Speaker 1: Does meditating feel like a chore, another to do list
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Speaker 2: These skills of mindfulness, compassion, calm, concentration, the various skills
Speaker 2: that can be taught through meditation. You just keep getting
Speaker 2: better and there's not as much of a physical limitations
Speaker 2: like there's a ceiling on how good I can get
Speaker 2: at basketball.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dan Harris.
Speaker 3: He's the author of the number one New York Times
Speaker 3: best selling memoir Ten Percent Happier, about a fidgety, skeptical
Speaker 3: news anchor who finds meditation. He's also the host of
Speaker 3: the ten Percent Happier podcast and a co founder of
Speaker 3: the ten Percent Happier Meditation app. For twenty one years,
Speaker 3: he worked at ABC News, where he anchored such shows
Speaker 3: as Nightline and the weekend editions of Good Morning America.
Speaker 1: Hey, Dan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to have you back on. I was
Speaker 1: saying to you right before we started that. I think
Speaker 1: the last time we did this, we did it in person,
Speaker 1: and you were still at ABC at the time, So
Speaker 1: we came to your offices in New York and did
Speaker 1: it there, you and me and Oran, who I know
Speaker 1: is a part of your app and been on your
Speaker 1: podcast a few times.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: Well, I think in the interim both of us have
Speaker 2: been able to quit corporate jobs.
Speaker 1: Yes, so that is good news. Has that transition been
Speaker 1: good for.
Speaker 4: You in most ways?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's great because Mama troll of my own schedule
Speaker 2: for twenty one years. As much as I loved ABC News,
Speaker 2: and I really loved it, my life was really at
Speaker 2: the whims of some crazy person walks into a supermarket
Speaker 2: with a AK forty seven, I got to fly there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, And yeah, I think when I was younger
Speaker 2: it was exciting to be at the whims of the
Speaker 2: news cycle, and as I got older and had lots
Speaker 2: of other stuff and a family, it was harder and
Speaker 2: harder for me to do. So that part is great,
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm around my family much more, and
Speaker 2: I was, you know, At the peak of my time
Speaker 2: at ABC, I was working nights anchoring Nightline and then
Speaker 2: weekends anchoring Good Morning America. So that really took me
Speaker 2: out of the mix. And so now I have a
Speaker 2: lot more time to be with my son and my
Speaker 2: wife and so.
Speaker 4: All that's great.
Speaker 2: Once in a while, I feel some identity crisis stuff around,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm no longer an anchorman, and you know
Speaker 2: what am I then? That kind of thing, But that's
Speaker 2: pretty fleeting. Yeah, yeah, I buy and large love my change.
Speaker 2: But there were things about it that I liked. I liked,
Speaker 2: you know, we went into an office and there were
Speaker 2: proba that kind of needed solved that didn't have anything
Speaker 2: to do with a human mind, you know, and I
Speaker 2: kind of occasionally liked, you know, something like a software
Speaker 2: problem that I could go fix that was very straightforward. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you were working kind of crazy hours, I know there
Speaker 2: for a while, for a long time.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, crazy hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we always start this podcast the way that
Speaker 1: we have all along, which is by the reading of
Speaker 1: the Wolf Parable. So I'll go ahead and read that
Speaker 1: to you and kind of get your up to date
Speaker 1: take on it. So in the parable, there's a grandparent
Speaker 1: who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 1: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 1: And the grandchild stops and they think about it for
Speaker 1: a second, and they look up at their grandparent and
Speaker 1: they say, well, which one wins, And the grandparent says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 2: I remember what I said last time, and I apologize
Speaker 2: if it's the exact same thing.
Speaker 4: But I love it either.
Speaker 2: So I love the parable because it speaks to the
Speaker 2: animating insight of my former side hustle and now in
Speaker 2: whole career as a meditation evangelist, which is that the
Speaker 2: mind is trainable and we are not stuck with factory settings,
Speaker 2: that we can work on the aspects of our self
Speaker 2: that we might struggle with, and we can further hon
Speaker 2: our positive attributes.
Speaker 4: I would say the one thing.
Speaker 2: That I've really noticed recently, perhaps this would be new,
Speaker 2: is that I think that I told myself a story,
Speaker 2: probably subconsciously. I don't know if I intellectually believe this,
Speaker 2: but subconsciously that maybe I was one way. You know,
Speaker 2: I think I harbored a long suspicion that I was,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of irredeemably selfish on some level. Of course,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a boundary between inside and outside when
Speaker 2: it comes to psychology, or the mind is really permeable,
Speaker 2: and so you tend to project your conclusions about yourself
Speaker 2: onto the world. And I think I felt that way
Speaker 2: about individuals in the news with whom I disagreed that they.
Speaker 4: Were all one way.
Speaker 2: But I've realized that it's much more complicated than that,
Speaker 2: and that I think leads to me taking it easier
Speaker 2: on myself, so that when I screw up and do
Speaker 2: something that might fit into the old story about how
Speaker 2: I'm a bad boy, I can see it as an
Speaker 2: isolated incident or even part of a pattern, but not
Speaker 2: a reification of a non negotiable truth. And that's really helpful.
Speaker 2: And also it makes it easier to be less judgmental
Speaker 2: about other people, and that being judgmental is a pain
Speaker 2: in the ass. You know, you're carrying around this view
Speaker 2: that on some level you know isn't true, but you're
Speaker 2: sticking to it. I've heard that that's actually the definition
Speaker 2: of hysteria, sticking to a view that you know on
Speaker 2: some level isn't true.
Speaker 4: And you know.
Speaker 2: So we look out the world that people we disagree
Speaker 2: with on social media or in the news, or maybe
Speaker 2: even in our family and harbor some belief that they
Speaker 2: are fundamentally one way. But I don't think that's how
Speaker 2: it works. And I think that if we do the
Speaker 2: experiment of putting ourselves in their shoes and coming out
Speaker 2: of the same womb and living in the same circumstances,
Speaker 2: we may very well do the same things that they're doing.
Speaker 2: There's a great figure. You may have interviewed him, father
Speaker 2: Gregory Boyle. You're nodding your head, so you know he is.
Speaker 2: Father Boyle was on my podcast one time and he said,
Speaker 2: I don't believe in evil. I believe in horrible behavior,
Speaker 2: but not evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it gets to the point that most
Speaker 1: of these things that we might call the bad wolf
Speaker 1: are typically coming out of some reaction to something that's happened.
Speaker 1: And I think you're right that it's far more complex
Speaker 1: and like there's a good and a bad side of
Speaker 1: us right life is we are far more complex than that.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I think I've seen in your
Speaker 1: work evolve over the years, and maybe I saw it
Speaker 1: most clearly seeing EU recent Ted talk, is this sense
Speaker 1: of really recognizing that these patterns inside of us. I
Speaker 1: want to find your line here because it's really good.
