Speaker 1: Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For most of us, the self care, self
Speaker 1: healing thing doesn't exactly come naturally. It took me hitting
Speaker 1: a pretty dark time in my life to realize and
Speaker 1: accept that I had to find a better, kinder, more
Speaker 1: sustainable way to live my life. My guest today can
Speaker 1: definitely relate and in an incredibly pragmatic, relatable way. Get
Speaker 1: ready as we talk about all the voices in our
Speaker 1: heads and some self help that actually works. Dan Harris
Speaker 1: is the man behind the successful and incredibly supportive ten
Speaker 1: Percent Happier website, podcast and best selling book, and I
Speaker 1: am a hundred percent happier to have him on my
Speaker 1: Holy Human podcasting that with me. Welcome to the show,
Speaker 1: Dan Harris. I have to say this is probably my
Speaker 1: most nerve wracking interview. I think I've done nine of
Speaker 1: them so far, and I'm like, oh, ship, how do
Speaker 1: I interview the interviewer? I am, I'll take it easy
Speaker 1: on you, Okay, please do that would be great. You
Speaker 1: should make me sing okay, Well we might get to
Speaker 1: that by the end of this. You never know. Uh No.
Speaker 1: I I'm just so interested because I you know, this
Speaker 1: is like I said, very new to me on this
Speaker 1: side of of the coin, and I know you obviously
Speaker 1: are very proficient in one side of it, and I
Speaker 1: think the other now after doing so many interviews, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: and do you have a favorite side of the coin
Speaker 1: of the interviewer or interviewee. You know, in some ways
Speaker 1: it's actually easier to be interviewed than it is to interview.
Speaker 1: Interviewing is hard, and I'm sure you're yes, you're seeing
Speaker 1: that now because like you, I host a podcast, You've
Speaker 1: been a guest on my podcast, and you want to
Speaker 1: make sure you're drawing people out and making their comfortable
Speaker 1: and also serving the listener, and you're constantly thinking of,
Speaker 1: like what's your next question? But how do I listen
Speaker 1: to this person while they're talking? And it's a lot.
Speaker 1: I was just explaining that to my husband last night.
Speaker 1: I was like, there's a really interesting part about your listening.
Speaker 1: For me, I intuitively want to if I hear something
Speaker 1: that takes me down a certain road, like I'm just
Speaker 1: listening for keywords. At the same time, if I listen
Speaker 1: too hard, it's almost like I stopped listening because it
Speaker 1: all of a sudden just becomes these jumbled words and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, I'm thinking of what question
Speaker 1: am I going to ask them? So yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: new language that I am learning, and it's um it's
Speaker 1: quite fascinating because I've been on the other side for
Speaker 1: so long, so I greatly respect what you do more
Speaker 1: so than ever have. I think, really respect the journalism
Speaker 1: side of things more so than ever. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a new thing. You know what's helped me
Speaker 1: and I'll say this, and you know you can use
Speaker 1: it or not. But UM is to prepare a little
Speaker 1: bit and have like a rough list of questions and
Speaker 1: then when I get into the interview completely drop it
Speaker 1: and just listen to what they're saying and and go
Speaker 1: with whatever the interviewee has said and react to it.
Speaker 1: And then if if they've said something that doesn't take
Speaker 1: me anywhere, I can look down at my list then.
Speaker 1: But so I've done enough preparations so that I don't
Speaker 1: need to be constantly plotting what my next question is.
Speaker 1: And then also to keep a pen and paper handy,
Speaker 1: because often my interviewee will say seventeen things I want
Speaker 1: to follow up on, and instead of trying to hold
Speaker 1: them all in my mind. I just kind of write
Speaker 1: them down quickly and then consult the list later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are great. Actually, I feel like I do the
Speaker 1: first one fairly well, and this is the second one.
Speaker 1: I've never had a pinhandy and I start to go
Speaker 1: through like, oh, that and that and that, and then
Speaker 1: I just lose it all. You're so right about that. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for those wise words. I greatly appreciate them.
Speaker 1: You know, you said I was on your podcast, and
Speaker 1: I have to say that was probably one of the
Speaker 1: favorite interviews that I've ever had, because I believe that
Speaker 1: that was probably the first time that I ever got
Speaker 1: to speak about meditation in a public forum, and it
Speaker 1: has It's changed my life tremendously. I just want to
Speaker 1: thank you for that opportunity because I kind of felt
Speaker 1: like I was coming out for me. I know when
Speaker 1: I get into this with you, but for me, meditation
Speaker 1: has been a very spiritual journey and it was kind
Speaker 1: of like coming out of my own spiritual closet in
Speaker 1: a way to do your podcast. So yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: for providing everything that you have with your ten percent
Speaker 1: Happier Appier books. You're sharing your own journey with meditation
Speaker 1: because I think it's I know from my own self,
Speaker 1: you've opened a lot of doors for me, So thank
Speaker 1: you for that. I appreciate that. Um. I remember having
Speaker 1: you on, and I remember trying to figure out why
Speaker 1: you seem so excited to talk about this, because you know,
Speaker 1: I every guest on my show was talking about this stuff.
Speaker 1: And and then you explained to me afterwards that, like,
Speaker 1: nobody would ever ask you these questions. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I did anything particularly skillful, but
Speaker 1: it was. I'm glad that I was there at the
Speaker 1: right time. Yeah, it was definitely a right moment, kind
Speaker 1: of divine timing for me, kind of thing where I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is something new to talk about,
Speaker 1: and I love that. So you have really become kind
Speaker 1: of the I would say, the face of practical meditation.
Speaker 1: And before I spiraled out all things meditation with you,
Speaker 1: I just wondered if you could walk people through your journey,
Speaker 1: what led you to finding meditation your personal experience. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'll try to tell the story reasonably briefly, um, just
Speaker 1: because if people have heard me interviewed before, anything might
Speaker 1: have heard this story. So I'll tell a brief version.
Speaker 1: And a few have follow ups. I'm happy to say
Speaker 1: more about any of it. So I had a panic
Speaker 1: attack on an obscure ABC News broadcast called Good Morning
Speaker 1: America with five million people watching. UM. And this was
Speaker 1: back in two thousand four, so it was a while ago.
Speaker 1: And after I had the panic attack, I went to
Speaker 1: a shrink to try to figure out what had happened,
Speaker 1: and UM, he asked me a bunch of questions, and
Speaker 1: one of the questions was due to drugs, and I
Speaker 1: sheepishly admitted that I did do drugs. I had spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in war zones as a very
Speaker 1: ambitious young network correspondent, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine is real,
Speaker 1: and had come home in the middle of that period
Speaker 1: and gotten depressed, although I didn't actually know I was depressed.
Speaker 1: And then I started to self medicate with recreational drugs,
Speaker 1: including cocaine. I was in my early thirties and I
Speaker 1: had never done hard drugs before. So this is phenomenally Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a great thing. You made it that, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: but not a great thing that I started. UM. And
Speaker 1: the doctor was explained that even though I my drug
Speaker 1: use career was pretty unspectacular. It was not. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like I was high on the air, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: doing it that often, but it was enough, this guy explained,
Speaker 1: to change my brain chemistry and make it more likely
Speaker 1: for me to freak out. And so that kind of
Speaker 1: set me off on a big, winding journey that I
Speaker 1: wrote about in a book called temper Cent Happier that
Speaker 1: ultimately landed me on meditation. And I was pretty hostile
Speaker 1: to meditation. I was down with therapy. I mean, I
Speaker 1: did a bunch of therapy after the panic attack to
Speaker 1: help me figure out how not to do that again,
Speaker 1: and also to get off drugs. But I was not.
