Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Holds on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio this weekend on the podcast Wow, I have
Speaker 1: a fun, extra fun, extra special Anyway, I have a
Speaker 1: really fun guest. Dan Harris wrote the book Ten Percent Happier.
Speaker 1: It's a short read on how he was kind of
Speaker 1: messed up, depressed, using drugs and literally had a panic
Speaker 1: attack on Live TV where he was a newsreader and
Speaker 1: an anchor. And he tells the story of how he
Speaker 1: sort of stumbled his way into mindfulness and meditation. And
Speaker 1: what I really found fascinating about the book is there
Speaker 1: are no great promises. This isn't going to change your life.
Speaker 1: It's called ten percent Happier because hey, if you can
Speaker 1: make your life ten percent better, that sounds like worthwhile
Speaker 1: trade to me. And Dan is a fascinating guy. Really
Speaker 1: tells a wonderful story of about how he stumbled into this
Speaker 1: area of self help and how it really helped turn
Speaker 1: his depression and his life around. And I found Dan
Speaker 1: to be a fascinating guy who really has a good
Speaker 1: sense of human psychology and the condition we're all born
Speaker 1: into and teaches us practically how to make the best
Speaker 1: of the wetwear that we've all inherited. I thought this
Speaker 1: was fascinating conversation and I think you will find it
Speaker 1: so also, with no further ado, my conversation with ten
Speaker 1: percent Happiers Dan.
Speaker 2: Harris, Thank you Berry, happy to be here.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about your background. Bachelor's
Speaker 1: in English at Colby College was the plan Oway's journalism.
Speaker 1: From day one.
Speaker 2: I had TV news and the movies mixed up in
Speaker 2: my mind. I kind of thought they were the same thing.
Speaker 1: So I sometimes they are.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, I had this desire to do something fun
Speaker 2: and glamorous. TV news is fun, but not very glamorous.
Speaker 2: But I went and did film school here in New
Speaker 2: York City at NYU for a semester while I was
Speaker 2: at Colby College, and it was not very good at film,
Speaker 2: but I did love the documentary course I took. So
Speaker 2: I then took a lot of internships and TV news
Speaker 2: and then I went off in that direction.
Speaker 1: So glamorous, You're in Baghdad covering the war, you fly
Speaker 1: right into the middle of Katrina. That seems like sexy,
Speaker 1: real stuff happening. Was some of television glamorous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think when I got to the national and
Speaker 2: international level, it was pretty glamorous. I was more talking
Speaker 2: about right out of college. I spent seven years in
Speaker 2: local news in places like bangor main or Portland, Maine.
Speaker 2: I was covering tire fires and murders with a musket
Speaker 2: and like lots of random stuff.
Speaker 1: So let's forward a little bit. Not only you at
Speaker 1: ABC for a while, but eventually they you to be
Speaker 1: a fill in nights and weekends and late and then
Speaker 1: you get a call to fill in working with you know,
Speaker 1: some of the bigs, and you have what can only
Speaker 1: be described as a panic attack on live television. Tell
Speaker 1: us about that experience.
Speaker 2: It was awful. This was two thousand and four. I
Speaker 2: was filling in as a newsreader. That's like the person
Speaker 2: would come on at the top of each hour and
Speaker 2: read the headlines on Good Morning America. And I was
Speaker 2: a few seconds into my spiel and just lost it
Speaker 2: and my heart started racing, lungs seized up, I couldn't breathe,
Speaker 2: which is inconvenient if you're trying to do the news
Speaker 2: that can be Yeah, it what didn't work And I
Speaker 2: had to quit right in the middle of my thing.
Speaker 2: And it was super humiliating, very scary, and I you know,
Speaker 2: in the end it turned out to be a really
Speaker 2: good thing for me, But in the moment, it was
Speaker 2: the most embarrassing moment of mine.
Speaker 1: Now, to be fair, and you can find it on
Speaker 1: YouTube and elsewhere. You look like you're in a little
Speaker 1: bit of distress, you have a little bit of difficulty breathing.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it felt much worse on the inside. But
Speaker 1: credit to you. You kind of kept it together long
Speaker 1: enough to finish one of the segments and then tapped out,
Speaker 1: even though you had a couple more segments to go.
Speaker 1: Unless you were paying close attention, I think the average
Speaker 1: viewer might not have noticed anything other than suddenly, the
Speaker 1: video doesn't match what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it helps to be a sociopath, you know,
Speaker 2: like I can really hide my emotions. I think you know.
Speaker 2: I was thirty two at the time. I had spent
Speaker 2: basically my whole adult life on camera. I really knew
Speaker 2: how to keep it together in every circumstance. I'd been
Speaker 2: in war zones, and so, yes, you're right, when you
Speaker 2: look at the video, it's not like I'm there's flop
Speaker 2: sweat and I'm ripping the mic off and running right
Speaker 2: with the.
Speaker 1: Scene from broadcast news with Albert Brooks like just drenched
Speaker 1: as always cracks me up. But that said, it leads
Speaker 1: to the obvious question. You've been in harrowing situations where
Speaker 1: there's death and destruction literally, not no hyperbole. You were
Speaker 1: in Iraq and Baghdad and Katrin and a bunch of
Speaker 1: other horrific situations. What led up to this moment that
Speaker 1: made it so disorient I.
Speaker 2: Think it was being in horrific situations and then coming
Speaker 2: home and having undiagnosed depression and anxiety, and then self
Speaker 2: medicating with recreational drugs.
Speaker 1: I love the expression self medicating. We're just getting high.
Speaker 2: This is what you're saying, Yes, getting high before we
Speaker 2: self medicate or get high with lots of stuff, sure, shopping, gambling, entertainment,
Speaker 2: social media, sex, we are food.
Speaker 1: There were constant being junkies as.
Speaker 2: We're soothing this this inner insatiability, this inner fear. And
Speaker 2: so for me it was cocaine. And I was not
Speaker 2: high when I was on the air having the panic attack,
Speaker 2: So it was only afterwards when I went to a
Speaker 2: shrink and he asked, what you know, do you do drugs?
Speaker 2: Could that may be a contributor? And I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: well I don't really do drugs, just some blow on
Speaker 2: the weekend and then I'm back on the desk ready
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about how this led. I hate the
Speaker 1: expression journey, but how this led to your next couple
Speaker 1: of steps. Your preconceptions about meditation were misconceptions, you write
Speaker 1: in the book tell us why It's funny.
Speaker 2: I hate the word journey too. It's like, right, I
Speaker 2: feel it's so it's so wilful. It's also it's just
Speaker 2: like played out. It's hackneyed, cliche, And I think a
Speaker 2: big being personicity about language, or like being picky about
Speaker 2: the words that I use, is really the only value
Speaker 2: that I'm adding here. I know we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about business, but for me, I mean I am really
Speaker 2: interested in meditation or what might be called spirituality, but
Speaker 2: the way presented so often with words like journey and
Speaker 2: heart centered and.
Speaker 1: Very woo, it's it's uh. And kudos for using the
Speaker 1: word persnickety, which is a great word. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: As soon as it came out of my mouth, I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: No, no, that that works. So we don't love the
Speaker 1: wou side of dressing up what is really a way
Speaker 1: to quiet the inner voice that sometimes is really noisy,
Speaker 1: which leads us to the next step on your path.
