Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show. You may not
Speaker 1: realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes
Speaker 1: in our archives. We've had so many wonderful guests that
Speaker 1: we've decided to hand pick one of our favorites that
Speaker 1: may be new to you, but if it's not, it's
Speaker 1: definitely worth another lesson. We hope you'll enjoy this episode
Speaker 1: with Dan Harris. I wanted to call the book The
Speaker 1: Voice in My Head as an asshole, because I just
Speaker 1: think that that's a profane statement of a fundamental truth.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great tinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen 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. 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, Happier. How I Tamed the Voice
Speaker 1: in my head, reduced stress without losing my edge, and
Speaker 1: found self help that really works. A true story. In
Speaker 1: the book, he describes how after a panic attack on
Speaker 1: national television, he stopped using drugs and discovered the bet
Speaker 1: of fits of meditation. Let's hear the interview. Hi, Dan,
Speaker 1: welcome 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 during 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 you you know. I think it speaks
Speaker 1: to 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 note notion undergirding meditation, that just as
Speaker 1: you go to the gym and build your bicep, 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
Speaker 1: things 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
Speaker 1: stress the gray matter literally shrinks. The area associated with
Speaker 1: empathy and compassion, the gray matter literally grows. So this
Speaker 1: isn't some touchy feely new ag 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: referred to the voice in your head as a malevolent puppeteer,
Speaker 1: which I also absolutely loved. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: I think that the fundamental the truth of the human
Speaker 1: condition is that we have this voice in our head
Speaker 1: and in your narrator. I mean, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: hearing voices or schizophrenia. I'm just talking about this voice
Speaker 1: that is what chases you out of bed in the
Speaker 1: morning and is heckling you all day long, and as
Speaker 1: you 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 puppeteer.
Speaker 1: You asked 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: a checking your email when your kids are trying to
Speaker 1: talk to you. So to me, that's why I wanted
Speaker 1: to call the book The Voice in My Head as
Speaker 1: an asshole, because I think I just think that that's
Speaker 1: a a profane statement of a fundamental truth. I agree.
Speaker 1: I think the first time that I ever got that
Speaker 1: really understood that and heard and you sort of described
Speaker 1: a similar experience when you when you read somebody describing
Speaker 1: that voice in their head, it was it was a
Speaker 1: complete revelation that we, most of us, have never really
Speaker 1: thought of that that that voice isn't necessarily us. It's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a manifestation of our mind. The central
Speaker 1: feature of our lives is this sense of me or I.
Speaker 1: It's the force that has you, you know, making dents
Speaker 1: to deployments, are getting up and leaving the room when
Speaker 1: you have to go the bathroom. It's this kind of
Speaker 1: it's this propulsion that's with us all the time. And
Speaker 1: there's you know, color commentating, commentating on everything, but we
Speaker 1: take it for granted. Uh, we don't. We don't see it,
Speaker 1: and unless it's pointed out to you, and this point
Speaker 1: out to you, it's like this thunderous truism. Obviously it's
Speaker 1: totally obvious. Um, obviously it's totally obvious. That's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a ridiculous statement. But it is obvious and
Speaker 1: yet overlooked. So um, it's uh. One. When when I
Speaker 1: first encountered this, this um, this observation, it was a
Speaker 1: big deal for me. And also it was not only
Speaker 1: powerful because it was intuitively true, but also because it
Speaker 1: explained some of the dumb behavior that you described that
Speaker 1: that I write about in the book, That the fact
Speaker 1: that I went to war zones without really thinking about
Speaker 1: the psychological consequences, that came home and got depressed and
Speaker 1: really wasn't fully aware that I was even depressed. I
Speaker 1: wasn't self aware enough to to to perceive what was
Speaker 1: really going on, and then I blindly self medicated with
Speaker 1: cocaine and ecstasy and it all blew up in my
Speaker 1: face in the form of a panic attack on Good
Speaker 1: Morning America in June of two thousand four. So for me,
Speaker 1: this seeing yeah, seeing Ekar totally who happened to be
Speaker 1: the first first person who I heard described the voice
Speaker 1: in the head. Seeing it on a page in a
Speaker 1: book was was a very powerful experience. The problem was
Speaker 1: with e car Totally that a lot of the other
Speaker 1: stuff he was writing but I found irretrievably ridiculous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say reading about your your your experience
Speaker 1: of reading Eckart totally was one of my favorite parts
Speaker 1: of the book because You've got a line where you say, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just when about when I started to think
Speaker 1: that totally was a sage and perhaps he held the
Speaker 1: key to all my problems, he started saying some ludicrous ship,
Speaker 1: which 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 application 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 neck 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 meditation.
