Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. I'm so excited about our guest today, Dan Harris.
Speaker 1: I am such a fan. I love his podcast ten
Speaker 1: Percent Happier, where he interviews people about mostly meditation, but
Speaker 1: a lot of other things in the realm of meditation
Speaker 1: and also anxiety, and his books ten Percent Happier High
Speaker 1: Tamed the Voice in My Head and his second book,
Speaker 1: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Now, this is not a meditation episode. However,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to talk to Dan Moore about his
Speaker 1: story because you know, Dan's got solutions for us all
Speaker 1: day long. We do get to some of them in
Speaker 1: this interview. But I also think sometimes stories are really
Speaker 1: an important part of our recovery with anxiety. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of times people will say, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: know I do this, I do that from anxiety. But
Speaker 1: since Dan is a mere mortal like the rest of us,
Speaker 1: he's not a neuroscientist. He didn't set out in life
Speaker 1: to study anxiety or meditation or mindfulness or learning how
Speaker 1: to be less angrier, learning how to be less type A.
Speaker 1: He was an ABC News anchor for decades. He was
Speaker 1: an adrenaline junkie, he was a at one time drug user, competitive,
Speaker 1: you know, all all kinds of things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to hear what his story was. What's it like to
Speaker 1: be so type A that you're all jammed up inside
Speaker 1: and you end up having a panic attack on air
Speaker 1: on ABC News, which he did, and we we have
Speaker 1: linked to that panic attack in the show notes, And
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that to torture Dan. He talks about
Speaker 1: it in his book, Tim Happier. He's happy to talk
Speaker 1: about it. But I just wanted people to know, you know,
Speaker 1: successful people can have panic attacks, they can have anxiety.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know everybody knows this, but just maybe
Speaker 1: there's one person going I don't believe it. I think
Speaker 1: he got successful and that's what made him ultimately stop
Speaker 1: using drugs, and you know, that's what helped him with
Speaker 1: his meditation. But and it's like, no, but he was
Speaker 1: successful already, but something wasn't working, and he knew he
Speaker 1: had to start to look at his anxiety, his neurosis.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk about how panic attacks can
Speaker 1: come out of the blue, when they start almost later
Speaker 1: in life. What it's like to be a type of
Speaker 1: person who was always afraid of losing their edge, And
Speaker 1: does getting help make you lose your edge? Does starting
Speaker 1: to meditate every day? Does being mindful of your own thoughts?
Speaker 1: Does that make you less able to succeed? I mean,
Speaker 1: in Dan's case, the answer is no. And he has
Speaker 1: now transitioned out of working for ABC News to doing
Speaker 1: full time. You know the media company he created, tim
Speaker 1: per cent Happy, or there's an app, there's the podcast.
Speaker 1: All of that is linked to in the show notes.
Speaker 1: And I have a special affinity for Dan because he
Speaker 1: is also a gen X person from Boston. He's grew
Speaker 1: up in the town next to me. We didn't know
Speaker 1: each other, but I just like his no bullshit approach
Speaker 1: to the way that he tries to help others. He
Speaker 1: doesn't claim he's figured it all out, he doesn't claim
Speaker 1: he's fixed, and he doesn't talk in a whispery voice. Now,
Speaker 1: if you naturally have a whispery voice, go off. I
Speaker 1: love that for you. But he doesn't adopt any fake
Speaker 1: guru persona. So I hope you enjoy my talk with
Speaker 1: Dan as much as I enjoyed chatting to him again.
Speaker 1: I could talk to him about a million different things
Speaker 1: and at the end of the interview, I I thought,
Speaker 1: oh God, I didn't I wish there was more. I
Speaker 1: could have let him just go on and on more about,
Speaker 1: you know, more solutions. But again, I do think sometimes
Speaker 1: we need to hear a really good backstory and just
Speaker 1: hear about how someone had no idea how to get help,
Speaker 1: and then it's sort of just organically presented itself to him.
Speaker 1: And I know there's part of the interview where I
Speaker 1: really don't need to go into it, but I egged
Speaker 1: Dan On to tell a story that he wrote about
Speaker 1: in his book Timber Cent Happier, about meeting eck Art totally,
Speaker 1: who claims Mr Totley does that he never has any
Speaker 1: negative thoughts or negative emotions anymore. He had a complete enlightenment.
Speaker 1: And I just find that hard to believe. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying he's lying. I just don't comprehend it. And those
Speaker 1: kind of people, they don't help me, because as as
Speaker 1: Dan Harris says, he's just trying to be Timber Sun Happier.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I think it can be intimidating when someone
Speaker 1: says they've got all the answers and look at them,
Speaker 1: they've never had a bad feeling again. Now what happens
Speaker 1: when you try to use some of their tools and
Speaker 1: you don't reach enlightenment. I I honestly, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I almost feel like people who if this eck Art
Speaker 1: totally really has reached enlightenment, I think he should not
Speaker 1: tell us because we're not ever going to get there.
Speaker 1: He's probably the one. I don't know this is I'm
Speaker 1: just rambling at this point, but talking to Dan made
Speaker 1: me very happy because what he does on his podcast
Speaker 1: is exactly what I would want to do with this one.
Speaker 1: Anxiety Bites is just real people, real talk about anxiety,
Speaker 1: and nobody's here to be a guru and whisper. Although
Speaker 1: I am wearing a long flowing robe right now, you
Speaker 1: just can't see it anyway. I hope you enjoy my
Speaker 1: chat with Dan Harris as much as I did see
Speaker 1: on the other side. Welcome to another episode of Anxiety Bites.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Dan Harris. You may know him
Speaker 1: from his hugely successful podcast Ten Percent Happier. He also
Speaker 1: has an app called ten percent Happier. We'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: You also may know him from watching the news on ABC.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy he's here and Dan thank you again
Speaker 1: for being on my show, my pleasure. I don't think
Speaker 1: i've seen you since you came on my show. It's
Speaker 1: been years. It's and thank you for letting me come
Speaker 1: on your fantastic show before. Um, you know, I was
Speaker 1: just I'm just an idiot. I'm just an idiot comedian
Speaker 1: who meditates, and you let me on there somehow. Well,
Speaker 1: you're a good company. I'm just an idiot reporter who meditates,
Speaker 1: so it's all good. Well, you know, I was going
Speaker 1: to tell you that I think comedians and reporters have
Speaker 1: a lot in common in the way that we approach
Speaker 1: our audience. So we do this invoking that invisible third
Speaker 1: party critic in order to kind of get people out
Speaker 1: of the route answers that they always give because we're
Speaker 1: sitting there going no, I know, someone is listening going yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you mean. There's no wrong way
Speaker 1: to meditate. Like you say that, not you, but a
Speaker 1: person says that, and it's like, I want I almost
Speaker 1: come from the negative when I'm interviewing and when I'm
Speaker 1: doing comedy. That's how I keep the audience from heckling me,
Speaker 1: is that I know what they're going to say before
Speaker 1: they say it, I'll say it first, so I think
Speaker 1: you may appreciate this interview and that I will keep
Speaker 1: you know, digging further for you know, what exactly does
Speaker 1: that mean? Um, and I've been really excited to have
Speaker 1: you on because you're one of my favorite I mean,
Speaker 1: I see you as a a self help guru. I
Speaker 1: know you would not say that about yourself, but you
Speaker 1: are around my age. I think you're a little older,
Speaker 1: just a couple of years. And uh, we're from basically
Speaker 1: the same town in Massachusetts. And one next reason you've
Speaker 1: got this gen X no bullshit. By the way, if
Speaker 1: you want, you can swear on my podcast. So let's
Speaker 1: start here. Um, you had a panic attack on the
Speaker 1: air in two thousand four, and that is sort of
Speaker 1: one of the things that started you on your I
Speaker 1: Guess journey. Sorry for that word of trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what the hell is wrong with you and how
Speaker 1: you can I guess A does not have panic attacks
Speaker 1: on air. But one of the things that was interesting,
Speaker 1: and we'll link it in the show notes. You can
Speaker 1: all watch Dan have a panic attack. What's so interesting
Speaker 1: as someone who has panicked disorder? And I've panicked as well.
