Speaker 1: I wanted to call the book The Voice in My
Speaker 1: Head as an asshole, because I just think if that's
Speaker 1: a profane statement of a fundamental truth, welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest this week is Dan Harris, correspondent for ABC
Speaker 1: News and co anchor for both Nightline and the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Good Morning America. In two thousand fourteen, Harris
Speaker 1: released his first book, Ten Percent Happier. How I Tamed
Speaker 1: the Voice in My Head, Reduced stress without losing My edge,
Speaker 1: and found self help that really works. A true story.
Speaker 1: In the book, he describes how after a panic attack
Speaker 1: on national television, he stopped using drugs and discovered the
Speaker 1: benefits of meditation. Let's hear the interview. Hi, Dan, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Hi glad that you could join us.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed your book ten percent happier. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of things that will get into as we go
Speaker 1: through the interview, but I related within with an awful
Speaker 1: lot of it, and I think are our approach to
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that are in this area
Speaker 1: are are very similar. And I was I was laughing
Speaker 1: a lot in the book at different points. Thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. So our podcast is called The One You Feed,
Speaker 1: and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves, where
Speaker 1: there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like hatred and greed and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins. And the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work you do. Yeah. I think it speaks to
Speaker 1: the fact that that the mind can be trained. Um,
Speaker 1: the brain and the mind can be trained. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you can practice for things like happiness and compassion. And
Speaker 1: that's the radical no notion undergirding meditation, that just as
Speaker 1: you go to the gym and build your icep you
Speaker 1: can sit close your eyes and practice things. Practice to
Speaker 1: be happier, or to be kinder, or lots of other things.
Speaker 1: And um. And that there's science that backs this up.
Speaker 1: And you we see it in the brain scans that
Speaker 1: we see that the areas of the brain associated with stress,
Speaker 1: the gray matter literally shrinks. The area associated with empathy
Speaker 1: and compassion, the gray matter literally grows. So this isn't
Speaker 1: some touchy feely new a G thing. This is hardcore
Speaker 1: scientific uh stuff and and at the same time life changing.
Speaker 1: And and this is why we're seeing everyone from scientists
Speaker 1: to pro football players to entertainers to c E O
Speaker 1: s UH engaging with what has always been considered a
Speaker 1: kind of fringe e weirdo activity UH And that's why
Speaker 1: I wrote my book to try to get people who
Speaker 1: might be skeptical about this stuff to to open their
Speaker 1: minds a little bit exactly. And I'm going to give
Speaker 1: just a brief overview of your book for the listeners,
Speaker 1: and then I'll kind of go into some more in
Speaker 1: depth questions and you can jump in if I say,
Speaker 1: you know, if I don't get the summary quite right.
Speaker 1: But in general, it's a story of you, um your
Speaker 1: journalism career, you going overseas UH in a lot of
Speaker 1: war zones, coming home, starting to self medicate some some
Speaker 1: different feelings through drugs, which led to you having a
Speaker 1: panic attack on air, which then led you to start
Speaker 1: searching for some answers as to what was happening, which
Speaker 1: ultimately led to you getting into meditation and then writing
Speaker 1: this book. So that's the very you know, forty five
Speaker 1: second version, pretty close, fair enough, all right. So you
Speaker 1: originally said that you wanted the title of your book
Speaker 1: to be The Voice in my Head is an Asshole,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a wonderful title. You also just
Speaker 1: refer to the voice in your head as a malevolent puppeteer,
Speaker 1: which I also absolutely loved. What do you mean by
Speaker 1: that I think that the fundamental truth of the human
Speaker 1: condition is that we have this voice in our head.
