't expect I don't think Perfection is on offer.
It also seems to showcase for me. The fact that there is a an evolutionary value to anxiety. If we were to Define it as the ability to foresee future threats and perhaps for staller mitigate them. Right but when it bleeds over into expecting catastrophe and wringing your hands and biting your nails at all times, then it ceases to be
Of utility right actually ends up being disabling but the seeing it in graph form or in visual form with the yerkes-dodson law clown Expedia. There we go. Correct. It corrected on Lucky Number 3 and was was really freeing in a sense because there's a desire that I find myself succumbing to which is to erase or remove all anxiety and vilifying anxiety. Is this so
shadow that I can't rid myself of and
I liked reading about it. I'll just put it that way like give yourself a break on some level now speaking of giving anyone a break if the price of security is in security was a motto that you kept in the back of your mind and assuming that you don't want your kids to have a model like only the paranoid survive or something like that. What might be a motto you would want your kids to have.
In the back of their mind as they navigate their lives the first 20 years 30 years, whatever it might be. Can I give you to you you are allowed to give me three if you'd
like. I love mottos. I love little Expressions mantras that you can use to kind of drop into your mind because it's so easy, you know, you can listen to an inspirational podcast or read a great book or whatever and feel really
Like you've your invigorated your you're awake to some some important truth, but the habits of mind the old habits of mind reassert themselves really quickly. And so we need to find ways to continuously wake up and to remember the our aspirations. And so these little mottos I think you know that can be a little bit cheesy, but but they're really helpful in my experience. So one of them that specifically applies to this question of how much insecurity or anxiety is too much
II got this motto from my meditation teacher guy named Joseph Goldstein now, I've heard you talk on this show and I've heard you you also talked the one time we met in person when you came on my show, I've heard you drop the name of Jack kornfield who's a legendary meditation teacher has had a huge impact on your life Jack and Joseph are old old old co-conspirators from the 60s and 70s when they met both of them along with Sharon salzberg.
Another just meditative tighten the three of them all spent a lot of time in Asia and came back to the States and founded co-founded something called the Insight Meditation society and then Jack broke off and started something called Spirit Rock Meditation Center on the west coast IMS is on the left on the east coast. And so they're really responsible for bringing mindfulness to the West in many many ways. And so one the first Meditation Retreat I
ever went on was at Spirit Rock where I know you've done meditation Retreats and at least one and
or nervous breakdown or
treats. I want to talk about that.
Yeah.
So so I was on my first Meditation Retreat at Spirit Rock and even though that's the place jack founded Joseph was teaching for ten days there and our mutual friend Sam Harris got me off the wait list for this
notification. I should
note no relation. Although I wouldn't be embarrassed because
I love the guy. So I'm at this Retreat and and I'll spare you the whole story of the retreat, but the key moment as it pertains to this question was toward the end of The Retreat Joseph is talking to the assembled Yogi's the meditators and he says something like okay, we're heading toward the end here now and you might find your thoughts start turning to the things you have to do when you return to your life, but the best your ability, you know, try to let those thoughts go and I raise my hand because this was a QA you're allowed to talk on an otherwise.
Is silent Retreat and I said well, wait a minute dude if I miss my flight.
That has real life consequences. What? Why would you tell me not to to think about that? And he said no, you're absolutely right, but on the 17th run through of all of the horrible knock-on effects of your missing that flight. Maybe ask yourself one. Simple question. Is this useful that is a great motto because of course we're going to do some worrying and I as you know a long time,
Better it Frederick borrowing that phrase from the great meditation teacher Sylvia Borstein as a inveterate Fred or myself. I'm a cool with some wearing. I think it you need to do some of that but at some point maybe ask yourself is this useful and it's at that point. It's probably not and you can like pay attention to what your child is trying to tell you or not. Mindlessly say something that's going to ruin the next 48 hours of your marriage or would have just live your actual life. And so that to me is a really useful model.
Stop there before I go on to the second one, unless your case. You have something you want to add or clarify.
I have a follow-up question, but I don't interrupt the flow to number two is let's go to number
two. No, no, go ahead because this the the number two is so so it's kind of off on a different thing and I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to mess up your flow. So go
ahead. Well, my flow as such is absolutely going to take us off on a wild tangent, but that's okay. So you mentioned a few names.
As you mentioned Joseph is it Goldstein or Goldstein? I always mix this up because there are so many different goldstein's and goldstein's how does he pronounces like him? He's a Goldstein. Yes. Okay. So Goldstein Salzburg and cornfield, right? So I asked Jack at one point Jack I have to ask you this was in private because of course. This is not the kind of thing that you always want to ask in public, but I said Jack, is there any reason why?
All of these meditation and mindfulness teachers these Pioneers from the West in the 70s are Jewish and he said that's a really good question and we talked about he said yeah, it sounds like a law firm and I would just love to hear.
If you have any thoughts on why that is the case, is it just coincidental? Is there something that maps from Judaism to Buddhism or otherwise, do you have any thoughts on that? Because it's it is it an uncanny?
Yes. I was just going to say as it happens Tim Ferriss. I have a lot of thoughts on this.
So these
these people are all like really good friends of mine now and they go there's a I don't know how they feel about this name, but there is an
Aim for this whole Coterie which is the Jews the Jewish Buddhist and the prototypical jubu is actually a Jew who or so he's a Hindu but his name is Ram Dass. He is. Yeah, so you will be as because I know you're a real connoisseur of and supporter of psychedelic or plant medicine and Rob Das born Richard Halpert Albert. Rather a Jewish guy from Boston became a whore.
Professor along with Timothy Leary they got fired for you know running experiments on their students with either LSD or psilocybin and he went off to India Richard did and discovered a Hindu Guru and named himself changed his name to Ram Dass and came back to the States and there's lots of good documentaries on him. I think some of them on Netflix and was extremely influential and the slightly younger generation included lots of people.
Like Junior chewy Jewish names like Joseph Goldstein Sharon salzberg, Jack. Kornfield. Sylvia Borstein Mark Epstein who's a psychiatrist in New York. City's written a whole beautiful series of books about the overlap between Buddhism and psychology Daniel goleman, who was a Harvard Ph.D. Then went on to write become a science journalist for the New York Times and then wrote a book called emotional intelligence, which is obviously a huge book on and on Atari.
Brock is a slightly younger iteration of the same sort of trend on and on and on you have these great Jewish meditation teacher. So what's going on here and I say this as a half Drew Bar Mitzvah guy what's going on here? The Jews have a cultural tendency toward anxiety, which I would argue is well earn from the Pharaohs through Hitler and you know that yearning for some sort of remedy.
E to this really difficult anxiety that plus the fact that Judaism in America is largely not entirely of course, but largely secular, I think created both a a hunger for answers to anxiety and maybe a sense that there wasn't enough spirituality and their lives throw in the 60s and all the psychedelics and the and the Vietnam and the and the sir.
Searching nature of that era and you get the Jew Boos. That's my sense. Of course. They may all yell at me for being wrong about this. But that's my
sense. You're entitled to your opinion and perspective on the whole thing. I certainly am not part of the club. So it's harder for me to have a strong opinion of any type of about this. It's also been a long-standing fascination of mine. I have a lot of Jewish friends to observe this
What seems to be fairly ubiquitous anxiety in many of the families I grew up around many of the friends. I develop close friendships with in high school and college how much of that do you think is cultural and how much of that is survival of the fittest in the sense if you think about Jews as having been persecuted for like you said Millennia since the time of the Pharaohs, is there just a a sir.
Of selection process over time where the people who are the first to flee or sense danger and move are the people who then end up producing sort of modern-day Judas mean. How do you think about that if you think about
it at all, I think the evolution produced the culture and so we have this culture of anxiety because those the Jews that survived learn to worry, you know in another this is skipping back a question, but I think another aspect of
The sort of causality that led to this remarkable.
You know group of young Jewish people mostly from New York and some of them from Boston who went over to India or Asia and learn how to meditate and came back and really became these Jon kabat-zinn died. I felt left him out who was the it was the granddaddy of mindfulness based stress reduction without him. There is no secular mindfulness movement, New York, Jewish guy went to MIT and studied microbiology and then and then found Zen and then invented mbsr. I think another aspect of this. Is that all of these
These people all of these names that I've listed in these are all people that I know quite well, they're incredibly smart and I think if you add the anxiety the spiritual yearning and the braininess it all is a perfect storm for Buddhism because Buddhism is incredibly interesting. There's the practice element which you know, thinking can become can be a big impediment to the practice but the intellectual infrastructure
Sure, that supports the practice is dense and fascinating and it's a Lifestyles supply of ideas to wrestle with and I think that's another component of why these people found this teaching so irresistible.
I think one might also argue that being well educated and having a lot of CPU Cycles.
In your prefrontal cortex is also a perfect recipe for Grist for the mill in the form of anxiety and rumination and open Loops for the south in a sense that then is mindfulness practice. So let's let's dial up the volume on the anxiety to 11 to use a spinal tap reference. I know you have told this story a lot, but there will be people listening who have no idea.
What the catalyzing event looked like what preceded it and so on could you walk us through your life from say 2000-2004? Obviously, we're going to use a montage of some type or 2001 to 2004 to let's call it the event in quotation marks.
