February 2, 2026 • 41 mins
Presented by Audible, Amy interviews Dan Harris, bestselling author of 10% Happier. They dive into panic attacks, mental health, meditation myths, and small changes that can make a big impact. Insightful, approachable, and perfect for anyone looking to quiet the noise and feel a little more grounded.
Dan Harris is the author of the #1 New York Times best-selling memoir, 10% Happier, about a fidgety, skeptical news anchor who finds meditation. He’s also the host of the 10% Happier podcast where he interviews celebrities, entrepreneurs, authors, scientists, and meditation teachers about how to do life better. For 21 years, he worked at ABC News, where he anchored such shows as Nightline and the weekend editions of Good Morning America. You can learn more about Dan at DanHarris.com.
For more of Dan’s journey with mindfulness, listen to his book 10% Happier, only on Audible. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a 30-day trial at Audible dot com. Membership is $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It takes thirty days to form a habit, in ninety
days to make it stick. Lucky for you, Audible and
I have teamed up to bring you the Sound Reset Challenge,
a four week series designed to help you unlock your
twenty twenty six goals, projects and resolutions, all brought to
you by Audible. Audible's wellbeing collection has everything to inspire
(00:21):
and support you in every step of your well being journey.
I'm Amy Brown, co host on The Bobby Bone Show,
and today I'm joined by Dan Harris, who is an
Emmy Award winning journalist, former ABC News anchor, and now
a practicing teacher of meditation and mindfulness. Nearly twelve years ago,
in twenty fourteen, Dan released his book Ten Percent Happier,
(00:43):
an autobiographical tale of the spiritual, scientific, and skeptical odyssey
that led him through many portals of the self help
world to his own mindfulness practice. The book was a
bestseller and did a lot to bring mindfulness to the mainstream. Today,
Dan is here to share their pertinent insights from his journey,
and then we're going to challenge you, the listeners, to
(01:06):
a four week course for getting out of your own
way and on your way to reaching your goals. Listen
as we challenge you to turn your resolutions into reality.
All right, So Dan, I listened to ten percent Happier
on Audible, and I got to say one of my
favorite little perks of that was the meditations at the end.
And I did the walking meditation yesterday.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Great good on you, how to go?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
It went really well.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I hadn't done a walking meditation in several months, but
I was like, oh, this is here at the end,
I might as well do it. And I got to say,
walking meditations are my favorite kind. But there is something
you talk about in the book that was really interesting
to me with the brain scans. It was maybe an
update that you did towards the end, so I don't
(01:49):
know if it was in the original book, but I thought, shoot,
now I want a scan of my brain to see
if I'm even meditating correctly.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I would strongly recommend against that because one of the well,
first of all, I did it, and it was a disaster,
and I walked away totally confused about whether I was
meditating correctly. And then I actually had dinner that night
with my longtime meditation teacher and he told me that
he did it too, and he was confused, and so
(02:21):
I don't recommend it. My worry for all meditators, including myself,
is that you get hung up on this question of
my doing it right. And here's the simple answer. If
you find yourself focused for a few nanoseconds at a
time on whatever you're trying to focus on, like your
breath or the sensations of your body as you're walking,
(02:43):
and then you get distracted a million times and then
start over a million times, then you're doing it correctly.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well that's the encouragement I need to hear. Dan, So
thank you, and I know it's been years for you now.
But for those who don't know what inspired your mindfulness
journey and led you to writing this.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Book Cocaine, I guess that would be the one word answer,
But the slightly longer answer is that I used to be,
in a former life, a globe trotting war correspondent for
ABC News. In the years after nine to eleven, I
spent a lot of time in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, the
(03:22):
West Bank, Gaza, and then a ton of time in Iraq,
probably a year total in a rock over the course
of six or seven trips and I came home in
the middle of this period of time and I got depressed,
although I didn't know I was depressed, and then I
did this incredibly stupid thing of self medicating with recreational drugs,
including cocaine, and that led to a panic attack on
(03:46):
national television on Good Morning America back in two thousand
and four. Actually had two panic attacks, one in two
thousand and four, one two thousand and five. The better
one to watch is the one from two thousand and four,
And if you google panic attack on television, mine is
the number one result, which makes my mother so proud.
And after I had that panic attack, I realized I
(04:07):
needed to sort my stuff out, and so I started
seeing a psychiatrist and that ultimately led me to meditation.
So that's the reef answer.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, your short answer being the cocaine. That's something that
I found to be so interesting about this book is
how vulnerable you got, especially the type of work that
you do. I know that's something that you wrestled with, like,
am I going to share this very vulnerable detail about
my life?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
But for me, I found it well.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
First of all, I was really shocked because I've watched
you on TV for years, and I thought, oh, no, way,
he was, you know, doing drugs like that heart and ecstasy.
Like I just couldn't separate you out on the town
with you being the news guy. My brain struggled with
that a little bit. And then I also was thankful
(04:54):
because it humanized you, like and it also helped me
relate to you more. Not that I I have that
exact you know, the exact story that you have by
any means, but I just was like, oh, wow, he's
just not this guy on the news. He has a
real story, and it made me just find everything you
were saying just a little bit more believable. I guess
(05:14):
that's how I would summarize it, because sometimes you read
like self help stuff and you're like, okay, yeah, right,
Like I don't really know that I could apply.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
This to my life.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And I was like, no, if he did this and
it completely changed his life, and you it's something that
you had to do. And now I want to circle
back to the title of the book, ten percent happier.
Is that a phrase you still use to this day
because you came up with that title a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I do use it. Look, I I'll just tell the
story for the people listening who may not be familiar
with any of this. That I got interested in meditation
at a time when it wasn't really socially acceptable to
talk about it, and so this is probably like two
thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten. And
(05:57):
occasionally people at work would say, you know what, what
has gotten into you? Or what's the matter with you?
You used to be semi cool. And I remember a
conversation where I was talking to my friend Chris and
she was asking this question, and I said, you know,
I do it because it makes me ten percent happier,
and I could see the look on her face transform
(06:17):
from scorn to mild interest, and I thought, Okay, well,
this is my shtick. This is this is how I'm
going to talk about it. Because there's so much overpromising
in the self help world that I think is quite
reckless and greety, frankly, and so I wanted to have
a way to talk about it that made sense. And
I'll be honest, you know, I've been meditating for I
(06:38):
don't know, sixteen seventeen years, and I'm way more than
ten percent happier. So now my little tweak is that
it's like a good investment. You know, if you're consistently
investing in the stock market, you'll get ten percent annual
returns probably, but they will compound over time if you
keep investing. And so my level of happiness now. I
(07:00):
continue to make mistakes, and you know, life happens to me,
Illness happens. You know, people in my life pass away.
All of the things that happened to the rest of
us happened to me. But my ability to handle it
with some sophistication just continues to get better.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I love that the compounding How difficult was it for
you to decide to write this and reveal things about
your own journey that you did. I know in the
book you mentioned your mom called you the night before
it was going to release or something, and she was like,
don't do it, don't do it, don't put it out there,
and you're like, well, I have books in the warehouse,
so it's happening.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
It was really hard. I mean, it feels like another
life because the book came out in twenty fourteen, so nearly,
you know, twelve years ago. But yes, I was super nervous.
And my mom's email to me shortly before the book
came out in which she begged me not to publish
the book was not helpful. Although I'm not trying to
criticize my mom, she was just being a protective mother. Honestly,
(08:00):
when you ask that question, I start thinking about the
fact that one year from now, actually less than one
year from now, at the beginning of January next year,
I have a sequel coming out that is frankly more embarrassing,
and I'm in the middle of the rewrites for it
today as a matter of fact, and I'm having very
(08:23):
similar feelings of like, am I really going to do this?
And what are people going to think? And ultimately what
I come back to always is I guess this is
just how I teach, and I think my mo or
my way of being a public figure now is to
admit the stuff that most people won't admit but is
actually true for them anyway. And so one of the
(08:46):
ways I describe this is that some people teach from
the mountaintop and I teach from the fetal position.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Well, I think you also, it's got to be a
little comforting to have the data from the first book
because you were nervous. Similarly, I understand those nerves coming
back again. But then you've got data of like, oh,
I've done this before, I've been here, and what the
data is telling me is this is what people appreciate
and respect from me, and this should do well too.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
That's true to a certain extent, and I definitely I know,
and there's a research to show that if you share,
if you self disclose, if you're vulnerable, to use the
term of art, people tend to like you. But there
is there's fear, nonetheless for all of us, if we're
even for somebody who's done it very publicly as I have,
(09:35):
And I guess part of me is scared that people
will say, well, wait a minute, how can you continue
to make mistakes. You're supposed to be some sort of
meditation guy. And I know my answer to that, which
is that you know, there is no such thing as perfection.