Speaker 1: You said my demons were actually fear based neurotic programs,
Speaker 1: probably injected into me by my culture or my parents,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to help me. Is a really
Speaker 1: you know, beautiful idea around recognizing the ways in which
Speaker 1: we aren't showing up in the world as the person
Speaker 1: we want to be is because of some habitual reaction pattern.
Speaker 1: Now again, I don't want to go down the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of is everybody that way? And what about psychopaths
Speaker 1: or any of that stuff. But for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of us, right our fear, our anger, our greed, they're
Speaker 1: coming from these deeper things within us that can be
Speaker 1: used differently and related to differently.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, just to clarify one thing, I don't think
Speaker 2: I was making the case that you know, we're either
Speaker 2: part good or part bad, but I actually agree with
Speaker 2: that case, it's a more sophisticated case. In the one
Speaker 2: I was making, I was more arguing that other people
Speaker 2: I judge them, and myself I judge them to be
Speaker 2: wholly bad, right, And I think that's not true in
Speaker 2: terms of our demons are wolves, and I think there
Speaker 2: are lots of bad wolves. If you want to use
Speaker 2: the word bad, let's use that word, even though it's
Speaker 2: probably overly simplified. Yeah, I think it's really helpful to
Speaker 2: view them warmly, to give them a high five instead
Speaker 2: of trying to slay them, because the aggression just makes
Speaker 2: them stronger. I have an executive coach who I really like,
Speaker 2: Jerry Kolonna, and he's often told me that I can't
Speaker 2: bully my inner bully out of existence. Just doesn't work
Speaker 2: that way. You drive them underground and it comes out
Speaker 2: in other places. And so the only route that I've
Speaker 2: found to dealing with the aspects of our personality that
Speaker 2: are difficult is to view them warmly as ancient programs
Speaker 2: that are trying to help us but are not, you know,
Speaker 2: highly functional, and move on, because that's the fundamental and
Speaker 2: radical disarmament.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a phrase that you used in the
Speaker 1: Ted talk. You know, you said that this counterintuitive extension
Speaker 1: of warmth to these things was not indulgent, but was
Speaker 1: indeed radical disarmament. I just love that phrase. It really
Speaker 1: jumped out to me when I heard it, and I
Speaker 1: was like, Yeah, that's kind of what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: And where I always find the nuance for me is
Speaker 1: in recognizing and allowing that those things are there and
Speaker 1: befriending them and not feeding them. You know, that to
Speaker 1: me is where the nuance gets to be. Even if
Speaker 1: I want to think about something like thinking more positively,
Speaker 1: knowing that I have a mind that goes towards the negative, right,
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to just the minute negative thoughts
Speaker 1: show up, like squelch them down, and so I want
Speaker 1: to allow them to be there and recognize them and
Speaker 1: explore them. And then there's a certain point for me
Speaker 1: where it's like, Okay, we need to move on here
Speaker 1: and change the channel or work on cultivating different thoughts.
Speaker 1: And so I've always found that dynamic to be one
Speaker 1: of the higher arts of sort of mindfulness healing all
Speaker 1: this stuff is kind of knowing how much to devote
Speaker 1: to each of those sort of areas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you're putting your finger on the key
Speaker 2: issue here. In my view, you can make the philosophical
Speaker 2: switch of not hating yourself because you might have venal impulses,
Speaker 2: but then what do you actually do with said impulses?
Speaker 2: And there are many strategies from modern psychology to ancient meditation.
Speaker 2: And you know, I am not olympic level. I can
Speaker 2: get carried away by my lesser impulses hourly. But I
Speaker 2: have been able to use some of these tools, and
Speaker 2: we can talk about them whatever order you would like
Speaker 2: to achieve, you know, maybe ten percent of the time,
Speaker 2: a different relationship to my stuff, so that I'm not
Speaker 2: completely handing over all of the power to voices in
Speaker 2: my head that are not so constructive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I.
Speaker 1: Don't know if you've seen this in your work, because
Speaker 1: you talk to a lot of different people like I do,
Speaker 1: and I'm oversimplifying, but I've seen it in psychology and
Speaker 1: I've seen it in Buddhism. These these sort of two
Speaker 1: different approaches, and one is very much an acceptance approach,
Speaker 1: be with what's there, befriended, let it be there. There's that.
Speaker 1: And then there's another approach, which is more I might
Speaker 1: call more of a cognitive behavioral approach, right, But it
Speaker 1: shows up in Buddhism too, which is you recognize the
Speaker 1: thought and then you choose to put a different one in.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: You might think of that as I'm choosing to pull
Speaker 1: out a weed or I'm putting a flower in. But
Speaker 1: there's an active changing. And I've really noticed as I've
Speaker 1: talked to people seen both of those things, and a
Speaker 1: less evolved version of me would have said, well, which
Speaker 1: is the better approach? And now I know that's a
Speaker 1: foolish question, right, But the question is, and the art
Speaker 1: is when do I use which approach.
Speaker 3: And for how long?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I'm just doing a little math in my
Speaker 2: head as we're talking, Like I think there are probably
Speaker 2: for me personally, like five different approaches that I interweave
Speaker 2: when I could remember to do it. And some of
Speaker 2: them are you know, meditative, contemplative Buddhist practices, and some
Speaker 2: of them are more sort of modern psychological practices, and
Speaker 2: the overlap between them is very significant because I think
Speaker 2: the Buddha made some insights twenty six hundred years ago
Speaker 2: that modern psychological researchers and practitioners are just coming to
Speaker 2: see the wisdom of.
Speaker 1: Yep so let's explore what some of those are. You
Speaker 1: just came up with the number five. I'm sure if
Speaker 1: I gave you ten minutes to think, that number might
Speaker 1: become four or seven or But let's go through what
Speaker 1: some of those categories are.
Speaker 2: All right, So let me list them and then we
Speaker 2: can go through them. First, I would say it's just
Speaker 2: straight up mindfulness. The second, I would say is loving kindness.
Speaker 2: So both of those come out of Buddhism. The third
Speaker 2: would be a modern psychological tool that has been perfected,
Speaker 2: at least to the extent of my knowledge, by a
Speaker 2: school of psychology called internal family systems ifs. The fourth
Speaker 2: would be self compassion. These are all very related. That is,
Speaker 2: self compassion is a mixture of modern psychology and ancient Buddhism,
Speaker 2: pioneered by some researchers doctor Kristin Neff and doctor christ Germer.
Speaker 2: And then the fifth is I don't know what he
Speaker 2: would call it, but doctor Ethan Cross at the University
Speaker 2: of Michigan wrote a book called Chatter, and the way
Speaker 2: I would describe what he is teaching is a kind
Speaker 2: of internal counter programming where you kind of talk back
Speaker 2: to your thoughts. And so I want to be clear
Speaker 2: that I'm speaking here, not you know, from the mountaintop
Speaker 2: as some expert. I'm sure I'm leaving out CBT or
Speaker 2: DBT or lots of other modalities. These are just the
Speaker 2: five that have worked for me.