Speaker 1: And in narrator, I mean, I'm not talking about hearing
Speaker 1: voices or schizophrenia. I'm just talking about this voice that
Speaker 1: is what chases you out of bed in the morning
Speaker 1: and is heckling you all day long, and as you
Speaker 1: constantly wanting things or not wanting or judging other people,
Speaker 1: are very harshly judging yourself, uh, and thinking about the
Speaker 1: past and thinking about the future instead of focusing on
Speaker 1: what's happening right now, And when you're unaware of this
Speaker 1: NonStop conversation you're having with yourself, it is a malevolent
Speaker 1: puppeteer yank you around. And it's why you have your
Speaker 1: hand in the fridge when you're not hungry, or you're
Speaker 1: losing your temper when it's strategically unwise, or you are
Speaker 1: checking your email when your kids are trying to talk
Speaker 1: to you. So to me, that's why I wanted to
Speaker 1: call the book The Voice in My Head as an asshole,
Speaker 1: because I think I just think that that's a m
Speaker 1: a profane statement of a fundamental truth. I agree. I
Speaker 1: think the first time that I ever got that really
Speaker 1: understood that and heard and you sort of described a
Speaker 1: similar experience when you when you read somebody describing that
Speaker 1: voice in their head, it was it was a complete
Speaker 1: revelation that we, most of us, have never really thought
Speaker 1: of that that that voice isn't necessarily us. It's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a manifestation of our mind. The central feature
Speaker 1: of our lives is this sense of me or I.
Speaker 1: It's the force that has you, you know, making dentsity deployments,
Speaker 1: are getting up and leaving the room when you get
Speaker 1: to go the bathroom. It's this kind of it's this
Speaker 1: propulsion that's with us all the time. And there's you know,
Speaker 1: color commenting, commentating on everything. But we take it for granted. Uh,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't see it, and unless it's pointed
Speaker 1: out to you, And when it's pointed out to you,
Speaker 1: it's like this thunderous truism. Obviously it's totally obvious. Um,
Speaker 1: obviously it's totally obvious. That's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: ridiculous statement. But it is obvious and yet overlooked. So
Speaker 1: um it's uh. One, when when I first encountered this,
Speaker 1: this um, this observation, it was a big deal. For me,
Speaker 1: and also it was not only powerful because it was
Speaker 1: intuitively true, but also because it explained some of the
Speaker 1: dumb behavior that you described that that I write about
Speaker 1: in the book, That the fact that I went to
Speaker 1: war zones without really thinking about the psychological consequences, that
Speaker 1: I came home and got depressed and really wasn't fully
Speaker 1: aware that I was even depressed. I wasn't self aware
Speaker 1: enough to perceive what was really going on. And then
Speaker 1: I blindly self medicated with cocaine and ecstasy and it
Speaker 1: all blew up in my face in the form of
Speaker 1: a panic attack on Good Morning America in June of
Speaker 1: two thousand four. So for me, this seeing seeing et
Speaker 1: Car totally, who happened to be the first first person
Speaker 1: who I heard described the voice in the head, seeing
Speaker 1: it on a page in a book was was a
Speaker 1: very powerful experience. The problem was with that Car Totally
Speaker 1: that a lot of the other stuff he was writing,
Speaker 1: but I found irretrievably ridiculous. Yeah, I have to say,
Speaker 1: reading about your your your sperience of reading eck Art
Speaker 1: Totally was one of my favorite parts of the book
Speaker 1: because You've got a line where you say, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just when about when I started to think that totally
Speaker 1: was a sage and perhaps he held the key to
Speaker 1: all my problems, he started saying some ludicrous ship, which
Speaker 1: just cracks me up, because that's exactly my you know,
Speaker 1: when I've read that stuff, it's I have the exact
Speaker 1: same experience. It's this, there's so much truth here, and
Speaker 1: yet everything else that's coming on here is just sounds
Speaker 1: insane to me. And that's one of the things I
Speaker 1: loved about your book because on this program, we've tried
Speaker 1: to really be focused on what I would say are
Speaker 1: pretty practical, down to earth applications of you know, how
Speaker 1: do we make our lives better? How do we live
Speaker 1: better in the world? And and you come to all
Speaker 1: this stuff very very skeptical. You start reading eck Art
Speaker 1: totally and you're intrigued and totally turned off at the
Speaker 1: same time. UM, tell us a little bit about where
Speaker 1: things went from there, and how did you go from
Speaker 1: being so skeptical to being a believer at least in meditation,
Speaker 1: like as you said earlier, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: tend to, uh, you know, has a bad has a
Speaker 1: bad PR program, right, people don't have good thoughts about
Speaker 1: meditation how how did that journey go for you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think meditation is a massive pr problem. Um. I
Speaker 1: think what what what clinched it for me was the science. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm a skeptical guy. But the scientific research into meditation,
Speaker 1: which I was previously unaware of, is you know, while
Speaker 1: it's still in its embryonic stages, um, it is pretty compelling. Um.