Sure. So in the year 2000 I as as a 28 year old Plankton from local news in
In Boston, I had spent like seven years in local news and and in Maine and Boston with ill-fitting suits and way too much plaid at 28. I rode the escalator up into ABC News at the headquarters on the upper west side of Manhattan. You've been to our building because you can when you came on my podcast so you know that escalator and I was terrified I had watched Peter Jennings my whole life.
if he was the legendary anchor of World News Tonight until he died in the mid oughts and I was just I was so thrilled the terrified and this is where price of security is insecurity kicked into high gear and I had gotten this job just complete luck that I had gotten this job and I just threw myself into it a skipped everybody skipped all my friends weddings work seven days a week just was clawing and scratching to get ahead in any
credibly venomous
really competitive unsafe in many ways psychologically environment at ABC News. It's it's improved vastly since then. I'm happy to report and then not long after I arrived 9/11 happened and I again driven by my anxiety and also my idealism about the role of journalists our duty to sort of bear witness at the tip of the spear. I raised my hand and volunteer to go overseas after
11 and I ended up in Afghanistan with the Taliban in Kandahar their Capital at the time. I think of one of the last people to get a Taliban Visa before they were overthrown and just fell in love with combat reporting not because I like the gore but because there's just it felt so thrilling and so important and of course there is the ego aggrandizement of it too that you're doing this important work you're living in this hyper.
Analyzed way and you're getting on TV all the while and so I got hooked into spent so much time in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan a cover the second intifada in 2002. So Israel the West Bank Gaza, and then Iraq happened spent months and months and months and probably all together like a year in on the ground in Iraq, and in the summer of 2003 I came home and I got depressed but I was not self-aware enough to know I was depressed. So I
It to sort of I did something incredibly stupid, which is I started to self-medicate with recreational drugs including cocaine and ecstasy. So I was in my early 30s at this point and I had never had smoked weed and obviously drank a lot of beer in college, but I never done any hard drugs and cocaine in particular really my depression manifest itself as a kind of Logue Enos or low energy had trouble getting out of bed felt the kind of
vaguely ill all the time and cocaine this kind of synthetic squirt of adrenaline really fixed that of course, it had horrible side effects, like feeling awful the next day, etc. Etc. And then an even worse side effect, which is the aforementioned event on a warm June morning in 2004. I was filling in on Good Morning America and at the time they had a job called the news reader. So you somebody would come on at the top of every hour and read the headlines the
Had that job at the time was named Robin Roberts. Who's now the main host of Good Morning America. They don't have that role anymore. But I was in a rotation of regularly filling in for Robin. And so I wasn't particularly nervous on this morning, but for some reason when the main hosts of the show Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer tossed it over to me to do my little Spiel. I just lost it and you can see this if you if you if you type panic attack on live television, it's the first result so go for it you you can see
It has tens of has millions of millions of hits. So I start reading and then my lungs basically seized up and my heart starts racing my Palms are sweating my mouth dries up and I can't talk which is a prerequisite for anchoring the news talking his and it was horrifying and so if you watch the tape, it actually does it looks like I definitely looks flustered and but a lot of people say, you know didn't didn't look that bad. And that's because I
The luxury of being able to squeak out back to you Charlie and Diane and they took it back but I had to cut the whole thing short. I mean, I think I had read like two and a half stories by the time the freakout hit and it was awful and really scary. Not only because a panic attack is horrifying but because I just thought well this is the end of my career and my mom was watching that morning and she and she called me back stage and said, oh you just had a panic attack dude, and she didn't say dude. But anyway, she said
Said you had a panic attack and she hooked me up with a shrink and Shrink asked me about your questions to try to figure out what was going wrong. And one of the questions was do you do drugs and I kind of said sheepishly. Yeah, and he gave me I like to make this joke. He gave me this look one of these shrinking looks I'm sure you've gotten this look before Tim from the shrinks with whom you've worked. He gave me a look that communicated the sentiment of okay asshole mystery solved and he pointed out that even though my drug use was pretty intermittent and short-lived.
Wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like one of the people from The Wolf of Wall Street or anything like that, but it was enough to change my brain chemistry and make a panic attack more likely so that's the
story on that day. Was there anything different about that day leading up to it anything at all? That could have hinted that this was not a day like any other and you have like itchy feet and your eyeballs feel too big. I mean it was there it was there anything suspicious?
Symptomatically to indicate that something was just slightly off or more than slightly off or didn't really come out of left
field left field man. I I hadn't I wasn't I on the air I hadn't been I don't think part. I don't remember. I definitely haven't been partying the night before or anything like that maybe in the week before but there was no I had no reason to foresee what was about to happen and it sucked uncontrollably.
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So my understanding is after all of this happens and we're probably skipping a few things. So feel free to fill in the blanks. If you think that that we should but you were then assigned to cover faith and spirituality against your own wishes, right? So he began exploring mainstream religion self-help spirituality neuroscience and so on and somewhere in that sort of chop salad of
Polity and so on was meditation like in there like a like a crouton you found meditation amongst everything before we jump to meditation though. I'm I'd be very curious to know. Was there anything else that you got exposed to?
That was interesting to you not because it was salacious or completely a hoax. But is there anything else that really seemed like it could be a value to you outside of meditation.
First of all, the metaphor about the chop salad is awesome.
The the the thing that's
the really landed with me about religion the religions that I spent time, you know sort of spent time marinating in I spent a lot of
Of evangelicals Mormons Muslims, I as the child of atheist scientists constitutionally. I just can't get myself to believe in things for which there's no evidence. So I had a bit of an allergy that may be understating it to the Dogma into the faith claims the metaphysical claims and all that stuff. But what struck me was that these folks were with regularity contemplating there.
A place in the cosmos, which I was not doing. I was utterly unreflective in many many important ways and these guys on 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning or whatever time you know on a Friday afternoon. If you're a Muslim or Saturday for the Jews like they were getting together and talking about the universe and that really hit me as somebody who I had a sense of my own selfishness and how that was making me unhappy.
I didn't know what to do based on what I was in countering from these folks of Faith because I found so many of their beliefs to be really hard to swallow. But I had this kind of I don't know. I'm going to use a word that I don't know how to pronounce. I think it's inchoate this kind of roof this beginning another words, you know that word right? You see it in like fancy books and like I never know how to pronounce it, but I had this kind of beginning inkling that yeah, there's something
Here that I that I should pay attention
to. So as you're paying attention then how does meditation first come over the transom? What was the first exposure that actually made you raise an eyebrow got a huh. Maybe that's something I should pay attention to here.
I'm a hard case so it took me awhile. But the first the first first exposure was I was shooting a story was went right after Sarah Palin was nominated to by John McCain as his vice presidential candidate and I
I was she's a she's a Pentecostal. So I was doing a story in Jersey City about Pentecostals. I was shooting at a street fair with some Pentecostals and trying to get a sense of like what that flavor of evangelicalism was like to educate the American public. Sorry. Did you have something you want to say there?
I was just going to say for people who don't know anything about Pentecostals. You should add some color here because it is it is a fascinating flavor.
Yeah. Yeah. So these are the folks that likes.
In tongues. I mean there's there's a I don't want to describe Pentecostalism as a monolith because there are flavors within the flavor. But but you know when you and and there are non Pentecostals who speak in tongues to but they're sort of charismatic in that's actually a term of art the charismatic Christianity where you some of them will will handle snakes during services or speak in tongues, which is a kind of like you're speaking in tongues is like you're speaking a
Nonsense language that is in some way Divine that you're being taken over by the holy spirit. So it's a really dramatic. And again, I think I'll use the word charismatic form of Christianity.
Thank you for the context. Please continue didn't want to interrupt too
much. No you drop me anytime because I like tangents. So anyway, I'm out shooting the story the story Pentecostalism has nothing to do with what is about to happen, which is that I was waiting and when you're shooting a story, there's like lots of downtime.
So I was chit-chatting with the crew the the cameraman the soundman and our producer Felicia, but Baraka who is still a actually she's quite senior producer at world news tonight at that time. She was a field producer. So she and I were covering the story together. We had known each other for quite a while and she started talking about a book a self-help book. She was reading by a guy named Eckhart Tolle who I had never heard of and Felicia said something like
Can you know you should read this book? It's all about controlling your ego and me and the crew started laughing because we was clear to us that she was saying you have an out-of-control ego which by the way was true. And so it was very funny, but it wasn't what she meant what she meant and what Tolle means by the ego. I subsequently learned because I went out and ordered his book and read it or one of his books and read it what totally means by the ego is the nonstop conversation. We are all having
Ourselves this inner narrator this constant flow of thought and urge urges and emotions coursing through our minds into which very few of us have any visibility and so I started to retool his book. And at first I thought it was complete nonsense because he layers in lots of like talk about vibrational fields and spiritual Awakenings and all this other stuff. But what I got to this stuff about the ego which again he has a much more expansive definition of this sort of
Inner ghostly sense of you that is constantly spewing sort of self-centered thoughts curling us into the future or ruminating about the past to the detriment of the here. And now when I read his diagnosis of the ego, which is essentially just The Human Condition that was a gigantic waking up moment for me because first of all, it was just like oh yeah, that is true.