Speaker 1: Yep, I think you've talked to many of these people.
Speaker 1: I've talked to many of the same people. I'm curious
Speaker 1: your experience with IFS. When did that enter your life
Speaker 1: and what did it look like for you.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't have extensive experience with Richard Schwartz, the
Speaker 2: godfather of IFS. Internal Family Systems, came on my show
Speaker 2: and we actually did a session live just for the uninitiated.
Speaker 2: Here the basics of IFS, and my apologies to Richard
Speaker 2: if I'm mangling this, but you look at the term
Speaker 2: of art within IFS is parts of your mind. You
Speaker 2: just kind of do a taxonomy of the various parts
Speaker 2: of your mind. You may have a prominent jealous mode,
Speaker 2: a prominent anger mode, a generous mode, whatever these If
Speaker 2: you've ever seen the movie Inside Out, the Pixar movie
Speaker 2: where they have all these different characters representing human emotions,
Speaker 2: that's not far off from the IFS model.
Speaker 4: And in the.
Speaker 2: IFS model, you actually give the characters' names. And I
Speaker 2: haven't done much IFS therapy beyond the one experience with Richard,
Speaker 2: which was very interesting. We got a lot of response
Speaker 2: to that. Before I met Richard, I had given names
Speaker 2: to the inner characters, which I found to be quite dopey.
Speaker 2: At first. I was like, I'm not going to name
Speaker 2: my inner characters. But actually, many of these practices, at
Speaker 2: least of people like me who or skeptics at first,
Speaker 2: are going to appear either dope or forced or annoying.
Speaker 2: But I often think of this great quote I heard
Speaker 2: from a meditation teacher. I don't know who said it,
Speaker 2: but I love it. Somebody was complaining to some meditation
Speaker 2: teacher about some of the Buddhist practices that we will,
Speaker 2: I think eventually get to being cheesy, and the teacher said, well,
Speaker 2: if you can't be cheesy, you can't be free.
Speaker 4: And I think.
Speaker 2: That's I think that's very true in my experience, and
Speaker 2: you've got to kind of get over yourself to do
Speaker 2: this awkward stuff. And the cop I often use is
Speaker 2: exercise If you landed here on Earth from another planet
Speaker 2: and you went to a gym, you would think this
Speaker 2: is nuts. People are running in place for thirty minutes
Speaker 2: and then systematically picking up and putting down heavy things.
Speaker 4: What is going on?
Speaker 2: This is ridiculous, But we call that exercise because we
Speaker 2: know that repetitive motion, repetitive exercise can lead to cardiovascular
Speaker 2: and muscular benefits, And the same is true with your
Speaker 2: brain and by extension, your mind. And that's what's on
Speaker 2: offer here. So in terms of ifs, yes, I found
Speaker 2: the idea of labeling my inner characters. One of them
Speaker 2: might call RJ or Robert Johnson, who was my grandfather,
Speaker 2: complicated dude, had many good parts to his own personality,
Speaker 2: but was quite an angry man and could be abusive
Speaker 2: in a bully And I see that in my own
Speaker 2: inner repertoire quite clearly, unfortunately, And so just giving it
Speaker 2: a name and being able to, I don't know, usefully
Speaker 2: objectifies it. Instead of having this miismatic juggernaut feel within
Speaker 2: your head, it's just like, oh, yeah, that's just one
Speaker 2: aspect of my mind and I can work with it
Speaker 2: better once I've identified it.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense one hundred percent? You know? Acceptance
Speaker 1: and commitment therapy is another one that often encourages you
Speaker 1: to give a name to these things because it just
Speaker 1: to use the Ethan cross term, it gives you a
Speaker 1: measure of self distancing. And I think I listened to
Speaker 1: your interview with Richard in preparation for one that I did,
Speaker 1: and I think I did something similar to you where
Speaker 1: we did a little of the work online. I remember,
Speaker 1: and it was the exact experience that I have and
Speaker 1: I often have with that stuff where I think you
Speaker 1: were like, I don't know if I'm really feeling that
Speaker 1: or if I'm just making this up, Like what's actually
Speaker 1: going on in here? Right? This stuff gets so complicated,
Speaker 1: and you know it's like we know, you know, he's
Speaker 1: asking a question apart, and you know that the part
Speaker 1: is supposed to have some kind of answer, so an
Speaker 1: answer comes, and why is that the real answer? I mean,
Speaker 1: I did this was a long time ago. This is
Speaker 1: probably two thousand, so twenty five years ago. I did
Speaker 1: some therapy work after my first marriage failed, and it
Speaker 1: was under the rubric of inner child work, that was
Speaker 1: what it was called. And I just couldn't stand that name.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of it made me a little bit crazy.
Speaker 1: But when I looked at what was going on inside
Speaker 1: of me and I went like, Oh, there do seem
Speaker 1: to be these times that the way my brain and
Speaker 1: my mind is reacting is exactly like what a three
Speaker 1: year old would be reacting like. I kind of went, well,
Speaker 1: I kind of could get over myself here and recke
Speaker 1: that this makes sense. I may choose to call it
Speaker 1: something different. And you know you're a skeptical guy. You
Speaker 1: talk about in your Ted talk. You know how putting
Speaker 1: your hand on your heart initially for self compassion made
Speaker 1: you cringe. I think we both come from a very
Speaker 1: similar place with all that stuff, and yet a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff really does seem to help. And I
Speaker 1: love that phrase. If you can't what was it, if
Speaker 1: you can't get cheesy, you can't get free?
Speaker 4: Something like that. Yeah, something like that. That's really good.
Speaker 2: It is, Yeah, your inner child experience. I resonate with that.
Speaker 2: Ifs says Richard did with me and with you, he
Speaker 2: basically has, you know, the same part of you talk
Speaker 2: to the various insane parts of you. Or maybe that's
Speaker 2: probably an overly negative way to describe it, but the
Speaker 2: various parts of your personality, you have a dialogue with them,
Speaker 2: and doing that feels very strange, and you're not even sure,
Speaker 2: like am I articulating what that part really thinks.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's very strange. Yeah, And so I'm not saying you,
Speaker 2: dear listener, need to do all of these things. What
Speaker 2: I'm saying is, in my experience, it's very helpful and
Speaker 2: just to repeat your phrase, Eric, getting over yourself can
Speaker 2: really be a key to dealing with some of these things.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about five broad approaches that have worked
Speaker 1: for you, that have been really important, And in your
Speaker 1: TED talk you say, the massively empowering news is that
Speaker 1: love is not an unalterable factory setting. It is a
Speaker 1: skill you can train. It's actually a family of skills.