Speaker 1: It shows that or to suggest that meditation can do
Speaker 1: everything from lowering your blood pressure to boosting your immune
Speaker 1: system to literally rewiring key parts of your brain. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as I mentioned before, you see it on
Speaker 1: the brain scans and um, you see it on the
Speaker 1: m R I S. And I find that very very
Speaker 1: very compelling. And also the other thing that I think
Speaker 1: really convinced me to to give meditation a out is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't involve all of the things that I
Speaker 1: thought it involved. You. You You don't have to where special outfits,
Speaker 1: you don't have to sit in any finding positions, you
Speaker 1: don't have to chance, you don't have to light in sense.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, you don't have to join any group.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a secular, simple brain exercise that you
Speaker 1: can do. Uh, you know a couple of minutes a day,
Speaker 1: and it can have a pretty transformative effect. Again, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna there's a reason why I call the book
Speaker 1: temper cent Happier. It's not gonna, you know, transform your
Speaker 1: life into NonStop rainbows and unicorns. But I think it does. Uh.
Speaker 1: What it does is it it allows you to feed
Speaker 1: the right wolf um repeatedly. That's what you're practicing to
Speaker 1: do um in meditation. And you know it's just to
Speaker 1: expand on the on the wolf thing um. You know,
Speaker 1: we we we tend to you know, the human condition
Speaker 1: is that we tend to make our suffering worse than
Speaker 1: it needs to be, and we tend to gloss over
Speaker 1: or ignore all a lot of the good things in
Speaker 1: our life. And what meditation allows you to do is
Speaker 1: to be present for the for the things that are good,
Speaker 1: and to not go down the rat hole of useless
Speaker 1: rumination over things that you can't change. Uh. I think
Speaker 1: that suffering and stress and striving is all, you know,
Speaker 1: part of life and part of trying to achieve anything
Speaker 1: and be ambitious. But you know what I found meditation
Speaker 1: has helped me figure out how not to cross the
Speaker 1: line between what I call constructive anguish and useless rumination
Speaker 1: and so to me that that's kind of a played
Speaker 1: into the to the wolf analogy, because there's a wolf
Speaker 1: that is um so you know, self referential and self
Speaker 1: absorbed that that he gets uh depressed and anxious, and
Speaker 1: then there's a wolf that is actually you know, wise
Speaker 1: and uh discriminating and uh paying attention to what actually
Speaker 1: going on, and meditation allows you to feed the latter wolf.
Speaker 1: We've talked on this on this show a lot, and
Speaker 1: I'll make the I like to make the distinction between pain,
Speaker 1: which is the normal things that happened to us in
Speaker 1: life that are unpleasant, and then suffering, which is sort
Speaker 1: of that as you just described, it's that extra layer
Speaker 1: of stuff that we put over top of it, all
Speaker 1: the thinking we do about about what's happening, the feeling
Speaker 1: bad about feeling bad, or the stories that we tell
Speaker 1: ourselves around that. And one of the things you quoted
Speaker 1: in the book Stephen Bachelor, who's a writer I really admire,
Speaker 1: and and you said, the craving to be otherwise, to
Speaker 1: be elsewhere, permeated my whole life. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: more about what why you chose that quote and what
Speaker 1: it means to you. I just thought I mean, I
Speaker 1: really like ticking Bachelor. He wrote a book called Buddhism
Speaker 1: Without Beliefs. Uh. He's a self described Buddhist atheist, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a um redundant phrase because there is
Speaker 1: really no God. There is no God in Buddhism, so um.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, he's a he's a in a faith that
Speaker 1: is a very skeptical faith, Buddhism, and is barely a
Speaker 1: faith at all. He's a super skeptical guy. So he's
Speaker 1: he's I like him for a lot of reasons. Um.
Speaker 1: And he's really good at describing this tendency we we
Speaker 1: have to be projecting into the future or reminiscing or
Speaker 1: ruminating on the past instead of focusing on where we
Speaker 1: are right now. It totally actually has a nice phrase here.