Speaker 1: I just thought meditation was just you know, the apex
Speaker 1: of hippie dippy bullshit. Um. And then I started to
Speaker 1: see the science that suggests, you know, I'm I'm my
Speaker 1: parents are both a could emic physicians. I'm married to
Speaker 1: a scientist, so I'm not good at math. So I
Speaker 1: became a news anchor, but I respect science, and I
Speaker 1: saw all this research and that suggested that meditation had
Speaker 1: profound psychological impact that was really good for anxiety and depression,
Speaker 1: both of which I've been struggling with since I was
Speaker 1: very young. And also that has all these physiological impacts,
Speaker 1: you know, lower blood pressure, reduced release of cortisol, the
Speaker 1: stress hormone, and then it changes the structure of your brain.
Speaker 1: And that was just super compelling to me. So I
Speaker 1: I started to do it about five to ten minutes
Speaker 1: a day, and I saw a real difference in my life.
Speaker 1: And then I, you know, because I'm a crass, craven
Speaker 1: Western materialist, you know, totally monetized it and wrote a
Speaker 1: book about it and blah blah blah. That has helped
Speaker 1: a lot of people. So let's not leave that part
Speaker 1: of it out. I love that you're honest about that.
Speaker 1: So too, there's always that there's always two sides of
Speaker 1: the coin. Right. You mentioned the word ambition. I find
Speaker 1: myself to be an incredibly ambitious person also, and I
Speaker 1: was just wondering that ambitious drive for you, going back
Speaker 1: into you know, you having these panics, this panic attack
Speaker 1: on national television, that ambitious drive. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the the quote unquote light and dark
Speaker 1: side of that ambitious drive. And I've heard you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the the inner critic that you found
Speaker 1: when you started to dig into the kind of shadow
Speaker 1: either sides for yourself. Um, and so yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I'm wanting to talk about a little bit,
Speaker 1: is that inner critic and how that ambitious drive has
Speaker 1: driven that that piece for you, just so I could
Speaker 1: tailor my answer to make it maximally useful. You want
Speaker 1: to start by talking about, like, is is ambition okay?
Speaker 1: And can you do that while being you know, a
Speaker 1: reasonably decent person. Yeah, I definitely would love to get
Speaker 1: there s because I have a lot of thoughts about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's actually, in some ways the issue I
Speaker 1: was trying to unpack when I wrote that first book,
Speaker 1: because I'm really ambitious, you know, and and and I
Speaker 1: got the sense it was becoming increasingly obvious to me
Speaker 1: the more I looked into my own mind through meditation,
Speaker 1: that the ambition was making me miserable and so but
Speaker 1: I didn't want to like move to the Himalayas and
Speaker 1: sit on a outcropping of rock and a loincloth. I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out, like, can you be ambitious
Speaker 1: without being miserable or a dick? And I think the
Speaker 1: answer is absolutely yes. What I learned in the course
Speaker 1: of writing that book and talking to all these amazing
Speaker 1: meditation teachers and also just more importantly doing the practice
Speaker 1: for myself. Is that there's a certain amount of worrying
Speaker 1: and plotting and planning that is part of trying to
Speaker 1: do anything right. Um, you're starting a new podcast, so
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some conversations about how do we build
Speaker 1: an audience and get the word out and all of that.
Speaker 1: That's just completely natural. However, we can take it too
Speaker 1: far and lose sight of enjoying doing the actual thing
Speaker 1: or trying to help people through doing the actual thing,
Speaker 1: because we're so caught up in the worry about what
Speaker 1: are the latest numbers on downloads and can we bully
Speaker 1: X or Y into writing a big piece about us
Speaker 1: or whatever. I'm I'm not less talking about you now
Speaker 1: that I'm talking about myself, because I also have a podcast,
Speaker 1: and it's like, how do I get the word out
Speaker 1: about it? And you know, I check the numbers obsessively,
Speaker 1: and I look at my Amazon rank of my book
Speaker 1: and it's like my own personal stock market and I
Speaker 1: can see, you know what, whether I'm up or down,
Speaker 1: and it drives me nuts. And so a certain amount
Speaker 1: of that makes sense. And then at some point you
Speaker 1: cross over into diminished returns. What mindfulness or meditation does
Speaker 1: is it helps you have enough self awareness to notice, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've firmly in not useful territory right now, and it's
Speaker 1: making me miserable, and it's making me unpleasant to the
Speaker 1: people around me. And it's more art than science, and
Speaker 1: you will mess up all the time, but it gives
Speaker 1: you some tools to manage this, because it's totally fine
Speaker 1: to be ambitious, but you just don't want to again
Speaker 1: lose sight of the positive motivations and to let it
Speaker 1: overtake you in such a way that you are, you know,
Speaker 1: not having fun in your life, which is by the
Speaker 1: way limited, and we should enjoy what we've got. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I've found that for myself. You know, I
Speaker 1: started so young, and there was a time, a good
Speaker 1: significant piece of the years I've been in this business
Speaker 1: where I definitely lost joy for what I did. And
Speaker 1: I think these past probably eight years my life is
Speaker 1: about returning to that joy and returning to what is
Speaker 1: the deeper purpose for me of why I do what
Speaker 1: I do. And it's not about your right, it's not
Speaker 1: about numbers. All of those things are wonderful if they happen,
Speaker 1: but that's not what I feel like. I'm here to
Speaker 1: do and really coming home to that purpose. And you're like,
Speaker 1: you're saying getting to know with meditation for me that
Speaker 1: it's been a practice of putting some space between this
Speaker 1: inner critic in my own head, which I thought. I
Speaker 1: thought that was what drove me, like, if I don't
Speaker 1: have that voice in my head, then I will not
Speaker 1: be the same ambitious person that I have always been.
Speaker 1: And there are some days I still believe that um
Speaker 1: and other days where I have been able to start
Speaker 1: to cultivate my own a different voice that's more compassionate.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you and I believe her? I believe
Speaker 1: her a lot more than I do him. And I
Speaker 1: say him because I've actually named my inner critic. His
Speaker 1: name is Tubby. He looks like the michelin Man. Is
Speaker 1: that like an overweight poodle you had as a child, No,
Speaker 1: but yeah, somewhat similarity. It's like Tubby is a guy
Speaker 1: like the michelin Man, that's like the big marshmallow dude.
Speaker 1: And he he loves to just berate me with you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not good enough anything that I'm not good enough
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, I mean, I think that I
Speaker 1: really had to put enough space between that inner critic
Speaker 1: and myself to be able to even start this podcast,
Speaker 1: or else I would have never even thought twice about
Speaker 1: doing this. So I was, have you does that voice
Speaker 1: still get to you? And have you been able, like myself,
Speaker 1: to try to or start to craft a new voice
Speaker 1: for yourself that's more compassionate. Yes, and yes, so absolutely,
Speaker 1: my inner I got a bunch of inner characters. You know.
Speaker 1: This is by the way, this may sound a little
Speaker 1: m schitzoid to folks who are new to this, but
Speaker 1: this is not We're not out on a limb here.