Speaker 1: It's not that bad. You know, you're not freaking out.
Speaker 1: You did end the segment. You were just reading the news, right,
Speaker 1: You ended the segment really early, and it just looks
Speaker 1: like you can't breathe. It looks more to me, to
Speaker 1: the uninitiated, like an asthma attack. So if you could
Speaker 1: take us through, and we'll get into your whole history
Speaker 1: and what caused it and all that, but take us
Speaker 1: through that day two thousand four, you're on the air,
Speaker 1: what happened and how did it feel in your body? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's You're right. If you look at the video,
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel like it doesn't It doesn't
Speaker 1: look that bad. I mean, that's what happens when a
Speaker 1: robot slash sociopath as a panic attack. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: look that that. You thought of yourself as a sociopath
Speaker 1: back then, only facetiously. Um, I was in my mid thirties.
Speaker 1: I had been on an anchorman really since I was
Speaker 1: twenty two, So I had a lot of experience with,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping my ship together and in tough circumstances,
Speaker 1: and I had covered wars and so I was able
Speaker 1: to hold it together. But you know, if if I
Speaker 1: didn't have the main hosts of the show, Charlie Gibson
Speaker 1: and Diane Sawyer, if I didn't have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: throw back to them because I was in I was
Speaker 1: the person who came on at the top of the
Speaker 1: hour and read a few headlines on Good Morning America.
Speaker 1: If I didn't have the opportunity to say back to you,
Speaker 1: it would have been horrible. I would have probably ripped
Speaker 1: the mic off and run away or started to cry.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that was that was the out. UM.
Speaker 1: So when the question the question when you say back
Speaker 1: to you, UM, for anyone listening, that means they have
Speaker 1: to then take back the broadcast. So you you didn't
Speaker 1: read all of the headlines. You read one of them
Speaker 1: and then went out back to you. Right, I read.
Speaker 1: I think I soldiered through two or three out of
Speaker 1: six or seven that I was supposed to read. And
Speaker 1: you can hear that my like throat is tightening and
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble breathing and I'm gulping for air. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's not good. So what I was wondering is
Speaker 1: you know, what did that feel like in your body
Speaker 1: when it was happening. What did it feel like in
Speaker 1: my body? Terrible? It's like having a heart attack. You know,
Speaker 1: you're or the way it goes is and you know this, Jim,
Speaker 1: because you've unfortunately had had panicked yourself. The way it
Speaker 1: goes is one thing starts it, and the and and
Speaker 1: then the other thing makes it worse. So it could
Speaker 1: be that your mind starts telling stories like, oh man,
Speaker 1: you just screwed that up, or five million people are
Speaker 1: watching this or whatever, and you start to have psychological anxiety,
Speaker 1: and then your body kicks in and starts to go
Speaker 1: into mutiny mode where your heart is racing, your lungs
Speaker 1: sees up, your your palms get sweaty, your mouth dries up.
Speaker 1: So what it's one or the other starts it, so
Speaker 1: your body, you might notice your body first, and then
Speaker 1: your mind starts freaking out. But then you get into
Speaker 1: a vicious cycle because the more your body's um in
Speaker 1: mutiny mode, the more your mind goes into freak out mode,
Speaker 1: and that makes the body worse, and then that makes
Speaker 1: the mind worse, and on and on and on um
Speaker 1: And it's it's really anxiety which many of us have felt,
Speaker 1: either in a chronic way, or in a in a
Speaker 1: cute or circumstantial way, you might just call that fear.
Speaker 1: It's it's that on steroids. It's our evolutionary, evolutionarily wired
Speaker 1: fight or flight impulse being triggered in inappropriate circumstances. We
Speaker 1: are wired to have this as a life saving mechanism
Speaker 1: when we're confronted with the tiger. But now we are
Speaker 1: both the tiger and the person being confronted by the tiger.
Speaker 1: We are making this happen to ourselves. That's interesting and
Speaker 1: I'm going to get to that in a minute. That
Speaker 1: the very keyword inappropriate, um reaction. So yeah, in your book,
Speaker 1: timber Cent Happier, which I mean, it's so great. Everyone
Speaker 1: get this book. I'm holding it up. This is not
Speaker 1: a video podcast, but um, what I love about timber
Speaker 1: Cent Happier is it really takes everyone through you know,
Speaker 1: your life as a journalist. And and you said in
Speaker 1: the intro that you wanted to name the book initially
Speaker 1: the voice in my head is an asshole. And I
Speaker 1: love that. And I think in that moment your voice
Speaker 1: in your head was this is one instance where the
Speaker 1: voice in your head was being an So it was
Speaker 1: not at all, Um, you know, looking around rationally and
Speaker 1: telling you what was actually happening. It was just making
Speaker 1: up lies, almost as though your mind was a competing
Speaker 1: anchor who wanted your job. Yes. So one thing that
Speaker 1: you do talk about in the book when you you
Speaker 1: talk about this experience, is you call it air hunger.
Speaker 1: And you know, in all my years of panicking and
Speaker 1: getting help for it, I actually had never heard air hunger.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about what that means? It's a
Speaker 1: bit I use it as a as a bit of
Speaker 1: a double entendre the phrase. I only heard it because
Speaker 1: I happen to be married to a pulmonologist, a lung doctor.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that is you. You are so lucky.
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone with anxiety and panic, that is the
Speaker 1: person to be married to. So jealous. Better than a therapist, Yes,
Speaker 1: but she she's altually a pretty good therapist. As it
Speaker 1: turns out. She married a neurotic, so she she better
Speaker 1: be um so she she I heard this expression through
Speaker 1: her talking about her work, where she would often intubate
Speaker 1: people or you know, she was a pulmonologist who worked
Speaker 1: in I see us for for much much of the
Speaker 1: early part of our marriage. So air hunger meant you
Speaker 1: couldn't breathe and you needed to be put on mechanical
Speaker 1: ventilation often. And I also used it as a double
Speaker 1: encounter because it was about this. The time during which
Speaker 1: I had the panic attack was the time where I
Speaker 1: had sort of ambition on steroids and I was hungry
Speaker 1: to be on the air all the time. I was
Speaker 1: really competing to to uh, you know, beat out my
Speaker 1: colleagues and get the big story and get the big
Speaker 1: assignments and get the job as an anchorman. And I
Speaker 1: had spent a lot of time in war zones um before,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think that's really what precipitated the
Speaker 1: panic attack. I had spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: war zones and come home and had some psychological problems
Speaker 1: and then self medicated with recreational drugs, and all of
Speaker 1: that I think really led to me having a panic attack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting with a panic attack that it never really
Speaker 1: is about anything that's happening in that moment, right. It's
Speaker 1: always kind of this build up where like you almost
Speaker 1: can't take it anymore. It's the straw that breaks the
Speaker 1: camel's back. You just it's not really about anything that
Speaker 1: happened that day, but it could be the build up
Speaker 1: of the drugs in your system, even if you hadn't
Speaker 1: taken any drugs, you know, weeks up to the panic attack.