Speaker 1: And again, sorry, you end up either seeing or meeting
Speaker 1: Eckhart tool tell us a little bit about and I'm
Speaker 1: not pronouncing his name.
Speaker 2: Right, it's a hard name to pronounce, right, But tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about him. Okay. So the first
Speaker 2: thing that happened is I got assigned to cover faith
Speaker 2: and spirituality for ABC News, which I didn't want to do,
Speaker 2: but it turned out to be great and I learned
Speaker 2: a lot. And through that I ended up reading a
Speaker 2: book by a guy named Eckhart. Totally is the way
Speaker 2: he pronounce it, okay, huge selling self help guru. I
Speaker 2: never heard of him because I wasn't interested in self help,
Speaker 2: but one of my producers recommended I read his book.
Speaker 1: Tell us about tole and what did you learn from?
Speaker 2: So he presents, at least to my eyes and ears
Speaker 2: then as just totally off putting. You know, he has
Speaker 2: this otherworldly ethereality to him. He's this small German Man
Speaker 2: who writes about having a spiritual awakening and he uses
Speaker 2: the word vibration a lot. He was not really my
Speaker 2: cup of tea robes. But but, but I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: surprised if he given what I read in his book,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have been surprised if that's how he showed up.
Speaker 2: But he's actually just like a guy who wears khakis.
Speaker 2: So at first I was very unimpressed with him, But
Speaker 2: then he started to unfurl this thesis about the human
Speaker 2: condition that was utterly captivating for me. His argument is
Speaker 2: that we all have a voice in our heads, by
Speaker 2: which he's not referring to schizophrenia or hearing voices. He's
Speaker 2: talking about the inner dialogue, the inner conversation that we
Speaker 2: all have all the time, and that if we broadcast allowed,
Speaker 2: we would be locked up.
Speaker 1: This were canceled at the very least for.
Speaker 2: Damn sure, you'd be canceled. And for all of us,
Speaker 2: like we wake up, we get you know, chased out
Speaker 2: of bed by this voice, and it's yammering at us
Speaker 2: all day long, constantly, we're wanting things, not wanting things,
Speaker 2: judging people, comparing ourselves to other people, running ourselves down.
Speaker 2: And when you're unaware of this NonStop conversation, which totally
Speaker 2: calls the ego, when you're unaware of the ego it
Speaker 2: owns you. And that to me was a huge aha,
Speaker 2: because I was like, Okay, this is just true and
Speaker 2: I've never heard it before. A and B this ego,
Speaker 2: this voice in my head is what led me to
Speaker 2: have a panic attack. I went off to cover war zones.
Speaker 2: My boss at the time was your colleague David Weston.
Speaker 2: I went off and covered war zones without thinking about
Speaker 2: the psychological consequences, came home, got depressed, was insufficient self
Speaker 2: aware to know I was depressed, and then blindly self
Speaker 2: medicated or got high, and then it all blew up
Speaker 2: in my face and it was all the ego and
Speaker 2: so that got me. Really that changed my life, And
Speaker 2: that's an overused phrase, but that is genuinely true. Reading
Speaker 2: that book changed my life.
Speaker 1: So you go from the tole a book name of
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: The one I read is called a New Earth.
Speaker 1: But he has like a run of books, a whole
Speaker 1: run of books.
Speaker 2: He's written a whole bunch of books.
Speaker 1: And from there you start meditating, tell us about what
Speaker 1: that initial experience was and when you realized, hey, this
Speaker 1: is something I could do on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: So totally is frustrating because he describes the voice in
Speaker 2: the head very well, but doesn't actually give you anything
Speaker 2: to do about it. A friend of mine has joked
Speaker 2: that he's correct, but not useful, so I was frustrated
Speaker 2: after meeting him. It was only after bouncing around for
Speaker 2: a little while in the aftermath of that, that I
Speaker 2: stumbled upon meditation. And this was like two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, so it was before meditation got cool.
Speaker 2: It was cool in the sixties and then it then
Speaker 2: it got uncool, and then it got cool again. And
Speaker 2: like the early oughts, it definitely comes and goes TM
Speaker 2: and transcendent meditation was huge for a while, and now
Speaker 2: it's got all sorts of different names. So what was
Speaker 2: your gateway drug to meditation?
Speaker 1: How did you find you.
Speaker 2: With the science? I started reading about all this science
Speaker 2: that at that point was not well publicized that showed
Speaker 2: that meditation can rewire key parts of your brain, help
Speaker 2: with anxiety and depression, both of which I've been dealing
Speaker 2: with since as a kid. It can help with your
Speaker 2: blood pressure, boost your immune system. So as a diet
Speaker 2: in the wool optimizer, the science really made me, you know, intrigued.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, okay, maybe I should try this.
Speaker 2: I also thought as a journalist, and you'll you'll relate
Speaker 2: to this barrier. Is like, since the science was not
Speaker 2: well known, I was like, oh, this is a good story.
Speaker 2: Nobody else is on this story. It's one of the
Speaker 2: first times in my life I've ever really been ahead
Speaker 2: of a trend. And so I started trying it, and
Speaker 2: I started with a couple of minutes a day, and
Speaker 2: it was super hard. It was very frustrating. You know,
Speaker 2: when you sit usually, and we don't have to get
Speaker 2: too into the details here, but meditation basically involves sitting,
Speaker 2: closing your eyes, trying to focus on one thing. Usually
Speaker 2: it's the feeling of your breath coming in and going out.
Speaker 2: You're not breathing deeply, you're just feeling the breath as
Speaker 2: it normally occurs. And then every time you get distracted,
Speaker 2: which is going to happen a million times because our
Speaker 2: minds are wild, you start again and again and again.
Speaker 2: But that last part is really hard because it's like
Speaker 2: holding a while a live fish in your hands, Like
Speaker 2: the mind is so squirrely and out of control and
Speaker 2: constantly planning and asking stupid questions, and you know, where
Speaker 2: do journals run wild and blah blah blah, and it's
Speaker 2: very easy to get discouraged and to think you're failing
Speaker 2: at this. And so I struggle with that at first,
Speaker 2: and I think most people do.
Speaker 1: Hum. I was struck reading the book how similar some
Speaker 1: of the advice about mindfulness is to good investing advice.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna give you a few lines that I
Speaker 1: pulled out from the book about how your experience and
Speaker 1: I can't help but point out how similar it is
Speaker 1: to good investing advice. Let's start with striving for success
Speaker 1: is fine as long as you realize the outcome is
Speaker 1: not under your control. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: First of all, I think it's a really good insight
Speaker 2: on your part. I do think there is a big
Speaker 2: overlap between the sanity you want to bring to your
Speaker 2: everyday mind and the sanity you want to bring specifically
Speaker 2: to this important area of life investing. So non attachment
Speaker 2: to results. That's a very sort of clunky phrase that
Speaker 2: the Buddhists have given us, but it basically means that
Speaker 2: we live in a world that is utterly out of
Speaker 2: our control, and so all we can do there's a
Speaker 2: great expression, all we can do is everything we can do.
Speaker 2: You can work as hard as you want, you can
Speaker 2: think as analyze the market is as assiduously as possible.