I'm mister ten percent, and I'm going to continue to
make mistakes, and I'm going to continue to self disclose
(09:56):
because I think it's helpful for other people, because it
normalizes all of our weird stuff. But it is it's
you know, there's no situation in which it's the fear
will go away.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I think, well, let's talk about the monkey mind. How
do you think that shows up in our world today?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, so the monkey mind is a term that is
kind of taken from the Buddha, who was a dude
who lived twenty six hundred years ago on the in
India and Nepal, and he was really a You can
think of him as just an amazing genius level meditation teacher.
That's just one way to think of him. And he
(10:36):
had this he compared our minds to monkeys in that
we're just jumping all over the place. We were just
constantly thinking about the past or the future. We're instead
of focusing on what's happening right now. We're judging people,
we're judging ourselves. We're wanting stuff, we're not wanting stuff.
And when you're unaware of this NonStop conversation which you
(10:58):
are having with yourself, when you're unaware of it, it
owns you. Every little thought that flits through your mind
is like and this is the way my meditation teacher
describes it, Every little thought becomes a tiny dictator. You
just act it out. You have a thought of like, oh,
maybe I should say something right now that will ruin
the next forty eight hours of my marriage, and then
(11:19):
you just do it. And what meditation does is help
you not be so owned by this stream of consciousness
that's happening all the time, and that were and that
if we broadcast allowed, we'd be locked up. But most
of us are only kind of vaguely aware of the
thinking process, and if we can become a little bit
(11:40):
more aware, aka a little bit more mindful, then we
have more choice and freedom.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Seeing of being locked up.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I was just taken back to a part in the
book where you, as a journalist, you did solitary confinement
for well, was it forty eight hours? First of all,
I couldn't believe that a prison agreed to block you
up that way, So just side note there. It's like
you were dedicated to that story.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
You know. I find that people are generally willing to
lock up somebody from the mainstream media. You know, we're
pretty unpopular. So that part wasn't the hard part. The
hard bar was actually doing it, And honestly, it really
did land me on the conclusion that solitary confinement, while
it may be necessary in some extreme cases, is kind
(12:25):
of torture. We are social animals, you know, if you
think about the history of humans.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
We never.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We never had claws or talons or wings or massive size.
In fact, in our early days as a species, we
were prey animals. We only got to the top of
the food chain because of our ability to cooperate, communicate, collaborate, care,
and everything about modern life now militates against that. Everything
(12:59):
about modern life, if it is hyper individualistic, isolated in
our own tech bubbles. We're being pitted against one another
on social media because the versions of the humans that
we disagree with, the version we see of them is
like a cartoon version often, So there's no I don't
(13:20):
think it's a coincidence that in this isolated, individualistic, lonely
era that we're seeing unprecedented me never before seen levels
of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, and loneliness. And so actually
that is kind of what I'm writing about in my
next book, for lack of a less cheesy term, it's
(13:41):
about love. You know, if you were to forget whether
you want to meditate or not, and I'm totally fine,
people should make their own minds up. I think you
can live a very happy life if you don't meditate,
but you cannot live a happy life if you don't
have high quality relationships in your life. And you know,
one of the other things that's happening these days is
(14:03):
that people are really into optimization. We're trying to live forever.
We're buying books on longevity and then tracking our sleep
and counting our steps and all that stuff. And that's
fine as far as it goes. But honestly, what the
science shows is that if you care about living along, happy,
and by the way, professionally successful life, the thing to
optimize for is the quality of your relationships. And so actually,
(14:25):
if I could leave you or anybody with anything today,
it's it's that.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Well with the which thank you for that. Relationships are
so important in your meditation journey. Once you started that,
how did it impact your your work life and your
personal life?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
What are some changes? You saw?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Huge changes in my personal life. It just made me
more patient. I made that joke before about Hussein. Has
you have this thought of like, let me just say
something because I want to discharge this anger I'm feeling
in my body, So let me just say something and
then and then you regret it and you hurt somebody's feelings.
And so I still do that, but I'm much much better.
(15:06):
I notice when I'm feeling angry and I let it
come and go, and I'm much better at just waiting
to act until the anger has passed. I'm not saying
anger never has any uses. It does, of course, but
(15:27):
rarely have I made a good decision in a state
of anger. And so one way to talk about this
is you learn how to respond wisely to things in
your life instead of reacting blindly. And I used to
be very reactive and I had quite a temper, and
it showed up at work, and it showed up in
(15:48):
my marriage. And again I'm not saying I'm perfect, but
I do much less of that, and it's had a
huge effect, honestly.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's another thing I appreciated in the book with talking
about kind of like year before and after your behavior,
how you would fire off females, like if you weren't
chosen for something. And that's something that we as viewers
we don't really think about when we're watching all the news,
is that like, oh, you know, they were chosen for
this story or this segment, and there's you know, ten
(16:18):
other people that were maybe fighting for that segment or
being sent off to this particular location to cover this
particular event, and that ever since I listened to the book,
now I've watched different things. I'm like, hmm, I wonder
who really wanted this segment of this spot, but that
I guess we'll call you your premeditation days. Yeah, you
(16:39):
admitted to firing off eemails and kind of making a scene,
probably behaved in a way that you.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Weren't really proud of.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And what I thought was cool though and probably could
offer a lot of people some hope is that there's
room for change and that people can accept the change.
Because suddenly you said you had coworkers. You know, i'm
pair phrase here, but how I recall it, like just
thinking that you're this kind person and that's not necessarily
(17:07):
how they saw your behavior before, but they were noticing
it after meetings and how you would carry yourself. And
I was like, oh, that's awesome because if people know that, Okay,
just because I've shown up this way for the last
decade doesn't mean I have to continue. Like I can
change and people will accept me for it.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I want to revise or maybe refine what I said
before about the one thing I would leave you with.
I'm going to make it too, and maybe this is
what I'm about to say is even more important because
you and I'm just picking up on what you said.
We can change.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And I.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Think many of us might not believe that in our bodies,
in our bones. We might think that we are x
amount patient or x amount of loving or friendly or
calm or whatever like, and that's just our unalterable factory setting.
And that's just not true. And I'm not You don't
(18:02):
have to take my word for it. What the science
is showing us is that the brain and the mind
are trainable. You can, through meditation and many other practices,
literally change your brain. Meditation, for example, rewires the part
of the brain associated with focus. Who are also distracted
(18:23):
these days, you can you can remedy that stress. The
part of the brain associated with stress has been shown
to literally shrink among meditators. So change is possible happiness,
which is what all of us want. It's it's a skill,
I mean, And that's just such a liberating idea. And
(18:45):
you know, in some ways, like my old job as
an anchorman and reporter was to travel around the world
covering bad news, and now my job is to travel
around the world and deliver good news, which which is
that you can change. It's perfection is not on offer,
but messy marginal change is absolutely available to everyone.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I think the more that we can remind ourselves that, yeah,
the brain is multiple neuroplasticity. I think when you have
that information and you know that it's actually true, then
there's this hope because some people are just so well,
this is how I'm wired, or this is how I
was raised, or this is what my parents did, and
that's the story they can tell themselves, but the facts
are telling us something different. So thank you for that
(19:32):
reminder as well. So you got hopefully you throw some
more takeaways, important takeaways in because both of those that
you've shared are very, very, very important. Let's talk about
boredom because you do mention that the mindfulness changed your
relationship with boredom, and I think we could all benefit
(19:52):
from that. So share more about your journey with boredom
and mindfulness.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I want to make a case for boredom. Much of
our lives these days revolve, whether we know it or not,
around fending it off. I have a visceral memory, can't
I just remember exactly where I was when I got
my first iPhone in I think two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
That was the year.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But yeah, okay, that was the year.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
We had a trivia game the other day and it
was what year did the iPhone come out? And I said,
I think it was two thousand and six or two
thousand and eight, I'm not sure, and then I ended
up going with two thousand and eight, and then sure
enough it was the year in between those two.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So thank you for that. Yeah, so yeah, I remember
in two thousand and seven. I'm dating myself now because
I was a grown ass man in two thousand and
seven already I got an iPhone, and I remember having
the thought, I will never be bored again. That's not good.