Speaker 1: It's well established in psychological circles that you know, you
Speaker 1: you can have different kind of programs or modes in
Speaker 1: your mind that are kind of competing for the top
Speaker 1: spot the most salience um at any given moments. So
Speaker 1: you can have a jealous mode or an angry mode,
Speaker 1: or a sad mode or victim mode or whatever. And
Speaker 1: so for sure, I've got several difficult modes. The one
Speaker 1: is kind of, you know, the self critical mode, the
Speaker 1: other is very ambitious, kind of hustler mode. And then
Speaker 1: of course lots of positive ones too, and boy, I
Speaker 1: have a lot to say about this, um, so I'll
Speaker 1: try to not say once for you. But I think
Speaker 1: having a different relationship to the critic doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you're gonna slide into sloppy resignation. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you don't try to see yourself clearly and think about
Speaker 1: when you've made mistakes. It's just a question of what
Speaker 1: is the attitude and tone in your mind as you
Speaker 1: go about that. There are is a ton of research
Speaker 1: and you know, here we are sliding into a new
Speaker 1: year where a lot of people are creating resolutions, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: And there's a and why do those resolutions fail so fast,
Speaker 1: usually by the end of the week, Because they usually
Speaker 1: come from a place of insufficiency, self hatred, self loathing, shame.
Speaker 1: There is a ton of research that shows that if
Speaker 1: you can come from a different place, which is around
Speaker 1: self compassion, you will be more likely to stick to
Speaker 1: your goals. And self compassion doesn't need to be irretrievably sappy.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to have string music and white light
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It's unhelpful if you think about
Speaker 1: it that way, because then it sounds impossible or maybe
Speaker 1: unwhy eies, or just ridiculous when I talk about self compassion,
Speaker 1: and when this the researchers who have led the charge
Speaker 1: on understanding how to practice self compassion and what it
Speaker 1: does in the mind, when they talk about it, it's
Speaker 1: more like a Scotich north of neutral. It's just like
Speaker 1: this basic wanting of the best for yourself. And I
Speaker 1: have increasingly come to think of that habit of mind
Speaker 1: of counter programming against Tubby with a different voice, as
Speaker 1: the uber habit, because if you can establish a new
Speaker 1: habit of the way you talk to yourself, all other
Speaker 1: habits like your six pack abs or you're larger four
Speaker 1: oh one k or whatever it is, can flow out
Speaker 1: of that. But if you start with yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get the abs or I'm gonna get out of debt immediately,
Speaker 1: then if you it's coming from a place of self
Speaker 1: laceration and shame, when you hit roadblocks, which you inevitably will,
Speaker 1: you're reducing your own resilience because you're just gonna be
Speaker 1: miserable and then it's hard to stick to something. Whereas
Speaker 1: if you come from a place of yeah, I want
Speaker 1: the best for myself, then it's like having a good
Speaker 1: coach in your ear as opposed to somebody a drill sergeant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely well, And I think you just hit onto something
Speaker 1: that I I think is really important, wanting the best for ourselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, the core for me of of that inner
Speaker 1: critic and thinking that I've constantly got to brerate myself
Speaker 1: is because I felt like I wasn't good enough, and
Speaker 1: so that piece of self worth is where I feel
Speaker 1: like I had to first look at my beliefs around
Speaker 1: am I worthy of care and nurturance and love? Simple things,
Speaker 1: simple basic needs? Are my needs worthy of being met?
Speaker 1: And am I worthy of being happy? And when I
Speaker 1: really sat and thought about my beliefs around that, I
Speaker 1: think when I was very honest with myself, no, my
Speaker 1: core belief of that was that I was not. And
Speaker 1: when I started to change that belief and I'm still
Speaker 1: working with that, honestly, don't even know how that began
Speaker 1: to change. I think it was probably for me, my environment,
Speaker 1: the people around me, the kindness that was reflected back
Speaker 1: to me, the love, especially with my husband, the love
Speaker 1: that insecurity that I felt tethered to with him, And
Speaker 1: to have your in my environment reflect back a different
Speaker 1: story all of a sudden started to change that belief
Speaker 1: for me. I'm worthy, I'm worthy of love. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I was able to connect with
Speaker 1: a new voice, a new way of speaking to myself.
Speaker 1: And by the way, this is still very new to me,
Speaker 1: like I still have to catch myself going in and
Speaker 1: with the energy of you have to change and shaming
Speaker 1: myself around things. But as soon as I catch myself
Speaker 1: that awareness, all of a sudden gives me an opportunity
Speaker 1: to shift into something different. So yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: that self worth pieces a is a huge piece, and
Speaker 1: I wonder what that journey has been like for you it.
Speaker 1: As far as self worth, we'll get more Dan Harris,
Speaker 1: wit and wisdom when we return from this quick break
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Gloves. We were just on the topic of
Speaker 1: self worth. I think it's very useful what you just
Speaker 1: said about work in progress aspect of it, because I
Speaker 1: could imagine people listening to this and be like, all right,
Speaker 1: Rhymes and Harris, you guys are like rich and already successful,
Speaker 1: and um, rhymes and Harris, I like that sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a daytime show. Um, you know, like you guys
Speaker 1: got it all figured out. And blah blah blah. But no,
Speaker 1: in fact, what you said was you can feel the
Speaker 1: shift in the right direction, and you still the old
Speaker 1: voices still come back, and the old voices will always
Speaker 1: come back. It's more just like, can you view the
Speaker 1: foundational shift and how you view yourself at least some
Speaker 1: of the time, with some more warmth, And then over time,
Speaker 1: can you start to view Tubby with some warmth? You know?
Speaker 1: Even just naming him Tubby is a great first step.
Speaker 1: I'm writing a book right now that is um kind
Speaker 1: of a I'm being pretty ambitious and writing about the
Speaker 1: not small subject of love, trying to hopefully helpfully define
Speaker 1: love down a little bit and not the grandiose stuff
Speaker 1: of movies and country songs, but more like just you know, again,
Speaker 1: this basic capacity we all have to care as mammals
Speaker 1: because of our extended childhood, like we need. We're wired
Speaker 1: to care for others because that's how the species has survived,
Speaker 1: and we have to work cooperatively at etcetera, etcetera. You
Speaker 1: can harness this towards yourself and I think actually you
Speaker 1: can start to develop warmth, which is maybe a more
Speaker 1: user friendly word than love, toward Tubby toward the difficult
Speaker 1: characters in your own mind, because fighting them or feeding
Speaker 1: them or pretending they don't exist are three habitual strategies
Speaker 1: of you know, like giving in, struggling or numbing out.
Speaker 1: None of those is particularly useful. And we have this
Speaker 1: notion in the West in particular of like slaying the dragon,
Speaker 1: But actually I think hugging the dragon. And I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of playing with this idea as I talked about
Speaker 1: this next book, I've even thought about calling the book
Speaker 1: Hugged the Dragon. Hugging the dragon is radical disarmament because
Speaker 1: you're not You're not saying Tubby, You're right, You're saying Tubby. Uh.