Speaker 1: He talked talks about the background static of perpetual discontent. Um,
Speaker 1: that we just never were like colloquy babies, were never
Speaker 1: quite happy or okay with what's happening right now. We're
Speaker 1: always trying to get onto the next thing, or we're
Speaker 1: idealizing the past in some way, uh, instead of fully
Speaker 1: inhabiting what's happening right now. Um. And I just found
Speaker 1: the way Bachelor wrote about it to be quite powerful
Speaker 1: and to be act you're it in terms of my life.
Speaker 1: I mean I I and in a deadline dominated world
Speaker 1: and of journalism, and you know so by by dint
Speaker 1: of UH being in this kind of job, it kind
Speaker 1: of puts the the the human tendency to lurch forward
Speaker 1: to the next thing on steroids and um. So I
Speaker 1: found that phrase very, very powerful. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I've cured myself of that tendency, but the first step
Speaker 1: is admitting it. And meditation is good for sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, rubbing your nose in the tendency so that
Speaker 1: you can see it when you're doing it and you
Speaker 1: can back off. Yea. And I have a question for
Speaker 1: you related to that. So you recently you recently, I
Speaker 1: guess within the last year, so became uh the anchor
Speaker 1: on Nightline, which is something you had wanted for a
Speaker 1: long time, and in your epilogue you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how that's been satisfying. I'm curious if you
Speaker 1: think had you had you achieved that place without some
Speaker 1: of the work you've done on meditation, whether you would
Speaker 1: have had the same sort of experience of being dissatisfied
Speaker 1: with where things were what they were, and we kind
Speaker 1: of look into the next thing. Uh. You know, I
Speaker 1: have a conflicted view on on this tendency we have
Speaker 1: to never be satisfied because I think to a certain
Speaker 1: extent it's useful, right, because the the those who achieve
Speaker 1: in society often are you know, like oysters with that
Speaker 1: little bit of sand that irritates them and that turns
Speaker 1: into a pearl eventually, you know that, like you just
Speaker 1: never quite you know happy. I I like that to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. But the thing is, we take it
Speaker 1: too far, or I realized that I was taking it
Speaker 1: too far. And um so I don't want to totally
Speaker 1: demean or degrade the the the the insatiability of the
Speaker 1: human of the human mind. But I do think that
Speaker 1: there's you've got to You've got to figure out how
Speaker 1: to draw, to draw the line. You know, when did
Speaker 1: it useful to be pushing and pushing and pushing and
Speaker 1: when is it not so useful? And for me, I've
Speaker 1: just gotten better at figuring that out. And it pertains
Speaker 1: the nightline. Um, you know, I it was I think
Speaker 1: about this a lot now, especially with the book too.
Speaker 1: When you when you have something. You've probably heard this
Speaker 1: theory before, that the set point theory that we humans
Speaker 1: have a we have a set happiness, set point that
Speaker 1: good things can happen or bad things can happen. We
Speaker 1: tend to sort of gravitate over time back to our
Speaker 1: set point. And that that happened to me both with Nightline.
Speaker 1: I got the job and I was so excited, and
Speaker 1: then I just kind of gravitated back to my set
Speaker 1: point over time. And then with my book. You know,
Speaker 1: I worried. I worked on this book for four years,
Speaker 1: and I worried that it was gonna suck, and and
Speaker 1: maybe it does suck, but it ended up selling well,
Speaker 1: which was enormously thrilling. And then over time, you just
Speaker 1: kind of gravitate back to your set point. Um, what
Speaker 1: I will say the difference between the old me and
Speaker 1: the new me is that I think the set point
Speaker 1: has gone up over time and that uh, I'm more
Speaker 1: aware of the gravitation back to it, and so I
Speaker 1: don't get too dared away with the ego trip of
Speaker 1: doing doing well at something, uh, and I don't get
Speaker 1: too disappointed to myself when it wears off. And I
Speaker 1: started thinking, looking around and thinking about what am I
Speaker 1: going to do next? One of the things in the
Speaker 1: book that you wrestled with and you just you just
Speaker 1: talked about it, and it has been it has been
Speaker 1: the fundamental question that eats at me for for years
Speaker 1: as I've as I've looked at this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly what you just said. Where's that Where's
Speaker 1: that line between uh, always wanting something different and striving,
Speaker 1: which is undeniably in some ways positive for for humans
Speaker 1: in general, versus sort of accepting where we're at and
Speaker 1: being happy with that. And I think you did a
Speaker 1: lot of wrestling with that in the book where you
Speaker 1: came to some answers that were a little bit comfortable.