The interesting and important things happen when we're bored. New
(20:58):
ideas can be made. We are I think, and this
is also very important. We're allowing ourselves to sit with
a certain amount of discomfort because boredom is uncomfortable. What
has happened, And I'm not anti technology, but it, you know,
(21:18):
the iPhone or smartphones generally, and then on top of that,
five or ten years later, the proliferation of social media
apps that live on the phone. They have had some
negative effects, and one of them is that our lives
are so filled and cluttered, filled with and cluttered by stimulation,
(21:44):
that we are unable or unwilling in many cases to
just be. In fact, there have been some studies that
have asked people what would you rather do. They put
people in a room and say you can sit here
and just be alone with your thoughts, or you can
administer self administer electric shocks. The vast majority, especially of men,
(22:08):
will take the shocks because they don't want to sit
and just be there. You know, they don't want to
do the thing that we as a species did for
tens of thousands of years before two thousand and seven.
And so what I want to make the case for
is just to run the experiment in your life. The
next time you notice your zombie arm reaching for your
(22:30):
phone because you're standing online. And by the way, I
no judgment here, I do this stuff too. But the
next time you notice, like, okay, I'm standing online, or
I'm sitting on a plane waiting for the door to
open so we can deplane, or all those little in
between moments during your day when you just reflexively reach
for the phone, try not to check out like what
it's like if you don't do it, and can you
(22:53):
sit with that? You know, there's this trend of again
mostly men online raw dogging reality where you'll see them
on eighteen hour flights and they don't check any their
phone at all, although they are using their phone to
film themselves while they do it. And so, I mean,
I think it's kind of ridiculous, but also pointing to
something important, like can you just be in your life?
(23:16):
This one incredibly precious life we got that's we don't
know how long it's going to last, but we know
it's going to end. Can you just be here for it?
And that will help you to be there for all
the beautiful moments during which many of us are actually
like rushing to the next thing or thinking about what
(23:37):
kind of notifications we might have on our phone, instead
of actually being awake and alive for this amazing, mysterious, painful,
confusing thing called life. And so I actually it's just
as being okay with boredom is like a rich, non
trivial endeavor.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, and I think I've seen some were all dogging
stuff online too, and just for people, like if you're
seeing people on flights, yeah, doing it for multiple hours
at a time, Like if you want to try it
out at home. I've also seen people just doing like,
you know, setting a timer for ten minutes and then
sitting up against the wall with nothing else around them,
and there they just rawll dog for ten minutes. And
(24:20):
you can start with small chunks. And I would say
you would probably say the same thing about meditation too,
you know, you could start with smaller and then grow
from there, because I think when I first started meditating
a few years ago, I did some meditation challenge with
my sister for like the first thirty day, like a
thirty day challenge, like at the beginning of the year,
and I had.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
No clue, but I felt I felt like if.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I wasn't sitting down and doing it for thirty minutes,
then I wasn't there was no point, Or if my
brain drifted off to something else, there was no point
because I had failed. But thankful to a lot of
other people out there. And then your story, even when
I was listening to it, I'm like, Okay, yes, he's
reminding me, like you're gonna have thoughts, just let those
thoughts come and then send them away and come back.
(25:05):
But you don't have to set out and do a
thirty minute one, and like thinking of exercising or and
how we know exercise is important, right, We've already that's
already been drilled into us. We know conditioning, but meditation
hasn't been around quite as long. But you would probably
put that in the same categories, like, yeah, this is
(25:26):
just as important. So I'd imagine, who knows, ten twenty
years from now, it might just be like a normal
thing that we know that like food, sleep, water, working out, meditation,
like it'll just be one of the things that we do.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
You are asking such good questions and that one. There
are so many things I just want to double click
on or expand upon. I'll to see if I can
remember them all first on the raw dogging thing, rather
than setting a timer and just sitting there and doing nothing.
The reason why I think it's kind of ridiculous is
I think you can use those moments to meditate, which
(25:59):
will actually help you be okay with being awake in
those in between moments and frankly every moment. The other
thing I want to say is, and you hinted at this,
like with the challenge you did, the meditation challenges you've done,
and this sense that you felt like it's not I'm
not really doing it unless I do thirty minutes. I
just want to relieve you of any pressure you're undue
(26:20):
pressure you're putting on yourself. All of the research around
habit formation indicates that it's very hard to do to
start a new habit, and so we don't need to
beat ourselves up if we struggle with it, or if
we have to try it again and again and again
to like really boot up a habit. So first, just
it's okay to struggle with this. And the second thing
(26:41):
is the probably the most reliable route to success is
to start small. So I often tell people, you know,
start with one minute daily ish, So you want to
you want to lower the stakes and make this as
easefull as possible. The other thing I just want to
(27:01):
make sure I bless for you again is that if
you're getting distracted and starting again, and getting distracted and
starting again, that's totally fine. Clearing your mind is impossible
unless you're enlightened or you've died, so you know, it's
such a deeply unhelpful misconception about meditation that you have
to clear your mind in order to do it correctly. Really,
(27:23):
all we're trying to do is try to pay attention
to one thing. Often it's the feeling of your breath
coming in and going out, and then you get distracted
and start again, get distracted, and start again. A lot
of people think that the getting distracted is a failure,
but actually it's success because the whole point of this
exercise is to get familiar with the chaos and cacophony
(27:46):
of your mind so that it doesn't own you as much,
so you're not doing as many stupid things. And that's immensely,
immensely valuable. So I think I answered all the things
I wanted to say based on your great question. Did
I miss anything?
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Now?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
That was great?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I want to talk about meta meditation next, the integration
of compassion.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Can you expand on that for people?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yes. To be clear, Meta m E T t A
not to be confused with Meta me E t A,
the company that owns Facebook and Instagram. So, and I'm
not correcting you. I think you already knew that. I'm
just making sure the listeners understand that this is not
a commercial for Instagram. M E T t A is
(28:32):
an ancient form of meditation, also said to be invented
by the Buddha, although the versions of it that are
available now are total and everything I'm talking about now
is totally secular and scientifically researched, and it can be
These practices can be done by Christians, Jews, Muslims, whatever
(28:53):
your religious belief or if you have no religious beliefs
at all, you can do this stuff. This is it's
not it's not religion is You can think of it
as exercise for your brain. Oh, that was the other
thing you said earlier that I wanted to just make
sure I double clicked on or amplified, which is I
(29:13):
do think we're now thinking about fitness in broader ways.
So I'm all for physical fitness. I work out daily,
but there's also mental fitness, which meditation falls into. You know,
therapy would fall into that too, like making sure that
your brain and mind are as sharp as they can be.
And then now increasingly we're talking about social fitness or
(29:35):
relational fitness, like how are your relationships doing, because that
actually is the greatest predictor of lifespan, the quality of
your relationships. Anyway back to Meta, and this is actually
not unrelated. This is another form of meditation that has
been studied quite a bit in the labs and has
been shown to have psychological, physiological and even behave your
(30:00):
old benefits. Preschoolers taught this form of meditation have been
shown to be more likely to give stickers away to
kids in their class they do not like, so it
can have a real impact. So what is it? Before
I describe it in detail, let me just say that
it's when I first heard about this, it seemed incredibly
(30:21):
annoying to me, so just brace yourself. But basically, the
practice is you envision a series of people, or it
can be pets in at least one of the categories.
You start with an easy person or this is where
you can use your pet, somebody who's really uncomplicated and
easy to love, and you imagine them in your mind,
(30:42):
and then you send a bunch of phrases like maybe
be happy, maybe healthy, may you live with ease, et cetera,
et cetera, And then you work your way through a
sequence from an easy person to yourself, to a mentor
to a neutral person somebody you see all the time
but don't have many feelings about that difficult person, and
then everybody everywhere, And it can feel a little bit
(31:06):
like Valentine's Day with a gun to your head. But
it has it has deep, deep impacts on your brain
and on the rest of your body. And for me
as somebody who's kind of for me, as somebody who's
really wired, as a frosty New Englander, it has helped
me immensely in having a friendlier attitude towards my own mind,
(31:31):
and that then has implications for how I am out
in the world, and then how I am out in
the world makes me even happier, and then I'm even
more friendly out in the world, and then I get
even happier, and it's a really beneficial upward spiral. Does
that make sense what I'm saying?