Speaker 1: How how did that journey go for you? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think meditation is a massive PR problem. UM. I think
Speaker 1: 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 it's suggests 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 s. And I find that very very very compelling.
Speaker 1: And also the other thing that I think really convinced
Speaker 1: me to to give meditation a shot is that it
Speaker 1: doesn't involve all of the things that I thought it involved. You.
Speaker 1: You don't have to where special outfits, you don't have
Speaker 1: to sit in any finding positions, you don't have to chance,
Speaker 1: you don't have to light in sense. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to join any group. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a secular, simple brain exercise that you can do, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of minutes a day, and it
Speaker 1: can have a pretty transformative effect. Again, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: there's a reason why I called the book ten percent Happier.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna, you know, transform your life into NonStop
Speaker 1: rainbows and unicorns. But I think it does. Uh. What
Speaker 1: it does is it allows you to feed the right
Speaker 1: wolf um repeatedly. And that's what you're practicing to do
Speaker 1: um in meditation. And you know, just to expand on
Speaker 1: the on the wolf thing um. You know, we we
Speaker 1: we tend to you know, the human condition is that
Speaker 1: we tend to make our suffering worse than it needs
Speaker 1: to be, and we tend to gloss over or ignore
Speaker 1: all a lot of the good things in our life.
Speaker 1: And what meditation allows you to do is to be
Speaker 1: present for the for the things that are good, and
Speaker 1: to not go down the rat hole of useless rumination
Speaker 1: over things that you can't change. I think that suffering
Speaker 1: and stress and striving is all, you know, a part
Speaker 1: of life and part of trying to achieve anything and
Speaker 1: be ambitious. But you know what, I found meditation has
Speaker 1: helped me figure out how not to cross the line
Speaker 1: between what I call constructive anguish and useless rumination. And
Speaker 1: so to me, that that's kind of a played into
Speaker 1: the to the wolf analogy, because there's a wolf that
Speaker 1: is um so you know, self referential and self absorbed
Speaker 1: that he gets uh depressed and anxious, and then there's
Speaker 1: a wolf that is actually you know, wise and uh
Speaker 1: discriminating and uh paying attention to what the actually going on,
Speaker 1: and meditation allows you to see the latter wolf. I
Speaker 1: like to make the distinction between pain, which is the
Speaker 1: normal things that happened to us in life that are unpleasant,
Speaker 1: and then suffering, which is sort of that as you
Speaker 1: just described, it's that extra layer of stuff that we
Speaker 1: put over top of it, all the thinking we do
Speaker 1: about about what's happening, the feeling bad about feeling bad,
Speaker 1: or the stories that we tell ourselves around that. And
Speaker 1: one of the things you quoted in the book Stephen Bachelor,
Speaker 1: who's a writer I really admire, and and you said
Speaker 1: the craving to be otherwise, to be elsewhere, permeated my
Speaker 1: whole life. Can you tell us more about what why
Speaker 1: you chose that quote and what it means to you.
Speaker 1: I just thought, I mean, I really like kicking a Bachelor.
Speaker 1: He's he wrote a book called Buddhism Without Beliefs. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's a self described Buddhist atheist, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a um redundant phrase because there is really no God.
Speaker 1: There is no God in Buddhism, so um. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a in a faith that is a
Speaker 1: very skeptical faith, Buddhism, and is barely a faith at all.
Speaker 1: He's a super skeptical guy. So he's he's I like
Speaker 1: him for a lot of reasons. Um. And he's really
Speaker 1: good at describing this tendancy we we have to be
Speaker 1: projecting into the future or reminiscing or ruminating on the
Speaker 1: past instead of focusing on where we are right now.