It also really explained my panic attack because he was my ego and again not just the sort of stereotypical parts of the ego the like self-aggrandizing part, but also like all of the fear and idealism and all this sort of unseen mental Machinery that propelled me to cover combat without really thinking about the psychological ramifications. It was the ego the sort of mindless inner conversation that allowed me to come home get
depressed not see it and blindly reach for cocaine as a as medicine and that all produce the the panic attack. So it was reading Eckhart Tolle. That was really the first step toward me getting interested in meditation and the problem with that car totally was that he didn't offer any actionable advice Felicia and I ended up flying to Toronto to meet totally he lives in Vancouver, but he was giving a speech in Toronto and he gave us an audience in a lie.
Beige hotel room and and I interviewed him and asked him. You know, what was actually the first interview I did with anybody in the faith world where I like felt like I had some skin in the game because I was really interested and I tried to get him to answer like what do you do about the voice in the head and I remember at one point. He said
take one conscious breath.
And my voice in my head was saying what the fuck does that mean? Like, what are you talking about? Give me something to do here A friend of mine has described totally as correct, but not useful and so he woke me up to a thunderously obvious, but regularly overlooked fact, which is that we all have minds and our thinking but he didn't give me anything to do about it
still very valuable to say. Hey, bro, you got a huge abscess in your gums or whatever it is, right?
Even though he might not be the surgeon are they orthodontist or whatever the specialty would be to take it out. I helpful for step.
Correct. It was it was really helpful. First up. I'm thankful for him.
What happens that point? You're like you've diagnosed. I don't want to see the problem the condition. Let's call it to where does Dan Harris go at that point
shamelessly leveraging all the privilege of my journalistic perch. I basically started with the aforementioned Felicia we started
Doing a lots of stories about self-help because I thought you know somebody in this ought to be able to tell me more about what to do about this. So I ended up doing all these stories about you know, Deepak Chopra who I think is on the farm. I mean I make fun of Deepak, you know with gusto in my book, but nonetheless, I think he's on the far benign end of the self-help spectrum and then we I did a lots of stuff on the folks who are way more questionable the sort of solve all of your problems through the power of positive thinking crew, you know that the secret and I did a lot of
Have fun James Arthur Ray. I believe his name is the guy who had that sweat lodge ceremony where people died or and basically I was completely completely unimpressed depressed confused didn't know what to do and actually during this period of time I came home one night to my then apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan and my then fiance and now baby mama Bianca gave me a gift as I walked into the apartment that evening.
She said I've been listening to you talk about Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle and blah blah blah and not making much sense as you do but it vaguely reminded me. This is her talking or vaguely reminded me of a book. I read many years ago. And here it is and the book was by a guy of I mentioned earlier on the show. We're talking about the Jew booze named. Dr. Mark Epstein. I liked him right away because he had actual credentials. He's as I said a shrink lives and works in New York City and he's written all these incredible.
About the overlap between Buddhism and psychology modern psychology. And so I started reading one of his books that night the book I started reading was going to Pieces without falling apart and it was my total. It's a great title. It's a great and it's a great book. I highly recommend it and and he was the first it was my first introduction to both Buddhism and
meditation. Did you begin some type of practice after that book? Did it give you the prescriptive?
How to in a form of self-help that you did not have enough lactic shock in response to
yes. I had hives on the regular when I was in the country
this ontological hives popping out
everywhere. That's a really good phrase. I might steal that
steal away. I'm high. I have like 5 million milligrams of caffeine in my system. So I'm on fire. Please continue. So so
yeah. Well somebody who has a panic disorder, I can't have caffeine.
Just that it's the poor man's caffeine continue.
So so I what I am a tough case as I referenced before so I read about Buddhism was really interested in Buddhism, but the talk about meditation I found repellent and so I was very very resistant and what finally brought me over to trying it was so this is like 2009
Am I as I started researching meditation. I came across some of the science that really strongly suggest that meditation can confer a long list of tantalizing health benefits. And at that time that science was not well publicized. And so I had this inkling of oh, this is a huge story that people don't know about and I had this kind of entrepreneurial itch of meditation appears to be really helpful.
And all these books I'm reading or many of the books. I was reading because I started reading a ton are really annoying
and
I could write a book that uses the word fuck a lot and like tells embarrassing stories and maybe that would reach people who otherwise would never do this thing. And so I started after really looking at the science and kind of reviewing it with my wife who's a scientist. I was really convinced that there was something here. So I
To do in like 5 to 10 minutes a day and it really helped and then after about a year of that I met Sam Harris. I actually re met him I had met Sam once years before then. I met him again. I was moderating a debate that he was in against Deepak Chopra and he actually dismantled them you can you can see that on YouTube to and Sam I loved and I still love
as a general rule. You do not want to debate Sam. No, it's a
very scary back.
Actually the thing about salmon, you know this time because you know him is like he can seem very intimidating. But if you interact with him, especially if his wife's around and his wife is an extraordinary person Annika Harris is written written a great book read on Consciousness Ito he/she can reduce him to like a bloody, you know, giggling, you know, red-faced ball a puddle, which is amazing and he's like a he's really warm and incredible and he told me about Joseph Goldstein and got me into this Meditation Retreat and that really cracked
Is open for me and I would say since doing that Retreat for the last decade. It is just a non-negotiable part of my life.
Is it part of your life on the frequency of daily a few times a week? What is the current or when you are at your best when you are your best self? Let's just say what is your frequency of practice?
I said, I'm going to buy forget the answer here because I'll answer for me and then I do want to say a few things about because I think the question that's probably coming up in the mines.
As of some of your listeners is like what's the least I can do to get all of the advertised benefits. So I'll say it I'll say something about that too, but I don't want you to be discouraged by what I'm about to say, which is that for me. It's every day once in a blue moon. I will miss a day because something has you know like that. It's just gotten totally crazy or whatever and I went through a period where I did two hours a day which was way too much not in that it was it was
That's it was it was just eating up too much of the rest of my life to now I do about an hour a day, but I'm much more relaxed about it. And I kind of my rule has always been and this was true. Even when I was doing two hours a day is like I can do it whenever I want wherever I want and in whatever increment I want so it may be five minutes here 10 minutes. They're on a really good day.
I'll get along sit, you know 30 45 60 minutes, but I many days it's just like a succession of smaller sits and or I'll do a walking meditation. So yeah, I'm pretty consistent but I don't think that's that's necessary for beginners. I really think the access point here is really easy and user-friendly and what I say for my two little mantras little slogans here I go again for for beginning meditators 1 is 1
It counts. I really thank and we can talk a little bit more about how to do the practice but I really think that even in a minute you can start to get a sense of oh, yeah, I've got this inner cacophony and I don't need to be owned by it say it's the visibility. That is the Kryptonite for the ego that seeing it really defang say which is kind of amazing and that can happen in a minute what I love to see you do five to ten sure, but we know that habit formation is really hard diabolically hard, so
Setting the bar really low I think is very helpful. And then the other little slogan is daily ish, you know, yes, would it be great if you're doing this everyday sure, but if you grit your teeth and tell yourself you're going to do it every day the first day you miss which inevitably you will the voice in your head will swoop in and tell you you're a failed meditator and then like Deuces, you know, you're out and and so I think daily ish has like elasticity and flexibility and in it that I really like.
Yeah, it's like brushing your teeth right you miss a day your your your teeth aren't going to
Integrate you miss eat 20 30 days. Then you might have an issue that starts to crop up that back to the abscess back to the abscess. I don't know why I'm so focused on Dentistry today, but question for you about the subjective experience of
This as a regular practice for me in my own personal experience the value of meditation, which I can find tremendous benefit in 10 to 20 minutes a day done consistently. Like I find tremendous value. The value is not always obvious when I am doing it, but it becomes more obvious if I suddenly stopped for a period of time I would just love to hear
What is Dan with meditation look like compared to Dan without if you suddenly go cold turkey for a period of time for whatever reason or however you'd like to tackle that just so people can get a grasp on the benefits as you experience them.
That would just really well articulated when you talked about your own practice because this is perhaps the hardest thing to understand about meditation because all of us I'm making an assumption here at that, but I think it's safe for you.
Your audience. We're all type A people we do something and we expect to succeed we expect to win.
So we go into meditation with expectations which are the most noxious thing. You can bring to the party. So in a in individual sitting or walking meditation in an individual session of meditation, the goal is not to feel any certain way. In fact going into it if you're expecting or hoping to feel a certain way it pretty much blocks you from getting there.
The goal instead is to feel whatever you are feeling clearly so that you build the muscle of not being owned by your feelings. We just say that again because it's a little hard to understand when you sit to meditate your you really don't need to like will yourself into a bulletproof Bliss bubble instead. You should just be noticing whatever's coming up. You know, I'm planning lunch. I'm planning a homicide. I'm you know, I'm jealous of
Like I'm remembering primordial anger toward my younger brother. Whatever is coming up and that is correct meditation because the visibility is the Kryptonite seeing clearly the cacophony of your own inner landscape is how you are no longer owned by it and over time so you can have a whole week of quote unquote bad sits where you're totally
attracted or you know, you're Restless or you're sleepy but over time the net effective it is that you are more self-aware and therefore less yanked around by the malevolent puppeteer of your ego and so for me what I notice and actually this is why falling off the wagon can be really helpful because it can increase your faith in the practice. What I notice is that if I miss a few days my inner weather becomes much more
You know stormy and I'm likelier to eat too much or to you know, make a nasty comment be impatient beat myself up more people are judgmental when I look in the mirror, etcetera etcetera. I can just really see the Venom quotient increase when I'm not doing this thing you use
the word weather anytime. I can't remember who
Shared this imagery with me at some point but they said, you know the difference between experiencing as you experience without meditation. And with meditation is like standing outside in the rain in a storm versus standing inside looking out the window at the storm and their bunch of other analogies that I like. I mean one would be to being 18 inches outside of the washing machine looking at the clothing versus being inside or sitting in the
Audience watching the movie of your emotions versus being in the movie right there out there these all these analogies or metaphors that we imply a level of observation and Detachment. Although I'm sure some psychologists would take issue with that term. What is the practice look like? What is your actual practice look like because there's so many ways to meditate right? It would be like saying I do Sports. It's like well, what are we talking about? Racquetball swimming curling? What are we talking about here? So in meditation, what is your
Particular format. What does it look like?