Speaker 2: But things are not fully in our control. So if
Speaker 2: you can have this attitude of like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do everything I can do and recognize eyes that I
Speaker 2: cannot control the outcome, I should not be attached to
Speaker 2: specific results. I think that's a recipe for happiness generally
Speaker 2: and good investing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the best traders I know focus on the process,
Speaker 1: not the results, because if you have a good process,
Speaker 1: even if you have a great process, sometimes outside listen,
Speaker 1: we can't control what the Fed's gonna do, well, what
Speaker 1: corporate earnings are, or hey, this debt sealing thing, maybe
Speaker 1: it works, maybe it doesn't. But the results are only
Speaker 1: gonna be as good as your process. Plus some randomness
Speaker 1: of the world.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, China shuts down, supply chains get clogged, there's a
Speaker 2: monsoon in India. I mean, there are so many factors
Speaker 2: that are hard to predict, political upheavals, and so what
Speaker 2: do you want to do? Do you want to beat
Speaker 2: yourself up every time something happens that's outside of your control.
Speaker 2: Is that gonna help your resilience? Is that gonna make
Speaker 2: your team feel happy to be at the office. No,
Speaker 2: what you want to do is have a good process
Speaker 2: and hope for the best.
Speaker 1: So another one, a simple question to ask yourself when
Speaker 1: you're worrying. Quote is this useful? And I find that
Speaker 1: to be fascinating. I frequently get calls from clients freaked
Speaker 1: out about I just saw this new story on TV.
Speaker 1: What good does worrying about it do? What value is
Speaker 1: that stress?
Speaker 2: Sometimes sometimes some amount of worrying and stress helps I
Speaker 2: call it constructive anguish motivation. Yeah, or just like thinking
Speaker 2: through the angles. You know, there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: hand rigging, and you know, you know, there's a great expression,
Speaker 2: never worry alone. So I think talking to you, talking
Speaker 2: to your colleagues, or your friends, or your spouse about
Speaker 2: investing or anything else actually makes a lot of sense. However,
Speaker 2: we tend to take our worrying too far. And on
Speaker 2: the seventeenth time that you're running through all the horrible
Speaker 2: things that are going to happen if you don't get
Speaker 2: the ROI you were looking for, or if you miss
Speaker 2: your flight or whatever where it is, maybe ask yourself
Speaker 2: at that moment, is this useful? Would I be better
Speaker 2: off changing the channel and thinking about something else.
Speaker 1: So this kind of reflects the title itself. Small improvements,
Speaker 1: incremental changes are much more viable than giant transformational wins.
Speaker 1: That's a huge insight.
Speaker 2: How many times have you had giant transformational moments They
Speaker 2: don't come across or come they don't come over the
Speaker 2: transom that often, And often what you think is a
Speaker 2: giant transformational moment becomes a good memory but doesn't get
Speaker 2: integrated into your life. Change is hard changes, that's the
Speaker 2: bad news. The good news is it's totally doable. If
Speaker 2: you commit to making small changes. The ten percent happier
Speaker 2: will compound annually like any good investment, and that is
Speaker 2: incredibly good news. Happiness, calm, equanimity, connection, compassion, all of
Speaker 2: the mind states that we want. Just as a brief aside,
Speaker 2: we may think we want money, power, success, but really
Speaker 2: what we want when it comes down to it, the
Speaker 2: elementary particles of being alive is mind states. We want
Speaker 2: to feel specific ways, and these mind states are all
Speaker 2: skills that you can train and take responsibility for, and
Speaker 2: that is incredible news. The mind is trainable. You can
Speaker 2: see it on the brain scans. You take a baseline
Speaker 2: reading of somebody's brain in an fMRI and then have
Speaker 2: them do meditation for a couple of weeks, put them
Speaker 2: back in the scan. Brain is different. The brain can
Speaker 2: be trained, and so extent by extension can the mind,
Speaker 2: and that is radically uplifting news.
Speaker 1: Here's another quote that I really like. Mindfulness represents an
Speaker 1: alternative to living reactively. Yes, so let's talk about the
Speaker 1: difference between reacting and responding, which you describe as two
Speaker 1: very different ways to interact.
Speaker 2: With some input, I can imagine a lot of people
Speaker 2: who are in the world of investing or finance business
Speaker 2: generally having the feeling that if they get too happy,
Speaker 2: they'll lose their edge, and that is not what this
Speaker 2: skill is all about. There's a reason why you see
Speaker 2: people in c suites and locker rooms meditating because it
Speaker 2: makes you more sharp, less emotionally reactive. So what you
Speaker 2: want is the ability, as you said earlier, to respond
Speaker 2: wisely to things that happen in your life, rather than
Speaker 2: being captive to the malevolent puppeteer of your ego that's
Speaker 2: going to have you making stupid decisions, saying the thing
Speaker 2: that's going to ruin the next forty eight hours of
Speaker 2: your marriage, eating the sleeve of oreos just because some
Speaker 2: little thought popped into your head. You want to be
Speaker 2: able to respond wisely to your internal stimuli and your
Speaker 2: external stimuli, so they are surfing all of the changes
Speaker 2: of life rather than drowning in.
Speaker 1: Them, surfing the changes of life like that. I have
Speaker 1: a colleague, Mike Batnik, who has this wonderful chart going
Speaker 1: back thirty forty years and it's called reasons to Sell.
Speaker 1: And you see, every year there's some crazy thing that
Speaker 1: happens that's an excuse to react and sell. But over
Speaker 1: the whole time, that chart goes from the lower left
Speaker 1: to the upper right, and the markets compound and go
Speaker 1: over time. If you react to the reasons to sell,
Speaker 1: you miss out on that big move up. And I
Speaker 1: see parallels in the book for just how we live
Speaker 1: our everyday lives.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, you don't want to miss out on dollar
Speaker 2: cost averaging because you're freaking out about every little jot
Speaker 2: and tittle in the news. I've like you. I also
Speaker 2: have a podcast also it mine is called ten Percent Happier,
Speaker 2: and we spend quite a bit of time talking about
Speaker 2: the psychology of money and because that's a huge part
Speaker 2: of the human condition. We need money, but we also
Speaker 2: don't want to get so obsessed with it that we
Speaker 2: make irrational decisions.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned executives, athletes, a lot of wool streeters
Speaker 1: very famously meditate, Ray Dallio, pol Tutor Jones, Michael Novogratz,
Speaker 1: Dan Loebe. The list goes on and on on. Have
Speaker 1: you worked with any people in finance and how have
Speaker 1: you found their intensity level and their ability to throttle
Speaker 1: back a little bit?
Speaker 2: Well, then there's acts and billions.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm trying to stay away from the fictional character.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting get I do a lot of corporate speaking,
Speaker 2: and a lot of banks bring me in investment banks,
Speaker 2: big banks, And I think it's really about wanting to
Speaker 2: wanting to have people who are a more business friendly term,
Speaker 2: might be emotionally intelligent, who can ride the waves, you know,
Speaker 2: as we said before, rather than drowning in them, and
Speaker 2: who can be good leaders instead of acting out all
Speaker 2: of their neurosis. These are important skills and in any field.
Speaker 2: But I get a lot of invitations from people in finance.
Speaker 1: You mentioned some people are concerned they would lose their
Speaker 1: edge not be competitive. Do you have to be paranoid?
Speaker 1: And worried all the time to stay at the top
Speaker 1: of your game.