Speaker 1: It totally actually has a nice phrase here. He talked
Speaker 1: talks about the background static of perpetual discontent. Um, that
Speaker 1: we just never were like colloquy abies, were never quite
Speaker 1: happy or okay with what's happening right now. We're always
Speaker 1: trying to get onto the next thing, or we're idealizing
Speaker 1: the past in some way, uh, instead of fully inhabiting
Speaker 1: what's happening right now. Um. And I just found the
Speaker 1: way Bachelor wrote about it to be quite powerful and
Speaker 1: to be accurate in terms of my life. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I am in a in a deadline dominated world
Speaker 1: and of journalism, and you know, so by by dint
Speaker 1: of being in this kind of job, it kind of
Speaker 1: puts the the the human tendency to lurch forward to
Speaker 1: the next thing on steroids and um, So I found
Speaker 1: that phrase very very powerful. And I'm not saying I've
Speaker 1: cured myself of that tendency, but the first step is
Speaker 1: admitting it. And meditation is good for sort of you know,
Speaker 1: rubbing your nose in the tendency so that you can
Speaker 1: see it when you're doing it and you can back off.
Speaker 1: I have a question for you related to that. So
Speaker 1: you recently you recently, I guess within the last year,
Speaker 1: so became uh, the anchor on Nightline, which is something
Speaker 1: you had wanted for a long time, and in your
Speaker 1: epilogue you talk a little bit about how that's been satisfying.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you think had you had you achieved
Speaker 1: that place without some of the work you've done on meditation,
Speaker 1: whether you would have had the same sort of experience
Speaker 1: of being dissatisfied with where things were what they were
Speaker 1: and be kind of look into the next thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a conflicted view on on the
Speaker 1: tendency we have to never be satisfied because I think
Speaker 1: to a certain extent it's useful, right, because the those
Speaker 1: who achieve in society often are, you know, like oysters
Speaker 1: with that little bit of sand that irritates them and
Speaker 1: that turns into a pearl eventually. You know that you
Speaker 1: just never quite you know happy. 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 insatiability of the human
Speaker 1: of the human mind. But I do think that there's
Speaker 1: you've got to You've got to figure out how to
Speaker 1: draw the draw the line. You know, when is it
Speaker 1: useful to be pushing and pushing and pushing and when
Speaker 1: is it not so useful? And for me, I've just
Speaker 1: gotten better at figuring that out and it pertains the Nightline. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I it was. I think about this a
Speaker 1: lot now, especially with the book too. When you when
Speaker 1: you have something, you've probably heard this theory before, that
Speaker 1: the set point theory that we humans have a we
Speaker 1: have a set happiness, set point that good things can
Speaker 1: happen or bad things can happen. We tend to sort
Speaker 1: of gravitate over time back to our set point. And
Speaker 1: that that happened to me both with Nightline. I got
Speaker 1: the job and I was so excited, and then I
Speaker 1: just kind of gravitated back to my stet point over time.
Speaker 1: And then with my book, you know, I worried. I
Speaker 1: worked on this book for four years and I worried
Speaker 1: that it was gonna suck, and and maybe it does suck,
Speaker 1: but it ended up selling well, which was enormously thrilling.
Speaker 1: And then over time, you just kind of gravitated back
Speaker 1: to your stet point. Um. What I will say, the
Speaker 1: difference between the old me and the new me is
Speaker 1: that I think the set point has gone up over time,
Speaker 1: and that uh, I'm more aware of the gravitation back
Speaker 1: to it, and so I don't get too dared away
Speaker 1: with the ego trip of doing doing well at something, uh,
Speaker 1: and I don't get too disappointed to myself when it
Speaker 1: wears off and I started thinking looking around and thinking
Speaker 1: about what am I going to do next? One of
Speaker 1: the things in the book that you wrestled with and
Speaker 1: you just you just talked about it, and it has
Speaker 1: been it has been the fundamental question that eats at
Speaker 1: me for for years as I've as I've looked at
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, and it's exactly what you just said.