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Oh yeah, I'm already just sitting here thinking, like, can
all the world leaders if be required to do meta meditation?
I mean, because obviously as a leader, you have to
have a certain amount of edge.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
But you address this in the book as well.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
That, like, I do understand how complicated that might seem,
especially for you if you're trying to practice one thing
and then you have to show up another way. And
you know, people should listen to the book to know
more of what we're talking about there, because I really
enjoyed that part about how to show up one way
and then showing up at work another way. And then
(32:24):
your wife even had to get involved and you know,
nudge you along a little bit, like come on, you
got to get yourself in the game. But yeah, so
like as a leader, you can't.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
You have to. There's certain ways you have to be.
I get that.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
But also they could all just share their stickers a
little more, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yes, yes, I mean this is so important because I am.
I am a businessman and a content creator and a
father and a husband. Like I'm I'm an active person
in the world, and I Am not suggesting that we
become doormats or pelukas or punching bags at all. What
(33:04):
I'm saying is that you can take all of the
same actions. You can be as strategic, as competitive on
the athletic field, in the boardroom, in every context. You
just don't need to be motivated by hatred and anger.
I don't think that's a clean burning fuel. I think love,
(33:27):
And I'm being cheesy and I get it, but properly understood,
love is a better motivator. So you may be thinking, well,
I'm a marine, I can't be motivated by that. Why not?
Why can't you be motivated by love of your country
and love of your fellow marines. Why can't that move
you forward instead of hatred? What we know about hatred
(33:51):
and anger? While they have their uses. For sure, anger
can get us off the couch. It can help us
spot a program, a problem and get more motivated. But
in terms of a long an abiding source of energy
and fuel, it constricts your literally constricts your vision, It
reduces your peripheral vision. It doesn't help you be maximally
(34:15):
creative and flexible. And again, I know it's a provocative
word to use, using it in a very broad way.
So love for yourself, for your family, for your country
is a Your brain is in a state where you
can handle problems in a much more creative way that
doesn't lead to inner toxicity and burnout. It's a better
(34:40):
route to helping you reach your goals.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
I think I just keep thinking of the saying, probably
because I've made it my mantra the last couple of
weeks for some stuff going on. It's just clear as kind,
unclear as unkind, and I feel like when my emotions
are in the driver's seat, I get really unclear and
things are messy, and then it's not kind and the
kindest thing I can do, even I'm being firm as
a parent or at work, and I have to have boundaries.
(35:06):
If I'm operating from a clear, kind space, then i
can deliver it. So that's over and over, clear as kind,
unclear as unkind, and yeah, through with my FAI, through meditation, prayer,
different things I know that I do that help ground me.
I know I can get to that space a lot
(35:27):
quicker and I can know, Okay, emotions are here right now,
I need to wait till they're in the passenger seat
and then I can proceed.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And I'm just.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Thankful getting back in this book has helped me get
back into meditation, because I told you I did that
challenge a couple of years ago and got really into
it and then it kind of, you know, life takes
a turn and you're just I was thinking when I
was doing one of the meditations recently, I was like, oh,
why did I ever drop this habit? Like how did
I ever drop it? But I didn't let that keep
(35:58):
me from moving forward with it, and so now I
feel like I'm starting back on this journey.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
So thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
For ten percent happier because it's brought it back in
to my life. And I've read the Power of Now
and something in the book and you talk about Eckartilla.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
I was like, I never.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Thought the things that you think. And I was like, wow,
he's just really going hard on some people. Not that
you were in a bad, bad way, but did you
have do you you're laughing?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Do you get what I'm saying?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yes, okay, I would have step back one thing. Just
what you described about what you've been going through. You
didn't say you didn't overshare, but you know, you just
mentioned that you've been going through some stuff and coming
back to clear his kind and coming back to a
meditation practice. This is a weird thing to say because
we don't know each other, but I just felt proud
(36:51):
of you. It just sounds like you're handling this beautifully.
So oh just want to give you something.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Well, thank you, And I may want to I am
this is going to give meditation shout out too, because
I had like a zoom call yesterday of someone that
I've worked with that's been involved with like our family
for a few years, and she said on the call,
she said, you it's probably been about five years now.
I guess she said you are not the same person
(37:18):
that I met five years ago, and so thank you
for saying that. And I shared that not as like,
oh look at me. It's just we were talking earlier
about how change is possible and that our brains can change.
It absolutely can happen, and I could have stayed stuck
in old patterns and continued that behavior. But meditation is
(37:42):
a piece to that puzzle that helped me change. And
that's why I think it was so shocking to me
that for the last year or so I had dropped
that habit, and so now I'm thankful that it is back.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
So thank you.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Just to respond to that, the falling off a wagon,
so to speak, on meditation or any other habit is
totally normal and nothing's been lost. You can always start again,
and so I just for you and for anybody listening,
and whether it's meditation or exercise or healthy eating, whatever
it is, it's completely normal to struggle it in that way,
and you can always start again. But to answer the
(38:16):
question you were actually asking, which is you know in
the book, I totally make fun of people, including best
selling authors like et Caartoli and Deepak Chopra, and yeah,
I tried to do it in a loving, fun way,
but I definitely made fun of them, and I think,
speaking of change, it's probably not the way I would
(38:39):
write about people now many years later, and you know,
in the book I'm working on now, like I do
kind of make fun of a few people, but it's
a little different in my current state.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Okay, I just had it and I was like, oh wow, Okay,
he went after them, but not You're right, it was
kind of it was handled well for sure. I just
was Maybe it was another thing I found that I appreciated,
Like you're just a normal person and you even anybody
that's thought about it or thinks like, oh that's too
boo boo or whatever, like you come from a perspective
(39:11):
of like you were that, Like you even on your
ten day silent retreat, you're like, this is stupid, I'm leaving,
like you know, and that's me fair phrasing. You didn't
say those exact words, but you that's the vibe I felt,
and I appreciated that. So because you're not coming from this,
you know, place of oh I've a I've always been
this way and this is going to be amazing. Like
(39:33):
you're like, this is ridiculous, and then you sort of
through your own research realized like, oh no, actually this
is not red ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
It's life changing.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
So well said, and I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Thank you ten percent happier And like I said, I'm
very thankful for the meditation practice at the end of
the book.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
That was a nice touch.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
All right, Dan, I hear you have a new audible
original coming out on March fifth. It's called even You
Can Meditate. Find the time, the motivation and the right
practice for you. What can we look forward to in
this new book?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, I did a little audible book with my friend
seven A Selassie. She's a highly trained meditation teacher, and
we recorded this had a lot of fun and it's
really kind of a meditation book for people who think
they can't meditate.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Well perfect, I'm probably going to check that out because
I still am thinking I cannot, but I'm still going
to keep trying.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Well, Dan, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Sure, that's just another just to say that thinking you
can't is just another thought. And if you just notice,
oh that's a thought, it's a thought, then you can
go back to your breath.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
It's already gone, Dan, Yeah, it's already gone. And I like,
you know what, I love to visualize. And I don't
know what meditation gave this to me. I can't remember
at some point, but I love to visualize when I
breathe in, all this ray of light is coming towards
me and coming into my hands and I hold them
up and I breathe in, and I breathe in the
light and then it goes through my body on the
(40:59):
exhale and outside my toes.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Is that Dan approved?
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I'm I am. I really believe that people should do
whatever works for them. I want people to feel better
and feel okay with themselves. And I think that's going
to make a you know, to be cheesy again, like
that'll improve the world. And so yeah, whatever gets you there,
as long as it's not harmful to you or anybody else.
I bless it well.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Dan, Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today.
If you are ready to take action on your goals
and you want even more strategies to make it happen,
check out ten Percent Happier by Dan Harris or the
Upcoming Even You can meditate on March fifth, All available
on Audible. Let's make twenty twenty six your most productive
year yet.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Thank you so much for having me on and the
great questions. I really appreciate it.