Speaker 1: Have you had any more insights or anything else you
Speaker 1: want to want to share about that, because that one
Speaker 1: still sort of, you know, pokes me in the side. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I think it is for any ambitious person.
Speaker 1: It is the question in my view, um and uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's all about finding the line between, as
Speaker 1: I said before, constructive anguish and useless rumination. And that's
Speaker 1: a blurry and wavy line. And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: in spin class. I don't know, if you were taking
Speaker 1: a spin class where you're on the bikes and um,
Speaker 1: the instructor you've taken wonder you haven't I have unfortunately. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah it sucks. Um, I do it. But it's
Speaker 1: a good workout, but it's horrible. Um. Anyway, the the
Speaker 1: instructor will say, you know, turn the resistance up to six. Well,
Speaker 1: there's no number on the dial, so you're you're setting
Speaker 1: your own six. And that's kind of the same thing
Speaker 1: here that you're you You've got to kind of have
Speaker 1: this internal self awareness to to know. Okay, Um, I've
Speaker 1: now spent twenty minutes worrying about all the awful ramifications
Speaker 1: of missing a flight. Uh, can is it okay now
Speaker 1: to start thinking about something else? Yes, I think it is, um,
Speaker 1: And and it's just a it's just an ongoing process.
Speaker 1: But for me, I just find it interesting to watch
Speaker 1: my mind in that way you know that made that
Speaker 1: that last save. Is kind of a larger issue, um,
Speaker 1: the the the fact that when you become a meditator,
Speaker 1: you sort of objectify your mind in some ways you
Speaker 1: you you, um, you start to view it with some
Speaker 1: amusement in some in a in a more dispassionate way. UM.
Speaker 1: But back to the ambition question. I just think that
Speaker 1: it's about figuring out how when is it okay to
Speaker 1: be pushing, pushing and pushing, and when did it no
Speaker 1: longer useful? Yeah. The other thing I've thought about with
Speaker 1: that is I've come from a position that always thinks
Speaker 1: that it's dissatisfaction or unhappiness or pain that that drives
Speaker 1: me forward to do things. And and I've thought more
Speaker 1: about could that motivation come from a different place or
Speaker 1: does it sometimes come from a different place, not one
Speaker 1: of unhappiness, but one of I guess, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, a joy or and enjoyment of making
Speaker 1: and creating things. I think it can, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think you can come from both places. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I've I found that when I've gone on meditation retreats,
Speaker 1: you know, when then when i'm when I'm when the
Speaker 1: amount of a discursive random thinking comes down because you're
Speaker 1: you're you know, focusing on your breath for hours at
Speaker 1: a time, I have many more good ideas. I'm often
Speaker 1: like running back to my room to scribble things down. Um,
Speaker 1: And and where is that coming from? It's not coming
Speaker 1: from a striving place, right, It's just coming from getting
Speaker 1: out of your own way. Uh. But you know, but
Speaker 1: again at the same by the same joke. And I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not against you know, creating a big ambition
Speaker 1: for myself or anybody else doing it and then going
Speaker 1: forward with extreme prejudice. I think I think there's something
Speaker 1: to be said for that, and that's how we that's
Speaker 1: how we got the iPhone and skyscrapers and um. But
Speaker 1: but I also think that enormous amount of creativity can
Speaker 1: come from more positive places too. It's the It's just
Speaker 1: not a simple answer, right, It's not. And I think
Speaker 1: for for a long time I wanted a simple answer
Speaker 1: with it. You did get sort of an answer, um,
Speaker 1: And I think it might have been uh Joseph Goldstein
Speaker 1: who gave it to you where you talked about um
Speaker 1: not being attached to the results. Yeah, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of just to get back here. You know, there's
Speaker 1: not being a simple answer. I think a lot. I
Speaker 1: think there is a romanticizing. It's and it's in history.
Speaker 1: You know, you there's you see it. You're from Plato
Speaker 1: or Aristotle whatever, all the way way back in time.
Speaker 1: We've heard about Shakespeare did it too. I haven't do
Speaker 1: have all the quotes of my fingertips where this romanticizing
Speaker 1: of melancholy, that everybody who has achieved anything has to
Speaker 1: be sad and miserable, and that scans to me as
Speaker 1: as like excuses. Now, to some extent, I think it's true.