Speaker 1: Where's that Where's that line between uh, always wanting something
Speaker 1: different and striving, which is undeniably in some ways positive
Speaker 1: for for humans in general, versus sort of accepting where
Speaker 1: we're at and being happy with that. And I think
Speaker 1: you did a lot of wrestling with that in the book,
Speaker 1: where you came to some answers that were a little
Speaker 1: bit comfortable. Have you had any more insights or anything
Speaker 1: else you want to want to share about that, because
Speaker 1: that one still sort of, you know, pokes me in
Speaker 1: the side. Yeah, I mean, I think it is for
Speaker 1: any ambitious person. It is the question in my view,
Speaker 1: um and Uh, I think it's all about finding the
Speaker 1: line between, as I said before, constructive anguish and useless rumination,
Speaker 1: and that's a blurry and wavy line. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of like in spin class. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: were taking a spin class where you're on the bikes
Speaker 1: and um extract you've taken wonder you haven't I have?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately Okay, yeah sucks. Um I do it, but it's
Speaker 1: a good workout, but it's horrible. Um anyway, the instructor
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 1: um 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 stavement 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 and some in a more just passionate 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 and pushing and pushing and when did it
Speaker 1: no longer useful? Yeah. The other thing I've thought about
Speaker 1: with that is I've come from a position that always
Speaker 1: thinks that it's dissatisfaction or unhappiness or pain that that
Speaker 1: drives me forward to do things. And and I've thought
Speaker 1: more about could that motivation come from a different place
Speaker 1: or does it sometimes come from a different place, not
Speaker 1: one of unhappiness, but one of I guess, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, a joy or and enjoyment of
Speaker 1: making and creating things. I think it can, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think 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 the mind when I'm when I'm when
Speaker 1: the amount of a discursive random thinking comes down because
Speaker 1: you're you're you know, focusing on your breath for hours
Speaker 1: the 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 time, 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 from Plato or
Speaker 1: Aristotle or whatever, all the way way back in time.
Speaker 1: We've heard about Uh, Shakespeare did it too. I haven't
Speaker 1: dona have all the quotes of my fingertips where this
Speaker 1: romanticizing of melancholy, that everybody who has achieved anything has
Speaker 1: to be sad and miserable, and that scans to me
Speaker 1: as as like excuses. Now, to some extent, I think
Speaker 1: it's true there is a high level of correlation between
Speaker 1: anxiety and achievement, and which is why I firmly believe
Speaker 1: that a certain amount of stress and struggle is part
Speaker 1: of achieving. But again, I'm not quite sure, based on
Speaker 1: my own experience and having spent a lot of years
Speaker 1: kind of attacking this question internally and externally, not quite
Speaker 1: sure that if van Go had been slightly less crazy,
Speaker 1: that he didn't cut his ear off, that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made the beautiful paintings. He might have made even
Speaker 1: more beautiful paintings. Um And I can just tell you
Speaker 1: from my own perspective, I feel like I'm doing better
Speaker 1: work now that I'm less crazy. I'm still pretty crazy
Speaker 1: again the book of Happier. I'm not claiming some sort
Speaker 1: of perfected state. Um uh. And again, if my wife
Speaker 1: was on the phone right now, she would give you
Speaker 1: still a moron speech. Um. So. I but I think,
Speaker 1: and maybe I'm deluding myself, but I think that my
Speaker 1: ability to focus is better now. The quality of my
Speaker 1: work is better, the quality of my interaction to other
Speaker 1: people is better. Um. And So I don't think that
Speaker 1: somehow being happier it works at cross purposes with being successful.
Speaker 1: I just don't. Um. But back to your question, non
Speaker 1: attachment results. Yeah, that simple, little, kind of bland sounding
Speaker 1: phrase turned out to be transformative to me. Uh. The
Speaker 1: phrase non attachment, for his else is all throughout Buddhism.
Speaker 1: But the person who first said it to me was
Speaker 1: Dr Mark Epstein, who's a very good friend of mine
Speaker 1: in a shrink in New York City, who writes great
Speaker 1: books about the overlap between Buddhism and psychology. And he
Speaker 1: was telling me that, you know, you can try really
Speaker 1: hard to achieve things. You have to recognize we live
Speaker 1: in a universe that is characterized by entropy. Chaos and impermanence,
Speaker 1: and you're not in control. And so the route to
Speaker 1: maximal resilience is to do as bet you know, to
Speaker 1: 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. And
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs lost. I mean he had a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of you know he had by the way, he was
Speaker 1: the meditator. Um, you know, he had all sorts of setbacks,
Speaker 1: all of my uh you know Ted Coppel, who's a
Speaker 1: personal hero of mine. You know, he he had struggles.