That's exactly right that there are many many forms and people can get pretty dogmatic about, you know, their support for whatever meditative team. They've chosen the kind of meditation that I generally talked about publicly and that, you know, we teach on my app and everything is called mindfulness meditation which is derived from Buddhism, but and I talked about Jon kabat-zinn before this was his Innovation. He was this
Whiz kid who discovered Zen and then it was on a Meditation Retreat a Buddhist Meditation Retreat and had this Insight that like, oh if we Strip This of its religious lingo and metaphysical claims, we could teach it in secular contexts such as Healthcare and people who otherwise would reject it might embrace it and he invented an eight-week protocol for teaching what's called mindfulness based stress reduction and secularizing it and giving it a structure.
Of an eight week teaching program that is what allowed for science scientists to come in and say, okay. Well we can this is replicable now we can run this on a bunch of different populations and measure their cortisol levels and look at their brains, etc. Etc. And that's what's given us this in large measure that was given us this explosion of research into what meditation does to the brain. So that's the kind. I was initially attracted to and the kind of meditation that I know evangelize for I have over.
I mean this is totally optional, but for me, I've overtime gotten more interested in the Buddhist antecedents. And so I would describe myself as a Buddhist. But in the sense that there's a great author named Stephen Bachelor who wrote a book called Buddhism without beliefs and he describes Buddhism not as something to believe him but as something to do and in that sense, I'm a Buddhist in the in the maybe in the same sense that I'm a journalist. It's like it is something that I do regularly, but I'm
Wouldn't sit here and pound the table on behalf of rebirth, but I do think that the Buddhist practices are just a revelation and there's like just a vast treasury really. So what is the practice look like beginning mindfulness meditation really is very simple. You just find a reasonably quiet place and sit with your spine reasonably straight. You don't have to be uptight about that. In fact being uptight is not recommended in any aspect of this. If you don't want to sit you first of all, you don't have to be in you don't have to fold your
Of newer pretzel I don't you can sit in a chair. You can also lie down if you're feeling sleepy and are worried about falling asleep. You can stand up by the way falling asleep is not a problem very common and actually a good sign that maybe you need more sleep. So that's the first step find a reasonably quiet place comfortable position close your eyes. If you don't like to close your eyes, you can kind of just gaze softly at a neutral spot.
Second step is bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out pick one spot like your belly or your chest your nose and just kind of commit to feeling that and that's the key word here feeling because you we do we spend most of our life trapped in thought but actually we're in this practice kind of dropping below the level of thought and tuning into the raw data of the physical sensations of the belly rising and falling the chest rising and falling the air entering or exiting the nostrils.
So that's step number two. Just oh by the way, I should say that if some people find the breath to be anxiety-producing and that's actually not uncommon, especially now with a covid has a pulmonary implication of obviously and BLM has a lot of stuff about not being able to you know people I can't breathe has become a really
really resonant in a difficult way phrase. So if the breath is hard for you, you can just focus on the feeling of your body sitting or lying down or standing or pick one spot on your body like your hands whatever they're touching and just commit to that and says the third step is as soon as you try to do this thing, which is going to sound reasonably simple, you'll realize it's infernal e difficult because your mind will go into Mutiny mode. It's like it's like trying to hold a live fish in your hands like it's
Slipping away from you all the time, you know, it's like you're planning lunch or you're planning some, you know, expletive filled speech you're going to deliver to your boss or you know, like random. What was Casper the Friendly Ghost before he died or we just like your mind's all over the place and that that is the moment most people
Think they are failed meditators, but I'm here to tell you that is the moment when you notice you've become distracted. Even if it's for the whole session just noticing that you've become distracted is proof that you are meditating correctly because as I said before the goal here is not to clean. Actually. I haven't said this yet. This is really important. The goal is not to clear your mind because clearing your mind is impossible unless you're enlightened or you have died. The goal here is instead to focus.
Focus your mind for a nanosecond or two on on something like the feeling of your breath or the feeling of your body sitting and then every time you get distracted you start again and again and again and that act of noticing the distraction and starting again is like a bicep curl for your brain and this is what we see on the brain scans of meditators. This is the mechanism by which we are training your attention. We're boosting your ability to focus. We're boosting your self-awareness and that self-awareness.
Fairness that regular sort of systematized collision. We're Engineering in meditation with the voice in your head.
That is revolutionary because as soon as you start to see how chaotic your mind is, and I know I'm banging on about this point, but it's just it you can't say it too much as soon as you start to see the chaos of your own mind. That's the first step toward not being owned by it. And you know, I just think that's you used a bunch of analogies earlier. Another analogy that Jon kabat-zinn uses is the you can think of the mind like a waterfall and the thoughts and urges and impulses. That's
The water flowing ceaselessly down the waterfall mindfulness, which is the self-awareness that we're generating through meditation is like the crevice in the rock face behind the water that lets you. Now, I'm mixing my metaphors kind of step out of the traffic and to view the contents of your Consciousness with some non-judgmental remove and this is not new age nonsense. We are classified as a species as Homo sapiens sapiens, the one who thinks and knows.
Knows he or she thinks and yet that capacity. This Birthright of yours is atrophying for many of us because in our culture at least nobody points out that we have this bonus level in our in our brain. And so that's what you're developing a meditation.
I want to come back to the bicep curl because I think it's a helpful way to view the practice least. It's been helpful for me and that is I'll pull from a different type of meditation for just a second because for
It's all the criticisms levied against TM. I do think that some transmittal meditation teachers, which is a mantra based practice have a way of setting the pass-fail bar very low to help you practice consistently in the beginning and I think that's really important. I mean if you decide as a type a person like anything worth doing is worth overdoing therefore, I'm going to sit in full Lotus two hours a day.
Five days a week. That's my resolution. The likelihood of you failing is almost a hundred percent. Right? But if you instead come into it as I was advised at one point when I've practiced TM is if you say your Mantra wants I mean, this is like one or two syllables if you say it once in a 20-minute session that is a successful session then for someone who is accustomed to trying to put points on the scoreboard and compete it's the
Proper sort of mental contortionism and trickery to get me to do it two or three days in a row and I found that extremely helpful and the I can't remember if it was tar Brock or Sharon salzberg who said to me, I think it was one of the two said the bringing the attention back from Casper the ghost to your breath even once like that's the bicep curl. That's the repetition that that is the practice the practice isn't sitting there like a bodhisattva.
In this single pointed experience of universal Consciousness for 20 minutes. The practice is thinking about porn hub or Different Strokes or like Dunkin Donuts and then coming back to the breath. Once like that's the rep that's when you earn the points which was just a incredibly helpful reframe for me. You can have an incredibly messy seemingly messy meditation practice and still consider it successful which
Difficult for a compulsive type A personality Like Yours Truly to get a toehold on in the beginning
a man to everything. You just said that was just all perfect and and difficult for me to and and which is why to me the biggest revolution in my own practice and this is just goes back to me being a hard case because this is recent for me when great meditation teachers give the beginning instructions. They often say
Say, you know, it's not a cold clinical Detachment with which were viewing the contents of her Consciousness. It's actually a often who's the word which I've traditionally found quite overwrought but like a loving awareness and I completely ignored that part of the instruction and over time what I have found this actually will bring me to the second slogan. I was going to try to get to at the beginning of this conversation earlier in the conversation over time. I've really
started to add into the mix
instead of like a cold maybe you might say journalistic remove on the various machinations of my ego that I'm witnessing. When I sit in meditation to bring a warmer friendlier again, maybe even loving sense as I'm viewing, you know, all of my ugliness that has been a revelation and what which brings me to the slogan which is and I think in our Western individualistic
Culture we think of spiritual quests as like a slaying the dragon which is pretty violent. And so I actually think it's more like hugging the dragon and that that is like a radical disarmament because I've just noticed as I see like my own selfishness or my own jealousy or my own impatience my own self laceration if I can see that as like ancient and you I heard you talk about this person.
On that incredibly Brave podcast you did about the childhood abuse you suffered if you can start to.
View these story lines as their ancient story lines their ancient inner characters who are trying to help you and they made sense. They were adaptive at some point in your life, but they aren't working now but instead of like slaying those dragons which by the way will only make them stronger.