Speaker 1: But and that's what I find so interesting is you know,
Speaker 1: so this panic attack was in two thousand four, and
Speaker 1: according to your book, so right after nine eleven, which
Speaker 1: obviously was the biggest jolt of anxiety that America had
Speaker 1: in a while, especially New Yorkers. You're in New York
Speaker 1: and you get sent to to our bar, You're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do this. I'm going right to where bin Laden
Speaker 1: is hiding. I mean, most people would not do that.
Speaker 1: And so it's funny to me that to the uninitiated,
Speaker 1: if they were on a quiz show and they said,
Speaker 1: tell me when Dan Harris had a panic attack? Was
Speaker 1: it when he was in Afghanistan intour bar after night eleven?
Speaker 1: Or was it when he was in the comfort of
Speaker 1: the ABC studios three years later? Mostly would guess in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: So were you, in a way do you think an
Speaker 1: adrenaline junkie as well at a certain point, like trying
Speaker 1: to feel a live when you went to get those
Speaker 1: news stories, or was it really just work ambition? Like,
Speaker 1: did you feel weirdly at ease in those war zones
Speaker 1: because it's almost like there's no time to panic, it's
Speaker 1: just survival and adrenaline. Yes, what you said is correct. Um,
Speaker 1: I was an adrenaline junk. He's probably still am in
Speaker 1: some ways, so not as much as I used to be. UM,
Speaker 1: I didn't really go into I started covering wars in
Speaker 1: my early thirties. I know, I had been a local
Speaker 1: news reporter for my twenties, and you know, there was
Speaker 1: there was no combat to speak of. UM, But I
Speaker 1: liked the excitement of my job as a as a
Speaker 1: local news reporter. And then when I got ABC News,
Speaker 1: nine eleven happened, and obviously that was the biggest story
Speaker 1: in the planet. UH. Initially Afghanistan and then Iraq, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to be there. And I initially was motivated
Speaker 1: by a combination of curiosity, idealism, you know, really feeling
Speaker 1: that we needed to bear witness to what was happening
Speaker 1: at the tip of the spear, and ambitions. What really
Speaker 1: kicked into high gear once I got into war zones,
Speaker 1: something I had never experienced before was that how much
Speaker 1: I loved the adrenaline, It really feels like you are
Speaker 1: somewhere you are not supposed to be, and it's very exciting,
Speaker 1: and your existential crisis can can evaporate because you know
Speaker 1: what you're doing is important, it's really exciting, and you
Speaker 1: get on TV while doing it. And so I got
Speaker 1: really hooked. And the problems came when I would come
Speaker 1: home in the midst of this, and even though I
Speaker 1: still had a pretty exciting job as a you know,
Speaker 1: budding news anchor, it didn't compare to being in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: or being in a rock and is not shooting bullets
Speaker 1: by your hand sometimes through her eyes, m but not
Speaker 1: not not not literally. And I got depressed in those
Speaker 1: periods of time, even though I didn't know I was depressed,
Speaker 1: and that's what led to the drug abuse. It's so
Speaker 1: funny to me, as a child from Boston, that you
Speaker 1: even tried cocaine, because I thought we'd all been successfully
Speaker 1: brainwashed by the by Lenn Bias, that was one of
Speaker 1: the Boston Celtics, a young recruit, and he oh deed
Speaker 1: um from cocaine overdose. And you know, I have remembered
Speaker 1: my middle school gym teachers. We shuttled us all into
Speaker 1: the gymnasium and said Lenn Bias tried cocaine once everybody
Speaker 1: and died and we were like, oh my god, we
Speaker 1: never it was height of the eighties. Just say no.
Speaker 1: I mean I never tried cocaine. Even when I learned
Speaker 1: that that wasn't quite true, that it wasn't his first
Speaker 1: time trying it, We'll never try it. So I really
Speaker 1: had the same reaction. I mean, I was terrified. I
Speaker 1: mean I was thirty two somewhere, pretty old to be
Speaker 1: trying cocaine for the first time. UM. But I was desperate. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was super depressed and feeling UM, I was feeling
Speaker 1: logi all the time. I felt physically bad all the time. UH.
Speaker 1: And I was kind of lonely. A lot of my
Speaker 1: friends had moved away. And then I, you know, my
Speaker 1: real best friends were when I was covering war and
Speaker 1: I couldn't be with them all the time. And I
Speaker 1: was with a buddy one night and he offered me
Speaker 1: some and I don't know why I just said yes.
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't recommend cocaine. UM. I think
Speaker 1: it's it is addictive. UM, it probably doesn't kill people
Speaker 1: on the first use, um uh all that often. But
Speaker 1: but it's it is addictive, and um, the crash is
Speaker 1: really brutal. And so I'm not like, I'm not puritanically
Speaker 1: anti drug, but I'm not out here recommending you do cocaine.
Speaker 1: And stopping doing cocaine was very helpful to me in
Speaker 1: terms of not having panic attacks anymore. Anxiety bites will
Speaker 1: be right back after a quick little message from one
Speaker 1: of our sponsors. Let's talk about when you started to
Speaker 1: get into meditation. So, according to your book, you started
Speaker 1: to interview self help gurus anything from a deepunk show
Speaker 1: for two, you know, more snake oil salesman, Christian evangelical types.
Speaker 1: So you were looking for answers but making it part
Speaker 1: of your job in a way. You had that ability
Speaker 1: to say this is what this is the field I
Speaker 1: want to go into now. It was it was an
Speaker 1: incredible stroke of luck that I, post panic attack kind
Speaker 1: of was trying to figure out what to do with
Speaker 1: my mind in my life. First thing I did with
Speaker 1: the therapy and quit doing drugs and that was really
Speaker 1: really helpful. And then I had this ability, um to
Speaker 1: go interview interesting people. UM I did. I had been
Speaker 1: assigned by Peter Jennings, um my then boss to cover
Speaker 1: faith in spirituality, which I didn't want to do because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm agnostic from the People's Republic of Massachusetts and
Speaker 1: it was not particularly and your parents were scientists, so
Speaker 1: it's not like you were this like religious household, right, correct.
Speaker 1: I did have a bar mitzvah, but I I like
Speaker 1: I always joked that I only did that for the money. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I was not at all interested in spirituality. Then
Speaker 1: over time I used that gig to start interviewing self
Speaker 1: help gurus, etcetera, etcetera, and through that I found meditation.