Speaker 1: There is a high level of correlation between anxiety and achievement,
Speaker 1: and which is why I firmly believe that a certain
Speaker 1: amount of stress and struggle is part of achieving. But again,
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure, based on my own experience and
Speaker 1: having spent a lot of years kind of attacking this
Speaker 1: question internally and externally, not quite sure that if van
Speaker 1: Gogh had been slightly less crazy, that he didn't cut
Speaker 1: his ear off, that they wouldn't have made the beautiful paintings.
Speaker 1: He might have made even more beautiful paintings. Um And
Speaker 1: I can just tell you from my own perspective, I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm doing better work now that I'm less crazy.
Speaker 1: I'm still pretty crazy. Again. The book is ten percent
Speaker 1: and happier. I'm not claiming some sort of perfected state.
Speaker 1: Um uh. And again, if my wife was on the
Speaker 1: phone right now, she would give you still a moron speech.
Speaker 1: Um So, I but I think and maybe I'm deluding myself,
Speaker 1: but I think that my ability to focus is better now,
Speaker 1: the quality of my work is better, the quality of
Speaker 1: my interaction with other people is better. Um. And so
Speaker 1: I don't think that somehow being happier it works at
Speaker 1: cross purposes with being successful. I just don't. Um. But
Speaker 1: back to your question, non attachment to results. Yeah, that simple, little,
Speaker 1: kind of bland sounding phrase turned out to be transformative
Speaker 1: to me. Uh. The phrase non attachment to results is
Speaker 1: all throughout Buddhism. But the person who first said it
Speaker 1: to me was Dr Mark Epstein, who's a very good
Speaker 1: friend of mine and a shrink in New York City
Speaker 1: who writes great books about the overlap between Buddhism and psychology.
Speaker 1: And he was telling me that, you know, you can
Speaker 1: try really hard to achieves, you have to recognize we
Speaker 1: live in a universe that is characterized by entropy, chaos,
Speaker 1: and impermanence, and you're not in control. And so the
Speaker 1: route to maximal resilience is to do as bet you know,
Speaker 1: to work as hard as you can, set audacious goals, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But to recognize that in the end, uh, you can't
Speaker 1: be in control. Of the results. So it's so a
Speaker 1: certain amount of this passion um visa vi the results
Speaker 1: is the right way to go, and that will allow
Speaker 1: you to dust yourself off and get back in the
Speaker 1: fray after you lose, which you will sometimes. Yep, I
Speaker 1: mean Steve Jobs lost. I mean he had a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of you know he had by the way, he
Speaker 1: was the meditator, Um, you know, he had all sorts
Speaker 1: of setbacks, all of my uh you know Ted Coppel,
Speaker 1: who the personal hero of mine. You know, he he
Speaker 1: had struggles. Peter Jennings, an even bigger hero in my world, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, was the main anchor of ABC News at
Speaker 1: age twenty si or something like that, and they got
Speaker 1: fired and uh or demoted publicly and sent off to
Speaker 1: be a foreign correspondent. He rehabilitated his reputation and then
Speaker 1: came back to become a legendary anchorman. So this is
Speaker 1: this the way of the world. We're all going to
Speaker 1: have these setbacks, and you can choose to feed the
Speaker 1: wolf of negativity and rumination, uh and resentment, or you
Speaker 1: can feed the wolf of resilience. Yeah. You mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: a little bit about the you know, is obsessing or
Speaker 1: worrying about missing my flight for the twenty five time?
Speaker 1: Is that really useful? And that was the catch phrase
Speaker 1: that you started to apply to your thinking. Is is
Speaker 1: this any longer useful? Because to the point, there is
Speaker 1: some amount of planning and worrying thinking all that that's critical.
Speaker 1: And I think that that line is is it useful?
Speaker 1: And how how do you tell that for yourself when
Speaker 1: it's no longer useful? As I was saying before, it's
Speaker 1: this this blurry, wavy line I did. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's no magic formula for figuring out when you're thinking
Speaker 1: it's useful. It's kind of intuitive. But what meditation does
Speaker 1: is it gives you boost yourself awareness because you're sitting
Speaker 1: with your eyes closed and watching your mind, and you become,
Speaker 1: in fact, the part of the brain associated self awareness
Speaker 1: that the gray matter has been shown to grow. You become.