Speaker 1: I get that. This is a self protective mechanism I
Speaker 1: developed somewhere along the way. And Tubby's trying to help Lean,
Speaker 1: but unskillfully. So thank you. You've done great work. I
Speaker 1: see you popping up right now. But I can invite
Speaker 1: you into the party, give you a hug. But Land's
Speaker 1: grown up, and I can make a wiser decision right
Speaker 1: now than the one you would have me make. So
Speaker 1: to me that process in my own mind of seeing
Speaker 1: I called my inner critic Robert Riving, named after my
Speaker 1: grandfather who told me that he would break my arm
Speaker 1: if I touched his vcru uh uh so uh so
Speaker 1: Robert pops up and it's like, oh, okay, so I
Speaker 1: I there are a couple of ways I could go
Speaker 1: right now. I could just start screaming because that's what
Speaker 1: Robert wants me to do. I could shame myself for
Speaker 1: having an inter Robert at all. Or I could pretend
Speaker 1: it's not there. None of those is likely to work.
Speaker 1: But I could give Robert a big, hardy high five,
Speaker 1: and you know, give him a seat at the table
Speaker 1: and and and thank him for trying to protect me.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe he's trying to protect me. I sometimes
Speaker 1: think about this kid John, who I was online at
Speaker 1: the water cooler after a basketball game in seventh grade
Speaker 1: and John came over one in my space in line
Speaker 1: and I told him no, and he punched me in
Speaker 1: the stomach and took it, and like I think at
Speaker 1: that point, I said, you know, nobody's gonna funk with
Speaker 1: me again, and like, hence Robert, And so Robert's trying
Speaker 1: to protect the kid who's doubled over at the water cooler.
Speaker 1: But I'm not that anymore, and I don't need to
Speaker 1: lash out the way I might have needed to back then,
Speaker 1: and same with Tubby and you. Um, and that warmth
Speaker 1: I think is for me has been key. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Can you speak a little bit on like, where do
Speaker 1: you feel these voices actually originate from? These negative voices
Speaker 1: just for people listening, because I can see people going like, well,
Speaker 1: why do I have his voice in the freaking first place?
Speaker 1: I think they're self protective mechanisms. You mentioned Robert. We
Speaker 1: don't come into this world with these voices necessarily. I
Speaker 1: don't feel like we do. I think it can be
Speaker 1: our environment, um, you know. I mean I mentioned my
Speaker 1: environment earlier being very different and reflecting something very different
Speaker 1: back to me now. And my environment when I was
Speaker 1: a child was very different than it is now, um,
Speaker 1: and was reflecting this reality that had me create this
Speaker 1: defensive mechanism. It's interesting our earlier influences are so an
Speaker 1: influencers really do Uh. That's basically I think who and
Speaker 1: what we're hearing? Um, and what why we created these
Speaker 1: defense mechanisms in the first place, as I understand it
Speaker 1: from having you know, we referenced that I have a podcast,
Speaker 1: and so I get all these experts in human psychology
Speaker 1: and flourishing and happiness, as I understand it from having
Speaker 1: spoken to men many many, many of these people have
Speaker 1: done a lot of reading and research into this. My
Speaker 1: understanding is that this it happened that we develop these
Speaker 1: sort of inner characters, these inner modes in response to experience,
Speaker 1: just the way you've described that we armor up. In particular,
Speaker 1: the negative modes come from getting punched in the stomach
Speaker 1: or having people. I don't know exactly what was happening
Speaker 1: with you, but maybe you had people pushing you to
Speaker 1: succeed at an age when you might have needed different messages,
Speaker 1: and you armor up to protect yourself. And I also think,
Speaker 1: you know, we may be born to a certain extent
Speaker 1: with some of these voices in that you know, there's
Speaker 1: this concept of enter generational trauma that you know, even
Speaker 1: the grandchildren of people who survived Auschwitz have you know,
Speaker 1: pronounced anxiety, etcetera, etcetera. So you know, you wherever they
Speaker 1: come from in response to experience or as a consequence
Speaker 1: of genetics, they're there. And just to know that they
Speaker 1: are trying to help you is really useful because it
Speaker 1: takes the shame and antagonism out of it and can
Speaker 1: put you in a position where your orientation toward your tendencies,
Speaker 1: your habits, your your habits of mind is a little
Speaker 1: bit friendlier, which is a much better way to work
Speaker 1: with them. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. You mentioned earlier that your
Speaker 1: parents were scientists. Were you raised with a specific religious
Speaker 1: background at all. Yes, it's called atheism. Um My, I
Speaker 1: remember my mom and we did Christmas and Hanukah because
Speaker 1: my my dad was Jewish. My mom's Christian. But I
Speaker 1: remember my mom like kind of telling me in one
Speaker 1: fell swoop, I might be making this up, but it's
Speaker 1: true enough that not only is there no Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: but there's also no God, something to that effect. Thanks Mom.
Speaker 1: I did have a bar Mitzvah, but only because I
Speaker 1: wanted the money and to fit in with my other
Speaker 1: Jewish friends. So I was raised pretty secular. Um. I
Speaker 1: think my dad might have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: more openness to the metaphysical than my mom. But um,
Speaker 1: certainly there wasn't any any real spiritual, any legit spirituality
Speaker 1: in the home. Um. I over time have developed a
Speaker 1: more sort of friendly agnosticism, like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's a God and or if the
Speaker 1: stories in the various you know religions are true, I
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I'm not hostile toward them as
Speaker 1: long as they're not being used to hurt other people.
Speaker 1: UM and um in particular. Now I would call myself
Speaker 1: a Buddhist um, but that kind of means more and
Speaker 1: less than that. It might seem like less in that
Speaker 1: like I don't consider. I know Buddhism is a religion
Speaker 1: and I respect that, but it can also be practiced
Speaker 1: as just not something. One of my favorite expressions about
Speaker 1: Buddhism is it's not something to believe in, it's something
Speaker 1: to do. And the Buddha himself said, look, I'm going
Speaker 1: to make a few metaphysical claims about enlightenment and reincarnation,
Speaker 1: but you should not take them at face value. Only
Speaker 1: believe in them once you've got evidence for yourself. And
Speaker 1: then you know in in the form of your meditation practice.