Speaker 1: And I was kind of curious, are these the skills
Speaker 1: that you mean? The things we just listed here, the
Speaker 1: self compassion, the compassion for others, or the loving kindness,
Speaker 1: the ifs work. Are these sort of to you that
Speaker 1: family of skills or did you have something else in
Speaker 1: mind when you use that line in the TED talk.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think those five skills that I reference,
Speaker 2: those five modalities that I referenced earlier, are all really
Speaker 2: good for inner work. But there are other skills that
Speaker 2: I would also put in the family of love skills.
Speaker 2: And as you know, I defined love quite broadly, not
Speaker 2: just romantic or familiar love, but just our capacity to
Speaker 2: give a shit, which is wired into us via evolution.
Speaker 2: You know, we are social animals. We needed to have
Speaker 2: this care capacity, and it's omnidirectional that it applies not
Speaker 2: only to people in your life, but also to yourself.
Speaker 2: And so those five skills that I was referencing, yeah,
Speaker 2: those are all really kind of on the self love
Speaker 2: side of the spectrum, you know, having a better relationship
Speaker 2: with yourself, which of course inexorably leads to better treatment
Speaker 2: of other people. But there are skills in the family
Speaker 2: that I think are really just about working, you know,
Speaker 2: with other people in a more effective way. Communication skills
Speaker 2: I would put right there at the top.
Speaker 4: I've spent a.
Speaker 2: Couple of years, maybe five years, I think coming up
Speaker 2: in five years, working with a pair of Buddhist inflective
Speaker 2: communications coaches who have utterly changed the way I interact
Speaker 2: with other people.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, that's just one example.
Speaker 2: Is or in one of those so Orang j Soher
Speaker 2: is an incredible meditation teacher who's been on my podcast.
Speaker 2: It teaches on the ten percent happier meditation app and
Speaker 2: he has written extensively and he's written a whole book
Speaker 2: about how to communicate better. The coaches that I work
Speaker 2: with are slightly different. Their names are Dan Klerman and
Speaker 2: Moodita Nisker. If you're looking for great guests for your show,
Speaker 2: I highly recommend them. They're incredible and their system, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, a bit simpler than Orrin's, and so I've
Speaker 2: gravitated in that direction. Or bases his stuff on non
Speaker 2: violent communication, which is this incredible system for communication. Dan
Speaker 2: and Moudita. It's a little bit more stripped down and
Speaker 2: I've just found it very easy to get into. It's
Speaker 2: easy to understand, very hard to do.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, there's a book out there. They wrote
Speaker 1: a number of them. One of my favorites is Crucial Conversations,
Speaker 1: and they've got other ones Patterson and Carrie and different people,
Speaker 1: and that's always been the one that just like turned
Speaker 1: on a light in my head about like how do
Speaker 1: you relate to other people? And you know, they were
Speaker 1: talking about this sort of idea of you know, psychological safety,
Speaker 1: you know, decades before it became a buzzword like it
Speaker 1: is today. So you recently mentioned on your podcast that
Speaker 1: you've had a resurgent and very inconvenient set of panic
Speaker 1: attacks recently. And I very recently have had something come
Speaker 1: up in my life that I can't really share much
Speaker 1: about because other people are involved, but it has caused
Speaker 1: me to have a level of anxiety that it's been
Speaker 1: twenty years since I felt anything like it, and it
Speaker 1: creeps up towards panic, you know. And so I thought
Speaker 1: maybe we could talk a little bit about what works
Speaker 1: for you there. You know, you've got a great recent
Speaker 1: podcast with don't have her name in front of me.
Speaker 4: Yes, doctor Lewana Marquez.
Speaker 1: So do you have any sense of why the panic
Speaker 1: resurfaced for you after having worked with it skillfully for
Speaker 1: a number of years or is that not even important
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 2: That's definitely important to me, this sister rich area. I
Speaker 2: have so many things to say. I'm going to try
Speaker 2: to do what the aforementioned Dan and Wouldita often urge
Speaker 2: me to do, which is to chunk rather than flood,
Speaker 2: to not say too much at one time, rather than
Speaker 2: flooding you with information, to give it out in chunks.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about what's going on with you.
Speaker 2: I think an important definitional thing to get straight up
Speaker 2: front is there's in my mind at least a difference
Speaker 2: between panic and anxiety. I mean, I think anxiety at
Speaker 2: its peak can become panic, but I have found different
Speaker 2: ways to deal with both. So, for example, for me,
Speaker 2: my recent bouts of panic have almost all been brought
Speaker 2: on by the two triggers that have always been there
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 4: One is public speaking.
Speaker 2: My most famous panic attack was on television in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four.
Speaker 1: What's it like to have a famous panic attack? Yeah,
Speaker 1: most people don't say that my most famous panic attack.
Speaker 2: I often joke about how I've been dining out on
Speaker 2: that story for a long time. Yeah, it's turned out
Speaker 2: to be great to have a famous panic attack at
Speaker 2: the beginning of a new career. But it's not great
Speaker 2: to have panic attacks. And in the fall of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, I started having panic attacks not only when
Speaker 2: I had to give public speaking, but also when I
Speaker 2: was in situations where I felt trapped physically, so elevators
Speaker 2: and airplanes. And I had struggled occasionally with elevators, you know,
Speaker 2: over the years, but never like this. I was having
Speaker 2: to if I was in the city, I would just
Speaker 2: walk up fifteen flights instead of taking the elevator.
Speaker 4: That's how terrified I was.
Speaker 2: And I was either getting off of planes because I
Speaker 2: was unwilling to fly, or having to take a lot
Speaker 2: of klonopin in order to get myself onto the plane.
Speaker 2: It was very embarrassing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Here I am mister meditation guru, not really a guru,
Speaker 2: but meditation evangelists is the phrase I often use, and
Speaker 2: you know, mental health quote unquote expert, and I'm freaking out.
Speaker 2: I can't even get on a fucking plane. And that
Speaker 2: was very embarrassing and demoralizing. The good news, though, is
Speaker 2: that I did a bunch of exposure therapy where I
Speaker 2: literally rode in elevators with a shrink, you know. I
Speaker 2: did it over the course of months, and I consistently,
Speaker 2: you know, went back on planes, and sometimes I had
Speaker 2: to take meds, but then I would taper down so
Speaker 2: that I was taking very small doses and then none.
Speaker 4: I just went at it.
Speaker 2: I want to say aggressively, but that's not the right term,
Speaker 2: but I would say persistently and doggedly. I really just
Speaker 2: did not want to let my life get small because
Speaker 2: panic was stopping me from doing things and it really worked.
Speaker 4: It really worked.
Speaker 2: I'm on planes and in elevators now and sometimes I
Speaker 2: feel a little nervous, but it's really helpful. I'm going
Speaker 2: to stop talking in a second, but i just want
Speaker 2: to say that to me, that high high high anxiety
Speaker 2: of panic is slightly different from daily anxiety, even when
Speaker 2: it rises to a level where it's kind of debilitating.