Speaker 1: So and I'm gonna take us back through that story
Speaker 1: from the Eckart totally to the mark Epstein. But did
Speaker 1: your therapist say anything helpful in the sense of what
Speaker 1: to do about panic and anxiety or did you find
Speaker 1: that you you needed more? Were you doing cognitive behavior
Speaker 1: therapy for panic attacks? Yeah? So he was really great.
Speaker 1: He had a couple of mechanisms. One was, don't do
Speaker 1: cocaine anymore. Uh. The other was he gave me some
Speaker 1: drugs that were helpful, um uh prescribed drugs. One of
Speaker 1: them is called beta blockers UM, which for anybody who's
Speaker 1: got uh stage fright or performance anxiety of any sort,
Speaker 1: or or if you're just going into a stressful meeting
Speaker 1: with your boss and you're worried about panicking. Beta blockers
Speaker 1: are a non narcotic prescription class of drugs that can
Speaker 1: stop your heart from beating too fast and block the
Speaker 1: release of cortisol. I believe I'm not a doctor, so
Speaker 1: if I got that wrong, I apologize. But anyway, he
Speaker 1: those were a couple of things he did. He tried
Speaker 1: to do cognitive behavioral therapy around my fear about being
Speaker 1: on TV, but it didn't work because you can't. I
Speaker 1: know when I'm live and I when I'm not. So
Speaker 1: you can put a TV camera in front of me,
Speaker 1: but if I am not, if I'm aware that it's
Speaker 1: not beamed out right now to five million people, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get scared. Uh. Then just a lot of
Speaker 1: also talk therapy, you know, just I had done it
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, but I had not done
Speaker 1: much as an adult. And so really seeing this guy
Speaker 1: once through twice a week for years and years and
Speaker 1: years just helped me live in a wiser way to
Speaker 1: start untangling why did I get myself into this situation
Speaker 1: in the first place. Well, I heard in an interview
Speaker 1: that you talked about, your dad had a saying and
Speaker 1: that you realize now he wasn't saying it like this
Speaker 1: is how it should be, but he was trying to
Speaker 1: make you feel better. What what was that saying? He
Speaker 1: had an expression was the price of security is insecurity,
Speaker 1: which is actually quite a nice for phrasing, UM. And
Speaker 1: I took that in ram with it and really believed
Speaker 1: that any success that I was achieving in my professional
Speaker 1: life was directly correlated to the intensity of my anxiety.
Speaker 1: I said, I thought I needed hair on fire anxiety
Speaker 1: in order to succeed. We can talk about why. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's true now. But but but my dad
Speaker 1: later told me UM that he didn't in make that
Speaker 1: up to encourage me to worry. He made that up
Speaker 1: to make me feel better about the fact that I
Speaker 1: was already worrying and I was a very nervous kid.
Speaker 1: These are the ways that parents don't even know they're
Speaker 1: influencing their kids. You know, everyone wants to be the
Speaker 1: perfect parent. I'm not going to screw my kid up.
Speaker 1: And it's like, but even when you're helping them, you
Speaker 1: might say something that just because of their own wiring
Speaker 1: they take totally the wrong way, and it just it
Speaker 1: makes me laugh because we just have so little control
Speaker 1: over how we take things, how how people take what
Speaker 1: we say. It's fascinating that you had that realization years later.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about your meditation, and then
Speaker 1: I want to jump back because I'm very obsessed with
Speaker 1: your interaction with eck Art Totley, but I think we
Speaker 1: need to start with So basically, someone gives you an
Speaker 1: neck art tole a book. You read it, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really connect with you. Will go back into detail
Speaker 1: about that. But then you find Mark Epstein and his
Speaker 1: book going to Pieces without falling apart? I am obsessed
Speaker 1: with markets. What happened there that made you say, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll try this this meditation? Tell me the journey keep
Speaker 1: saying journey to you. I hate that. Are you gonna
Speaker 1: ask me about about my aura next? I don't have
Speaker 1: to ask. I see it. I see your auras right.
Speaker 1: I can't see it because I hid self view, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's here. Um I So Dr Mark Epstein
Speaker 1: totally obsession worthy is if he is a psychiatrist who
Speaker 1: lives and works in Manhattan has written a whole series
Speaker 1: of beautiful books about the overlap between Friday and psychology
Speaker 1: and Buddhism. He was not my psychiatrist. I found him
Speaker 1: because my then fiance and now baby Mama Bianca gave
Speaker 1: me one of his books, the aforementioned Going to Pieces
Speaker 1: Without Falling Apart, and it was my first exposure to Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and I was really impressed that that the There's so
Speaker 1: many diagnoses that the Buddha made of the human condition,
Speaker 1: but one of them is that we have this racing mind,
Speaker 1: some sometimes referred to as the monkey mind, which is
Speaker 1: leaping all over the place and from one thing to
Speaker 1: the next randomly, often grabbing onto things that will not
Speaker 1: last in a universe that is characterized by impermanence and entropy,
Speaker 1: and lurching from one hit of pleasant experience, one vaccasion,
Speaker 1: one slice of cake, one latte to the next, and
Speaker 1: never fully satisfied. And that just when I heard that description,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, that is that is that
Speaker 1: is true, and that explains why I went off to
Speaker 1: war zones uh without thinking about the consequences, came home,
Speaker 1: got depressed, was insufficiently self aware to know it, and
Speaker 1: then blindly self medicated and it all blew up in
Speaker 1: my face on national television. So it was very satisfying
Speaker 1: to read that, and the Buddha had something to do
Speaker 1: about it, which was a star contrast to Eckar Totally,
Speaker 1: who I know we'll talk about later, has a similar diagnosis.
Speaker 1: But as a friend of mine has joked, ear totally
Speaker 1: is correct but not useful. The Buddha is correct and
Speaker 1: very useful. And now, people listening, you don't have to
Speaker 1: actually become a Buddhist right to incorporate. I mean, he
Speaker 1: really is like very practical. You know. I know that
Speaker 1: there are people who have this as the religion and
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of problems with us white people appropriating
Speaker 1: and go well I'll use a little of this but
Speaker 1: not that. But but just for you know, the sake
Speaker 1: of someone listening and at all I'm not a Buddhist,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, we're just talking honestly about um, the
Speaker 1: practicality of it. It's like not even about love everyone,
Speaker 1: but do no harm. You know, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: like not as as you say gooey as people think,
Speaker 1: it's a lot more practical of like do less this.
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh wow, that's challenging to people because
Speaker 1: I think type A people want to do how do
Speaker 1: I do this? And and some of the answers of
Speaker 1: the Buddha are you don't that you are absolutely right
Speaker 1: that you don't have to become a Buddhist or anything
Speaker 1: like that. The Buddha in his own time was there
Speaker 1: were no Buddhists. They were just you know, people who
Speaker 1: followed him and did his meditation techniques. Ranged from people
Speaker 1: who are ordained as monks and nuns all the way
Speaker 1: up to wealthy merchants to kings. It basically had a
Speaker 1: philosophy and a set of practices, both for seed in
Speaker 1: meditation and for your life, your free range living, that
Speaker 1: were designed to make you less miserable, to make you happier.