Speaker 1: And so for me, I I have not seen any
Speaker 1: evidence for rebirth, and that doesn't bar me from being
Speaker 1: a Buddhist though, because I do Buddhism in the form
Speaker 1: of meditation and trying to live in ethical life just
Speaker 1: the way I do journalism. So I am a journalist
Speaker 1: I'm more open now than I was as a younger person,
Speaker 1: but I definitely come from a background of like, show
Speaker 1: me the evidence before I'm gonna sign on. Right, Where
Speaker 1: does belief and trust come into that into play? Well,
Speaker 1: you can get some trust in and faith in the
Speaker 1: power of meditation practice. You can develop some trust and
Speaker 1: faith and faith in you're inherent worth and goodness and
Speaker 1: that of other people, no matter how many heinous things
Speaker 1: we or other people do. Um. So there's a sort
Speaker 1: of evidence based trust, Like I trust this chair I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in. Um. That isn't the same as me saying
Speaker 1: that I'm going to believe I'll take a metaphysical claim
Speaker 1: from Buddhism rather than pick on some other religion that
Speaker 1: you know, if I transgress right now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be reborn as a Gila monster. Like I don't know
Speaker 1: that Maybe that's the truth, Um, but I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's the truth. And so I have like a
Speaker 1: willing suspension of disbelief. But I'm not going to pound
Speaker 1: the table and say it's definitely true. But that to say,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of friends who are people of
Speaker 1: deep and abiding faith, and I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time as a reporter covering spirituality and faith, and UM
Speaker 1: made a lot of friends in that process. UM, and
Speaker 1: they are people who really believe the word words of
Speaker 1: the Bible are literally true, etcetera, etcetera. And that's all
Speaker 1: good with me. And I don't have any diminished respect
Speaker 1: for people who are in that position. It's just not
Speaker 1: the way I'm wired right, spending your time covering so
Speaker 1: much spirituality and religion. Is there is someone that you
Speaker 1: can think of that's the one person who's really made
Speaker 1: an impact on you, and that feel yeah in that
Speaker 1: rail well, in the realm of spirituality, there are countless people. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll just pick one person who I mock
Speaker 1: a lot in my book and feel free to mock
Speaker 1: to this day, but have to say that he had
Speaker 1: a huge, huge, life changing impact on me. And that
Speaker 1: is Eckhart Totally, who you may have heard of. He's
Speaker 1: a mega best selling self help writer. Colleague of mine,
Speaker 1: way before I started meditating, recommended I read one of
Speaker 1: Totally's books because she thought it would be a good
Speaker 1: story from me. And I read one of his books
Speaker 1: and at first I thought, this is ridiculous. It's filled
Speaker 1: with all of this pseudo scientific language. And again for
Speaker 1: somebody wired like me and raised as I was in
Speaker 1: the People's Republic of Massachusetts by these you know physicians,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like that whole jargon of very
Speaker 1: vibrational fields and blah blah blah like and he claims
Speaker 1: that he had a spiritual awakening, after which he lived
Speaker 1: on park benches in a state of bliss in the
Speaker 1: city of London for two years. And I was just like,
Speaker 1: this is garbage, but I kept reading it and totally
Speaker 1: was the first person I ever heard talk about the
Speaker 1: notion that we all have a voice in our heads.
Speaker 1: I mean, you might refer to it as voices, and
Speaker 1: again not in a sort of mental illness way, but
Speaker 1: in a sense that we have this inner conversation that's
Speaker 1: happening all the time for us that if we broadcast aloud,
Speaker 1: we'd be locked up. Um, but most of us are
Speaker 1: unaware that we're having this conversation, and look at us
Speaker 1: broadcasting it aloud. Yes, exactly, I could see, I can.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get frog marched out of our homes in
Speaker 1: any minute. And and when you're unaware, Totally's argument is
Speaker 1: when you're unaware of this NonStop conversation that you are
Speaker 1: having your with yourself, like constantly thinking about the past
Speaker 1: or the future, comparing yourself to people, or judging yourself.
Speaker 1: This whole blah blah blah that's happening in your head
Speaker 1: when you don't see it clearly, which most of us don't,
Speaker 1: then it owns us. You know, we're checking our email
Speaker 1: in the middle of a conversation with you know, another person,
Speaker 1: or we're eating when we're not hungry, or we're losing
Speaker 1: our temper when it doesn't make any sense, and that
Speaker 1: is suffering. And so for all of Totally's sort of floibles. Um,
Speaker 1: he was the first person to point that out to me.
Speaker 1: I later realized that that whole notion was taken largely
Speaker 1: without attribution from somebody called the Buddha. But Totally writes
Speaker 1: about this very well, very incisively and insightfully, and I
Speaker 1: don't think as wild as some of his claims are
Speaker 1: about his own spiritual attainments. Having met him, I'm open
Speaker 1: to the possibility that he is not making that up right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I love I love that about you.
Speaker 1: I love that you keep your mind open to the possibility.
Speaker 1: And I think that's for me kind of where I'm
Speaker 1: at too. And although I can be very woo woo
Speaker 1: and very spiritual and partly gosh, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: my own, my own experiences um and what I feel UM.
Speaker 1: And I also am very open to being completely wrong.
Speaker 1: And I think as long as we keep the both
Speaker 1: sides of the coin, you know, open, that that we
Speaker 1: I think for myself, it's just life becomes more interesting
Speaker 1: and I get to explore that exploration. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's what life is all about. Well, just just to
Speaker 1: back you up, probably the most influential person I met
Speaker 1: in the whole Ray realm of spirituality is a guy
Speaker 1: named Joseph Goldstein, who is my meditation teacher. He and I,
Speaker 1: along with some other folks, co founded a meditation app
Speaker 1: called tempercent Happier but which is awesome. Joseph, Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: Joseph is um. He's been meditating for fifty years. He
Speaker 1: is not at all what you would think. He's not
Speaker 1: at all like Kart totally has he's way way goofy er,
Speaker 1: you know, totally basically says he never gets into a
Speaker 1: bad mood. Joseph is like a much more of a
Speaker 1: normal guy. Who like gets into bad moods and whatever.
Speaker 1: But he's this brilliant kid who graduated from an Ivy
Speaker 1: League school, went off to the Peace Corps, found himself
Speaker 1: in Thailand and fifty years ago, and then directed his
Speaker 1: big brain at Buddhism instead of becoming a lawyer, which
Speaker 1: he probably would have done. And it is so interesting
Speaker 1: to see what fifty years of sustaining practice can do
Speaker 1: to a mind, because I've seen Joseph in so many
Speaker 1: differences in there. We're now, you know, business partners in
Speaker 1: a way. He's also my meditation teacher. Were also friends.
Speaker 1: I've you know, spent time with him in very loose
Speaker 1: social environments. I've spent I've been on meditation retreats with him.
Speaker 1: I've been and I've worked with him. He's never disappointed me.
Speaker 1: That's not to say he's never gotten annoyed by something
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But he is just such a
Speaker 1: high quality human being. And yet he believes in all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff that I think I have like no
Speaker 1: idea how he got there. You know, he has a
Speaker 1: meditation teacher who he believed had supernatural powers like walking
Speaker 1: through walls. He believes in lots of the stuff from
Speaker 1: the Buddhist cosmology about there being several layers of existence,
Speaker 1: like there's the realm that we all inhabit, but then
Speaker 1: there's also like a God realm and a hell realm.
Speaker 1: And he once quoted one of his teachers who said
Speaker 1: something to the effect of, you don't have to believe this,
Speaker 1: but it's true. And and like that's Joseph's attitude. He
Speaker 1: he describes this willing suspension of disbelief, where he doesn't
Speaker 1: bring the skeptical, western materialistic mind to these things. He
Speaker 1: he just believes that they're true. And we have thought
Speaker 1: about it, and I've made fun of him mercilessly. And
Speaker 1: so I say all that to say that it's very
Speaker 1: hard for me to dismiss that capacity that you described
Speaker 1: in your own mind. To be as you said, woo woo.
Speaker 1: I can be dismissive about it because I'm a bit
Speaker 1: of a judgmental jerk sometimes, but when I'm at my best,
Speaker 1: I maintain a sense of openness. All right, In just
Speaker 1: a few moments, we'll be back with how you can
Speaker 1: break open to that sense of openness too. All right,
Speaker 1: we are back, and we were just talking about how
Speaker 1: to keep an open mind. I guess this can be
Speaker 1: a good thing and a bad thing quote unquote good
Speaker 1: and bad um where the mind will always question what,
Speaker 1: even if we've had the deepest experience, at least for me,
Speaker 1: like that inner critic. Even going back to like the
Speaker 1: goodness I feel when I when I do feel like
Speaker 1: you're saying at your best and you love yourself when
Speaker 1: you feel connected, there's always this other piece of me
Speaker 1: that's like, that's not true, but that's not real, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I've had to get in touch with.