Speaker 1: You've become better at this kind of self monitoring so
Speaker 1: that you can see when am I kind of going
Speaker 1: down a rat hole here? And when am I actually
Speaker 1: engaged in some constructive analysis? Excellent? I do think your
Speaker 1: book was was really excellent. I it's I've read more
Speaker 1: of these books than I am even cared to admit um.
Speaker 1: And I loved your book, and I actually something out
Speaker 1: of it beyond just resonating with the story as a whole,
Speaker 1: because your skepticism and and your path. I think Mark
Speaker 1: Epstein was the first person I read that I really went, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: this really makes a ton of sense to me. But
Speaker 1: you described when you were on your meditation retreat how
Speaker 1: you hit a point where you had um. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you'd refer to it as a spiritual experience,
Speaker 1: but you had an experience of some sort where your
Speaker 1: mind sort of locked in and was you were you
Speaker 1: were ecstatically overjoyed, and you described what that was like.
Speaker 1: You described how your mind was noting things really really quickly.
Speaker 1: And despite all the things that I've read and all
Speaker 1: that I had never thought of that as being the experience,
Speaker 1: and once I did, it was. I I won't say
Speaker 1: I had an experience to the level of yours, but
Speaker 1: something clicked in me when I started thinking of it
Speaker 1: that way. Really about the whole point is to sit
Speaker 1: back and just watch the mind. It's about watching, It's
Speaker 1: about nothing else. And that was enormously helpful for me.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to say thanks for that I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's actually about you know, it's
Speaker 1: annoying to say this because it's such a stupid cliche
Speaker 1: with this whole be here now, being in the present
Speaker 1: moment thing. But another way to say it is the
Speaker 1: way they say it in sports, being in the zone,
Speaker 1: what's happening. When you're in the zone, you're totally focused
Speaker 1: on what's happening right now. You're making a free throw,
Speaker 1: for example, or you're hitting a put um. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened to me on that meditation retreat. I was
Speaker 1: just kind of dragged, kicking and screaming into the present
Speaker 1: moment for you know, many many hours. And that was
Speaker 1: associated with a big blast of serotonin. And I think
Speaker 1: that most of our happiness is derived from focusing on
Speaker 1: what's happening right now. And uh, you know there's another
Speaker 1: There was a great study at Harvard that showed that
Speaker 1: it pinned people on their iPhones. All the researchers sent
Speaker 1: out these iPhone alerts at random times two hundreds of
Speaker 1: people and asked them what are you doing right now
Speaker 1: and how happy are you? And what they found was
Speaker 1: that that when people's minds were wandering they were less happy. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it goes to follow that when you're in
Speaker 1: the zone, when you're focusing on what's happening right now,
Speaker 1: you can be really, really happy. And what meditation does
Speaker 1: is just shove you into the moment. I mean you're
Speaker 1: you are uh basically you're shoving yourself into the moment
Speaker 1: by repeatedly refocusing on the feeling of your breath coming
Speaker 1: in and going out every time your mind wanders. And
Speaker 1: that can have if you do it. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're sequestered on a meditation retreat for ten days with
Speaker 1: a bunch of weirdos, um, you know, and all you're
Speaker 1: doing all day long is meditating, that that can be
Speaker 1: one of the effects. And that's certainly what happened to me.
Speaker 1: And when, you know, when I drop all of my
Speaker 1: obsessive thinking, when I'm standing at a stoplight in New
Speaker 1: York City or uh, standing in my office looking at
Speaker 1: the window, I can get just a little taste of
Speaker 1: that one now and again. And I think what's really
Speaker 1: important about that is meditation is a big is a
Speaker 1: big part of it. But that's available to us really
Speaker 1: any time that we choose to do it. And I've
Speaker 1: I've found for me that that's a great practice when
Speaker 1: I'm starting to get swept away with whatever negative feelings,
Speaker 1: is to just come back and try and notice exactly
Speaker 1: what's happening around me right then. And it tends to
Speaker 1: interrupt this. I heard an interview the other day and
Speaker 1: I can't remember the woman's name, but it was on
Speaker 1: a podcast called on Being, and she's studied mindfulness since
Speaker 1: the seventies, and she doesn't really advocate meditation so much.