Speaker 4: And I use different tools for each.
Speaker 1: So what to you is the difference between something that
Speaker 1: would be like high anxiety and panic.
Speaker 2: Oh so I kind of think if high anxiety and
Speaker 2: panic is the same thing as opposed to you know,
Speaker 2: garden anxiety, background static of fear or so.
Speaker 4: I'm not really an expert.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm an expert in my own experience, but
Speaker 2: this is my way of thinking about it. You know,
Speaker 2: the daily background of fear that I think I certainly
Speaker 2: live with. Somebody with anxiety can go up or down
Speaker 2: depending on the circumstances or whether I've slept or whatever,
Speaker 2: and it can get pretty high and really be intrusive.
Speaker 2: But panic or high anxiety is when fight or flight
Speaker 2: really kicks in and your heart race's lungs sees up.
Speaker 2: You're completely debilitated, and you feel like you're having a
Speaker 2: heart attack. So to me, that's the bright line.
Speaker 1: Yep, because we know that what we might call garden
Speaker 1: variety anxiety, which makes it sound like a lady's gardening club,
Speaker 1: which is not what it feels like. There tend to
Speaker 1: be two elements to it in my mind, right, there's
Speaker 1: all the thought patterns, and then there's the degree of
Speaker 1: fear in the body. Yeah, and so you're saying that
Speaker 1: from your perspective, panic is when that fear is at
Speaker 1: like a ten, whereas if it's only at an eight,
Speaker 1: that's anxiety to you. Even though you might notice that
Speaker 1: your heart is racing, you might notice that you're feeling
Speaker 1: a little bit short of breath. You might notice like, okay,
Speaker 1: I can't quite get my bearings here.
Speaker 2: Yes, what you just did there is called reflective listening,
Speaker 2: where you this is a thing I learned from Dan
Speaker 2: and Moudito, which is you repeated back to me in
Speaker 2: a more succinct fashion what I was trying to say
Speaker 2: in your own words, and yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: Well, you and I both sort of do it for
Speaker 1: a living, so I should be good at it after
Speaker 1: almost a decade, you know, if not, I picked the
Speaker 1: wrong field. And so you've got a cue events, you've
Speaker 1: got to give a public talk, you've got to get
Speaker 1: on an elevator. Those cause panic. The rest of the anxiety,
Speaker 1: you know, does it get up into that seven eight
Speaker 1: level for you? Or is that mostly floating? And again
Speaker 1: I'm talking less about the thoughts and more about the
Speaker 1: physical sensations.
Speaker 4: Yeah to me.
Speaker 2: And again I cannot stress strongly enough. I'm not a
Speaker 2: clinician and I'm not an expert in this, but the
Speaker 2: stuff that's giving me garden variety anxiety. And yes, I
Speaker 2: agree with you. There are the thoughts and then they're
Speaker 2: the physical manifestations rarely gets close to panic. I can
Speaker 2: get very angry or very distracted. I'm not able to
Speaker 2: focus on stuff because I'm worried. But the source of
Speaker 2: the daily anxiety is quite different, at least consciously.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: I think subconsciously maybe all the same thing.
Speaker 2: But what's giving me anxiety on a day to day
Speaker 2: basis is not claustrophobia.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What gives me panic on the regular is claustrophobia or
Speaker 2: public look speeding yep.
Speaker 1: And you said you had some theories as to why
Speaker 1: it was resurfacing. If you're comfortable sharing it. No, I
Speaker 1: don't mind sharing it at all.
Speaker 2: I think when very practical explanations that we were in
Speaker 2: a pandemic, so I wasn't getting on airplanes as much,
Speaker 2: and I had moved out of the city where I
Speaker 2: lived in New York City to the suburbs with my family,
Speaker 2: and so I wasn't getting on elevators as much. And
Speaker 2: so after a couple of years of not being exposed,
Speaker 2: when I started getting back onto planes, especially with masks on,
Speaker 2: it was harder for me to do. And it was
Speaker 2: just one experience I had where I was getting on
Speaker 2: a flight to LA for a big talk and I
Speaker 2: was getting over COVID. I was clear to travel, but
Speaker 2: I had to have a kN ninety five on and
Speaker 2: I was sitting on the plane. I hadn't been on
Speaker 2: a plane in a long time, and I had the
Speaker 2: mask on, and I didn't feel good and I started
Speaker 2: to freak out and I got off the plane, and
Speaker 2: that just set me so far back. And then it
Speaker 2: just started showing up everywhere. And that's in my experience,
Speaker 2: the way panic works. Once it creeps in, it just
Speaker 2: metastasizes into lots of areas.
Speaker 4: Of your life.
Speaker 2: And if you're not really on top of it. You
Speaker 2: can start pulling back from everything, you know, not doing
Speaker 2: the things that might give you panic, and then your
Speaker 2: life gets super small. Right, And so luckily I have
Speaker 2: a lot of experience like you do, interviewing mental health experts.
Speaker 2: I just started calling my shrink. I called doctor Marquez
Speaker 2: and got some advice from her, and I just started
Speaker 2: getting treated right away, but it took months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I find what you just shared and
Speaker 1: the fact that you are sharing it to be courageous
Speaker 1: in kind of like you said that you are positioned
Speaker 1: in a certain way in the world. You know, I
Speaker 1: know I do this with myself when I'm struggling. I'm like,
Speaker 1: You've interviewed all the leading people in the world about
Speaker 1: this stuff. You teach programs on this stuff, like what
Speaker 1: is the matter with you? The Buddhist idea of the
Speaker 1: second arrow and the shame that comes with it can
Speaker 1: be so pernicious.
Speaker 4: Yes, it, Kain.
Speaker 2: The second Arrow is a great story, another great parable.
Speaker 2: I think maybe it's technically not a parable, but it's
Speaker 2: a great story from the Buddhist canon of guys walking
Speaker 2: through the woods gets hit by an arrow and that
Speaker 2: hurts obviously, and then starts telling himself a whole story
Speaker 2: about like why if I always the guy gets hit
Speaker 2: by the arrow and now I'm not gonna be able
Speaker 2: to make dinner tonight and all that stuff. And that's
Speaker 2: the second arrow that we inject voluntarily. And I think
Speaker 2: we're doing this to ourselves all the time. And I
Speaker 2: think what has been helpful for me, as allegedly an
Speaker 2: expert in mental health and meditation and Buddhism, who you know,
Speaker 2: continues to make lots of mistakes and have lots of
Speaker 2: setbacks in his life, is to recognize that this was
Speaker 2: never promised to be linear personal development, personal growth, the
Speaker 2: spiritual path not a phrase I love.
Speaker 4: It's not supposed to.