Speaker 1: And um, I would call myself a Buddhist, but only
Speaker 1: in the sense that I do Buddhism the same way
Speaker 1: I would call myself a journalist. The Buddha clearly said,
Speaker 1: you don't have to take anything I say on face value.
Speaker 1: You don't have to believe anything just because I said it.
Speaker 1: Try it off for yourself. There's no creation myth and Buddhism.
Speaker 1: There's no He's not a god. He was just a guy. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some claims in there that I can't verify
Speaker 1: and I don't particularly believe in because I just don't
Speaker 1: have evidence for them, including reincarnation, etcetera, etcetera. But you
Speaker 1: can take or leave that stuff, and you can practice
Speaker 1: Buddhism if you're a Christian or do uh, Muslim and
Speaker 1: agnostic and atheist, doesn't matter. It's a set of practices.
Speaker 1: You can do some of them, not all of them. Whatever.
Speaker 1: And yes, there are people who practice Buddhism as a religion,
Speaker 1: and I think that's quite beautiful, but I'm not one
Speaker 1: of them. But I do Buddhism on the regular and
Speaker 1: take it very, very seriously. So it's not that mindfulness
Speaker 1: and Buddhism are totally interchangeable, but kind of in that sense,
Speaker 1: like mindfulness is one of the credible insights made by
Speaker 1: the Buddha. So what we've seen in recent years is
Speaker 1: that Buddhism is this vast, rich, you know, treasury of
Speaker 1: kind of insights into what makes us tick. One of
Speaker 1: the things that Buddha talked about was mindfulness, which is
Speaker 1: basically just another way of saying self awareness, the awareness
Speaker 1: of this voice in your head that is an asshole,
Speaker 1: and that awareness allows you not to be so owned
Speaker 1: by it, you might notice. So, Yeah, I'm having this
Speaker 1: ridiculous urging to eat a sleeve of oreos or to
Speaker 1: say something that's gonna ruin the next seventy two hours
Speaker 1: of my marriage, but I don't have to act on it.
Speaker 1: That's mindfulness, just the ability to see what's happening between
Speaker 1: your ears in any given moment without without taking de
Speaker 1: bait and acting blindly. Um, that's one very important chunk
Speaker 1: of many, many incredible things the Buddha talked about. Mindfulness
Speaker 1: has been taken out. And I think there's some disagreement
Speaker 1: about this in the in the Buddhist world, but I'm
Speaker 1: pretty partisan in saying that. I think it's a really
Speaker 1: good thing that it's been taken out of a religious context,
Speaker 1: studied in labs, and taught in a secular way, and
Speaker 1: that has allowed for this explosion of scientific research that
Speaker 1: shows that mindfulness can have lots of tantalizing health benefits. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's now being taught in foster homes and in prisons
Speaker 1: and and business this is and in locker rooms and
Speaker 1: in dressing rooms in l A and so this secularization,
Speaker 1: which again has been a little bit controversial, and we
Speaker 1: can talk about that if you want. I think has
Speaker 1: led to a really interesting mainstreaming of this practice, which
Speaker 1: heretofore had been kind of limited to religious communities. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the only thing that makes me want to
Speaker 1: barf is when people who don't understand that it is scientific,
Speaker 1: has a psychological been to it, like Mark Epstein's writings,
Speaker 1: and you know, you've got some influencer on Instagram who's
Speaker 1: like mindful and they're turning it into some hippie to beating.
Speaker 1: I mean that makes me crazy too, will be right back.
Speaker 1: What does it look like when the type a news
Speaker 1: guy starts meditating? Do you totally do it? I know
Speaker 1: there's no wrong way to meditate, but do you approach
Speaker 1: it like yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna listen to
Speaker 1: them about how I should approach it. I know how
Speaker 1: I'm gonna win it. That like where you like that
Speaker 1: when you started, by the way, there is a wrong
Speaker 1: way to meditate. If you sit down and affirmatively decide
Speaker 1: to like plan lunch, that's not meditation, that's planning lunch.
Speaker 1: That's true. And I know you don't like this either
Speaker 1: when people go cooking, is my meditation, It's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's cooking meditation, Like, show some respect, it's an actual thing,
Speaker 1: like it be in the zone when you're cooking, but
Speaker 1: you're not meditating. I think you can be mindful while
Speaker 1: you cook. In other words, you can be mindful while
Speaker 1: you're doing anything, because mindfulness just means paying attention to
Speaker 1: what you're doing in a way that allows you to
Speaker 1: see the workings of your mind, just for a few
Speaker 1: nanoseconds at a time, without being owned by it. So
Speaker 1: you can be chopping onions and just really tuning into
Speaker 1: what's the smell, what are my eyes singing, what's the sensation,
Speaker 1: what are the sensations in my arm as I moved
Speaker 1: the knife up and down. I think it's quite hard
Speaker 1: to do that if you don't have a foundation of
Speaker 1: seated practice where you are really doing a kind of workout.
Speaker 1: So to let, I think I should answer your the
Speaker 1: question you actually asked me, which is how do you meditate?
Speaker 1: How did I do it when I was first introduced
Speaker 1: to it. There are lots of kinds of meditation. Um.
Speaker 1: I was drawn to something called mindfulness meditation, which is
Speaker 1: derived from Buddhism, but has been thoroughly secularized. The practice
Speaker 1: is very simple. The cliche is that it's simple but
Speaker 1: not easy. The practices you sit quietly somewhere, bring your
Speaker 1: full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in
Speaker 1: and going out, and then every time you get distracted,
Speaker 1: which will happen a million times, you start again and
Speaker 1: again and again. And a lot of people think when
Speaker 1: they get distracted, that is proof that they're meditating incorrectly,
Speaker 1: but in fact, not to saying you've become distracted is
Speaker 1: proof you're meditating correctly, because the whole game here is
Speaker 1: to develop mindfulness, is to see that the voice in
Speaker 1: your head is often an asshole, and when you have
Speaker 1: that self awareness, you are less owned by the voice.
Speaker 1: So the whole goal as you sit, you notice your
Speaker 1: breath for a few nanoseconds and you immediately take it away.