It takes thirty days to form a habit, in ninety
days to make it stick. Lucky for you, Audible and
I have teamed up to bring you the Sound Reset Challenge,
a four week series designed to help you unlock your
twenty twenty six goals, projects and resolutions, all brought to
you by Audible. Audible's wellbeing collection has everything to inspire
(00:21):
and support you in every step of your well being journey.
I'm Amy Brown, co host on The Bobby Bone Show,
and today I'm joined by Dan Harris, who is an
Emmy Award winning journalist, former ABC News anchor, and now
a practicing teacher of meditation and mindfulness. Nearly twelve years ago,
in twenty fourteen, Dan released his book Ten Percent Happier,
(00:43):
an autobiographical tale of the spiritual, scientific, and skeptical odyssey
that led him through many portals of the self help
world to his own mindfulness practice. The book was a
bestseller and did a lot to bring mindfulness to the mainstream. Today,
Dan is here to share their pertinent insights from his journey,
and then we're going to challenge you, the listeners, to
(01:06):
a four week course for getting out of your own
way and on your way to reaching your goals. Listen
as we challenge you to turn your resolutions into reality.
All right, So Dan, I listened to ten percent Happier
on Audible, and I got to say one of my
favorite little perks of that was the meditations at the end.
And I did the walking meditation yesterday.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Great good on you, how to go?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
It went really well.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I hadn't done a walking meditation in several months, but
I was like, oh, this is here at the end,
I might as well do it. And I got to say,
walking meditations are my favorite kind. But there is something
you talk about in the book that was really interesting
to me with the brain scans. It was maybe an
update that you did towards the end, so I don't
(01:49):
know if it was in the original book, but I thought, shoot,
now I want a scan of my brain to see
if I'm even meditating correctly.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I would strongly recommend against that because one of the well,
first of all, I did it, and it was a disaster,
and I walked away totally confused about whether I was
meditating correctly. And then I actually had dinner that night
with my longtime meditation teacher and he told me that
he did it too, and he was confused, and so
(02:21):
I don't recommend it. My worry for all meditators, including myself,
is that you get hung up on this question of
my doing it right. And here's the simple answer. If
you find yourself focused for a few nanoseconds at a
time on whatever you're trying to focus on, like your
breath or the sensations of your body as you're walking,
(02:43):
and then you get distracted a million times and then
start over a million times, then you're doing it correctly.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well that's the encouragement I need to hear. Dan, So
thank you, and I know it's been years for you now.
But for those who don't know what inspired your mindfulness
journey and led you to writing this.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Book Cocaine, I guess that would be the one word answer,
But the slightly longer answer is that I used to be,
in a former life, a globe trotting war correspondent for
ABC News. In the years after nine to eleven, I
spent a lot of time in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, the
(03:22):
West Bank, Gaza, and then a ton of time in Iraq,
probably a year total in a rock over the course
of six or seven trips and I came home in
the middle of this period of time and I got depressed,
although I didn't know I was depressed, and then I
did this incredibly stupid thing of self medicating with recreational drugs,
including cocaine, and that led to a panic attack on
(03:46):
national television on Good Morning America back in two thousand
and four. Actually had two panic attacks, one in two
thousand and four, one two thousand and five. The better
one to watch is the one from two thousand and four,
And if you google panic attack on television, mine is
the number one result, which makes my mother so proud.
And after I had that panic attack, I realized I
(04:07):
needed to sort my stuff out, and so I started
seeing a psychiatrist and that ultimately led me to meditation.
So that's the reef answer.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, your short answer being the cocaine. That's something that
I found to be so interesting about this book is
how vulnerable you got, especially the type of work that
you do. I know that's something that you wrestled with, like,
am I going to share this very vulnerable detail about
my life?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
But for me, I found it well.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
First of all, I was really shocked because I've watched
you on TV for years, and I thought, oh, no, way,
he was, you know, doing drugs like that heart and ecstasy.
Like I just couldn't separate you out on the town
with you being the news guy. My brain struggled with
that a little bit. And then I also was thankful
(04:54):
because it humanized you, like and it also helped me
relate to you more. Not that I I have that
exact you know, the exact story that you have by
any means, but I just was like, oh, wow, he's
just not this guy on the news. He has a
real story, and it made me just find everything you
were saying just a little bit more believable. I guess
(05:14):
that's how I would summarize it, because sometimes you read
like self help stuff and you're like, okay, yeah, right,
Like I don't really know that I could apply.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
This to my life.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And I was like, no, if he did this and
it completely changed his life, and you it's something that
you had to do. And now I want to circle
back to the title of the book, ten percent happier.
Is that a phrase you still use to this day
because you came up with that title a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I do use it. Look, I I'll just tell the
story for the people listening who may not be familiar
with any of this. That I got interested in meditation
at a time when it wasn't really socially acceptable to
talk about it, and so this is probably like two
thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten. And
(05:57):
occasionally people at work would say, you know what, what
has gotten into you? Or what's the matter with you?
You used to be semi cool. And I remember a
conversation where I was talking to my friend Chris and
she was asking this question, and I said, you know,
I do it because it makes me ten percent happier,
and I could see the look on her face transform
(06:17):
from scorn to mild interest, and I thought, Okay, well,
this is my shtick. This is this is how I'm
going to talk about it. Because there's so much overpromising
in the self help world that I think is quite
reckless and greety, frankly, and so I wanted to have
a way to talk about it that made sense. And
I'll be honest, you know, I've been meditating for I
(06:38):
don't know, sixteen seventeen years, and I'm way more than
ten percent happier. So now my little tweak is that
it's like a good investment. You know, if you're consistently
investing in the stock market, you'll get ten percent annual
returns probably, but they will compound over time if you
keep investing. And so my level of happiness now. I
(07:00):
continue to make mistakes, and you know, life happens to me,
Illness happens. You know, people in my life pass away.
All of the things that happened to the rest of
us happened to me. But my ability to handle it
with some sophistication just continues to get better.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I love that the compounding How difficult was it for
you to decide to write this and reveal things about
your own journey that you did. I know in the
book you mentioned your mom called you the night before
it was going to release or something, and she was like,
don't do it, don't do it, don't put it out there,
and you're like, well, I have books in the warehouse,
so it's happening.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
It was really hard. I mean, it feels like another
life because the book came out in twenty fourteen, so nearly,
you know, twelve years ago. But yes, I was super nervous.
And my mom's email to me shortly before the book
came out in which she begged me not to publish
the book was not helpful. Although I'm not trying to
criticize my mom, she was just being a protective mother. Honestly,
(08:00):
when you ask that question, I start thinking about the
fact that one year from now, actually less than one
year from now, at the beginning of January next year,
I have a sequel coming out that is frankly more embarrassing,
and I'm in the middle of the rewrites for it
today as a matter of fact, and I'm having very
(08:23):
similar feelings of like, am I really going to do this?
And what are people going to think? And ultimately what
I come back to always is I guess this is
just how I teach, and I think my mo or
my way of being a public figure now is to
admit the stuff that most people won't admit but is
actually true for them anyway. And so one of the
(08:46):
ways I describe this is that some people teach from
the mountaintop and I teach from the fetal position.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Well, I think you also, it's got to be a
little comforting to have the data from the first book
because you were nervous. Similarly, I understand those nerves coming
back again. But then you've got data of like, oh,
I've done this before, I've been here, and what the
data is telling me is this is what people appreciate
and respect from me, and this should do well too.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
That's true to a certain extent, and I definitely I know,
and there's a research to show that if you share,
if you self disclose, if you're vulnerable, to use the
term of art, people tend to like you. But there
is there's fear, nonetheless for all of us, if we're
even for somebody who's done it very publicly as I have,
(09:35):
And I guess part of me is scared that people
will say, well, wait a minute, how can you continue
to make mistakes. You're supposed to be some sort of
meditation guy. And I know my answer to that, which
is that you know, there is no such thing as perfection.