Speaker 2: Do you think it helps like I. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is something I've wrestled with a lot. To be curious
Speaker 2: to see what your point of view is. You know,
Speaker 2: I do a lot of worrying, but at some and
Speaker 2: I do believe up unto a certain point, it's useful.
Speaker 2: But at some point it's completely degrading my judgment. It's
Speaker 2: degrading my sleep, it's degrading my capacity to have an
Speaker 2: open mind with peripheral vision for new opportunities because I'm
Speaker 2: coiled into anger or fear. You know, only a certain
Speaker 2: amount of it is useful, and I just I can't
Speaker 2: see the argument for being it being perpetually useful.
Speaker 1: So the key, since you asked me, I'll answer. The
Speaker 1: key from my perspective is you have to worry about
Speaker 1: the right things and recognize. So my favorite joke is
Speaker 1: talking to a manager who is complaining about the FED.
Speaker 1: First it was quantitative easing, and then it was zero
Speaker 1: interest rates, and they're complaining, complaining, complaining, And I in
Speaker 1: the back of my head, I'm always thinking, Oh, this
Speaker 1: guy's underperformed for a decade and he's blaming the Fed.
Speaker 1: That's very different than saying, Hey, the Fed is talking
Speaker 1: a lot about inflation in twenty twenty one, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like they're going to rapidly raise rates. What happens
Speaker 1: when rates go up rapidly, Well, it's very bad for
Speaker 1: long dated bonds. I got to tighten my duration and
Speaker 1: known shorter dated bonds so they won't take a ten
Speaker 1: or a twenty percent hit if rates do go much higher.
Speaker 1: That seems to be a more responsive way of worrying,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just freaking out about something that's out
Speaker 1: of your control.
Speaker 2: I love what you said, worrying about the right things.
Speaker 2: Prioritize your worry and then stop it, and you know,
Speaker 2: live your life, get enough sleep though. All of those
Speaker 2: things will help your performance. Writ large and useless miismatic.
Speaker 2: You know, constant freaking out is rarely helpful.
Speaker 1: So explain to me how do you go from Hey,
Speaker 1: this meditation thing helps me stay a little centered, quiets
Speaker 1: the voices in my head to I know, I'll write
Speaker 1: a book on this.
Speaker 2: This is a business story, actually, because I had an
Speaker 2: entrepreneurial feeling back in two thousand and nine. I think
Speaker 2: that I was reading all of these books about meditation
Speaker 2: that were really helpful, but they were also really annoying,
Speaker 2: and they were written in a cloying sentimental way, and
Speaker 2: I thought, well, I'm going to write one that has
Speaker 2: the F word in it a lot, and that tells
Speaker 2: a very embarrassing personal story. And my whole goal was
Speaker 2: to make meditation attractive to a whole new audience of skeptics,
Speaker 2: and that was that was an entrepreneurial itch that I had.
Speaker 1: That's kind of interesting. I love the premise that practicing
Speaker 1: meditation and mindfulness will make you a little happier. Why
Speaker 1: ten percent?
Speaker 2: It's funny. I mean it was a joke. I mean
Speaker 2: I was. I was in a conversation with somebody, one
Speaker 2: of my colleagues at ABC News, and she was asking me, like,
Speaker 2: why are you into this meditation thing? What's the matter
Speaker 2: with you? And I said I was kind of reaching
Speaker 2: for some answer that would satisfy her, and I said,
Speaker 2: it makes me like ten percent happier. And I could
Speaker 2: see that it just made her go from scorn to
Speaker 2: mild interest, and I thought, Okay, this is my shick.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say that. And my publishers didn't
Speaker 2: get the joke. They were trying to bargain me up
Speaker 2: to thirty percent happier, but you're haggling over the title.
Speaker 2: We were haggling, but you know the idea of.
Speaker 1: Ten percent happier, the whole concept of incremental change and
Speaker 1: not over selling it. And here's the bar, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to pass the bar. That's a great approach
Speaker 1: as opposed to all the other books that promised to
Speaker 1: transform your life and then sit on the shelf, yes,
Speaker 1: a third read and point.
Speaker 2: If you if they really were going to transform your life,
Speaker 2: those authors wouldn't keep writing more books, right, And that
Speaker 2: over promising, that kind of reckless hope that is peddled
Speaker 2: in the darker precincts of the self help world is
Speaker 2: I think what I was really trying to counter program against.
Speaker 2: And like I said earlier, though the ten percent does
Speaker 2: compound annually, these are skills and happiness and the other
Speaker 2: mental states that we want our skills, as I keep saying,
Speaker 2: because I think it's so important and interesting and we
Speaker 2: can just you can continue to get to improve over time.
Speaker 1: So the first line of the book just cracked me up.
Speaker 1: My inner voice is an explain why your inner voice
Speaker 1: seems to be disagreeing with you.
Speaker 2: I think it's a pretty much a statement of the
Speaker 2: universal you know, of the human condition. We have these gnattering,
Speaker 2: chattering inner voices that are constantly running us down, constantly
Speaker 2: making negative comments about other people, and that is you know,
Speaker 2: we don't that's not actually something we should feel guilty about.
Speaker 2: I think it's because of evolution. You know, evolution bequeathed
Speaker 2: us this mind that is racing. Why because we need
Speaker 2: always looking for threats, yes, sabertoothed tigers, food, sexual partners.
Speaker 2: Because natural selection really didn't care about your happiness. It
Speaker 2: cared about getting your DNA into the next generation. And
Speaker 2: so that is the mind we're left with. And there
Speaker 2: are beautiful parts of it, like without the racing mind,
Speaker 2: we probably wouldn't have skyscrapers or the iPhone, and so, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of great parts of the human mind,
Speaker 2: but there are a lot of bugs in the design.
Speaker 2: And one of the bugs is that we're never satisfied.
Speaker 2: We're rarely satisfied, we're rarely in the present moment. And
Speaker 2: the good news is that you can train yourself to
Speaker 2: kind of reduce the power of those bugs.
Speaker 1: So I don't find my inner voice to be as
Speaker 1: distasteful as yours. But I have a very noisy internal dialogue.
Speaker 1: It's lots of distraction, constant input. And my wife says,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing escapes my notice with sitting out having
Speaker 1: dinner and after every now and then she's like, tell
Speaker 1: me about the people in that corner. So well, he
Speaker 1: came in from the bathroom, zip was open. After the
Speaker 1: second he walked away, the wife pulled out the phone
Speaker 1: and stud just peripheral vision. And it's not that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to pay attention to other stuff. It's just everything
Speaker 1: is this fire hose of input, and then everybody in
Speaker 1: the back of my head is having a conversation about it.
Speaker 1: So I don't find it's like a nasty, unpleasant person
Speaker 1: chattering away. It's just a cacophony. Yes, and I would
Speaker 1: love to be able to sort of quiet that down
Speaker 1: a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it's as with a lot of
Speaker 2: the things I say. It's meant to be kind of
Speaker 2: poetic language in the form of a joke, and so yes,
Speaker 2: what you're describing isn't necessarily as noxious as some of
Speaker 2: the thoughts that come up in my head. And yet
Speaker 2: it is making you less happy, and in that sense,
Speaker 2: it's so. And what my point is is that there
Speaker 2: are practices that can turn the volume down.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about writing the book.