Speaker 1: You're starting to plan a homicide, or you know, you
Speaker 1: plan some expletive filled speech you're gonna deliver to your boss,
Speaker 1: and then you notice it. You're like, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's anchor, that's that's maybe that's some ancient pattern
Speaker 1: I've been running in my mind since I was five,
Speaker 1: Blow it a kiss and you go back to the
Speaker 1: breath over and over and over again. And that's like
Speaker 1: a bicet girl for your brain. And this is what
Speaker 1: shows up on the brain scans when you look at
Speaker 1: the brains of people who meditate, they are different. The
Speaker 1: area of the brain associated with focus changes, the area
Speaker 1: of the brain associated with stress changes, the area of
Speaker 1: the brain associated with compassion, self awareness. These change and
Speaker 1: that is really revolutionary here that you can change change
Speaker 1: your brain and by extension, your mind. And you know,
Speaker 1: we these qualities, these mental qualities that many of us
Speaker 1: have been carrying around stories about how their set their
Speaker 1: factory settings that are unalterable. Actually know, these are skills
Speaker 1: that can be trained. It doesn't mean it's going to
Speaker 1: happen overnight hence ten happier, but these are things that
Speaker 1: you can get better and better and better at overtime. Well,
Speaker 1: you know a big thing for me and my anxiety,
Speaker 1: learning about anxiety and you know the things that caused
Speaker 1: my panic attacks was one of them. A lot of
Speaker 1: negative self talk, but not even conscious of it. Right,
Speaker 1: So when I sit down and notice my thoughts, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just that, oh I kind of already knew these
Speaker 1: thoughts were there, but I'm giving them attention. It was
Speaker 1: like I didn't even know that my I call it
Speaker 1: like the CNN news crawl that you see on the
Speaker 1: outside of the buildings and Manhattan, like that news crawl
Speaker 1: was just sorry, just at ABC that that was constantly
Speaker 1: You're no good, You're you know, all terrible things, and
Speaker 1: negative self talk can lead to so much anxiety. Um
Speaker 1: it can lead to panic attacks. And you know a
Speaker 1: lot of people that are perfectionists have anxiety and panic
Speaker 1: and so sitting down and noticing your thoughts is like
Speaker 1: you said, you they won't own you anymore, and that
Speaker 1: is I think that's should be very attractive to type
Speaker 1: A people like you don't want your thoughts owning you.
Speaker 1: Like you know, people with anxiety, they long for control.
Speaker 1: You tell them what to do to gain control. And well,
Speaker 1: not that you know, but but it's beautiful what you said.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to interrupting. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: give you credit. I want to give you a gold
Speaker 1: star because the seeing of this heretofore hidden obnoxious news
Speaker 1: ticker is the point of meditation, or at least one
Speaker 1: of the big points and and that's a huge victory.
Speaker 1: And for so many people they get caught up on this.
Speaker 1: They they see that this is happening and they feel
Speaker 1: like they're failed meditators because they should be sitting down.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like Calgan, take me away, or
Speaker 1: I need the beatific Buddha half smile that I see
Speaker 1: on the statues outside the airport massage places. That's not
Speaker 1: the way it's gonna go. The way it's gonna go
Speaker 1: is what Gen just described as you're gonna sit and
Speaker 1: you're gonna see like, yeah, this is what your life
Speaker 1: is about, which is a lot of you know, doing
Speaker 1: it a haircut? Where to gerbils run wild? Why are
Speaker 1: you such a failure? Why does your brother in law
Speaker 1: make more than you? Blah blah blah. That is what's
Speaker 1: happening on a moment's moment basis in your mind most likely,
Speaker 1: And if you don't see it, those thoughts are like
Speaker 1: tiny little dictators that you act out reflexively. When you
Speaker 1: do see it, you have a choice to respond wisely
Speaker 1: to stuff rather than reacting blindly. Right, And of course
Speaker 1: you know your reactions change over time with meditation practice
Speaker 1: every day, and so this is this I've been dying
Speaker 1: to tell you this story. It's not a long story,
Speaker 1: but I just it's like you know, when you know
Speaker 1: the perfect person to tell something too because you want
Speaker 1: them to get mad for you. This is I need
Speaker 1: you to react correctly to the story. I know you,
Speaker 1: so I think you know. I think you relate to
Speaker 1: this that like you're not having anxiety panic every day,
Speaker 1: but that stuff could come up. Right. So I have
Speaker 1: situations where I could still have a panic attack. One
Speaker 1: is airplanes. I'm not afraid to fly, but just every
Speaker 1: once in a while my defenses are down, I'm tired,
Speaker 1: I start to feel the physical sensations of panic. I
Speaker 1: have my dissolveable clone up in on me if that happens.
Speaker 1: I also have my tools and techniques. I do both
Speaker 1: okay great. The other thing that I just have not
Speaker 1: mastered yet is a fear of heights, like elevators and
Speaker 1: tall buildings. Um And when I am in New York
Speaker 1: City and I take meetings, I obviously find out what
Speaker 1: floor it's on, and I do a whole thing that morning.
Speaker 1: I don't have caffeine, I do extra meditation, I do
Speaker 1: take take medication hours earlier, and I actually talk to
Speaker 1: the people that are coming to the meeting with me
Speaker 1: about here's what you should say to me when I'm
Speaker 1: panicking the elevator, Here's what not to say. It's a
Speaker 1: whole thing. I have to prepare, and I've learned how
Speaker 1: to take care of myself and ask for what I need.
Speaker 1: So I blindly go to a pitch meeting, ironically pitching
Speaker 1: a TV show about a teenage growth anxiety to this
Speaker 1: network in l A. And you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: tall buildings here. There's one building in Universal City that's tall.
Speaker 1: I never go in it, never been in it. That's
Speaker 1: where the meeting is. I blind. I just don't even
Speaker 1: pay attention. I get there, it's on the floor. I
Speaker 1: have one minute before the meeting starts. I was jacked
Speaker 1: on caffeine, ready to give my one hour pitch, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I said, I can't, said to my manager
Speaker 1: and her sister, I can't go up, And they said,
Speaker 1: is there anything we can do? And I said, listen,
Speaker 1: that the stuff that needed to be done to take
Speaker 1: care of myself is too late. But if you could
Speaker 1: call up and have them shut those blinds. Um if
Speaker 1: you guys could say this not that to me in
Speaker 1: the elevator. But before I even gave them what they
Speaker 1: could say, they were saying all the wrong things. I
Speaker 1: was panicking more. I took my desolvable plant have been
Speaker 1: and as you said in your book, once, um, it
Speaker 1: just cut right through the terror cart right through there.
Speaker 1: No drug could stop this. And I was like air hungry,
Speaker 1: couldn't breathe couldn't breathe. And I said, well, we're pitching
Speaker 1: a show about anxiety. That's what this network wanted. They
Speaker 1: they're very big into mental health. Blah blah blah. And
Speaker 1: there was a beautiful coffee shop in the lobbies, so
Speaker 1: maybe we just asked him to come down and we
Speaker 1: pitch here, you know, I mean, it was a there's
Speaker 1: no reason they couldn't come down. So these young executives
Speaker 1: come down, and I said, I'm really grateful to you guys,
Speaker 1: and I said everything I just said to you. I said,
Speaker 1: I normally I never panic, but when I do, it's
Speaker 1: because I wasn't prepared and I didn't know it was
Speaker 1: going to be the whole thing. And this one guy
Speaker 1: goes de meditate and I said yeah, and he goes,
Speaker 1: he goes, yeah, I used to panic but I just
Speaker 1: started meditating. I've never panicked again, So yeah, you should
Speaker 1: just meditate more. And I was like, I want you
Speaker 1: to explode right here, and like I was so angry
Speaker 1: because I was like, then he has never He's either
Speaker 1: never panicked or he's never meditate. This is not true, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm I hope for his sake that it is true.
Speaker 1: I'm happy for him if it's jobs, God bless I
Speaker 1: Still I've been doing it for I don't know, twelve
Speaker 1: years or something like that, and I still retained the
Speaker 1: capacity to definitely have anxiety daily. UM. Not not necessarily
Speaker 1: crippling anxiety, but low level anxiety. I worry about stuff
Speaker 1: that's just kind of how wired. And if you put
Speaker 1: me in the right situation, I could definitely panic. I'm claustrophobic.