If you hug them if you give them a high five and a seat at the table and a party hat, they will quiet down and you can then make a better smarter
decision. Yeah, totally for whatever reason I was thinking of this tiny Huffy bike that I had as a kid Huffy some people recognize that name imagine this tiny Huffy bike with like the padded handle bars BMX with training wheels, and that's a great bike when you are the
Proper size but if you're still trying to ride that when you're in your 20s 30s and 40s that is you're going to have some panty pinches. That's very uncomfortable. Right? So it's perfect for a time and is no longer the right tool for the job but doesn't mean you have to throw it in a trash compactor and right curses all over it also brought up a memory of a pin that my mom bought for me because last summer for my birthday, which says sometimes I wrestle with my
And sometimes we just snuggle and I thought that was a pretty good reminder for mindfulness practice. What is your relationship with anger and that could be past tense and present tense, but I have read that one of the let's call it difficult emotions that you still experience. Regularly. This is at least in an interview in 2018 was anger. Could you speak to your
Relationship with anger or how that has been a presence in your
life a prominent inner player and I'm still like kind of working on this. So what L say is because maybe going to be not polished just as a joke to start I Chris Cuomo who used to work at ABC News and we became friends back then but he's now CNN Primetime host. He wrote an article years ago for some Men's Health magazine or something like that and he talked about
out his emotional landscape having two gears anger and self-pity and which I thought was just so great. And so perfect for me in some ways because those those two emotions are just so prominent for me and particular anger and it's a not man. It's just a you know, I will get angry because you know, just say I'll get it.
It's somebody I'm working with because if they're not doing a good enough job If it threatens my high standards for my work which then threatens my safety my you know, it triggers my anxiety and I will lash out and then I'll lash back at myself for being such a horrible mean person and that is really hard to untangle and this is where the hugging the Dragon.
Becomes really useful to see at the root of that is fear right anger is often described as a secondary emotion. It's usually something that happens as a knock-on effect of a more Primary Emotion in my case over time. I've just seen the emotion that seems to be at the root of so many of my problems is fear.
Anxiety and so it can lead to as a knock-on effect this anger at other people but primarily is not so much blowing up at other people going on in my life now, but a lot of anger at myself I can get into whole loops around. I'm a I'm approaching 50 and the ABS that I had in my mid 30s or now not visible in any way unless you have a high-powered microscope and you know, I can get into a whole thing around that and and it's like this.
ER at myself for being sloppy or not being up to my old standards or whatever and same thing can happen around my productivity levels. There's a great phrase. I heard from a podcaster named Jocelyn keg lie. She has a phrase productivity shame, which I just love that. You know, like IU. I know you're writing a book. I'm writing a book right now and like if I'm not hitting my Cadence for completing a chapter, it's just there's is just so much anger at myself. And so it's been really useful. I
With this coach who I know, you know Jerry Colonna. Yeah, and I don't working with Jerry for years. He's an executive coach. But in many ways it's like very close to therapy. And so he I've been working with him for years and and you know, really he definitely helped me a tune to a the fact that there was notwithstanding my meditation practice quite a bit of anger and be that beneath that was a lot of fear,
since you invoked the name of the coach with the spider tattoo. I'm going
to use that and ask you a question that I'll paraphrase. I'm sure I'm not getting it entirely right but question the jury often asks is how are you? Well, he encourages you to phrase it in the first person. So how am I complicit in creating the conditions? I say I don't want ya that is that is a Kelowna is mm. How would you answer that?
Or actually how would you have answered that?
in
say that you pre 2010 and has the answer changed.
I suspect funny. That's not a question. I mean, I've heard him ask that question, but it's not one we've worked on a lot so I don't have a ready answer because I'm going to have to process it a lot, you know in real time. I suspect it all comes back to the fear and anxiety to that in particular pre-2010 or whatever before I started getting really serious about meditation, but even after two because it didn't it doesn't solve all of your problems.
Hence, the whole 10% shtick
the
the I would say that the anger that flows out of the fear was creating a lack of collegiality for me and my work relationships and could sometimes be a really tough thing for my wife to deal with as well. And I want to be clear. It's not like I was a rageaholic or anything like that. It's more just like I could go inward I could withdraw.
And that was hard for people to that is hard for people to read but it nonetheless I could also lose my temper and that would be scary or annoying for people and I think now so the back then it would say if I felt like I had too much stress in my life too much conflict in my life. I think I was complicit because I hadn't taken a look at the sources of my own fear and anger and I would say now the answer would change to be more around at the anxiety, which I worry one of the things I really
Learn from Jerry and why Jerry focuses on the leadership in organizations. Is that a primary thesis of his is that when you have unexamined baggage as a leader in an organization, you pass your pathology along willy-nilly throughout the rest of the organization. It just starts to mirror your idiosyncrasies. And now that I'm you know, helping to run an organization. I mean, I guess I have a kind of a leadership role at ABC news, but within the temple
sent happier company, you know, I worry about and Jerry and I have talked a lot about my anxiety leading, you know bleeding out into the rest of the organization and I really have to watch
that you mentioned long ago in this conversation. Actually. Let's not go long ago there. Is there something that I've bookmarked for later discussion, but the withdrawal the not in the drug sense, but the emotional withdrawing is something I'd like to dig into
A little bit. So I'm looking at some of my notes and one says that you've had the experience or the habit of tending to avoid social engagements. Is that related to the you withdrawing are you more of would you consider yourself an introvert? I asked in part because I
generally withdraw from social engagements. I find them more depleting than re-energizing generally speaking particularly if it's a larger group particularly, if it's people I don't know very well from the outset. Could you speak to any aspect of that? Non question that I just threat you
it's not an odd question that was super redundant when I just said not an odd question, but it's a real question and I think actually the reason why I've had a big
Done this I was not very good at keeping up with my friends and prioritizing social engagement for a long time.
Largely, well, it started a little bit when I stopped doing drugs and that had a could have a negative relationship, you know relationship on your friendships with it can have a negative impact on your friendships with people who are still partying. So there was that and then I as I started to write 10% happier and then all of the stuff that happened after 10% happier, like launching a podcast and accompany all that stuff. I was just I told myself I was too busy and so I was really like letting my friendships starve.
I am not an introvert though. I actually get an enormous amount of energy. I think I've some introverted Tendencies Annika and I started Annika Harris and I started talking recently about this and we never finished the conversation. Should I think she might have a good diagnosis for me, but I have some introversion in me, but generally speaking. I really love seeing my friends and there wasn't an episode A couple of years ago where my wife and my son and I went to a rooftop party was a goodbye party for two of my colleagues.
ABC news and it was just a small group of my ABC News colleagues and it was so much fun. And I got in the car afterwards and I was like, why am I in such a good mood? And I realize it's because I don't do this anymore lie. I'm not making this a priority and so over the last couple of years. I've completely switch that and I which is hard during covid, but you know, we moved out of the city we had the incredible good luck to be able to our lease was ending in the
T so we were able to get out of our apartment in the city and rent a house up in the suburbs and has a pool and so over the summer were able to like bring our friends over all the time and my happiness level went through the roof from regular social engagement and this actually speaks to a huge issue in our culture, which is the lack of prioritization of social connection, which has led to a pandemic that predated the current pandemic which was the pandemic.
Of loneliness which is a major contributing factor from the evidence. I've seen to depression anxiety drug abuse suicide, you know, there are many contributing factors here from the way we live, you know, the way our societies are structured the the myth of individualism where we think we can do everything alone social media, which is further sort of taking us out of you know, seeing each other in person and
And I think this is a gigantic social issue and on an individual level to be practical about it for your listeners. I think being deliberate about cultivating interpersonal relationships will pay unbelievable dividends, you know, we've talked a lot about meditation, but I'm not a meditation fundamentalist. I think there are many many many levers to pull here and there's that one incredibly powerful one is just having
Relationships it's just right there in our Evolution. You know, we evolved to be social creatures. This is how we survived. We killed the Mastodon as a group and yet we have as the great writer Johann Hari has written we're the first generation to voluntarily dissolve the tribe, but we need the tribe and so making your own tribe and if you're introverted, you know for you Tim, it's might be about like smaller close-knit group of really really powerful Intimate Relationships, but
we need those relationships and I would recommend to people like being super deliberate about keeping those up even in a
pandemic maybe especially independent Mike. Yes. So the 10% happier stick your words not mine. Use those earlier. I want I have a comment and then a whole slew of questions. So the comment is I think you called it the 10% happier stick because you were alluding to the fact that many of the emotional experiences that you
Before meditation you still have post meditation and it made me think of I'm going to paraphrase here but a parable in a book called awareness by Anthony De Mello, who is a Jesuit priest and I suppose you call me psycho therapist to therapist but tells this parable of this enlightened master who says before Enlightenment. I was depressed after Enlightenment. I was still depressed but he goes on to say that the relationship to the depression changed.
and I'm going to take some creative Liberties here, but in brief effectively says, you know before Enlightenment, I was depressed and then after Enlightenment, I continue to experience what we would call depression but it was more of a there is depression or I am making myself depressed and it was that level of
Observer status that allows you to or certainly facilitates decreasing the half-life of depression, right? Sam Harris has talked about the half-life of anger. And if you can reduce that from like two hours to two minutes or five hours to one hour, the benefits are huge. Even if the subjective experience at times can still feel the same kind of pre and post. So I just I thought that was something very important that you
Loaded to when you were calling at the 10% happier stick. So let's talk about that. You publish 10% happier. Excellent Title, by the way, thank you. And it does very well. It's spawns all of these various businesses apps and so on that both contribute, I think incredible tools to those who are open to them and is also made you into I'm going to use a little bit of hyperbole here, but a very unlikely
Help Guru, so you have spent a lot of time as and and probably still do as the skeptic the debunker of self-help pundits in a sense when you were writing or dis or contemplating writing. What became ten percent happier. How did you approach it? And I think there are probably quite a few things that I'm digging for here and one is how did you create?