Speaker 1: I know, sometimes it's exhilarating, sometimes it's a slog, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's both. What was your experience like putting this down
Speaker 1: on paper. I know you spent four years writing.
Speaker 2: This, five years, I think, ye I. Whenever anybody says
Speaker 2: I really love writing, I think, oh, you must be
Speaker 2: a bad writer, because it's awful. And it just took
Speaker 2: so much sweat and grit, and I was doing it
Speaker 2: as a side hustle. I had a full time job
Speaker 2: as the anchor of Nightline and the anchor of Good
Speaker 2: the weekend edition of Good Morning America. It was so hard,
Speaker 2: and I'm now on a I'm writing the sequel right now,
Speaker 2: and I think I'm in my sixth or seventh year.
Speaker 1: It is just so.
Speaker 2: Hard for me to write. I'm trying to learn these
Speaker 2: important lessons and then give it back to you in
Speaker 2: the form of a narrative. I want you to feel
Speaker 2: like you're watching a movie and that you could read
Speaker 2: it in an afternoon, because the story's good and it
Speaker 2: tugs you along, but I need to weave in all
Speaker 2: of these teaching points, and for me, the blocking and
Speaker 2: tackling of that is very, very hard.
Speaker 1: It's work, and it's very hard to do on the
Speaker 1: side if you're just doing that. And then when I
Speaker 1: was writing my first book, I remember I had to
Speaker 1: do less because your discipline, your creativity, it's a very
Speaker 1: very small tank and it gets exhausted pretty quickly. So
Speaker 1: at the end of a long day to sit down
Speaker 1: and pound out twenty thirty pages, that's really hard.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right. I mean, that's an insight. I hadn't
Speaker 2: really thought about this. It's true. I mean, I have
Speaker 2: retired from ABC News, so I have fewer things on
Speaker 2: my plate, but I host a podcast which is two
Speaker 2: almost three times a week.
Speaker 1: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: It's a lot. And I'm writing this book, and I'm
Speaker 2: I'm working on some TV stuff and I give so
Speaker 2: I have a lot of stuff going on still. And
Speaker 2: one of the biggest battles for me is the tank
Speaker 2: issue that you just talked about, because if somebody gets
Speaker 2: on my calendar in the morning, well that completely derails
Speaker 2: my creative time. And any there's an opportunity cost any
Speaker 2: amount of time I'm thinking about something else or being
Speaker 2: creative in somebody else's lane. It reduces my capacity to
Speaker 2: finish my own work.
Speaker 1: When do you do your writing, I personally have found
Speaker 1: like five to eight in the morning is just the
Speaker 1: golden hour.
Speaker 2: I for me, will get up at around seven or eight,
Speaker 2: and because for me, I really try to get enough sleep,
Speaker 2: so I'll get up around seven or eight. I don't
Speaker 2: have a boss, so I can do whatever that I want,
Speaker 2: and I work most of the morning, but I interrupt it.
Speaker 2: So I'll try to not have anything else on my
Speaker 2: calendar til one or two, and so I will write
Speaker 2: for that time, but I will interrupt it with meditation
Speaker 2: and exercise so that I'm not You can't really write
Speaker 2: for within ninety minutes at a time, in my experience.
Speaker 1: There's something to that and then get up from your desk,
Speaker 1: take a walk around the block, come back. That's when
Speaker 1: you could do the edit, revise it. But that creative
Speaker 1: first flow. I love that feeling early in the morning,
Speaker 1: when it's like a clean paper in a fresh reboot,
Speaker 1: where it's just tumble out. It's very very different.
Speaker 2: I really don't have I have very few moments of joy.
Speaker 2: It really is mostly suffering for me, and I'm wondering,
Speaker 2: like can I do this again? I'm fifty one, almost
Speaker 2: fifty two, and you know, I think I could write
Speaker 2: small books or more like how to books. But these
Speaker 2: big books like this one I'm writing now, that is
Speaker 2: like a movie of a true narrative or like ten
Speaker 2: percent happier they just read. It takes so much out
Speaker 2: of me. I'm not sure. Maybe I could do one
Speaker 2: more before I die, but I don't even know.
Speaker 1: So if you break it down into smaller pieces, it's
Speaker 1: much more doable and putting out, you know, a thousand
Speaker 1: word columns, eight hundred word columns. So that's all a
Speaker 1: book is, is a collection of those shorter chats.
Speaker 2: Not my books though, because it has this yard it
Speaker 2: is a movie.
Speaker 1: Oh you could have the the thread weaving through the
Speaker 1: whole tapestry. You could certainly do that.
Speaker 2: To me. As soon as that you get into that,
Speaker 2: it's like it's too it's too real. It's too it's
Speaker 2: like building the taj Mahal. You know, it's just too
Speaker 2: that that for me and I maybe just don't have
Speaker 2: a good brain. But it doing a discrete thousand word
Speaker 2: s occasionally I write something for the Times or whatever
Speaker 2: that's hard, but it's it's discrete and I can get
Speaker 2: it done quickly. But as soon as I have to
Speaker 2: think about the structure, the themes carrying out and building
Speaker 2: upon one another, and the scenes that are required in
Speaker 2: order to teach it, I'm torturing you with you, my,
Speaker 2: with my.
Speaker 1: I have two projects I'm working on, and one of
Speaker 1: them is just trying to stitch together all these previous
Speaker 1: and the other is something from scratch that's a whole
Speaker 1: broad overview of something that word one. I wrote the
Speaker 1: introduction that was pretty much it. It's easier stitching together
Speaker 1: the previous thoughts then coming up with a whole holistic
Speaker 1: tapestry from scratch that said, the journey of a thousand
Speaker 1: miles begins with one step, and breaking big projects up
Speaker 1: into smaller and smaller chunks makes it doable. Like if
Speaker 1: you're thinking about I have a five hundred word book
Speaker 1: to write, that's paralyzing. I have to write the introduction,
Speaker 1: I have to write the overview. I have to put
Speaker 1: together the structure that makes it almost tolerable.
Speaker 2: I completely agree with you. I just think the difference
Speaker 2: here is that in books like ten percent Happier. And
Speaker 2: in the next book I'm writing, which is called Me
Speaker 2: a Love Story. I'm glad you get that joke. Some
Speaker 2: people don't get it.
Speaker 1: I think that's very fun.
Speaker 2: I'm really trying to make a movie when I mean.
Speaker 2: What I mean by that is it's a yarn. It's
Speaker 2: not a it's not me sharing a bunch of ideas
Speaker 2: with you. It should feel like you're on one person's
Speaker 2: story the whole way. And weaving the teaching points into
Speaker 2: that is just really anyway, I'm rambling at this point.
Speaker 1: No, no, this is so all good. So what do
Speaker 1: you make of the claim that really you just need
Speaker 1: twelve and a half minutes of meditation today to see
Speaker 1: positive results? I keep seeing ten minutes, twelve minutes. How
Speaker 1: realistic is that?
Speaker 2: Okay, So that twelve and a half minute number I
Speaker 2: believe comes from a neuroscientist. He's a friend of mine
Speaker 2: at the University of Miami. Her name is Amishi Ja,
Speaker 2: and she studies high stress people in high stress fields
Speaker 2: like first responders and marines. And she has found that
Speaker 2: the minimum effective dose for her populations is twelve and
Speaker 2: a half minutes a day. And I believe her. However,
Speaker 2: I feel like it's daunting for most people to hear
Speaker 2: that if you've never meditated before. And so I say
Speaker 2: two things one one minute counts, it will confer benefits.