Speaker 1: If you put me in an m R I without
Speaker 1: enough preparation, absolutely I have a panic attack. I don't
Speaker 1: think meditation is a panacea. I think it makes me
Speaker 1: much more. I think it makes both of us much
Speaker 1: less likely to panic or to have anxiety, and it
Speaker 1: gives us tools to deal with it when those things
Speaker 1: come up. So I hope it's true for that young executive.
Speaker 1: UM but it's not true for a lot of people. Well,
Speaker 1: I also think the one mistake he made being like Mr,
Speaker 1: I love anxiety and helping people, is you just shamed me,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's not how we talk to people.
Speaker 1: Like a real meditator does not say that, you know,
Speaker 1: would would would would never go. I used to have this.
Speaker 1: It's never happened again that did. Dolly Lama wouldn't say that,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And so it takes me probably using
Speaker 1: one of my competitor apps, you know that that's problem. Problem, Well,
Speaker 1: it takes me to your story about art Totally, and
Speaker 1: then you know, we'll wrap up and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about your app. In your book, you talk about
Speaker 1: meeting the dolly Lama who you know, everyone I've read
Speaker 1: who's met him, it's just like they asked you know,
Speaker 1: you asked him about you know, stopping the mind and
Speaker 1: does he still get angry and he's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, like he's always just very like whenever I
Speaker 1: read about him, he's like yeah, yea, yeah, don't be stupid.
Speaker 1: Of course I geta like please there, you'd have to
Speaker 1: be a spaceman to not right. Yes, then you meet
Speaker 1: at art totally and it's like the whispering and just
Speaker 1: tell me about that experience, because I have an aversion
Speaker 1: to him and you know, again all God's children. But
Speaker 1: it's just that kind of thing I think can hurt
Speaker 1: because it's the goal is not to never for have
Speaker 1: things bother you. It's like, what everything you've already talked
Speaker 1: about the reactivity? So can you just delight me with
Speaker 1: your story in your book where you kind of make
Speaker 1: fun of him? Okay, So I have complicated feelings about
Speaker 1: that Cartolia that have that have kind of changed a
Speaker 1: little bit over time. But the if you've never heard
Speaker 1: of that Cartoli is a mega best selling self help
Speaker 1: guru German kind of a diminutive elfin german Man, who
Speaker 1: um his story is. This is his story that he
Speaker 1: had a spiritual awakening in his twenties and then lived
Speaker 1: on park benches in the city of London for two
Speaker 1: years in a state of bliss. I I got skeptical
Speaker 1: by that story for many reasons, including the fact that
Speaker 1: they have winter in London. So I don't know about
Speaker 1: you know, whether that's true. Having said that, his books
Speaker 1: give a very incisive, compelling description of the voice in
Speaker 1: the head being an asshole. He calls it your ego.
Speaker 1: So I was really intrigued when I first read his book.
Speaker 1: I read his book before I got interested in meditation,
Speaker 1: before I met the Dollar. He was the first person
Speaker 1: even before I heard of Dr Mark Epstein. He was
Speaker 1: at cart Toley who really pointed out this this nattering
Speaker 1: voice that I have in my head, and that is
Speaker 1: part of you know, the human situation. And so I,
Speaker 1: while I found so many things in his books to
Speaker 1: be very very strange, including the park bench story, I
Speaker 1: was intrigued to meet him. And I went and met him.
Speaker 1: And the first question I asked is what do you
Speaker 1: do about the voice in the head? And he said
Speaker 1: take one conscious breath? And the voice in my head
Speaker 1: was like, what the fund does that mean? Like would
Speaker 1: give me some something to do? And I asked him
Speaker 1: a million ways, what do you do about this? I
Speaker 1: understood the words he was using, just not the order
Speaker 1: in which he was using them. Like I, he didn't
Speaker 1: say anything comprehensible to me, And then I asked him
Speaker 1: with the question I would later ask the Dollar Llama,
Speaker 1: who gave me a pretty sane answer to I asked,
Speaker 1: you ever get into a bad mood? And he said no,
Speaker 1: insisted that he's just whatever happens. You know, I'd like,
Speaker 1: if I cut you off in traffic, he'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd be like a gust of wind. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't personalize it, etcetera, etcetera. Which sounds beautiful, but like
Speaker 1: I was really very skeptical about it, and his whole
Speaker 1: presentation and his claims really put me off to him personally,
Speaker 1: although I was deeply intrigued by his the diagnosis of
Speaker 1: that is true, and that's great. Yeah, I over time,
Speaker 1: you know, here's the way. I've interviewed lots of sketchy
Speaker 1: people in my thirty years as a television journalist. Eckhart
Speaker 1: totally does not strike me as full of ship though,
Speaker 1: So while I was incredulous, I did not get the
Speaker 1: sense that he was a snake oil salesman. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how to compute that. I have in my
Speaker 1: wanderings since I have met him. Throughout spiritual the spiritual world,
Speaker 1: I have come across many descriptions of people who have
Speaker 1: be ago awakenings, sometimes with no training whatsoever, and they
Speaker 1: are just the software has been upgraded. And I can't
Speaker 1: tell you whether that's true because I have not experienced
Speaker 1: in myself, but there are many claims of this in
Speaker 1: the contemplative literature. And so maybe that is what happened
Speaker 1: with that car told you know, maybe I just think
Speaker 1: it's it's a miracle you kept going and found something
Speaker 1: that worked for you, because I think those kind of people,
Speaker 1: if we meet them first, it can be a turn
Speaker 1: off in that it just seems insurmountable. And uh and
Speaker 1: so I try to, you know, with your podcast, and
Speaker 1: I think it's so important that you're putting voices out
Speaker 1: there that are saying, no, here is what you do.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't even have to ever have an awakening,
Speaker 1: like you say, ten percent happier a little less of
Speaker 1: an asshole. So as we wrap up, can you tell
Speaker 1: everybody all about the ten percent Happier. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: really a media company at this point, the app, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. I have the app. I love it. I
Speaker 1: just just go off about your podcasting your app. Please. Well, well,
Speaker 1: I I don't I won't go to too deep into
Speaker 1: plugging except to say that that there's been a kind
Speaker 1: of a development in my own personal life. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know when this is going to post, but I
Speaker 1: am leaving ABC News after having been there for twenty
Speaker 1: one years because, um, I really want to go full
Speaker 1: time on ten percent happier and that I was wondering that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so my final day will be the end of September,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how I'm going to make it
Speaker 1: through my final day on the air, just because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really close to so many people there, and I've
Speaker 1: I've been I just you know, you're gonna cry on
Speaker 1: air and we'll put it on YouTube right next to
Speaker 1: your panic attack and it will be nice of full circle.