I ate a book that we think about creating it that ended up being very successful and a hugely crowded category, right because I would imagine at the time if you had said to some of your friends like hey, I'm thinking about writing a book on meditation. They were like Well, yeah, if you want to be number three to five million six hundred and seventy six thousand on the list of meditation books knock yourself out nonetheless it cut through the Clutter so
How did you think about writing this book? I mean, you mentioned a little bit and briefed earlier, but it really cut through and stood out so effectively in a crowded category. I would just love to hear anything that you would have to say about that
what I mentioned to Barbara Walters one time that I was working on this book. She turned to me and literally said don't quit your day job,
so
I had no read this was an
Complete I say this as somebody who's already out of himself as an atheist or an agnostic or whatever but like I this was a complete leap of faith. I had no reason to believe this was going to be a success. I did not think it was going to be success. I thought it was gonna be mildly embarrassing and then go away. My publisher is a
living you push back just for a second though. A book is a hell of a heavy lift like that is not an easy thing to do. So what were you hoping this book would do because as we both know book economics if
Are a huge outlier can produce some income but they're not the best. It's like relying on music royalties or something like that. Why do it you might not have had high expectations, but maybe you had some hopes related to it.
So the right amount of work there was the fantasy which I really was aware. That was a fantasy and then there was the thing that kept me going day to day. So the fantasy yes was that I was kind of like a
pence still am like a B or C Level Network news person who you know, I worried about ever like really cutting through in that industry and you know also could see quite clearly that it's not an industry. That's kind to its senior Statesman. So, you know, what was my future here and so like my fantasy was that I would create a whole new brand for myself in some ways and that it would really help a lot of people who would reflexively reject meditation.
In the ordinary course of events, but if talked about in the right way would really embrace it. And so that was my fantasy but I didn't allow myself to indulge in that that much because it all the messages. I was getting including from my own publisher where that this was not going to first of all I couldn't sell the book. I had a fancy book agent and he couldn't he got me one meeting and I and that one who had a lot of
eggs in one basket. Yes,
and that one editor bought it but for very
It'll money and
was the title 10 percent happier
welt, okay, so he said they then try to bargain me up to 20 or 30% of
here
and I was like you don't get the joke and they also at one point tried to get me to change the title to be happy now, which I did have a like a real temper tantrum, but that and so it was not good. I mean the initial print run was 15,000. I
I really didn't think it was going. I honestly didn't think it was going to succeed. But of course I had the fantasies but the read the thing that got me going from day to day because I remember I had many conversations with people in my life including my brother who's really like my closest advisor and probably the smartest person I know and I'm remember him just kind of marveling it like dude you are it took me five years to write that book and he was just like you are spending so much time on this thing and you have no idea, you know if it's going to be published.
Or whether it's going to be a success at what are you doing this for? And I think it was because I needed to figure this stuff out and I know you know this Tim because you've written so many books. Like there's a great expression. I heard once that you should only write a book if you have to and I felt like I had to write this book because I was trying to figure out these incredibly important issues to me around anxiety and ambition and this the voice in the head and and and
Remedies for that or the ways to work with it. I only fully started to get some level of understanding as I was writing. And so that's really what kept me
going five years. That's a long time. Yeah. When did you
have the book I'm writing now is too much to the consternation of the people in my Orbit is going to take me at minimum for
what are you working on right now? Can you say is that under your cover? I think it's
similar to what you're working on in some ways is
because I knew you were writing a book about healing and I would say I've only recently started using this formulation of I think it's a book about love.
Which is and I think love has gotten a really bad rap because it comes down to us through Hollywood movies and love songs. And all you need is love which I love that song but like definitely not true. Like you also need to brush your teeth and whatever there lots of other things you need. And I also think we we don't think about love in the right way. Our understanding is kind of limited to the romantic or maybe the the way we feel about our kids but in a lot of Buddhist circles that you
you can think about love as kind of anything north of neutrality just like the human capacity to care and and you can also think of it as omnidirectional which I think is perhaps the most interesting aspect here which is and this gets to the hug the Dragon Aspect of it. It's like if you can start to love yourself and I don't mean love yourself like you're walking around giving yourself hugs or talking about how great you are but like have some warmth towards your own inner.
- or as RAM Das has said before he passed he said it's not about defeating your neuroses. It's about becoming a connoisseur of them. Like if you could think about like self love in that way. Well, that's like the unlock that can improve your relationships and lead to a really virtuous cycle of the okay show. Your inner weather is balmier than your relationships get better and as a consequence of your relationships getting better because we know that relationships are in many ways like the
the apex predator of like self-care techniques or self-care like aspects of self-care then then your inner weather gets better and then your relationships get better and it goes into a virtuous cycle upward spiral and so for me, like that's what I mean when I'm talking about love, I wrote a subsequent book to 10% happier called meditation for fidgety Skeptics and I wrote it really quick and I made myself and everybody around me miserable and in the end the book was fine, but it wasn't like it's not as impactful
as
I don't think has as 10% happier and so my goal for this next book and I may fail but I'm willing to make the leap of faith in the investment largely because I'm trying to figure this shit out for myself. And so it's just going to take me a long time
books. What a what an Everest books are and I'm on the fence. You know, I have I will be honest. I have God knows how many words I mean fifty thousand a hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand words gathered largely in the form of notes and rough.
Giraffes and so on for this healing this book about I should I should personalize it because I don't think it's one-size-fits-all but my own healing journey, and I'm not going to lie that I have become.
Largely demotivated which is not necessarily a bad thing after releasing this podcast about the childhood abuse because that was the big reveal that was going to be in a sense the nucleus of this book and I feel like the live dialogue with my friend. Debbie Millman was a more suitable format in a way. It was a more emotionally charged.
Appropriate format for that reveal then text I'm not saying that's true for all things. I think that many many things are better explored in the printed word. But since releasing that into the wild, I have all these notes in them. I'm not I've lost a bit of the internal pressure and the it's going to be really dramatic but sort of the the like the devil whipping me at my back to get that out into the world if that makes
He sense which I think is a good thing in a sense because I'm having I'm not having to but I'm choosing to leave more slack in the system, which I have done for the last month or two and it's deeply uncomfortable deeply deeply deeply uncomfortable. It's like, you know, if your thrashing around in the kiddie pool, it's like yeah, you don't have to look at the stuff. That's at the bottom of the pool is creating so much.
Each surface froth with like frenetic activity and lots and lots of projects and so on which I've always not just done I would say to cover things but because I enjoy that like the kind of Parker 6th Gear to borrow from your from your friends to gear analogy. When do you feel most
At ease and expansive or when do you feel the greatest sense of
spaciousness?
I'm going to answer that but can I just go back to your book for a second and I don't say this to be a devil whipping you and I think it's totally fine. If you never write the book and because the service you provided by releasing that podcast is already immense. So I say this very gingerly because I again this not to apply pressure but it's maybe too it's a perhaps we could tempt a tree motivation if that's even appropriate with it because I think there's a difference.
Because that the podcast was stupendous in many ways because you know, I of course for people who suffered trauma and as you guys Exposed on there, it's you know or described on there. It may be as high as one of every three women and one in every six men and perhaps even higher given the shame around reporting in among men. So that's a huge population. But beyond that there were the themes that you described that really resonated with me who luckily didn't suffer any childhood abuse.
There are the themes you described in there that are very similar to the things that I'm describing which is you know, viewing these adaptive patterns behavioral patterns and storylines that we adopt in childhood. You you talk about sort of a dissociation which made a lot of sense was a group was brilliant as a kid, but not so useful as you got older that the universality I think of bringing some warm
with exploring through various modalities, you've described therapy CBT in particular but also psychotropic drugs and meditation hearing you walk through that narrative in a much more granular way and letting us watch your process. I think there there is an enormous amount of value you could provide their I again, I'm not saying you're fucking up if you don't do it, but
I could see how it would serve a lot of people if you did do it. I
appreciate the pep talk Den. I it's not it's not absolutely off the table. It's not absolutely off the table. I have a a, you know, Seth Godin would sort of give me a stiff drink and give me another talking to if you heard me saying this but I have this I think developed certain apprehension around writing because I really haven't written a monster book. Not that this would need to be a monster book, but it probably would knowing me and my
my tendency to write phone books was 2011. This has been a long time. I mean you have tools of Titans, which did have quite a bit of original writing it probably a hundred fifty a hundred hundred fifty Pages original writing and but it was connective tissue for the rest of the book tribal mentors, which was like one of the incredible demonstration of efficiency and having other people write a book for you, which I can't recommend highly enough.
So there's some apprehension around it, but I'll be getting back into the writing game and I think I need to sort of sharpen up my ice skates and take a bunch of shots on goal that are in a practice setting before I get back to real live gameplay, but I suspect I'll get there very early on in this conversation. You mentioned I don't want to say reverence that's too strong. But an appreciation for how adherence to these various religions you were exposed to
to through your assignments had regular a regular Cadence of contemplating their place in the cosmos contemplating the universe in whatever capacity have you found an opportunity or vehicle for doing that yourself or is that still a non-essential or non present at least element in the the puzzle? That is Dan
Harris. No, it's totally essential and it really comes in the form of Buddhism.