Speaker 2: And we know from behavior change science that starting small
Speaker 2: is really important. The second thing I have to say
Speaker 2: is daily ish, give yourself flexibility. Don't beat yourself up
Speaker 2: if you miss a day, don't get over the persnickety
Speaker 2: about like which time of day you're meditating. Give yourself
Speaker 2: a break and take it easy and start small, and
Speaker 2: that is the route to effective habit building.
Speaker 1: So what has the response to the book been like?
Speaker 1: And let me just tell the listening audience. You were
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes late from speaking upstairs because we couldn't get
Speaker 1: you out of there because it was a giant line
Speaker 1: of people asking you to sign books. So I have
Speaker 1: to think the response has been really positive.
Speaker 2: The most amazing thing that's happened in my professional life,
Speaker 2: you know, right below having a child and getting married.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't believe it. It's almost ten years
Speaker 2: since the book came out. I honestly, honestly thought that
Speaker 2: it would go nowhere.
Speaker 1: You describe it as a fiery failure, Your mom begged
Speaker 1: you not to write about your personal failures.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was terrified and that this thing has turned
Speaker 2: into something that's so helpful for so many people. It
Speaker 2: swallowed my life, you know. I mean, I quit this
Speaker 2: career that I loved in TV news to do this
Speaker 2: full time, to host a podcast, to write more books,
Speaker 2: and to give speeches, and it's just incredible. It's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2: And this is a cliche thing I'm about to say,
Speaker 2: but I'm like, really grateful.
Speaker 1: Nothing wrong with a little gratitude, can't go wrong with that.
Speaker 1: What practical tips do you have for incorporating meditation, mindfulness,
Speaker 1: whatever into people's daily lives. Because the thing that makes
Speaker 1: the book so interesting versus all the other books is
Speaker 1: you really tell people do this, do this, do this,
Speaker 1: as opposed to this sort of woo ooo spiritual be
Speaker 1: at one with the universe, which really, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: one with the universe now, what it really isn't very helpful.
Speaker 2: Yes, So a couple of ways to get started. One
Speaker 2: is there are lots of meditation apps out there, and
Speaker 2: they all are either free or they have free trials.
Speaker 2: I would do some taste testing. You can also read
Speaker 2: a good book there are plenty of them. One book
Speaker 2: that's coming to mind it is called Real Happiness by
Speaker 2: Sharon Salzburg. Very very very very practical. Another thing you
Speaker 2: can do is, if you live in a major city,
Speaker 2: most of them have meditation centers where you can drop in.
Speaker 2: And even if they're sectarian, in other words, even if
Speaker 2: they're Buddhist, don't worry about it. It's not a proselytizing religionist.
Speaker 1: Buddhists tends to me kind of low key.
Speaker 2: I consider myself a Buddhist and I'm not like trying
Speaker 2: to convince anybody to join me in that. In that tradition,
Speaker 2: it's really about giving you exercises to train your mind
Speaker 2: in terms of fitting it into your day. Just like
Speaker 2: I said before, and you can't hear this enough, set
Speaker 2: the bar low, don't try to do too much off
Speaker 2: the bat, and don't beat yourself up when you fall
Speaker 2: off the wagon because it's inevitable. So sneak it in
Speaker 2: into the little parts of your day where you've got
Speaker 2: an extra minute or two right before dinner, right when
Speaker 2: you pull your car into the garage, either at work
Speaker 2: or when you've come home, little points in the day
Speaker 2: where you might otherwise be stressed, fomo inducing Instagram scrolling.
Speaker 2: You can do that too, But can you just carve
Speaker 2: one minute out or two minutes out to do this thing?
Speaker 1: I think you can really intriguing. Let's talk about the podcast.
Speaker 1: What made you decide to say I know, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to people about this three times a week.
Speaker 2: You know, generally throughout this whole thing, I've had no
Speaker 2: idea what I was doing, So I'm almost like the
Speaker 2: opposite of a master's a master in business. I've been
Speaker 2: just stumbling through. I wrote the book because I had
Speaker 2: this idea that I could maybe that maybe there was
Speaker 2: a space in the market for this. And I turned
Speaker 2: out to be right about that, but I didn't I
Speaker 2: wasn't confident as I did it. The book was way
Speaker 2: more successful than I think thought, and then I was
Speaker 2: kind of thinking about, like, oh, what do I do next?
Speaker 2: And this was in the book came out in fourteen,
Speaker 2: and I think in around sixteen friends of mine were
Speaker 2: starting podcasts. I have a buddy named Sam Harris. We're
Speaker 2: not related, but he's not very popular podcast and he's
Speaker 2: a friend and I was like, man, I ran into
Speaker 2: somebody in the elevator at ABC News and I was like,
Speaker 2: do we do podcasts here? And they were like the
Speaker 2: next day there was a bunch of people in my office.
Speaker 2: They were like, let's do this. So I started a
Speaker 2: podcast with no real plan. My initial thought was, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of interested in, like, what's beyond ten percent happier?
Speaker 2: What you know, there's all this talk of enlightenment. Is
Speaker 2: that real? So I really focused it on deep end
Speaker 2: of the pool meditation and Buddhism stuff at first, and
Speaker 2: then over the years, especially during the pandemic, I started
Speaker 2: to expand it to just the human condition and really,
Speaker 2: how do we do life better in all areas of life?
Speaker 2: So now we talk about work, we talk about sex,
Speaker 2: we talk about romance, we talk about conflict, boundaries, managing money,
Speaker 2: any area area of life where we tend to suffer
Speaker 2: or struggle. We bring in people to help you unlock.
Speaker 2: And that has been totally fascinating. Is really helped me
Speaker 2: do my own life better because this is like an
Speaker 2: extended therapy session for which I get paid.
Speaker 1: Huh. Really interesting you have on the podcast His Holiness
Speaker 1: the Dali Lama. How does that come about? Does the
Speaker 1: Lama have an agent or pr firm? How do you
Speaker 1: how do you land the Dali Lama as a podcast?
Speaker 2: You know. One one thing that is interesting is I'm
Speaker 2: basically like the beat reporter for Buddhism, Like I know
Speaker 2: most of the Buddhists.
Speaker 1: You know, all the big Buddhists.
Speaker 2: I guess I do. Like I'm a little bit like, uh,
Speaker 2: what's that in Caddy Shack Bill Murray talking about getting Yeah,
Speaker 2: I got that going. That's nice.
Speaker 1: Right, You're gonna achieve total consciousness on your deathbed, so
Speaker 1: you have that going for you.
Speaker 2: I do, which is nice.
Speaker 1: So by the way, I literally have that line written
Speaker 1: down on the off chance that you would reference it,
Speaker 1: and I'm so happy you did. Yeah, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: eleven percent happy.
Speaker 2: Any chance to reference Bill Murray or so. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've found myself in this foine. I was like a
Speaker 2: traditional hard charging newsman. I was covering wars and natural disasters,
Speaker 2: mass shootings, political campaigns, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I'm like I got interested in meditation. And now I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, I know all these spiritual leaders. They sleep
Speaker 2: at my house, you know, like this is my life.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very strange. And so.