I'm mister ten percent, and I'm going to continue to
make mistakes, and I'm going to continue to self disclose
(09:56):
because I think it's helpful for other people, because it
normalizes all of our weird stuff. But it is it's
you know, there's no situation in which it's the fear
will go away.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I think, well, let's talk about the monkey mind. How
do you think that shows up in our world today?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, so the monkey mind is a term that is
kind of taken from the Buddha, who was a dude
who lived twenty six hundred years ago on the in
India and Nepal, and he was really a You can
think of him as just an amazing genius level meditation teacher.
That's just one way to think of him. And he
(10:36):
had this he compared our minds to monkeys in that
we're just jumping all over the place. We were just
constantly thinking about the past or the future. We're instead
of focusing on what's happening right now. We're judging people,
we're judging ourselves. We're wanting stuff, we're not wanting stuff.
And when you're unaware of this NonStop conversation which you
(10:58):
are having with yourself, when you're unaware of it, it
owns you. Every little thought that flits through your mind
is like and this is the way my meditation teacher
describes it, Every little thought becomes a tiny dictator. You
just act it out. You have a thought of like, oh,
maybe I should say something right now that will ruin
the next forty eight hours of my marriage, and then
(11:19):
you just do it. And what meditation does is help
you not be so owned by this stream of consciousness
that's happening all the time, and that were and that
if we broadcast allowed, we'd be locked up. But most
of us are only kind of vaguely aware of the
thinking process, and if we can become a little bit
(11:40):
more aware, aka a little bit more mindful, then we
have more choice and freedom.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Seeing of being locked up.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I was just taken back to a part in the
book where you, as a journalist, you did solitary confinement
for well, was it forty eight hours? First of all,
I couldn't believe that a prison agreed to block you
up that way, So just side note there. It's like
you were dedicated to that story.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
You know. I find that people are generally willing to
lock up somebody from the mainstream media. You know, we're
pretty unpopular. So that part wasn't the hard part. The
hard bar was actually doing it, And honestly, it really
did land me on the conclusion that solitary confinement, while
it may be necessary in some extreme cases, is kind
(12:25):
of torture. We are social animals, you know, if you
think about the history of humans.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
We never.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We never had claws or talons or wings or massive size.
In fact, in our early days as a species, we
were prey animals. We only got to the top of
the food chain because of our ability to cooperate, communicate, collaborate, care,
and everything about modern life now militates against that. Everything
(12:59):
about modern life, if it is hyper individualistic, isolated in
our own tech bubbles. We're being pitted against one another
on social media because the versions of the humans that
we disagree with, the version we see of them is
like a cartoon version often, So there's no I don't
(13:20):
think it's a coincidence that in this isolated, individualistic, lonely
era that we're seeing unprecedented me never before seen levels
of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, and loneliness. And so actually
that is kind of what I'm writing about in my
next book, for lack of a less cheesy term, it's
(13:41):
about love. You know, if you were to forget whether
you want to meditate or not, and I'm totally fine,
people should make their own minds up. I think you
can live a very happy life if you don't meditate,
but you cannot live a happy life if you don't
have high quality relationships in your life. And you know,
one of the other things that's happening these days is
(14:03):
that people are really into optimization. We're trying to live forever.
We're buying books on longevity and then tracking our sleep
and counting our steps and all that stuff. And that's
fine as far as it goes. But honestly, what the
science shows is that if you care about living along, happy,
and by the way, professionally successful life, the thing to
optimize for is the quality of your relationships. And so actually,
(14:25):
if I could leave you or anybody with anything today,
it's it's that.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Well with the which thank you for that. Relationships are
so important in your meditation journey. Once you started that,
how did it impact your your work life and your
personal life?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
What are some changes? You saw?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Huge changes in my personal life. It just made me
more patient. I made that joke before about Hussein. Has
you have this thought of like, let me just say
something because I want to discharge this anger I'm feeling
in my body, So let me just say something and
then and then you regret it and you hurt somebody's feelings.
And so I still do that, but I'm much much better.
(15:06):
I notice when I'm feeling angry and I let it
come and go, and I'm much better at just waiting
to act until the anger has passed. I'm not saying
anger never has any uses. It does, of course, but
(15:27):
rarely have I made a good decision in a state
of anger. And so one way to talk about this
is you learn how to respond wisely to things in
your life instead of reacting blindly. And I used to
be very reactive and I had quite a temper, and
it showed up at work, and it showed up in
(15:48):
my marriage. And again I'm not saying I'm perfect, but
I do much less of that, and it's had a
huge effect, honestly.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's another thing I appreciated in the book with talking
about kind of like year before and after your behavior,
how you would fire off females, like if you weren't
chosen for something. And that's something that we as viewers
we don't really think about when we're watching all the news,
is that like, oh, you know, they were chosen for
this story or this segment, and there's you know, ten
(16:18):
other people that were maybe fighting for that segment or
being sent off to this particular location to cover this
particular event, and that ever since I listened to the book,
now I've watched different things. I'm like, hmm, I wonder
who really wanted this segment of this spot, but that
I guess we'll call you your premeditation days. Yeah, you
(16:39):
admitted to firing off eemails and kind of making a scene,
probably behaved in a way that you.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Weren't really proud of.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And what I thought was cool though and probably could
offer a lot of people some hope is that there's
room for change and that people can accept the change.
Because suddenly you said you had coworkers. You know, i'm
pair phrase here, but how I recall it, like just
thinking that you're this kind person and that's not necessarily
(17:07):
how they saw your behavior before, but they were noticing
it after meetings and how you would carry yourself. And
I was like, oh, that's awesome because if people know that, Okay,
just because I've shown up this way for the last
decade doesn't mean I have to continue. Like I can
change and people will accept me for it.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I want to revise or maybe refine what I said
before about the one thing I would leave you with.
I'm going to make it too, and maybe this is
what I'm about to say is even more important because
you and I'm just picking up on what you said.
We can change.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And I.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Think many of us might not believe that in our bodies,
in our bones. We might think that we are x
amount patient or x amount of loving or friendly or
calm or whatever like, and that's just our unalterable factory setting.
And that's just not true. And I'm not You don't
(18:02):
have to take my word for it. What the science
is showing us is that the brain and the mind
are trainable. You can, through meditation and many other practices,
literally change your brain. Meditation, for example, rewires the part
of the brain associated with focus. Who are also distracted
(18:23):
these days, you can you can remedy that stress. The
part of the brain associated with stress has been shown
to literally shrink among meditators. So change is possible happiness,
which is what all of us want. It's it's a skill,
I mean, And that's just such a liberating idea. And
(18:45):
you know, in some ways, like my old job as
an anchorman and reporter was to travel around the world
covering bad news, and now my job is to travel
around the world and deliver good news, which which is
that you can change. It's perfection is not on offer,
but messy marginal change is absolutely available to everyone.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I think the more that we can remind ourselves that, yeah,
the brain is multiple neuroplasticity. I think when you have
that information and you know that it's actually true, then
there's this hope because some people are just so well,
this is how I'm wired, or this is how I
was raised, or this is what my parents did, and
that's the story they can tell themselves, but the facts
are telling us something different. So thank you for that
(19:32):
reminder as well. So you got hopefully you throw some
more takeaways, important takeaways in because both of those that
you've shared are very, very, very important. Let's talk about
boredom because you do mention that the mindfulness changed your
relationship with boredom, and I think we could all benefit
(19:52):
from that. So share more about your journey with boredom
and mindfulness.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I want to make a case for boredom. Much of
our lives these days revolve, whether we know it or not,
around fending it off. I have a visceral memory, can't
I just remember exactly where I was when I got
my first iPhone in I think two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
That was the year.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But yeah, okay, that was the year.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
We had a trivia game the other day and it
was what year did the iPhone come out? And I said,
I think it was two thousand and six or two
thousand and eight, I'm not sure, and then I ended
up going with two thousand and eight, and then sure
enough it was the year in between those two.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So thank you for that. Yeah, so yeah, I remember
in two thousand and seven. I'm dating myself now because
I was a grown ass man in two thousand and
seven already I got an iPhone, and I remember having
the thought, I will never be bored again. That's not good.