And it's not just Buddhism. I don't want to be too sectarian about this. It's just living an exam and examined life generally and so for me that can happen in the form of my meditation practice and going on meditation Retreats, but it's also, you know hosting a podcast where I get to interview all of being people all sorts of people including you it's listening to other peoples podcasts. You're Sam's our mutual friend Peter Atia it
It's reading books. So it's walking in nature. It's it's anything that can jar you out of the constricted sense of being an ego being a small self appearing fretfully out at the world through your eyeholes and more into.
Scott this is this is where you get into this sort of cliched stuff, but like feeling connected the and so I haven't toid much with psychedelics. Although I'm very interested in it. But you know, you can get that in psychedelics. I can get it pretty easily in meditation. I can get it in socializing with my friends. I get it with I have a five-year-old and
Done and he is just like just a constant source of this and also like worry and frustration to engaging in the lifelong exercise and project of being in a marriage. So there's so many for me that seems like such a Target Rich environment for contemplating.
externally, and internally, I've been that has been just such an incredible shift in my life since
Those days when I was reluctantly exposed to you know, the faithful and had that inchoate sense of maybe there was something I was missing but I didn't want exactly what these guys were doing. I feel like I figured that out. I mean I'm figured out much but I figured out the various access points for me to start this this investigation
just a quick side note on psychedelics for people who may not have any exposure to other
Ins about them this may seem odd, but I just pulled it up because I thought it might be fun and instructor for folks. There's a book called The Island written by Aldous Huxley. Yeah, I've read and okay. So Aldous Huxley also our doors of perception considered the island. His most important work is a novel about Paula this utopian Island. And there's this psychedelic Brew, you know, the Psychedelic medicine called Moksha Moksha. Mm. And there's a there's a portion.
If you don't mind me sort of indulging myself on this podcast. I'll just read this real briefly. So here we go. This is a dialogue between two characters in the novel The Moksha medicine takes you to the same place you get to in meditation. So why bother to meditate you might as well ask why bother to eat dinner, but according to you the Moksha medicine is dinner. It's a banquet. She said emphatically and that's precisely why there has to be meditation. You can't have Banquets every day. They're too rich in the last too long besides Banquets are provided by a caterer.
You don't have any part in the preparation of them for your everyday diet. You have to do your own cooking. The Moksha medicine comes is an occasional treat in theological terms. The Moksha medicine prepares one for the reception of gratuitous Graces pre mystical Visions or the full-blown mystical experience meditation is one of the ways in which one cooperates with those gratuitous Graces how by cultivating the state of mind that makes it possible for the dazzling ecstatic insights to become permanent and habitual illuminations by getting to know oneself to the point where one won't be compelled by
unconscious to do all the ugly absurd self stultifying things that one so often finds oneself doing and I think that's a great I suppose description narrative painting of a scene to compare or put side by side psychedelic compounds and experiences with meditation because I think the tendency among all so many Taipei driven personalities when they hear the description of
of say a very strong psilocybin experience or Ayahuasca experience as 15 years of therapy and two nights. They're like great. I've been looking for the shortcut. Let me go do this and get on the front lines and take a thousand bullets to the face in a short period of time to get this over with so I can move into my more enlightened phase and that's a very problematic approach and can backfire can destabilize can really untether people also,
I use the Expression ontological hives earlier in the conversation, which I don't know. I'm not sure where that came from. But there is a term that I don't know if the scientist would be comfortable using his name, but very well known scientist would call ontological shock where people come out of these experiences. So I'll just use the same word be stabilized because of the richness vividness comprehensiveness of their experience under psychedelics that they
lose their faith in the Fidelity and the realness of this let's call it ordinary reality and that may sound like word salad to some but it is it can be a not just terrifying but persistent issue for some folks and you know, there is a reason that psychedelics prior to that becoming the default term were called psycho memetics right if you were used to
What clinicians at the time assumed to be psychotic episodes even though neurobiologically they're actually quite different if you were to look at so functional MRI or the activity, they're quite different but subjectively they can seem quite similar. So that is that is not something you want to do on a daily basis. It may be something you never want to do meditation allows you to
sort of access
many of the same channels without having it at spinal tap 11 of volume. So that's
we complete but if we Flash Forward say three years, I like three years for these kind of thought exercises.
for you to be
in retrospect looking back at the past three years. This is three years from now. What would you like to see in your own life? That's deliberately very broad. But if we were to flash forward to Dan Harris three years from today,
And of ask are you happy with the last three years you satisfied you content pleased choose your adjectives. What assessment would you do would you run? What are the things you would look for anything in particular?
Well, like there's a superficial level that's not unimportant, but the superficial level of you know, I'm really focused on professionally on building a brand and a company that is going to help a lot of people. I'm grow and be good.
Our employees and you know writing the book is part is, you know sort of related to that and so all of that stuff which I would put on the more superficial end of the spectrum while again not being unimportant. That's there. I'd say deeper is is this stuff again just to invoke this cheesy little hug the dragon phrase, you know, like that seems to me like to be incredibly
onward leading and to have
Profound Ripple effects for like every aspect of my existence the more I can switch my response to my own to use this phrase again sort of inner ugliness from anger or just sort of blind obedience to a sort of slightly amused warmth.
That just strikes me as like really consequential in terms of how I'm treating myself and then how and treating other people and then all of the ramifications of that Dynamic and so it will show up in lots of ways like how I am I about you know, my own feelings about like my own body or toward food or toward productivity or how am I in my marriage? How is all of that modeling which of course your kids going to see?
How's that all impacting him? And what kind of human he's going to become and all of the Ripple effects of his actions in the world. So yeah, that seems like the project to me and it's not just as simple as you know, you talked before about a kind of and I didn't respond to it because we moved on but there was you were talking before about like the selflessness or not self the the the idea and Buddhism that there is no solid self here. So instead of saying I'm angry you can just say
there is anger and I see that as related to the it's not just that you have a warm relationship to your anger. You see that they're the anger isn't as solid like identifying with it as my anger instead of seeing it and this is kind of radical as nature. We again think of ourselves as atomized individual egos, right just nature is outside of us. We're looking at it through this lens of me.
But absolutely can't be true to go to the cliche about like your the the atoms that make up your body or from the first exploded Stars you are part of Nature. And so therefore all of the horrible little things that you're thinking all of these things that you still feel so much like you
that's nature to and and that helps you not identify with it not it doesn't have to be your anger anymore can just be anger. And so the combination of viewing it with some warmth and then viewing it as just nature as the selfless phenomenon that you don't have to claim.
That project seems like a I would love to be further and further along in the development of those twin mutually reinforcing capacities over the next three years.
Yeah, me too. You mentioned the weather patterns earlier in the conversation frank mean getting I very rarely I would say never get angry at the day for being overcast or raining or fill in the blank rights getting closer to that.
Level
of equanimity Detachment / connection with the occurrences of emotions and viewing them similarly that something to Aspire
to you can view your emotion as a weather pattern. This is not my analogy because I can you can view the what is a hurricane or any storm. It's a Confluence of meteorological atmospheric events that come together to create a storm but this you can't find any core to the store.
I'm there is no essential nugget of storm. It's a coming together of a variety of phenomena and the same is true for your anger, but we just don't see it that way and so starting to just play with the idea of like this anger may just be a naturally occurring phenomenon just like a storm as Joseph Goldstein off and says takes the nutriment of I out of it and makes it so much less
loaded.
This is question that keeps popping to mind for me. I don't know why I want to ask about I'm going to ask if I were to ask. Dr. Bianca your partner in crime partner in life or not. I if I were to rather put her in a situation with you where she is saying to you Dan, I'm so proud of you for dot dot dot just looking back over. The last could be last few years could be last week. It could be anything. But what might she say to you.
I don't have to guess actually because
Rika Lona not that long ago. He and I were having a Skype session and he asked me something to the effect of like what would be exhibitor question to what you just asked like what would Beyoncé and I said, well, we don't have to guess let's bring her in and she she's pretty shy so she was mad at me for doing this but I pulled her over in front of the camera and he asked her about it. She loves him so she was happy to see him. So she asked him a bunch of questions. He asked her a bunch of questions and and she said the following which was
So just by way of background, I got involved with Jerry because I had a 360 review. This was two and a half years ago for those of rudel. Yeah. Okay. So have you ever had one? I have okay, it took me a while to recover from it. Okay, so I'm still recovering. This was like two and a half years ago and I had a 360 review. I did it as like a cute little thing that I thought might be like a good element for a book that I was writing.
Now. Let's do you want to just four people don't know what it is describe what this is.
Yes, I will.
So a 360 review is a corporate thing mostly where you were you hire a company an executive will hire a company or the the executives boss will hire a company that comes in and interviews said Executives superiors peers and subordinates. So you get a 360 view of how they're performing in the company. I would Jerry did the colonoscopy version of this where we interviewed 16 people both for my professional life and my personal life.
Like my wife my brother may be dragons Okay exactly there be dragons which by the way I've learned how to hug but I didn't I didn't know this. I didn't have a lot of sort of warmth toward my inner dragons in the when we did this two and a half years ago and the results were devastating devastating. I mean I was
because everybody there the feedback is reported
Anonymous. Yes. Yes, right. That's a key Place key.