Speaker 1: And and I still even question the question, you know.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I'm questioning the voice in my head
Speaker 1: and thinking is that question bad? There's many layers to that,
Speaker 1: and I usually, as just for me, have always gone
Speaker 1: with you know, my own experiences are my own truth,
Speaker 1: and I think we all have our own truths. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we're all unique human beings
Speaker 1: walking around in this world. We can be the only
Speaker 1: ones experiencing what we're experiencing, and because of all of
Speaker 1: our past experiences leading up to the point where we're in,
Speaker 1: we're all going to see a different truth from I've
Speaker 1: learned not to and that's been another thing of coming
Speaker 1: back to my own self worth, knowing not to question
Speaker 1: so much my own truth and allowing that to be
Speaker 1: it is what it is. In that moment, I had
Speaker 1: a thought when you were talking about sort of second
Speaker 1: guessing yourself and having a little voice that pops up,
Speaker 1: maybe this will be helpful for those moments we were
Speaker 1: just talking about. Joseph Goldstein, he's got this great little
Speaker 1: phrase that he uses called cowboy dharma um, and it
Speaker 1: basically is a very playful idea that when you see
Speaker 1: the inner critic pop up, or you know, shame or
Speaker 1: angry at yourself, can you just kind of gently just
Speaker 1: like a cowboy. But it's not like firing a gun
Speaker 1: at it's not hostile. It's more like a nerf gun.
Speaker 1: And it's more like a fun thing, like oh, I
Speaker 1: see you, because you don't need to deal with it
Speaker 1: too much. You don't need to get caught in a
Speaker 1: whole loop around why is that voice coming up and
Speaker 1: to trying to say it's just like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's just more like and move on, keep it moving.
Speaker 1: To use your mindfulness you're which we're training in meditation
Speaker 1: disability to be self aware to say, oh, I see you,
Speaker 1: I see utubby, and then you don't need to start
Speaker 1: wrestling with it or thinking too much about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so funny, that's so true. And my have two stepsons,
Speaker 1: and my youngest is not thirteen, but he used to
Speaker 1: walk around the house. He still does it. Actually, every
Speaker 1: once in a while, playing outside by himself, will go
Speaker 1: and so, yes, I'm totally using that meditation. You know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about both of us how much has changed
Speaker 1: our lives. And you take a very grounded approach to meditation.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the main reasons people have
Speaker 1: shied away from it for so long is because they
Speaker 1: think it's woo woo and because they think it's, you know,
Speaker 1: this hippie, whole hippie hippie nation like thing to do.
Speaker 1: What would you say to But if they're listening and
Speaker 1: they're still feeling that way and don't see the grounding
Speaker 1: in and the worth in having a meditation practice, even
Speaker 1: if it's just for a few minutes a day, I
Speaker 1: would say, I hear you. You're my people. I mean
Speaker 1: the skeptics like that. I got you, um and I
Speaker 1: felt that way for a long time, to the extent
Speaker 1: that I even thought about meditation. Um, I thought it
Speaker 1: was nonsense, And so I mean it might be useful
Speaker 1: for me to just describe what it is. I would
Speaker 1: because I think once you hear it described, it will
Speaker 1: seem a lot less fluffy. Just to say before I
Speaker 1: dive in on that, that the word meditation is a
Speaker 1: little bit like the words sports. It like describes a
Speaker 1: whole range. There are millions of kinds of meditation. But
Speaker 1: when I talk about meditation, I'm generally talking about mindfulness meditation,
Speaker 1: which is derived from Buddhism but is stripped of any
Speaker 1: metaphysical claims or religious lingo. And it is this form,
Speaker 1: this secular form of meditation that has been studied in
Speaker 1: the labs very very extensive lee roughly the past twenty years.
Speaker 1: So there's now a really significant body of evidence that
Speaker 1: strongly suggests that it can confer a whole long list
Speaker 1: of physiological and psychological and even behavioral changes and benefits.
Speaker 1: So beginning mindfulness meditation is really simple. You just there
Speaker 1: are three steps. One is to kind of sit comfortably.
Speaker 1: You don't have to fold yourself up into a pretzels.
Speaker 1: I am nearly fifty and do not like yoga, So
Speaker 1: I do not sit on the floor and a cross
Speaker 1: legged position, which you know if you can great. I
Speaker 1: sit in a chair. Sometimes I lie down. If I'm
Speaker 1: really sleepy and I'm worried about falling asleep, I'll stand up.
Speaker 1: Although if you fall asleep, it's like not a big deal.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the first step is just find a reasonably
Speaker 1: comfortable position in a reasonably quiet place if you have
Speaker 1: no access to quiet. This is why the Good Lord
Speaker 1: invented noise canceling headphones. Um so again, Step number one,
Speaker 1: reasonably quiet place, reasonably comfortable, dignified position, lying up, lying down, standing,
Speaker 1: sitting down, whatever. Step number two is to just bring
Speaker 1: your full attention to something. So usually it's the breath.
Speaker 1: You pick one spot where you feel your breath most
Speaker 1: prominently rising and falling off your belly, or if your
Speaker 1: chest air coming in and out of your nose. Some
Speaker 1: people find the breath to be anxiety provoking, so if
Speaker 1: that's you, you can just pick something else, like the
Speaker 1: feeling of your full body sitting, or whatever your hands
Speaker 1: are touching at the moment, sounds in your environment. Just
Speaker 1: pick something that's below the level of thinking, because that's
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do here is we're trying to
Speaker 1: drop below the NonStop nattering of our minds to something
Speaker 1: that has to do with our senses again, the feeling
Speaker 1: of the body sitting, or the breath rising and falling
Speaker 1: at the belly, whatever. You're just picking something and committing
Speaker 1: to it. And then the third step is the most important,
Speaker 1: because as soon as you say, okay, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: feel my breath for a couple of minutes, your mind
Speaker 1: will go nuts. I mean, you'll just start thinking about
Speaker 1: what's for lunch? Does Leon like me? What kind of
Speaker 1: dog is that? I'm gonna need to get a dog?
Speaker 1: And and and you know when is this quarantine gonna
Speaker 1: be over? And you know where did gerbils run wild?
Speaker 1: And what was Casper the friendly goes before he died?
Speaker 1: And blah blah blah, And that's totally natural, like that
Speaker 1: is what the mind does. The mind's job is to
Speaker 1: secrete thoughts the way the stomach secretes enzymes. So you're
Speaker 1: The goal here is not to clear your mind, because
Speaker 1: that's impossible unless you're fully enlightened or you have died.
Speaker 1: The goal here is to focus the mind for a
Speaker 1: few nanoseconds at a time on something like the sensations
Speaker 1: of your breath or your body sitting or lying down.