Speaker 2: Be like a hockey stick that just goes up in
Speaker 2: an uninterrupted way, like the life is going to happen
Speaker 2: to you. And I think it's just been important for
Speaker 2: me to remind myself of that, and it's another example
Speaker 2: of self love.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, that is the way we tend to think
Speaker 1: about growth, as in it goes in one direction, and
Speaker 1: when it doesn't, it can be very very discouraging. And
Speaker 1: you know, I often think of it almost like a
Speaker 1: I don't know who I heard say this, but like
Speaker 1: a spiral staircase, you know, like if you go on
Speaker 1: a spiral staircase, you may come buy that very scary picture.
Speaker 1: But ideally when you get to it next time, you're
Speaker 1: slightly better than before, or at least have more tools
Speaker 1: in how to work with it than before. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the picture doesn't scare a shit out
Speaker 1: of you.
Speaker 2: Yes, a friend of mine told me a story about
Speaker 2: something that his shrink said to him. My friend was
Speaker 2: complaining to his shrink about how he yet again made
Speaker 2: the same mistake that he had made a million times.
Speaker 2: I can't believe I did this you know thing x
Speaker 2: again And the shrink said, was it as bad.
Speaker 4: As the last time?
Speaker 2: That's just a great way to look at it, you know,
Speaker 2: And that is a great way to remove the second arrow.
Speaker 1: I think it's so important to do what you are
Speaker 1: doing or I'm attempting to do, which is to share
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter where you get in life, you know,
Speaker 1: life still can kick your ass. And I've talked to
Speaker 1: enough people and I think you have too where I've
Speaker 1: recognized that. After a while, I was like, Oh, they're
Speaker 1: incredibly wise people. They have a lot to share with
Speaker 1: the world, and they still have their moments. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: some people I don't know, like the Dalai Lama, so
Speaker 1: you might say, well, not the Dalai Lama. There's some
Speaker 1: people that maybe get to a different level, but most
Speaker 1: of us in Western society, there is some degree of
Speaker 1: life still comes at you and sometimes it takes a
Speaker 1: while to recalibrate.
Speaker 4: Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2: One of the best Buddhist book titles is by a
Speaker 2: teacher named Jack Cornfield, incredible meditation teacher, and he wrote
Speaker 2: a book called After the Ecstasy the Laundry yep. And
Speaker 2: you know, you can have these incredible transformative experiences in meditation,
Speaker 2: with psychedelics, in therapy, in nature, and then you got
Speaker 2: to do the laundry, and sometimes the laundry sucks.
Speaker 1: Yep. So a recent podcast series that you guys started
Speaker 1: doing I love the idea of and the question really
Speaker 1: is can you get fit sanely right in that you know,
Speaker 1: many of us have a relationship with exercise that has
Speaker 1: been driven by very often poor body image or insecurity
Speaker 1: or trying to look a certain way or going overboard.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, what did you learn from doing that
Speaker 1: series about getting fit in a sane way. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm asking you to condense what were many episodes into
Speaker 1: a few key thoughts, but what were some of the
Speaker 1: big takeaways for you for that?
Speaker 2: First of all, thank you for the kind words about
Speaker 2: the series, and also that it was six episodes and
Speaker 2: so there was so much stuff in there. But the
Speaker 2: thing that leaps to mind as you asked me that question, like,
Speaker 2: what was the takeaway when after interviewing all of these
Speaker 2: experts in getting healthier in various ways. One of the
Speaker 2: people we interviewed was a teacher named Kara Lai. Lai
Speaker 2: is her last name. She's a Buddhist teacher and also
Speaker 2: a social worker and used to run marathons barefoot. So
Speaker 2: she was a hardcore exerciser and then got lymes disease
Speaker 2: and has really not been able to exercise as much
Speaker 2: and has really wrestled with that. And she talked a
Speaker 2: lot about why we exercise, like what is driving you
Speaker 2: to do this? And that really got me thinking, like
Speaker 2: why am I spending so much time in the gym?
Speaker 2: What is my motivation? Is it to keep up with
Speaker 2: people I'm seeing on Instagram?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think in part and that's fine. We live in
Speaker 2: this culture where to be impacted by the culture. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that it's bad to have that motivation. What
Speaker 2: I'm saying is is that the fuel you want, can
Speaker 2: we switch to something else and what impact might that have?
Speaker 4: So, for example, can.
Speaker 2: I really consciously boost my attention on my motivation being
Speaker 2: staying healthy for my now eight year old son as
Speaker 2: he gets older, and what would the ramifications of that be. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll spend less time working on my biceps because
Speaker 2: I like the way my arms look in T shirts,
Speaker 2: and more time working on I don't know my core
Speaker 2: because that will help me get up or tie my
Speaker 2: own shoes when I'm one hundred if I live that long.
Speaker 2: And so I think it can change your goals and
Speaker 2: also it can really, in my experience, lead to stickier habits.
Speaker 2: You know, if I've tried to get into the habit.
Speaker 2: And again, this is going to be one of those
Speaker 2: things that's going to sound cheesy, but of you know,
Speaker 2: when I get on the exercise bike or I this morning,
Speaker 2: I took a run, just taking a second and saying like,
Speaker 2: I'm doing this to make myself happier and stronger so
Speaker 2: that I can make other people happier and stronger, and
Speaker 2: so that I can be around for my son and
Speaker 2: my wife.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I have.
Speaker 2: More grit in my exercise regime, and my priorities have
Speaker 2: changed because my motivation is clearer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I also think that for whatever reason, the fuel, the
Speaker 1: ego fuel, doesn't work for me in the way that
Speaker 1: it did when I was twenty five. It's just not
Speaker 1: strong enough necessarily to get me to do it consistently.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest change for me was when I realized, like,
Speaker 1: like you said, this makes me healthier and stronger. And
Speaker 1: for me it was really emotionally and mentally when I realized, like,
Speaker 1: emotionally and mentally, this is the practice that is better
Speaker 1: for me than any of the others. If I had
Speaker 1: to set meditation aside, if I could keep one of
Speaker 1: the two, I would say, let me keep exercise, you know,
Speaker 1: let me keep exercise strictly from a mental health emotional
Speaker 1: health perspective. And that's really good because it shrinks the
Speaker 1: time horizon between like the action and the reward. You know,
Speaker 1: even wanting to be healthy for your son, there's a
Speaker 1: way in which you can be like wow, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I got twenty more good years before I
Speaker 1: have to really start to worry about that. Whereas I'm like,
Speaker 1: if I want to feel better this afternoon, so I can,
Speaker 1: you know, have more energy, Like the benefit is so
Speaker 1: close as humans, the bigger that span gets between the
Speaker 1: action and the benefit, the harder it is to sort
Speaker 1: of really work with ourselves more facing resistance.
Speaker 4: I agree.