It's like basically I will got to eavesdrop on a conversation. That's 16 of my closest colleagues and friends and family members had behind my back and and all the feedback was anonymized and it was I was sick for days and that's the book I'm writing now is thats that's the panic attack of the book. I'm writing now. So the first book The began with a panic attack this book begins with a
360
and so I thought it was going to be like a cute little device I would use for
Look, it turned out to be so devastating that it became the whole book my sort of dealing with what I learned in this 360 and it's the best thing that ever happened to me as horrifying one of the best things that ever happened to me as horrifying as it was and so anyway, Jerry called Bianco over and she said that she was incredibly proud of me for dealing with all of the contents of the 360, which she has read first time. She read it she cried. She said she was very proud of my dealing with it forthrightly.
We and really digging in and I said at the moment will Bianca, you know, like I'm writing a book about this. So I'm essentially getting paid to do this work and I don't know like I have trouble giving myself too much credit and she have she's had to say this to me time and time again, and it's really a relief. She's like, I don't care why you're doing it you're doing it and you can't fake the doing of it. Whatever your motivations are. Like if you're really doing it you're really doing it and
The benefits for her for my son potentially if I do my job correctly and write the book. Well, the benefits for other people should be real so that was reaiiy. I was just I audio record all of my conversations with Jerry because I often write about them and I was just really listening to that the other day so your question is serendipitous because I happen to happen to have her words fresh fresh in my mind. And yeah, it's very moving for me to hear.
Well, I don't care why you're doing it. That's a good partner right there. That's a good intervention. Just a few more questions and we'll do it. We'll do a couple of will end on some some candy some shorter questions. Although the answers don't have to be short books. You've gifted the most other people outside of your own what books have you gifted the most to other people anything that comes to mind and why?
Yeah, so the books that I most
Are you won't surprise you all going to be with one exception? They're all going to be sort of meditation books. Although the one exception is has some pretty strong ties to it to for people who are interested in learning more about this. I recommend why Buddhism is true by Robert Wright waking up by Sam Harris Buddhism without beliefs by Steven Bachelor Real Happiness by Sharon salzberg, and now there's a new entrant which would be You Belong by seven a Selassie.
The the non meditative book I would recommend but it actually has some pretty strong Dharma overtones is perhaps the best novel I have ever read and it was sent to me by seven a Selassie wedges reference to wrote that book you belong. She's a meditation teacher and share her love language is to send people books. And so she sent me a book recently and it was called the overstory. Did you read it?
This is where I'm gonna I'm like gonna drown in my own productivity shame because this book has been recommended to me.
So many times it's on my Kindle and I haven't yet gotten past page 1 so I need to read it. But please describe it for
people well page one is tough. Actually I can see why you wouldn't get past page one because he it's a barn burner of a story and so in fact that you should you don't need to look at this as homework because it's in a massively pleasurable read the only warning I would give you is that as a fellow writer. I found the book to be
utterly humiliating because I realized that he has more skill in a single paragraph and I will ever muster in my entire writing career. This guy is a force of Nature and the book is about nature. The book is ostensibly about trees, but it's really about humans and their relationship to trees and he is able to render these Incredible characters and create this really page-turner of a book that is again sort of ostensibly about trees which makes it sound very
Ring but now I'm fascinated by trees and I loved the book and I just couldn't believe still can't believe how much how talented a writer he is. It's just it's not fair. I will just say I was just finally say that one of the great joys of my life recently has you know has been having a son and or child but he happens to be a boy and and we moved to the suburbs and we're doing the most quintessential cheesy suburb thing, which is he's a Cub Scout.
Now and he loves nature. So we will like we have these like a Cub Scout pamphlets of a walk around the yard trying to identify trees and that has been part been fueled by the reading of the overstory keep
any favorite documentaries or documentaries. You most recommend or tend to recommend a lot and I also have question about well, it's very personal I suppose approach to documentaries. But how would you answer
that? I love I'm a sucker for a rock duck so I will watch pretty
Any rockumentary that comes out so I've obviously the king of them is The Last Waltz, which is a Martin Scorsese movie about the final concert put on by the band there actually is a new documentary called once we were brothers, I believe and it's also about the band Robbie Robertson. It's on Hulu right now, and I loved that but I will watch like my wife and I just watched a show time documentary about the Go-Go's and it was amazing. I watched a
Side idli mediocre Netflix documentary, but the Kpop band black pink, but I loved it. Anyway, even though it wasn't really that good no direction home about Bob Dylan song Exploder, which is the new Netflix show where they do a half-hour on Like Us song that I watch one last night just last night about Losing My Religion By REM and it's basically a duck a little mini documentary about how they made the song and ended up telling the story of the band as part of that. And so yeah, that's what I find myself.
Watching when I'm looking to
relax. So perhaps when people are not looking to relax necessarily, but could you please describe Guardians of the Amazon? I feel I would be remiss not to bring
that up. I did a documentary like an hour-long documentary about this Amazonian indigenous tribe. We finished it and posted it in February. It's on YouTube. You can watch it there. It's on Hulu and I went and followed this indigenous tribe. They started their own peril.
Military organization to go out and do this incredibly dangerous thing of arresting illegal loggers illegal loggers are basically the tip of the spear when it comes to deforestation the way it works is the loggers come in. They take all the valuable trees and then then people come in and flatten the whole part of the forest and turn into grazing land for cattle. If you want to know why we have so much deforestation in you can largely blame your cheeseburger this tribe that was incredible and
Embedded with them on a mission and they were right. It does like so much action on the folded in front of our lenses as they went out and found these loggers and they're armed with bows and arrows machetes muskets rifles pistols is extraordinary. It is visually and
emotionally arresting if people just watch the trailer for Guardians of the Amazon my reasons for saying that will be extremely extremely clear. You've given a few Matos.
Few mantras if you had a billboard metaphorically speaking to reach billions of people message to put up could be a quote could be a word could be an image could be anything at all. What might you put up on that billboard. I don't
know if this is if this would work on a billboard but the most exciting idea I've ever encountered and I think it's now my job on the planet to spread the word about this which is in part why I was
Badgering you about writing your book because I think your book makes this point will make this point a beautiful way. The most exciting idea is that the mind is trainable and we are not stuck with
All of the things we don't like about ourselves that you can through various modalities including meditation therapy psychedelics walks in nature working on your relationships. There's so many ways that you can train your mind. I'm obsessed with music as and I used to back when record stores were a thing. I would always go to Newbury Comics in Boston and spend an hour or so flipping through the new records and they would had this like whiteboard that
Did all of the upcoming releases when I was so interested to see what like what new records were going to come out and and there was an expression above the list and it said all dates can change. So can you that is the truth dude like you can change and like you've demonstrated this is why I was so sort of galvanized by listening to your podcast and I knew some of it because you when you came in to do my podcast
just a while ago you actually I think we had stopped rolling but you had told me some of the story and so I was aware of some of what I was going to hear on the podcast, but just hearing more about the work you've done to recover from this Grievous injury makes that point that we can change it's not I'm not saying it's gonna be easy but it is doable and what are the
options? Yeah, all dates can change and so can you like it?
Stuck clearly mean that that that I guess what was it signed poster board the letters that fit into those grooves. I'm just imagining one of those announcement boards in high school all dates can change and so can you I think that's a good place to start to wrap up Dan. Is there anything else you would like to say request complaints comments anything you would like to posit a
Most of my audience
listening. No, I'm very grateful to you for having me on thank you and it was actually really fun. So that's all I have to say.
This has been a whole hell of a lot of fun Dan. I always enjoy our conversations and can't wait to see the new book when that is done. And the people can find you online quite easily. They can find the book 10% happier. Also the follow-up meditation fidgety Skeptics a 10% happier how-to book.
Have the 10% happier company with the app and so on Twitter at Danby Harris 1s Instagram at Dan Harris Facebook at Dan Harris ABC. Is there anywhere else any other URLs or anything that that might be helpful to mention for people who want to see and learn more about what you're up
to have you can check out the podcast we've had illustrious guests such as Tim Ferriss and many of the all of the meditation teachers who've been referenced in the course of this show are regulars.
On the show on the show. We were we post episodes twice a week. So basically it's a fiesta of the if you enjoy if you like thinking about human flourishing that's that's all we talked about and just like Tim and Sam and others do as well. So that's the you check that
up. What is the name of your podcast also called 10% happier easy to remember
brand continuity, you know you I know you're a big investor and in companies and sobrang continuity is reasonably
important.
Yes, very important dates can change and so can you but your brand shouldn't change every Tuesday. That is something that you probably want to keep more constant Dan. Once again, thank you so much for taking the time. This was just a great way to wrap up this week. We're recording on a Friday and really appreciate also what you're doing in the world and what you're sharing. I think it's incredibly valuable and Incredibly practical.
So coming at it from the perspective of a skeptical investigative wartime journalist who is loath to believe in any mythology is your fairy tales. I think that appeals to an entire large segment of the population who would otherwise not be open to even test driving any of these these tools that can so demonstrably help. So it's a
It's quite a service that you put into the world. So and I thank you for that and to everybody listening everything we've talked about will be linked to in the show notes. So you can find all of that at Tip Top log forward slash podcast until next time. Thank you for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And what do you enjoy getting a short email for me every
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Very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that check it out. Just go to four hour workweek.com. That's 4-Hour workweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoyed this episode is brought to you by Thera gun. I have to their guns and they're worth their weight in gold and using them every single day whether you're an elite athlete or just a regular person trying to
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