Speaker 1: And then every time you get distracted, which will happen
Speaker 1: a million times, you just start again and again and
Speaker 1: again and again. And this is like a golf game
Speaker 1: with a million mulligans, where you're the whole goal is
Speaker 1: to are it over. Many people, when they start to
Speaker 1: meditate and they notice how distractable they are, their ego
Speaker 1: tells them the story, or Tubby tells them the story
Speaker 1: of like your a failed meditator deuces you know, I'm
Speaker 1: out um, But in fact, the moment you notice how
Speaker 1: distractable you are, the moment you notice how wild your
Speaker 1: mind is, that is proof that you're meditating correctly, because
Speaker 1: the whole game in meditation, mindfulness, meditation is to see
Speaker 1: how wild your mind is so that the wildness doesn't
Speaker 1: own you as much. You're getting familiar with Tubby, You're
Speaker 1: getting familiar with your anger, your sadness, you're planning, you're rushing, whatever,
Speaker 1: because then when you're not meditating and you get hit
Speaker 1: by a big bolt of anger, then you're better able
Speaker 1: to resist the shitty suggestions that the anger is offering
Speaker 1: up Like I don't have to say something that's going
Speaker 1: to ruin the next seventy two hours of my marriage,
Speaker 1: or or I don't need to eat a whole sleeve
Speaker 1: of oreos or whatever it is. What we're doing here
Speaker 1: is training a kind of self awareness that allows you
Speaker 1: to respond wisely to things instead of reacting blindly. And
Speaker 1: that is not woo woo. That is secular, simple, science
Speaker 1: based exercise for your brain and for your mind. And
Speaker 1: I've been on this jag of you know, evangelizing for
Speaker 1: meditation for the last six or seven years now, and
Speaker 1: I've never explained it that way to anybody and had
Speaker 1: them say, oh yeah, yeah, that sounds like bullshit. That's
Speaker 1: is clearly not. What were some of the things that
Speaker 1: started happening in your life when you started a regular
Speaker 1: meditation practice that you could tell like this is working.
Speaker 1: I like to tell this story because it's it's actually
Speaker 1: a true story. UM. My wife is a very sweet doctor,
Speaker 1: very caring doctor, but it likes to make fun of me,
Speaker 1: which I respect and appreciate. Um. After I started meditating,
Speaker 1: I overheard her at a cocktail party telling one of
Speaker 1: our friends, oh, yeah, Dan started meditating, and he's a
Speaker 1: little bit less of a ship head, and that that
Speaker 1: was actually a really interesting data point because I had
Speaker 1: not felt any benefits yet. But I would say this
Speaker 1: was very soon after I started meditating, so like a
Speaker 1: week or two. But for me, I would say after
Speaker 1: about two three weeks, I started to notice three big benefits.
Speaker 1: One was that I felt calmer. And I want to
Speaker 1: be clear, that doesn't mean that my meditation sessions were calm.
Speaker 1: My meditation sessions were a mess. It's like you're like
Speaker 1: trying to hold a live fish in your hands, like
Speaker 1: your felt crazy or even you know, because I was
Speaker 1: seeing some of the my anxiety and avarice more clearly.
Speaker 1: But the act of stepping out of the daily toppling
Speaker 1: forward that I had to who most of the days,
Speaker 1: like constantly crossing things off my to do list and
Speaker 1: hustling this meeting to the next. The act of just
Speaker 1: taking a few minutes I started with like five minutes
Speaker 1: a day. It just made me feel calmer. The second
Speaker 1: big benefit was that it and again this is really
Speaker 1: backed by the science, it may it gave me a
Speaker 1: better ability to focus, because that's what you're doing here,
Speaker 1: is like you're trying to focus on one thing, getting distracted,
Speaker 1: starting again and starting again, starting again, and that the
Speaker 1: science shows that like it changes the part of the
Speaker 1: brain associated with attention regulation. And the third thing is
Speaker 1: the biggest, which is that it gave me what I
Speaker 1: keep talking about here, which is like this self awareness
Speaker 1: that is often called mindfulness, which allows you to see
Speaker 1: what's happening between your ears at any given moment without
Speaker 1: necessarily taking the bait and acting on it. And that
Speaker 1: is really a game changing skill because we just walk
Speaker 1: around so much of our lives like just controlled by
Speaker 1: this malevolent puppeteer of of Tubby or or just random thoughts.
Speaker 1: And once you see it, you can cut the strings.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna work all the time. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why I when I wrote my first book, I called
Speaker 1: it temper cent Happier, because I was kind of trying
Speaker 1: to counter program against the overpromising that I see in
Speaker 1: the shadier corners of the self helped world, where it
Speaker 1: seems like they're saying, you can solve all of your
Speaker 1: problems through whatever, the power of positive thinking, and I
Speaker 1: just that's is not going to happen. But while the
Speaker 1: ten is kind of a joke now that I'm stuck
Speaker 1: with math jokes the rest of my life, and I
Speaker 1: hate math. Um Uh. What I will say is that
Speaker 1: it's like any good investment, it compounds annually. These are skills.
Speaker 1: The ability to not be yanked around by your emotions,
Speaker 1: the ability to focus. These are These are skills. These
Speaker 1: are not factory settings that are unalterable, and so for me,
Speaker 1: over eleven years, I just keep getting better at these.
Speaker 1: That does not mean I'm never a schmuck anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely we brought my wife in here right now. You
Speaker 1: can get a laundry list of recent transgressions. But I'm
Speaker 1: less likely to screw up, and when I do screw up,
Speaker 1: I'm quicker to apologize. Yeah that's yeah, that's very true. Um,
Speaker 1: what does your meditation practice look like these days? Has
Speaker 1: it been tough to actually continue a meditation practice during
Speaker 1: this time? So I will admit that there is one
Speaker 1: area in which I'm a bit of a mutant. W
Speaker 1: is that I am actually very disciplined. And this has
Speaker 1: actually been a problem for me because there are some
Speaker 1: areas where I've struggled with discipline, and when I struggle
Speaker 1: with discipline, I really beat myself up. For example, one
Speaker 1: area where really struggled is um, I have a bit
Speaker 1: of a fraud relationship to food and body image and
Speaker 1: eating and things like that, and which is weird thing
Speaker 1: to say because I'm a thin guy. But I can
Speaker 1: overdo it with oreos and get really mad at myself
Speaker 1: and go into a full spiral over that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And one of the aspects of myself criticism here is
Speaker 1: that I feel sloppy and undisciplined. But there are areas
Speaker 1: of my life where, like eleven years ago, I said
Speaker 1: I'm going to meditate every day, and I do it um,
Speaker 1: and I know that that people will resent me for that.
Speaker 1: So that's why I told the Oreo thing first. It's
Speaker 1: not like I'm perfect, but I am pretty disciplined. And
Speaker 1: so I went on an arc where I started with
Speaker 1: like five to five minutes a day, and then I
Speaker 1: went up to ten minutes a day, and then after
Speaker 1: a year of that, I went up to thirty minutes
Speaker 1: a day, which I did for a few years, and
Speaker 1: then I went through a crazy period where I was
Speaker 1: doing two hours a day, and then I realized that
Speaker 1: that was crazy um and cut down to an hour.
Speaker 1: And now I'm at a place where I try to
Speaker 1: do an hour every day, you know. And I don't
Speaker 1: do it all in one go most days, although today
Speaker 1: I did. But I'm pretty relaxed about it now because
Speaker 1: I know that my practice is pretty solid. I've been
Speaker 1: at it for a minute, and I go in meditation
Speaker 1: retreats once a year, and like, I'm pretty committed. So
Speaker 1: it's pretty well established. And so if if one day
Speaker 1: I only do fifteen minutes, it's not like I'm going
Speaker 1: to fall off the wagon or lose all the mindfulness
Speaker 1: I've accrued. But I I I sort of gently try
Speaker 1: to do an hour a day if I can, and
Speaker 1: I divide it up into little chunks throughout the day,
Speaker 1: and I try to do this thing that is very
Speaker 1: unusual for me, which is to be relaxed about right.