The interesting and important things happen when we're bored. New
(20:58):
ideas can be made. We are I think, and this
is also very important. We're allowing ourselves to sit with
a certain amount of discomfort because boredom is uncomfortable. What
has happened, And I'm not anti technology, but it, you know,
(21:18):
the iPhone or smartphones generally, and then on top of that,
five or ten years later, the proliferation of social media
apps that live on the phone. They have had some
negative effects, and one of them is that our lives
are so filled and cluttered, filled with and cluttered by stimulation,
(21:44):
that we are unable or unwilling in many cases to
just be. In fact, there have been some studies that
have asked people what would you rather do. They put
people in a room and say you can sit here
and just be alone with your thoughts, or you can
administer self administer electric shocks. The vast majority, especially of men,
(22:08):
will take the shocks because they don't want to sit
and just be there. You know, they don't want to
do the thing that we as a species did for
tens of thousands of years before two thousand and seven.
And so what I want to make the case for
is just to run the experiment in your life. The
next time you notice your zombie arm reaching for your
(22:30):
phone because you're standing online. And by the way, I
no judgment here, I do this stuff too. But the
next time you notice, like, okay, I'm standing online, or
I'm sitting on a plane waiting for the door to
open so we can deplane, or all those little in
between moments during your day when you just reflexively reach
for the phone, try not to check out like what
it's like if you don't do it, and can you
(22:53):
sit with that? You know, there's this trend of again
mostly men online raw dogging reality where you'll see them
on eighteen hour flights and they don't check any their
phone at all, although they are using their phone to
film themselves while they do it. And so, I mean,
I think it's kind of ridiculous, but also pointing to
something important, like can you just be in your life?
(23:16):
This one incredibly precious life we got that's we don't
know how long it's going to last, but we know
it's going to end. Can you just be here for it?
And that will help you to be there for all
the beautiful moments during which many of us are actually
like rushing to the next thing or thinking about what
(23:37):
kind of notifications we might have on our phone, instead
of actually being awake and alive for this amazing, mysterious, painful,
confusing thing called life. And so I actually it's just
as being okay with boredom is like a rich, non
trivial endeavor.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, and I think I've seen some were all dogging
stuff online too, and just for people, like if you're
seeing people on flights, yeah, doing it for multiple hours
at a time, Like if you want to try it
out at home. I've also seen people just doing like,
you know, setting a timer for ten minutes and then
sitting up against the wall with nothing else around them,
and there they just rawll dog for ten minutes. And
(24:20):
you can start with small chunks. And I would say
you would probably say the same thing about meditation too,
you know, you could start with smaller and then grow
from there, because I think when I first started meditating
a few years ago, I did some meditation challenge with
my sister for like the first thirty day, like a
thirty day challenge, like at the beginning of the year,
and I had.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
No clue, but I felt I felt like if.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I wasn't sitting down and doing it for thirty minutes,
then I wasn't there was no point, Or if my
brain drifted off to something else, there was no point
because I had failed. But thankful to a lot of
other people out there. And then your story, even when
I was listening to it, I'm like, Okay, yes, he's
reminding me, like you're gonna have thoughts, just let those
thoughts come and then send them away and come back.
(25:05):
But you don't have to set out and do a
thirty minute one, and like thinking of exercising or and
how we know exercise is important, right, We've already that's
already been drilled into us. We know conditioning, but meditation
hasn't been around quite as long. But you would probably
put that in the same categories, like, yeah, this is
(25:26):
just as important. So I'd imagine, who knows, ten twenty
years from now, it might just be like a normal
thing that we know that like food, sleep, water, working out, meditation,
like it'll just be one of the things that we do.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
You are asking such good questions and that one. There
are so many things I just want to double click
on or expand upon. I'll to see if I can
remember them all first on the raw dogging thing, rather
than setting a timer and just sitting there and doing nothing.
The reason why I think it's kind of ridiculous is
I think you can use those moments to meditate, which
(25:59):
will actually help you be okay with being awake in
those in between moments and frankly every moment. The other
thing I want to say is, and you hinted at this,
like with the challenge you did, the meditation challenges you've done,
and this sense that you felt like it's not I'm
not really doing it unless I do thirty minutes. I
just want to relieve you of any pressure you're undue
(26:20):
pressure you're putting on yourself. All of the research around
habit formation indicates that it's very hard to do to
start a new habit, and so we don't need to
beat ourselves up if we struggle with it, or if
we have to try it again and again and again
to like really boot up a habit. So first, just
it's okay to struggle with this. And the second thing
(26:41):
is the probably the most reliable route to success is
to start small. So I often tell people, you know,
start with one minute daily ish, So you want to
you want to lower the stakes and make this as
easefull as possible. The other thing I just want to
(27:01):
make sure I bless for you again is that if
you're getting distracted and starting again, and getting distracted and
starting again, that's totally fine. Clearing your mind is impossible
unless you're enlightened or you've died, so you know, it's
such a deeply unhelpful misconception about meditation that you have
to clear your mind in order to do it correctly. Really,
(27:23):
all we're trying to do is try to pay attention
to one thing. Often it's the feeling of your breath
coming in and going out, and then you get distracted
and start again, get distracted, and start again. A lot
of people think that the getting distracted is a failure,
but actually it's success because the whole point of this
exercise is to get familiar with the chaos and cacophony
(27:46):
of your mind so that it doesn't own you as much,
so you're not doing as many stupid things. And that's immensely,
immensely valuable. So I think I answered all the things
I wanted to say based on your great question. Did
I miss anything?
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Now?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
That was great?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I want to talk about meta meditation next, the integration
of compassion.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Can you expand on that for people?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yes. To be clear, Meta m E T t A
not to be confused with Meta me E t A,
the company that owns Facebook and Instagram. So, and I'm
not correcting you. I think you already knew that. I'm
just making sure the listeners understand that this is not
a commercial for Instagram. M E T t A is
(28:32):
an ancient form of meditation, also said to be invented
by the Buddha, although the versions of it that are
available now are total and everything I'm talking about now
is totally secular and scientifically researched, and it can be
These practices can be done by Christians, Jews, Muslims, whatever
(28:53):
your religious belief or if you have no religious beliefs
at all, you can do this stuff. This is it's
not it's not religion is You can think of it
as exercise for your brain. Oh, that was the other
thing you said earlier that I wanted to just make
sure I double clicked on or amplified, which is I
(29:13):
do think we're now thinking about fitness in broader ways.
So I'm all for physical fitness. I work out daily,
but there's also mental fitness, which meditation falls into. You know,
therapy would fall into that too, like making sure that
your brain and mind are as sharp as they can be.
And then now increasingly we're talking about social fitness or
(29:35):
relational fitness, like how are your relationships doing, because that
actually is the greatest predictor of lifespan, the quality of
your relationships. Anyway back to Meta, and this is actually
not unrelated. This is another form of meditation that has
been studied quite a bit in the labs and has
been shown to have psychological, physiological and even behave your
(30:00):
old benefits. Preschoolers taught this form of meditation have been
shown to be more likely to give stickers away to
kids in their class they do not like, so it
can have a real impact. So what is it? Before
I describe it in detail, let me just say that
it's when I first heard about this, it seemed incredibly
(30:21):
annoying to me, so just brace yourself. But basically, the
practice is you envision a series of people, or it
can be pets in at least one of the categories.
You start with an easy person or this is where
you can use your pet, somebody who's really uncomplicated and
easy to love, and you imagine them in your mind,
(30:42):
and then you send a bunch of phrases like maybe
be happy, maybe healthy, may you live with ease, et cetera,
et cetera, And then you work your way through a
sequence from an easy person to yourself, to a mentor
to a neutral person somebody you see all the time
but don't have many feelings about that difficult person, and
then everybody everywhere, And it can feel a little bit
(31:06):
like Valentine's Day with a gun to your head. But
it has it has deep, deep impacts on your brain
and on the rest of your body. And for me
as somebody who's kind of for me, as somebody who's
really wired, as a frosty New Englander, it has helped
me immensely in having a friendlier attitude towards my own mind,
(31:31):
and that then has implications for how I am out
in the world, and then how I am out in
the world makes me even happier, and then I'm even
more friendly out in the world, and then I get
even happier, and it's a really beneficial upward spiral. Does
that make sense what I'm saying?
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Oh yeah, I'm already just sitting here thinking, like, can
all the world leaders if be required to do meta meditation?