Speaker 1: Can't wait. You know, I'm not very emotional. It's one
Speaker 1: of the things I've been criticized for by many people,
Speaker 1: including my my wife. Um, but I worry about whether
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be able to hold it together. That I
Speaker 1: think you don't hold it together, And because you need
Speaker 1: that advertisement for Temper, that's right, come on, think about
Speaker 1: say something. I thought you were gonna say something, you know,
Speaker 1: wholesome and gooey, but you were just going right to
Speaker 1: the crash, which I love you for. Yeah. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna make some money with this ten
Speaker 1: percent and the way to advertise it as crying on air. UM,
Speaker 1: don't hold it together unless you you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want profits to store now so, but but it's it's
Speaker 1: so helpful. I mean, you did this whole thing during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. UM. I mean you just have the most
Speaker 1: amazing guests interviewing people about I mean you I need
Speaker 1: you to talk about because I'm I'm speechless. But you
Speaker 1: had a recent UM block of episodes this past summer
Speaker 1: that we're all about anxiety, and it's just so helpful.
Speaker 1: We do a lot on anxiety, both on the podcast
Speaker 1: and on the app UM. The we we did a
Speaker 1: special series of episodes of the summer on anxiety. We
Speaker 1: brought all sorts of experts in both scientists and UM
Speaker 1: meditation practitioners who are who have worked with anxiety in
Speaker 1: their own minds meditation teachers that is. And we did
Speaker 1: a big course on the ten percent Happier app called
Speaker 1: Taming Anxiety, where you if you download the app, you
Speaker 1: can try this course. UM and UH, we we worked
Speaker 1: again with we usually combine a scientist, UH. In this case,
Speaker 1: we worked with a researcher and clinician from Harvard who
Speaker 1: can teach you how to you know, the scientifically validated
Speaker 1: techniques for dealing with anxiety effect. I have clastrophobias. So
Speaker 1: she and I got in an elevator and went up
Speaker 1: and down at nauseum until I stopped freaking out. And
Speaker 1: she's really helpful. So we pair somebody like that with
Speaker 1: a you know, a deep meditation teacher who can give
Speaker 1: you guided practices. So the way it works as you
Speaker 1: get like a two three minute fun video and it
Speaker 1: slides right into a guided audio meditation and UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just got it. We got a tremendous response to
Speaker 1: that because we're in the middle of the pandemic. There's
Speaker 1: the pandemic, there's um we've had what's often called a
Speaker 1: racial reckoning in this country. We've had um political polarization,
Speaker 1: We've got climate change. There's so much going on that
Speaker 1: is stress full. Uh. And I've just found that I've
Speaker 1: seen that the interest in what we do and what
Speaker 1: you know, lots of other amazing people are doing in
Speaker 1: this space has skyrocketed. So, UM, I'm glad to see
Speaker 1: there's increased interest. I'm not happy about what's driving it exactly.
Speaker 1: Would be better if everyone just curious and trying to
Speaker 1: stay on top of it. Instead of suffering. UM. So,
Speaker 1: last question, UM, I know you were worried when you
Speaker 1: first started meditating that you might lose your edge. Did
Speaker 1: have you lost your edge? And is that good at
Speaker 1: that if you have or not? No? I mean I
Speaker 1: don't think. I don't think I lost my madge. I
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the things I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: is lose more of my edge. Because I I have
Speaker 1: my eyes are bigger than my stomach. I contend to
Speaker 1: say yes some more things than um I can actually do,
Speaker 1: and that can make me really, really unpleasant to be around.
Speaker 1: It's one of my biggest, you know, flaws, is I
Speaker 1: overextend myself. I've been working seven days a week for
Speaker 1: teen years and that is no boy, no. And that
Speaker 1: is why I decided to leave ABC News, because I
Speaker 1: needed to start following my own advice. But but it's
Speaker 1: a challenge because even as I'm leaving ABC News, I've
Speaker 1: got other offers of things I could do and do
Speaker 1: I say yes to them? How many things do I
Speaker 1: say yes to? And I'm driven a lot by ambition
Speaker 1: but also by I love this stuff and I really
Speaker 1: I think it can help people. And so I've this
Speaker 1: kind of mix of ambition and idealism and maybe some
Speaker 1: fear and greed under all of that, and in security.
Speaker 1: It's a whole interesting cocktail that I still work with,
Speaker 1: you know, And this is somebody who's ten, eleven, twelve
Speaker 1: years into meditation. It doesn't make all that stuff go away.
Speaker 1: What it does do is create a fertile ground for
Speaker 1: working on it more sanely. And that's what I recommend
Speaker 1: to people. And yeah, maybe you'll hit Eckhart totally status
Speaker 1: at some point, God blessed. I mean, I hope you do.
Speaker 1: But if you just want to have a marginally but
Speaker 1: steadily increasing love of sanity, this is a terrific modality.
Speaker 1: I love it. Dan, Thank you so much. This has
Speaker 1: been a joy. You don't say no to Jen Kirkman.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, I don't want to see how
Speaker 1: tough you can be on Twitter. I'm on this. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is my talk with Dan Harris. Now let's just
Speaker 1: do some takeaways. Next time you're having a panic attack,
Speaker 1: notice what's going on. It does start in your body first,
Speaker 1: but then your mind starts to freak out. It's a
Speaker 1: vicious cycle, as Dan calls it, mutiny mode. The more
Speaker 1: your mind freaks your body freaks worse. It's fear on steroids.
Speaker 1: It's our fight or flight response being triggered in a
Speaker 1: completely inappropriate circumstance. But you are not dying. Nobody has
Speaker 1: ever died from a panic attack, and no, you're not
Speaker 1: the first one that's going to die of a panic attack.
Speaker 1: You're not dying. If there's anything you can take away
Speaker 1: from this entire season of the Anxiety Bites podcast, You're
Speaker 1: not dying. Number two. Do not do cocaine. It's not
Speaker 1: going to help with anything in your life. No drugs, everybody,
Speaker 1: No street drugs. The book that Dan mentioned that was
Speaker 1: the first book that really opened his eyes. If you
Speaker 1: need that repeated, it's called Going to Pieces Without Falling
Speaker 1: Apart by doctor Mark Epstein E P S T E
Speaker 1: I N. When your mind is racing, it's known as
Speaker 1: the monkey mind. It's leaping all over the place. But
Speaker 1: you can get it to a place by practicing mindfulness
Speaker 1: where your monkey mind doesn't own you. If you don't
Speaker 1: notice what's happening in your mind, your thoughts are like
Speaker 1: tiny little dictators that you end up acting out reflexively
Speaker 1: and rather unconsciously. You don't have to be a Buddhist
Speaker 1: to meditate or practice mindfulness, or even practice some of
Speaker 1: the tenants of Buddhism that dovetails so well with modern
Speaker 1: day psychology. If the word mindfulness doesn't work for you,
Speaker 1: maybe another way to think of it is self awareness.
Speaker 1: It's just like the way that Dan was able to
Speaker 1: label the voice in his head as an asshole. Mindfulness
Speaker 1: self awareness. It's a way of seeing what's happening between
Speaker 1: your ears without taking the bait and acting on your thoughts.
Speaker 1: This is all scientifically proven. The brains of people who
Speaker 1: meditate look different. It shows up in brain scans, and
Speaker 1: meditation positively affects the areas of focus and stress and
Speaker 1: increases compassion. And lastly, the factory settings of our brain
Speaker 1: are not unalterable. You can do this anxiety bites, but
Speaker 1: you're in control. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.