Speaker 1: I still relate to everything you just said. I am
Speaker 1: so incredibly disciplined when I am focused on something, when
Speaker 1: I want something, I'm so disciplined. And then there's many
Speaker 1: other parts of my life where I can just like
Speaker 1: go nuts also, and I have that same inner dialogue
Speaker 1: of oh my god, why you know, why can't I
Speaker 1: be disciplined in the space, And I'd completely beat myself
Speaker 1: up about it, you know, what you do in those moments.
Speaker 1: What I like that. Yes, it's so true, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people can relate. I think we
Speaker 1: all have some kind of discipline in our life in
Speaker 1: certain areas and then others. I mean maybe some of
Speaker 1: us have like extreme discipline, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's that ambition that comes into that too. We can
Speaker 1: utilize it to its fullest, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it just like crosses over that line of I'm going
Speaker 1: to now use this to hurt myself. Yes, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I totally relate to that. Um I was wondering, does
Speaker 1: your whole family meditate? No, So I learned a very
Speaker 1: valuable lesson the hard way, which is you shouldn't lecture
Speaker 1: people about meditation. In fact, what I've learned is you
Speaker 1: shouldn't like sure people about anything. Um So, if somebody
Speaker 1: invites me on their podcast or TV show or whatever,
Speaker 1: I will come on and talk about meditation all day long,
Speaker 1: as I love talking about it. But when I first
Speaker 1: started meditating, I started lecturing my wife about it. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: that didn't go well. I I often think about this
Speaker 1: cartoon that I saw in the New Yorker a few
Speaker 1: years ago. I had two women having lunch and one
Speaker 1: of them says to the other, I've been gluten free
Speaker 1: for a week and I'm already annoying, And uh, that
Speaker 1: can happen to people who get really excited about meditation.
Speaker 1: What I've learned is that it's best to keep your
Speaker 1: mouth shut and let people observe in you the benefits
Speaker 1: of your practice and then come to you and ask
Speaker 1: you about it, at which point you can say whatever
Speaker 1: the hell you want. But if you proselytize unsolicited, it's
Speaker 1: likely to backfire. Yeah. Absolutely, And my husband is he
Speaker 1: kind of dabbles in and out of it. I say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go meditate. I'll invite him, said do you
Speaker 1: want to come? And if sometimes it's yes, sometimes it's no,
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, cool. But I was very much
Speaker 1: like you. When it starts to change you, you're like,
Speaker 1: holy sh it, like this is this is changing my life.
Speaker 1: I wanted to change everyone else's too, and you you
Speaker 1: can if you can so easily get into you. You've
Speaker 1: got to do this. You've got to do this. And
Speaker 1: people are like, can you please stop talking about this thing? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: So I'll give a talk and some man will come
Speaker 1: up or some woman will come up, and they'll be
Speaker 1: with their spouse, and the primary person coming up to
Speaker 1: me will be like, I I you change my life.
Speaker 1: I'm so so I've read your book and now I
Speaker 1: meditate and I can see the spouse is like, I'm
Speaker 1: so sick of hearing about the ass and I got
Speaker 1: dragged to this talk tonight. You know, I was doing
Speaker 1: that to my wife and and so the best thing
Speaker 1: to do is what you just described as like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're doing this thing. It's good for you. Your husband
Speaker 1: reached the benefits of you being happier. And yeah, if
Speaker 1: you gently invite him and he wants to come, great,
Speaker 1: and if he doesn't, okay, Yeah, that's I've definitely learned that. Also,
Speaker 1: I'd love to close out all my conversations with the
Speaker 1: little question about music. So I'm gonna get you to sing,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned earlier, and I'm just kidding now, I
Speaker 1: love you know, music connects all of us, and it's
Speaker 1: something that's obviously a huge part of my life, and
Speaker 1: I love to hear what songs resonate with people. I
Speaker 1: just thought you could share. I call this the Holy five.
Speaker 1: So it's five songs that maybe are influencing your life
Speaker 1: now or maybe have over your lifetime, just anything that
Speaker 1: resonates with you. Okay, So I'm gonna warn you advanced.
Speaker 1: None of these is a country songs. I've historically not
Speaker 1: had much interesting country but then I met you, and
Speaker 1: I also met Brett Eldridge. Do you know Brett? Okay?
Speaker 1: So Brett is also a very into meditation, very nice
Speaker 1: guy and very into sort of like he's had some
Speaker 1: panic issues, would be very open about that. Um. And
Speaker 1: also our nanny, who's from Belize, is really into country music,
Speaker 1: so we love that country music around the house now.
Speaker 1: But none of these songs is going to be a
Speaker 1: country song, That's all right. I am really in into
Speaker 1: like kind of indie rock and have been for since
Speaker 1: I was in high school, and I've constantly have active
Speaker 1: playlist UM that I used for working out, and so
Speaker 1: I just took a look at some of the songs
Speaker 1: that are on there right now, and these are all
Speaker 1: sort of like obscure indie rock bands. But here we go.
Speaker 1: One song is called Close and it's by an Australian
Speaker 1: band called Sweater Curse. Another another song is called lemon
Speaker 1: Mouth by an American band I believe called Tiger's Duck,
Speaker 1: Different universe by direct hit, a different kind of life,
Speaker 1: by nation of language. I think they're from Brooklyn. And
Speaker 1: then this woman you might like because she's got a great,
Speaker 1: great voice, but also like a really clever songwriter. Her
Speaker 1: name is Samiya and this she wrote a song called
Speaker 1: fit in Full. Those are five Fit and Full. I
Speaker 1: like that. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so interesting to hear what people are into because sometimes
Speaker 1: it matches like what you think of someone, and then
Speaker 1: other times you're like, WHOA. I wasn't expecting that at all.
Speaker 1: I definitely appreciate your choices. I'm gonna go listen. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go rock out. It's good for running, very good,
Speaker 1: very good. Thank you so much for coming on here
Speaker 1: and sharing yourself and all about meditation and and the
Speaker 1: inner critic. I love that we dove into that because
Speaker 1: I think it's really important. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: My message for Tubby is that you're doing a great
Speaker 1: job as an interviewer. Thank you. I appreciate that. Good job, Tubby.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, my pleasure, thank you, Liam, thank you,
Speaker 1: my laves for joining us, for this episode of Holy Human,
Speaker 1: Please share it with anyone you think might benefit from listening,
Speaker 1: and I would love to hear from you too, so
Speaker 1: please leave me a message and that wonderful five star
Speaker 1: rating wherever you get your podcasts. On our next Holy Human,
Speaker 1: you were going to meet a man who is honestly
Speaker 1: probably one of the kindest human beings that I know,
Speaker 1: and I can almost guarantee that he will help connect
Speaker 1: you with your more centered, more self accepting, and truly
Speaker 1: lovable self. It's best selling author and my dear friend,
Speaker 1: Matt con Thank you. Listen and follow Holy Human on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. M