Speaker 1: She's much more an advocate of, Hey, you can, at
Speaker 1: any minute just start paying attention to what's going on
Speaker 1: around you. And I think that's a I found for
Speaker 1: myself that meditation is a real way to strengthen that muscle.
Speaker 1: But it's not the only place that it happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I guess you know, I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't remember her name, but I know you're talking
Speaker 1: about my I have never read her material, nor I've
Speaker 1: ever discussed this, so I'm gonna say something that maybe
Speaker 1: I'll later regret. But I kind of disagree. I mean,
Speaker 1: I agree that, yes, she's right, you can, you can
Speaker 1: drop into the present moment. Anybody can, but it's really
Speaker 1: hard to do if you don't have this practice, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like going out and throwing a fifty yard
Speaker 1: past in an NFL game if you've never done any
Speaker 1: practice before, and meant, what meditation does? It just it
Speaker 1: just teaches you how to do it. You have a mechanism.
Speaker 1: It's a really simple mechanism. Um, you know what, I
Speaker 1: could teach you how to do it and fewer uh
Speaker 1: as the New York Times reporter had me do in
Speaker 1: the New York Times tech reporter had me teach them
Speaker 1: how to meditating. Fewer characters and it takes to send
Speaker 1: a tweet. It's super, super simple. It's just you learn
Speaker 1: how you learn how to focus. And Um, I think
Speaker 1: practicing mindfulness is tricky without it. That's just my view.
Speaker 1: Most likely this woman who's been setting mindfulness since the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies is right and I'm wrong, But that's just
Speaker 1: my view. I tend to agree. I've not read her
Speaker 1: stuff either. What it made me think of a little
Speaker 1: bit was um, and you said it when you were
Speaker 1: reading uh eckar totally stuff like the ideas were great,
Speaker 1: but there was no there was no practical implement Asian plan.
Speaker 1: There was no way for you to see how to
Speaker 1: get from where you were to what was being described.
Speaker 1: And that's for me, that's what meditation does, is it
Speaker 1: does strengthen that muscle. The other big one that I
Speaker 1: come back to all the time is so much of
Speaker 1: it it's a skill and knowing how to do it,
Speaker 1: but so much of it for me is just even
Speaker 1: remembering to do it, even remembering. And that's I've said this.
Speaker 1: You know, listeners are probably tired of hearing it, but
Speaker 1: that's why I started the podcast, was to remind myself
Speaker 1: to feed the good wolf, for example. Because I've got
Speaker 1: a lot of the tools, it's remembering to use them
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. Well. The one of the many
Speaker 1: meanings of mindfulness in the the Buddha's ancient language of Polly,
Speaker 1: one of the meanings of the word is remembering um.
Speaker 1: And that's what the practice of meditation is is getting
Speaker 1: lost and then remembering to refocus and uh. And what
Speaker 1: what you're doing in meditation is just training yourself to
Speaker 1: get to remember more frequently. And you can do that
Speaker 1: with compassion. There's compassion in meditation, which which again just
Speaker 1: boost your ability to remember not to be an asshole
Speaker 1: more frequently. And um, so remembering is great. And I
Speaker 1: that's why I think listening to podcasts, reading good books
Speaker 1: it you know, you're just infusing your life with this
Speaker 1: stuff so that when you get swept away, you recover
Speaker 1: more quickly. Yeah, exactly. Maybe the not being an asshole
Speaker 1: compassion stuff, Chris, do you want to maybe work on
Speaker 1: that a little bit? It's all right, Um, well, Dan,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. It's been a it's been a
Speaker 1: great talk. I Uh, like I said, I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the book. I've read a lot of them. It was
Speaker 1: it was one of my favorites. I think it mirrored
Speaker 1: my my journey a lot. And I think what you're
Speaker 1: doing for meditation is really important, which is putting it
Speaker 1: kind of right in the mainstream and demystifying it. So
Speaker 1: thanks for all you're doing with that. Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on. I appreciate. Okay, take care, take care, all
Speaker 1: right bye. You can learn more about Dan Harris and
Speaker 1: this podcast at one you feed dot net slash Dan
Speaker 1: Harris