Speaker 2: The dollar alumb was the first guest on my podcast
Speaker 2: because one of his best friends is an eminent American
Speaker 2: neuroscientist by the name of Richard Davidson who's friends of mine,
Speaker 2: and so I will call Richie once in a while
Speaker 2: and be like, hey, can you get the Dollar Lama
Speaker 2: on my show? And he makes it happen, and so
Speaker 2: I actually have had him on four times. And in
Speaker 2: the fall, I went over to India and I spent
Speaker 2: two weeks hanging around him and we did this whole, big,
Speaker 2: long podcast series about the Dalai Lama. And he's a
Speaker 2: fascinating dude.
Speaker 1: To say the very least. When he's in America, does
Speaker 1: he crash on your couch? Or where does the Lama stay?
Speaker 2: Well, he's eighty seven or eighty eight now, so he
Speaker 2: is not traveling much. He tends to stay in highly
Speaker 2: secure hotel rooms.
Speaker 1: And you said something earlier that I let slip by
Speaker 1: unnoticed because I was so entranced with the Bill Murray reference.
Speaker 1: But you said, you're not a master's in business. You
Speaker 1: never expected that. I can't tell you how many people
Speaker 1: sat across from me who are wildly successful, very accomplished people,
Speaker 1: and they talk about the role of serendipity and random
Speaker 1: luck and just recognizing an opportunity that hey, am I crazy?
Speaker 1: But is this a market that's untapped, And well, it's
Speaker 1: untapped for a reason. Maybe we should tap it and
Speaker 1: see what happens. So how much of your experiences with
Speaker 1: meditation and the book and the podcast and everything else
Speaker 1: around what you've learned is just random luck? And how
Speaker 1: much of it is you saying there's something here and
Speaker 1: it's a new story that no one's really covering.
Speaker 2: I think it's a mixture. I mean, I will never
Speaker 2: underplay luck. I mean, I've been lucky in just so
Speaker 2: many areas of my life. And I also think there's
Speaker 2: some strategy and some lucky insights, you know, like I
Speaker 2: have a animalistic sense. I think for what is going
Speaker 2: to work in this area and where the shortfalls and
Speaker 2: pitfalls are and self help and self development, and you know,
Speaker 2: I think that is actually doing a service. It's been
Speaker 2: It's turned out to be quite a lucrative business. And
Speaker 2: I also think that it's helping people and taking these
Speaker 2: ancient teachings and updating them for new audiences.
Speaker 1: Buddha a lucrative side hustle. Whoever would have guessed that.
Speaker 1: So before we get to our favorite questions that I
Speaker 1: ask all my guests, I have to just ask about
Speaker 1: the rain technique Recognize, allow, investigate, non identify. How familiar
Speaker 1: are you with the loop from the fighter pilot I
Speaker 1: want to say, Boyd. I'm trying to remember his name,
Speaker 1: John Boyd, Colonel John Boyd, which is all right. So
Speaker 1: the loop is observe, orient, decide act And this was
Speaker 1: early mid century US Air Force trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what sort of advantages can we give to fighter pilots
Speaker 1: when it was still you know, hand to hand air
Speaker 1: to air combat, not just press a missile and forget
Speaker 1: about it. That idea of recognize, allow, investigate, non identify
Speaker 1: is very similar to on a completely different context, observe, orient,
Speaker 1: decide act it. It's just funny how those four steps here,
Speaker 1: you're trying to deal with something internally. There you're dealing
Speaker 1: with an external threat. Tell us about the rain technique.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love that. I think there are lots
Speaker 2: of these acronyms out there that help you just navigate life.
Speaker 2: Rain is recognized, allow, investigate, non identification. So that sounds
Speaker 2: like a mouthful, but it's pretty simple. You're in a
Speaker 2: tough moment, you're struggling, and it could be something internal
Speaker 2: or external, and very quickly you can learn how to
Speaker 2: do these four steps. Recognize it, just to notice what's happening.
Speaker 1: Right now, figure out what's going on, Wake up.
Speaker 2: To what's happening right Allow is instead of fighting it
Speaker 2: or acting on it in some way that is fighting it,
Speaker 2: Like I'm feeling like some tiny pang of hunger and
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna randomly eat the most recent thing, or
Speaker 2: my wife said something mildly annoying and I'm going to
Speaker 2: snap at her instead of acting blindly, just allow the
Speaker 2: feeling to be there. I is investigate, which doesn't mean
Speaker 2: like where did this come from? And you know it's
Speaker 2: not a cognitive thing. It's more just like, how is
Speaker 2: this showing up in my body? Can you investigate? How
Speaker 2: is this anger or hunger? Where am I experiencing in
Speaker 2: my body? Which just allows you to sort of take
Speaker 2: it in on a deep level and be with it
Speaker 2: in the current moment. And non identification is to recognize
Speaker 2: that you don't need to take your innership personally. And
Speaker 2: you didn't create your mind, you didn't create your body,
Speaker 2: you didn't create the world. You may think you have
Speaker 2: all of this agency, you're this ego separate from the world,
Speaker 2: peering out fretfully from behind these eyeholes, But you're part
Speaker 2: of the universe. Sounds a little out there, but it's
Speaker 2: actually non negotiably true. And so all of this stuff
Speaker 2: is nature. You are nature. And can you, just, sir
Speaker 2: a second, see your emotion from that perspective so that
Speaker 2: it doesn't own you. And I just think this is
Speaker 2: a nice little way to navigate the world.
Speaker 1: I like it. I like a lot. Let's jump to
Speaker 1: our favorite questions and we'll get you out of here
Speaker 1: in time to hit your next gig. Starting with tell
Speaker 1: us what you're consuming for entertainment, What are you streaming
Speaker 1: or watching? What podcasts you're listening to give us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what's keeping you.
Speaker 2: Entertaining success Baby, I was Succession, you know. I mean
Speaker 2: not only am I, you know, watching the show as
Speaker 2: it wraps up, but my wife and I love it
Speaker 2: so much we went back and started watching from season
Speaker 2: one as really, and I think it's just a masterful
Speaker 2: piece of art. The writing, the acting, it's all just incredible.
Speaker 2: And it's hard to watch because you're just watching it.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most violent shows I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: So funny you say that I couldn't get past the
Speaker 1: second episode. I didn't have that experience with the Sopranos.
Speaker 1: I didn't have that experience with a lot of other
Speaker 1: great television I had a hard time with.
Speaker 2: So I had the similar experience with you with Succession.
Speaker 2: The first time I watched it, I didn't like it,
Speaker 2: and I set it aside. And then COVID hit and
Speaker 2: I got COVID, and I was in bed, and I
Speaker 2: watched seasons one and two because I was in bed
Speaker 2: and bored and what it has to do. And then
Speaker 2: I got it because I really had to live with
Speaker 2: it for a minute.
Speaker 1: It is so a commitment. Here fourteen hours. See if
Speaker 1: you like it.
Speaker 2: Well, if I didn't like it, I would have watched
Speaker 2: something else. But it is first of all, one reason
Speaker 2: to stay with it is very funny, extremely funny, and
Speaker 2: it gets funnier as it goes. The other reason to
Speaker 2: live with it is it's doing what I love in
Speaker 2: great art, which is it's transporting you into a different
Speaker 2: world that feels real, and so that's just anthropologically interesting.