I mean, because obviously as a leader, you have to
have a certain amount of edge.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
But you address this in the book as well.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
That, like, I do understand how complicated that might seem,
especially for you if you're trying to practice one thing
and then you have to show up another way. And
you know, people should listen to the book to know
more of what we're talking about there, because I really
enjoyed that part about how to show up one way
and then showing up at work another way. And then
(32:24):
your wife even had to get involved and you know,
nudge you along a little bit, like come on, you
got to get yourself in the game. But yeah, so
like as a leader, you can't.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
You have to. There's certain ways you have to be.
I get that.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
But also they could all just share their stickers a
little more, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yes, yes, I mean this is so important because I am.
I am a businessman and a content creator and a
father and a husband. Like I'm I'm an active person
in the world, and I Am not suggesting that we
become doormats or pelukas or punching bags at all. What
(33:04):
I'm saying is that you can take all of the
same actions. You can be as strategic, as competitive on
the athletic field, in the boardroom, in every context. You
just don't need to be motivated by hatred and anger.
I don't think that's a clean burning fuel. I think love,
(33:27):
And I'm being cheesy and I get it, but properly understood,
love is a better motivator. So you may be thinking, well,
I'm a marine, I can't be motivated by that. Why not?
Why can't you be motivated by love of your country
and love of your fellow marines. Why can't that move
you forward instead of hatred? What we know about hatred
(33:51):
and anger? While they have their uses. For sure, anger
can get us off the couch. It can help us
spot a program, a problem and get more motivated. But
in terms of a long an abiding source of energy
and fuel, it constricts your literally constricts your vision, It
reduces your peripheral vision. It doesn't help you be maximally
(34:15):
creative and flexible. And again, I know it's a provocative
word to use, using it in a very broad way.
So love for yourself, for your family, for your country
is a Your brain is in a state where you
can handle problems in a much more creative way that
doesn't lead to inner toxicity and burnout. It's a better
(34:40):
route to helping you reach your goals.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
I think I just keep thinking of the saying, probably
because I've made it my mantra the last couple of
weeks for some stuff going on. It's just clear as kind,
unclear as unkind, and I feel like when my emotions
are in the driver's seat, I get really unclear and
things are messy, and then it's not kind and the
kindest thing I can do, even I'm being firm as
a parent or at work, and I have to have boundaries.
(35:06):
If I'm operating from a clear, kind space, then i
can deliver it. So that's over and over, clear as kind,
unclear as unkind, and yeah, through with my FAI, through meditation, prayer,
different things I know that I do that help ground me.
I know I can get to that space a lot
(35:27):
quicker and I can know, Okay, emotions are here right now,
I need to wait till they're in the passenger seat
and then I can proceed.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And I'm just.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Thankful getting back in this book has helped me get
back into meditation, because I told you I did that
challenge a couple of years ago and got really into
it and then it kind of, you know, life takes
a turn and you're just I was thinking when I
was doing one of the meditations recently, I was like, oh,
why did I ever drop this habit? Like how did
I ever drop it? But I didn't let that keep
(35:58):
me from moving forward with it, and so now I
feel like I'm starting back on this journey.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
So thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
For ten percent happier because it's brought it back in
to my life. And I've read the Power of Now
and something in the book and you talk about Eckartilla.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
I was like, I never.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Thought the things that you think. And I was like, wow,
he's just really going hard on some people. Not that
you were in a bad, bad way, but did you
have do you you're laughing?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Do you get what I'm saying?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yes, okay, I would have step back one thing. Just
what you described about what you've been going through. You
didn't say you didn't overshare, but you know, you just
mentioned that you've been going through some stuff and coming
back to clear his kind and coming back to a
meditation practice. This is a weird thing to say because
we don't know each other, but I just felt proud
(36:51):
of you. It just sounds like you're handling this beautifully.
So oh just want to give you something.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Well, thank you, And I may want to I am
this is going to give meditation shout out too, because
I had like a zoom call yesterday of someone that
I've worked with that's been involved with like our family
for a few years, and she said on the call,
she said, you it's probably been about five years now.
I guess she said you are not the same person
(37:18):
that I met five years ago, and so thank you
for saying that. And I shared that not as like,
oh look at me. It's just we were talking earlier
about how change is possible and that our brains can change.
It absolutely can happen, and I could have stayed stuck
in old patterns and continued that behavior. But meditation is
(37:42):
a piece to that puzzle that helped me change. And
that's why I think it was so shocking to me
that for the last year or so I had dropped
that habit, and so now I'm thankful that it is back.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
So thank you.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Just to respond to that, the falling off a wagon,
so to speak, on meditation or any other habit is
totally normal and nothing's been lost. You can always start again,
and so I just for you and for anybody listening,
and whether it's meditation or exercise or healthy eating, whatever
it is, it's completely normal to struggle it in that way,
and you can always start again. But to answer the
(38:16):
question you were actually asking, which is you know in
the book, I totally make fun of people, including best
selling authors like et Caartoli and Deepak Chopra, and yeah,
I tried to do it in a loving, fun way,
but I definitely made fun of them, and I think,
speaking of change, it's probably not the way I would
(38:39):
write about people now many years later, and you know,
in the book I'm working on now, like I do
kind of make fun of a few people, but it's
a little different in my current state.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Okay, I just had it and I was like, oh wow, Okay,
he went after them, but not You're right, it was
kind of it was handled well for sure. I just
was Maybe it was another thing I found that I appreciated,
Like you're just a normal person and you even anybody
that's thought about it or thinks like, oh that's too
boo boo or whatever, like you come from a perspective
(39:11):
of like you were that, Like you even on your
ten day silent retreat, you're like, this is stupid, I'm leaving,
like you know, and that's me fair phrasing. You didn't
say those exact words, but you that's the vibe I felt,
and I appreciated that. So because you're not coming from this,
you know, place of oh I've a I've always been
this way and this is going to be amazing. Like
(39:33):
you're like, this is ridiculous, and then you sort of
through your own research realized like, oh no, actually this
is not red ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
It's life changing.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
So well said, and I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Thank you ten percent happier And like I said, I'm
very thankful for the meditation practice at the end of
the book.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
That was a nice touch.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
All right, Dan, I hear you have a new audible
original coming out on March fifth. It's called even You
Can Meditate. Find the time, the motivation and the right
practice for you. What can we look forward to in
this new book?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, I did a little audible book with my friend
seven A Selassie. She's a highly trained meditation teacher, and
we recorded this had a lot of fun and it's
really kind of a meditation book for people who think
they can't meditate.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Well perfect, I'm probably going to check that out because
I still am thinking I cannot, but I'm still going
to keep trying.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Well, Dan, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Sure, that's just another just to say that thinking you
can't is just another thought. And if you just notice,
oh that's a thought, it's a thought, then you can
go back to your breath.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
It's already gone, Dan, Yeah, it's already gone. And I like,
you know what, I love to visualize. And I don't
know what meditation gave this to me. I can't remember
at some point, but I love to visualize when I
breathe in, all this ray of light is coming towards
me and coming into my hands and I hold them
up and I breathe in, and I breathe in the
light and then it goes through my body on the
(40:59):
exhale and outside my toes.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Is that Dan approved?
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I'm I am. I really believe that people should do
whatever works for them. I want people to feel better
and feel okay with themselves. And I think that's going
to make a you know, to be cheesy again, like
that'll improve the world. And so yeah, whatever gets you there,
as long as it's not harmful to you or anybody else.
I bless it well.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Dan, Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today.
If you are ready to take action on your goals
and you want even more strategies to make it happen,
check out ten Percent Happier by Dan Harris or the
Upcoming Even You can meditate on March fifth, All available
on Audible. Let's make twenty twenty six your most productive
year yet.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Thank you so much for having me on and the
great questions. I really appreciate it.
Hosts And Creators
Bobby Bones
Amy Brown
Lunchbox
Eddie Garcia
Morgan Huelsman
Raymundo
Mike D
Abby Anderson
Scuba Steve
Popular Podcasts
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.
Milan Cortina Winter Olympics
The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina are here and have everyone talking. iHeartPodcasts is buzzing with content in honor of the XXV Winter Olympics We’re bringing you episodes from a variety of iHeartPodcast shows to help you keep up with the action. Follow Milan Cortina Winter Olympics so you don’t miss any coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics, and if you like what you hear, be sure to follow each Podcast in the feed for more great content from iHeartPodcasts.
iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2026 Winter Olympics.