Speaker 2: And if you're doing a class in the you know,
Speaker 2: just say you're doing spin quite a bit and sometimes
Speaker 2: the teachers having you sprint a bunch and it can
Speaker 2: be nice to picture my son or my wife in
Speaker 2: those moments. Yeah, So I think it's yes. And a
Speaker 2: shorter time horizon is always a powerful motivator, and if
Speaker 2: I'm doing it for my own abs, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be less likely to push that hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I interviewed a woman years ago and she had
Speaker 1: done some research on this, and I've asked her since, like,
Speaker 1: has this really been replicated or not? And I'm kind
Speaker 1: of curious what you think about it because it was
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to me, and I don't know that I think
Speaker 1: it's true. And she said that when you start to
Speaker 1: layer multiple motivations on you, weaken what can be a
Speaker 1: primary motivation, and to me, I've always been under the
Speaker 1: school of thought of like, you know what, have a
Speaker 1: bunch of them, because different ones may pull me through
Speaker 1: on a different day and again, and when I talked
Speaker 1: to her, she was like, I don't know how well
Speaker 1: that's really been replicated. I think it gets to the
Speaker 1: intrinsic extrinsic motivation debate, and people say, well, if you
Speaker 1: reward somebody for doing something with just money, they have
Speaker 1: less intrinsic reward to do it. And I've just found
Speaker 1: that most things in my life seem to be a
Speaker 1: blend of those things anyway, and that leaning into that
Speaker 1: has been helpful for me. But I'm kind of curious
Speaker 1: what you think.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't really know. What's coming to mind is
Speaker 2: something that my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein has often said
Speaker 2: to me and others, which is that if you look
Speaker 2: carefully at your motivations, and it's not just your motivation
Speaker 2: to exercise, it can be your motivation for saying a
Speaker 2: certain thing in any given moment, or for having a
Speaker 2: career goal or whatever, you'll probably see a range from
Speaker 2: the high minded to the crass. That just feels like
Speaker 2: a part of human nature, that we have many motivations,
Speaker 2: seen and unseen, and a good life goal is to
Speaker 2: try to emphasize the wholesome and de emphasize the unwholesome.
Speaker 1: I've heard you talk about this, and I've thought about
Speaker 1: it a lot over the years, particularly as I went
Speaker 1: from doing this is something that I just did because
Speaker 1: I wanted to do it, to something that paid the bills.
Speaker 1: You know, the motivations start to get confused, and instead
Speaker 1: of making that a problem, right, I just kind of go, well,
Speaker 1: of course I'm motivated by making money, because everybody is
Speaker 1: motivated by making money to some degree, and now it's.
Speaker 4: How I make a living.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm motivated by being seen and approved of.
Speaker 1: But can I try, like you said, to focus more
Speaker 1: of my energy intention on the more wholesome motivations, you know,
Speaker 1: Can I try and let that be what drives me
Speaker 1: more without making it a problem that these other things
Speaker 1: are there, Because like what your teacher Joseph said, it
Speaker 1: just feels fundamentally true to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I've had that conversation with myself that
Speaker 2: you just described of I'm out here supposedly helping people,
Speaker 2: but you know, am I just lining my own pockets
Speaker 2: or just you know, trying to get clout or influence
Speaker 2: or fame or whatever. And I have gone down the
Speaker 2: toilet on that many times. I had a really useful
Speaker 2: conversation about this with a guy who I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: Jerry Colonna, who's also might be a good guest for
Speaker 2: this show. He's quite a famous executive coach, and he's
Speaker 2: also written a bunch of books about leadership and from
Speaker 2: a really sort of psychological slash Buddhist perspective, and I've
Speaker 2: found his stuff to be very helpful, both one on
Speaker 2: one end and his public pronouncements. And I was talking
Speaker 2: to Jerry once about, you know, my motivations and raising
Speaker 2: the question of whether I'm maybe broken in some way,
Speaker 2: and he's like, look, you know, we all have the
Speaker 2: desire for money and to be liked by our fellow mammals,
Speaker 2: and that's natural, and can you just look at it
Speaker 2: as like an exchange of and he used the term love,
Speaker 2: which is a complex word and carries a lot of
Speaker 2: cultural baggage, But back to my sort of capacious, broad
Speaker 2: understanding of it, can you look at this as an
Speaker 2: exchange of love? And I think this applies to you Eric, like, yes,
Speaker 2: you get paid for doing this podcast, and you might
Speaker 2: get more Twitter followers, or somebody stops you in an
Speaker 2: airport and says they love your show, and all of
Speaker 2: that makes you feel good and makes you safe and
Speaker 2: gives you the capacity to do more good work to
Speaker 2: help more people, and that's a beneficial cycle.
Speaker 1: Yep, I agree. I definitely go that way. You did
Speaker 1: a recent thing for the podcast Meditative story with that team,
Speaker 1: and you did an episode where you sho taking a
Speaker 1: trip with your son and it's a really beautiful episode.
Speaker 1: We had Rohan on recently and he did a meditation
Speaker 1: based on the two Wolf parable. But I loved your
Speaker 1: story in that talking about how spending time one on
Speaker 1: one with him kind of brought you together. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious, you know, this was sort of your
Speaker 1: first trip, you know, with your son, and I don't
Speaker 1: know when you recorded that episode, but I'm kind of
Speaker 1: curious has that trend of spending time with your son
Speaker 1: one on one in that way continued, and as it
Speaker 1: continued to sort of be a way of giving you
Speaker 1: more quality time with him in a way that still
Speaker 1: feels really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on thousand percent, So I did this story for
Speaker 2: meditative story about how what my son was for. I
Speaker 2: think I took him on the road with me to
Speaker 2: go see my parents. We went from New York to Boston.
Speaker 2: My parents were living in Boston at the time, so
Speaker 2: this was pre pandemic. He's eight now, Okay, so this
Speaker 2: is a while ago. Yeah, it was a while ago,
Speaker 2: but there's some cool updates. And I, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 2: I hope this is obvious. I love my son. I
Speaker 2: loved him then, and I was at a time in
Speaker 2: my life where I was working all the time. You know,
Speaker 2: I was working nights on Nightline and weekends on Good
Speaker 2: Morning America, and I was traveling to give speeches, I
Speaker 2: was writing books, I was traveling to do investigative television stories.
Speaker 2: I was hosting a podcast, I started a meditation app.
Speaker 2: It was insane and as a consequence, I didn't get
Speaker 2: that much time with my son, and he really didn't
Speaker 2: have time for me when I was around. He was
Speaker 2: just like all about his mother, and it just brought
Speaker 2: me back into the place of feeling like I was
Speaker 2: a monster. And so I took him on this trip
Speaker 2: and we had a great time. And you can listen
Speaker 2: to the episode if you want. But the update is
Speaker 2: that now he travels with me all the time. So
Speaker 2: I do a lot of corporate speaking and will fly
Speaker 2: around the country to talk to different professional groups or corporations.