Speaker 2: But it is a hard show because you're watching people
Speaker 2: do very skillful interpersonal violence to one another, and the
Speaker 2: show does a kind of violence to you because three
Speaker 2: percent of the time they will allow real human kindness.
Speaker 2: And that is what is the cruelest twist. It's keeping you, Oh,
Speaker 2: maybe these people aren't the worst in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then the ship comes in correct, right in the kidney.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love your concept of transporting you to a
Speaker 1: world that feels almost real. The Diplomat is just an
Speaker 1: eight souit Yeah, yes, yeah, just really well written and
Speaker 1: well afted. And then if you like Bridgerton the prequel
Speaker 1: Queen Charlotte, it's this crazy, colorful, weird, almost believable alternative
Speaker 1: world that's like with great characters and great writing. And
Speaker 1: you know, you did what you made me think of
Speaker 1: Queen Charlotte, because it's that transporting you to someplace that
Speaker 1: almost feels real. It's like one thing that's off that
Speaker 1: keeps it fictional, but it's close.
Speaker 2: I'll give you one two other little entertainment things. One
Speaker 2: is Hacks on HBO Max or now it's just called Max.
Speaker 2: It's very funny, she's amazing, she's incredible.
Speaker 1: Amy Smart is it not Amy Smart?
Speaker 2: What is her name? Yes, she's fantastic, Gene Smart, Jean Smart, Yes,
Speaker 2: and the comedian Theo Vaughn who's been showing up for
Speaker 2: me a lot on social media. He is totally inappropriate
Speaker 2: but also just incredibly funny. I mean, just like he's
Speaker 2: very clippable. You can make short little clips of him
Speaker 2: as pithy little things.
Speaker 1: That's hilarious. Tell us about your mentors who helped to
Speaker 1: shape your career.
Speaker 2: I mentioned a couple of people in the course of
Speaker 2: this conversation. David Weston, who's one of your colleagues at Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: who was my boss at ABC News. Incredible boss and
Speaker 2: really helped me in my career. Sam Harris, who I
Speaker 2: also mentioned, who was one of the first people who
Speaker 2: was a real role model for me in terms of
Speaker 2: getting into meditation, because here was this guy who's quite
Speaker 2: well known as an atheist writer and who unafraid to
Speaker 2: mix it up with and debate with all sorts of people. Yes,
Speaker 2: and so you know, I don't always agree with him,
Speaker 2: but I find him inspirational and aspirational in that way,
Speaker 2: and he's a committed, committed meditator, and so that was
Speaker 2: really helpful to me. And then Jerry Kolonna is a
Speaker 2: quite a well known executive coach who has been referred
Speaker 2: to as the Yoda of Silicon Valley. Does a lot
Speaker 2: of like CEO whispering, and he has worked with me
Speaker 2: in my career and has really helped me grow up.
Speaker 2: He did a very devastating but impactful three sixty review
Speaker 2: on me, which resulted in me learning a lot about myself.
Speaker 2: Though that's the sequel. Actually that's the next one.
Speaker 1: Oh the three sixties review. Really interesting. Tell us about
Speaker 1: speaking of books, tell us about some of your favorites
Speaker 1: and what you've read recently.
Speaker 2: I really am into novels right now, and I have
Speaker 2: been reading a lot of novels as I write my
Speaker 2: next book, because I'm stealing their storytelling techniques and I'm
Speaker 2: trying to like up my game as a writer. In
Speaker 2: one of the ways I'm doing that is by reading
Speaker 2: the greats. Jennifer Egan is a modern writer. She'd won
Speaker 2: a Pulitzer for a book in twenty eleven called A
Speaker 2: Visit from the Goon Squad, and then she wrote a
Speaker 2: follow up called The Candy House, and I find her
Speaker 2: to be mesmerizing and bewitching.
Speaker 1: Two interesting recommendations. So what sort of advice would you
Speaker 1: give to a recent college grad interested in a career
Speaker 1: in either journalism or broadcast television.
Speaker 2: Go for it. You know, it's hard, it's tough, but
Speaker 2: it's awesome and I love as I think. I said
Speaker 2: this in my first book, that the right that it
Speaker 2: confers upon you to walk up to important people and
Speaker 2: ask impudent questions yes, is incredible and if you have curiosity,
Speaker 2: this is a playground. And I mean it's a tough business.
Speaker 2: Content creation is hard, and ad supported models are hard.
Speaker 2: As we get into subscriptions, that too is hard. It's tough,
Speaker 2: and it's competitive, but I do think that if you
Speaker 2: can hack that it is worth it.
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the
Speaker 1: world today that you wish you knew thirty or so
Speaker 1: years ago when you were a Green Cub reporter.
Speaker 2: I heard Scott Galloway, another big business voice, say this
Speaker 2: recently to me, actually, and he said it about himself,
Speaker 2: But actually it just comes to mind as my big
Speaker 2: oversight too. I wish I had been nicer. And you
Speaker 2: think about niceness as kind of weakness, but it's actually
Speaker 2: a real strength. And we are social animals. We need
Speaker 2: other people we may think, in this culture that's individualistic,
Speaker 2: that we're going to be self made, but nobody's self made.
Speaker 2: You're all co created, and we're all co created. And
Speaker 2: if I had taken the time to work on my
Speaker 2: relationships in all aspects of my life, my life would
Speaker 2: have been better, way quicker. And even after meditation came
Speaker 2: into my life, I was still failing on the relational front.
Speaker 2: And that's really what the three sixty taught me, which
Speaker 2: is I needed to up my game, and that like
Speaker 2: taking small moments to be nice to people is first
Speaker 2: of all, it can have a huge impact on other people,
Speaker 2: but it's good for me. I always go through the
Speaker 2: lens of self interest because I'm naturally frosty and selfish,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of people are if they're
Speaker 2: capable of looking into that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to interrupt you. I'm trying to remember what
Speaker 1: was in the book or something else I had read
Speaker 1: where you describe, and it might even be a Buddhist
Speaker 1: precept of there's two types of generosity, the selfish generosity, yes,
Speaker 1: and generous generosity. And even the generous generosity comes back
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: Yes. The Buddha talks about why selfishness that all I mean. Sorry,
Speaker 2: The dollar Lama talks about this concept of why selfishness,
Speaker 2: that if you want to be really good at being selfish,
Speaker 2: you will be compassionate and generous because that is the
Speaker 2: number one source of happiness. Let me just say this
Speaker 2: finally on a broader note, but it's a related note.
Speaker 2: There are so many bugs in the human design, but
Speaker 2: there is this feature that is the way out for
Speaker 2: us as a species of our problems. The feature is
Speaker 2: this doing good for other people is to do good
Speaker 2: for yourself, and that we can ride to personal happiness
Speaker 2: and species wide improvements. It is an incredibly hopeful and
Speaker 2: totally true thing, and I find that to be a
Speaker 2: source of real personal and sort of micro and macro optimism.
Speaker 1: It's not a coincidence that billionaires also tend to be philanthropists,
Speaker 1: right works out. Dan, Thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: so generous with your time. We have been speaking with
Speaker 1: Dan Harris, author of ten Percent Happier. If you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation, well be sure and check out any of
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