Speaker 1: 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 six 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. The catchphrase that you
Speaker 1: start to apply to your thinking is is this any
Speaker 1: longer useful? It's because to the point, there is some
Speaker 1: amount of planning, worrying, thinking all that that's critical. And
Speaker 1: I think that that line is is it useful? And
Speaker 1: how how do you tell that for yourself when it's
Speaker 1: no longer useful? As I was saying before, it's this
Speaker 1: this blurry, wavy line I did. I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: no magic formula for figuring out when you're thinking it's useful.
Speaker 1: It's kind of intuitive. But what meditation does is it
Speaker 1: gives you boost yourself awareness because you're sitting with your
Speaker 1: eyes closed and watching your mind, and you become, in fact,
Speaker 1: the part of the brain associated with self awareness that
Speaker 1: 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 you're
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 got something
Speaker 1: out of it beyond just resonating with the story as
Speaker 1: a whole, because your skepticism and and your path I
Speaker 1: think Mark Epstein was the first person I read that
Speaker 1: I really went, oh, wow, this really makes a ton
Speaker 1: of sense to me. But you described when you were
Speaker 1: on your meditation retreat how you hit a point where
Speaker 1: you had um. I don't know if you'd refer to
Speaker 1: it as a spiritual experience, but you had an experience
Speaker 1: of some sort where your mind sort of locked in
Speaker 1: and was you were you were ecstatically overjoyed, and you
Speaker 1: described what that was like. You described how your mind
Speaker 1: was noting things really really quickly. And despite all the
Speaker 1: things that I've read and all that I had never
Speaker 1: thought of that as being the experience, and once I did,
Speaker 1: it was. I won't say I had an experience to
Speaker 1: the level of yours, but something clicked in me when
Speaker 1: I started thinking of it that way. Really about the
Speaker 1: whole point is to sit back and just watch the mind.
Speaker 1: It's about watching, It's about nothing else, and that was
Speaker 1: enormously helpful for me, So I wanted to say thanks
Speaker 1: for that. I appreciate it. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: actually about you know, it's annoying to say this because
Speaker 1: it's such a stupid cliche with this whole be here now,
Speaker 1: being in the present moment thing. But another way to
Speaker 1: say it is the way they say it in sports,
Speaker 1: being in the zone. What's happening. When you're in the zone,
Speaker 1: you're totally focused on what's happening right now. You're making
Speaker 1: a free throw, for example, or you're hitting a put um.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened to me on that meditation retreat.
Speaker 1: I was just kind of dragged, kicking and screaming into
Speaker 1: the present moment for you know, many many hours. And
Speaker 1: that was associated with a big blast of serotonin. And
Speaker 1: I think that most of our happiness is derived from
Speaker 1: focusing on what's happening right now. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: there's another It was a great study Harvard that showed
Speaker 1: that it picked people on their iPhones. All the researchers
Speaker 1: sent out these iPhone alerts at random times two hundreds
Speaker 1: of people and ask them, what are you doing right
Speaker 1: now and how happy are you? And what they found
Speaker 1: was that that when people's minds were wandering, they were
Speaker 1: less happy. Um. And so it goes to follow that
Speaker 1: when you're in the zone, when you're focusing on what's
Speaker 1: happening right now, you can be really really happy. And
Speaker 1: what meditation does is just shove you into the moment.