Speaker 2: And so I have this eight year old who is
Speaker 2: my right hand man, and I pull him out of
Speaker 2: school and we go. And so we just did a
Speaker 2: ten day trip where I had three speeches, one in Vegas,
Speaker 2: one in New Orleans, one in Jackson Hole. And he's
Speaker 2: my little guy, and it's awesome. We are really close now.
Speaker 2: And part of that is because of the travel, part
Speaker 2: of it is because I'm not working as much, and
Speaker 2: part of it is because he's gotten older and I'm
Speaker 2: a little bit more interesting to him. But it's phenomenal.
Speaker 2: It's completely changed our relationship. And what did he say
Speaker 2: to me in the middle of the recent trip. He said, Daddy,
Speaker 2: I love you, but I'm sick of you. He's got
Speaker 2: a sassy mouth on him.
Speaker 1: Eight is such a great age, you know, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're all great ages, but five to ten
Speaker 1: just felt like the glory years to me.
Speaker 4: I was just like, how many kids you have?
Speaker 1: Just one? And he is grown and he is currently
Speaker 1: a wildland firefighter, so he's been in Canada for much
Speaker 1: of the summer. But I loved that five to ten range.
Speaker 1: When I was listening to that story, it took me back.
Speaker 1: His mother and I split when he was like two
Speaker 1: and a half, and he was very attached to his mother,
Speaker 1: which you know, as a two and a half year old,
Speaker 1: you know, she was home with him all the time
Speaker 1: I was working, you know, similar, similar dynamic, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden had this two and a half year
Speaker 1: old all by myself for stretches of time, and it
Speaker 1: was difficult in some ways, but I'm so glad also
Speaker 1: that it gave me a relationship with him that was
Speaker 1: just different than it would have been had I remained
Speaker 1: sort of the secondary parent, you know, or the parent
Speaker 1: that wasn't around as much. And so suddenly I was
Speaker 1: getting these big blocks of time with him. So when
Speaker 1: I heard that story, it kind of took me back to,
Speaker 1: you know, the sweetness of that one on one time,
Speaker 1: not that time with like you and your wife and son.
Speaker 1: I'm sure isn't wonderful also, but there is a difference there, definitely.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you get asked this question a lot,
Speaker 1: but I can't resist it, but I'm sure you get
Speaker 1: asked it a lot because it's the obvious question, which is,
Speaker 1: you know you are a decade or so off of
Speaker 1: writing ten percent Happier. It's a great book title, right,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you wouldn't change the book title because it's
Speaker 1: so good. Would you change the degree to which you
Speaker 1: think these things have made you happier?
Speaker 4: Better?
Speaker 1: Is ten percent really the right number or would you
Speaker 1: revise that upwards to some bigger number.
Speaker 2: I have never been good at math, and I came
Speaker 2: up with this title, and as a consequence, get math
Speaker 2: questions a lot. So the way I think about it,
Speaker 2: and I actually think this is a very important question
Speaker 2: love getting it is. I'm going to make a math
Speaker 2: assertion here, just with the caveat that I'm not good
Speaker 2: at math, but I think about it like an investment,
Speaker 2: and the ten percent compounds annually, and so I'm way
Speaker 2: more than ten percent happier ten years out from writing
Speaker 2: that book. I think it's because you just have to
Speaker 2: keep at it. These skills of mindfulness, compassion, calm, concentration,
Speaker 2: the various skills that can be taught through meditation, You
Speaker 2: just keep getting better, and there's not as much of
Speaker 2: a physical limitations, like there's a ceiling on how good
Speaker 2: I can get at basketball. You can go pretty far
Speaker 2: in the interior realm, and I'm not saying that I've
Speaker 2: gone that far, but I like the possibility.
Speaker 1: I love that answer, and it speaks very much to
Speaker 1: what I think is a truth, which is, if you
Speaker 1: were to compare how much happier you are in the
Speaker 1: recent time, you might go, well, I'm yeah, I'm getting
Speaker 1: a little bit better, you know. But the cumulation of that,
Speaker 1: you know, I've studied a lot in the Zen tradition,
Speaker 1: particularly in Rinzi and co On Zen, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of focus on satori right, these moments of just
Speaker 1: like bamn thundercloud enlightenment. Right. You know, I've been fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to have some really profound experiences in that way.
Speaker 1: But I often think about this, and I've said this
Speaker 1: on the show a bunch of times, that I think
Speaker 1: if you were to take the twenty three year old
Speaker 1: version of me, who was a homeless heroin addict, and
Speaker 1: you were to drop him into this brain today, he
Speaker 1: would think he was suddenly enlightened. Because the gap between
Speaker 1: where I am now and where I was then is
Speaker 1: so vast. The gap between where I am now and
Speaker 1: where I was last year might not be in the
Speaker 1: same way. It's harder to see. It's you know the
Speaker 1: nature of progres, and to your point, it's not always linear.
Speaker 1: But I do think that answer of compounding really does
Speaker 1: make sense to me that over time I've radically transformed
Speaker 1: as a person due to many of the things that
Speaker 1: we've talked about on this show. The psychological principles, the
Speaker 1: Buddhist principles, you know, all these different things have made
Speaker 1: such a big difference over time. So I love that
Speaker 1: answer that, yeah, you may not expect to earn more
Speaker 1: than ten percent in a year. And to take your
Speaker 1: market analogy further, you know, if you talk with the
Speaker 1: financial planner, they'll say, well, you know, we think we
Speaker 1: can get you like seven percent over the long term,
Speaker 1: knowing that some years you're going to get fourteen percent
Speaker 1: and some years you're going to get one percent, and
Speaker 1: that over time it's going to sort of average out.
Speaker 1: And that feels like a apt way of thinking about
Speaker 1: the growth and healing journey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I love your story. That's amazing. It's
Speaker 2: incredible that you've been able to make that progress and
Speaker 2: I think the takeaway for people listening is that you
Speaker 2: shouldn't get too hung up on the day to day
Speaker 2: improvements in your meditation practic. This you shouldn't be thrusting
Speaker 2: more arrows into your thigh because you lost your temporary
Speaker 2: yesterday and you've been meditating for a month and you
Speaker 2: can't believe that happened.
Speaker 4: That's just the way it is.
Speaker 2: The best way to look at it over time is
Speaker 2: from a pretty broad lens. This is a long, long path.
Speaker 2: Joseph Goldstein, who we talked about before, the Great Meditation Teacher,
Speaker 2: sometimes jokes about how when he was a kid, he
Speaker 2: did some gardening and he kept pulling the carrots out
Speaker 2: of the ground to see how they were growing. And
Speaker 2: it's not a great way to garden, and it's not
Speaker 2: a great way to meditate or to engage in any
Speaker 2: kind of personal growth if you're just constantly and obsessively
Speaker 2: checking your progress.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up. Dan.
Speaker 1: It's lovely to talk with you again and see you again,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 4: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Great conversation.
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