Speaker 1: I mean you're you are uh basically, you're shoving yourself
Speaker 1: into the moment by repeatedly refocusing on the feeling of
Speaker 1: your breath coming in and going out every time your
Speaker 1: mind wanders. And that can have if you do it.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're sequestered on a meditation retreat for
Speaker 1: ten days with a bunch of weirdos, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and all you're doing all day long is meditating, that
Speaker 1: that can be one of the effects. And that's certainly
Speaker 1: what happened to me. And when you know, when I
Speaker 1: drop all of my obsessive thinking, when I'm standing at
Speaker 1: a stoplight in New York City or uh, standing in
Speaker 1: my office looking at the window, I can get just
Speaker 1: a little taste of that one now and again. And
Speaker 1: I think what's really important about that is meditation is
Speaker 1: a big is a big part of it. But that's
Speaker 1: available to us really any time that we choose to
Speaker 1: do it. And I've I've found for me that that's
Speaker 1: a great practice when I'm starting to get swept away
Speaker 1: with whatever negative feelings, is to just come back and
Speaker 1: try and notice exactly what's happening around me right then.
Speaker 1: And it tends to interrupt this. I heard an interview
Speaker 1: the other day and I can't remember the woman's name,
Speaker 1: but it was on a podcast called on Being and
Speaker 1: she's studied mindfulness since the seventies, and she doesn't really
Speaker 1: advocate meditation so much. She's much more an advocate of, Hey,
Speaker 1: you can at any minute just start paying attention to
Speaker 1: what's going on around you. And I think that's ah
Speaker 1: I found for myself that meditation is a real way
Speaker 1: to strengthen that muscle. But it's not the only place
Speaker 1: that it happens. Yeah, but I guess you know, I
Speaker 1: know who you're talking about. I don't remember her name,
Speaker 1: but I know you're talking about my I have never
Speaker 1: read her material, nor I ever discussed this, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say something that maybe i'll later right, But I
Speaker 1: kind of disagree. I mean, I agree that, yes, she's right.
Speaker 1: You can. You can drop into the present moment. Anybody can.
Speaker 1: But it's really hard to do if you don't have
Speaker 1: this practice. It's kind of like going out and throwing
Speaker 1: a fifty yard past in an NFL game if you've
Speaker 1: never done any practice before. And meant, what meditation does
Speaker 1: is just it just teaches you how to do it.
Speaker 1: You have a mechanism. It's a really simple mechanism. Um,
Speaker 1: you know what, I could teach you how to do
Speaker 1: it and fewer as the New York Times reporter had
Speaker 1: me do In the New York Times tech reporter had
Speaker 1: me teach them how to meditating. Fewer characters and it
Speaker 1: takes to send a tweet. It's super, super simple. It's
Speaker 1: just you learn how you learn how to focus. And Um,
Speaker 1: I think practicing mindfulness is tricky without it. That's just
Speaker 1: my view. Most likely this woman who's been setting mindfulness
Speaker 1: since the ninety seventies is right, and I'm wrong, but
Speaker 1: that's just my view. I tend to agree. I've not
Speaker 1: read her stuff either. What it made me think of
Speaker 1: a little bit was, um, and you said it when
Speaker 1: you were reading Eckar Totally stuff like the ideas were great,
Speaker 1: but there was no there's no practical implementation plan. There
Speaker 1: was no way for you to see how to get
Speaker 1: from where you were to what was being described. And
Speaker 1: that's for me, that's what meditation does, is it does
Speaker 1: strengthen that muscle. The other big one that I come
Speaker 1: back to all the time is so much of it.
Speaker 1: It's a skill and knowing how to do it, but
Speaker 1: so much of it for me is just even remembering
Speaker 1: 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 and 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 meditation, which which again just boost
Speaker 1: your ability to remember not to be an asshole more frequently.
Speaker 1: And um, so remembering is great, and I that's why
Speaker 1: I think listening to podcasts, reading good books it you know,
Speaker 1: you're just infusing your life with this stuff so that
Speaker 1: when you get swept away, you recover more quickly. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Maybe the not being an asshole compassion stuff, Chris, do
Speaker 1: you want to maybe work on that a little bit?
Speaker 1: It's all right, Um, well, Dan, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: It's been a it's been a great talk. I Uh,
Speaker 1: like I said, I really enjoyed the book. I've read
Speaker 1: a lot of them. It was it was one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. I think it mirrored my my journey a lot.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're doing for meditation is really important,
Speaker 1: which is putting it kind of right in the mainstream,
Speaker 1: demystifying it. So thanks for all you're doing with that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate. Okay, take care,
Speaker 1: take care all right. Bye. If what you just heard
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