Dan Harris: The Hidden Stressors That Are Ruining Your Inner Health & 10 Changes to Make to Reduce Stress

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stress is the difference between the things on your to
do list and your capacity to handle that to do list.
Anxiety is fretfully projecting and fearing that bad things are
going to happen. Both things are probably at the worst
point they've ever been since we started keeping those records.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm our ABC News anchor, author of ten Percent Happier.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Mister Dan Harris.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
People who live the longest, have strong relationships. Dose yourself
with some discomfort, go to that party. Accept the invitation.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
The Number one Health and Well Inness Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Jay Shetty, Jay Sheddy See One Only Ja Shetty, Dan Harris,
Welcome to On Purpose. It's so great to finally have
you here. I feel like this has been years in
the making. I know my audience has wanted to hear
from you, my community has asked for us to get together.
I've seen so many comments tagging you saying you have

(00:54):
to have done on the show, and so this is
really exciting for me and I want to thank you
for taking out the time and and being here with us.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
It's a little embarrassing because they might have tagged me
in the comments, but I wouldn't have seen it because
I wasn't on social media until a few months ago,
and well I had an Instagram, but I didn't really
post to it much. And so about six months ago
I started putting some videos up and I was looking
at it one day and I saw that I had
a message from you, but it was from twenty twenty. Yeah,

(01:24):
so I answered it, And that's why we're.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Here, absolutely, and I love it. Yeah, I reached out. Yeah,
I'm glad, glad you're Yeah, I reached out twenty twenty
and who's probably aware of your work even before that.
And I feel like there's so many similarities and differences
that we can explore today in our personal journeys. But
let's dive straight in. I think I'm at this point
in time. It feels like we've talked about this topic

(01:47):
for a long time, but it still feels like we
have a slightly unhealthy relationship with it and somewhat a
subconscious relationship with it. And I'm talking about stress, and
it seems that YEurope on your people's stress increases, people's
variety of causes of stress increase. Even after the pandemic,

(02:09):
we saw a different type of stress that we experienced.
I wanted to get your thesis on how you feel
about the state of stress at the moment.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
It's not good. I recently learned this is embarrassing that
I recently learned this. The difference, the specific difference between
stress and anxiety. Hopefully I don't mangle this, but it's
something like stress is the difference between the things on
your to do list and your capacity to handle that
to do list, the difference between the demands on you

(02:40):
and your ability to meet those demands. And anxiety is
a little bit more fretfully projecting forward into the future
and fearing that bad things are going to happen. And
so I think actually both things are probably at the
worst point they've ever been since we started keeping those records.
So from what I can take, anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction,

(03:03):
and loneliness are, according to the numbers I've seen, at
unprecedented levels. Now, we haven't been keeping these statistics for
that long, so I suspect when we were on the
edge of World War two, things were worse. But in
the modern era, things have not been worse from what
we can tell, and I think a huge contributor to

(03:25):
that is the pandemic that we just lived through I
sometimes describe it as a global, unregulated experiment into what
would happen when you deny people social connection and put
people in a state of deep uncertainty about the future.
And add into that political polarization the noxious impacts of

(03:46):
social media, which we were just talking about, war, climate change,
and you have a very tough situation for individual minds.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Which one's been the one that you feel you've heard
about the most from the people that follow your podcasts,
that have read your books, Like, what's the stress that
you think is weighing them down the most.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I'm projecting a little bit here and guessing, but I
sometimes think there's a difference between what people perceive to
be the source of their stress or anxiety and what
actually is driving it. So we might fasten on to
things that are real for sure. I mean like work
stress economics, So there can be stress about the state
of your job, and then economic stress about the larger

(04:28):
state of the economy. There's increasing stress around inequality and bigotry,
increasing awareness of it. So the question is are those
the approximate causes for your stress or could there be
subterranean contributors that you might not be aware of? So
I think today's media environment, particularly social media, and I'm

(04:51):
not anti social media.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
We just talked about the fact that I recently went.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
On it, but I think there are aspects of social
media we need to be aware of, and too much
comparing yourself to other people is as you've talked about,
the source, it's a really good source of unhappiness and stress.
I think also, if you're spending too much time staring
at a screen, two things going to happen. One, you
can get a distorted view of the state of the

(05:15):
world because the algorithms feed off of conflict and anger
and outrage. They feed our anxiety. And then the other
thing is the more you're staring at the screen, the
less time you're spending connecting to actual human beings. So
I think this is the deepest contributor we are, and
this is to state the obvious social animals. You hear

(05:36):
this in every Ted talk. I think I said it
in my own Ted talk. So I'm like, deeply unoriginal here.
We are social animals. We're designed to interact with other
human beings, and yet everything about modern life militates against
this basic obvious fact. Everything drives us into our own
information silos, into curating our own resumes and working on

(05:56):
our own little homes and all that can be beautiful,
but when you overlook what we need, that is going
to create stress and anxiety. And you might think it
is observable things out in the world, and it probably
is those things too, But I just wonder from many
people whether it's this deeper contributor that they're not looking at.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, I'm so glad you've just made some two really
good distinctions there. I love the way you are sharing
the research around the difference between anxiety and stress, and
going back to that for a second, that example you
gave of having your to do list and feeling like
you don't have the capacity, It sounds like what you're
sharing is that there's a capacity challenge and then also

(06:37):
a control challenge, and when you're naming all those things
external to us, there's a feeling of I can't control
any of those things. All of those things are uncertain,
and thereforem dealing with constant states of change, and that
in effect creates a sense of stress and to some degree,
if I'm forward projecting, then anxiety as well. When I

(06:59):
think about that, and I love what you just said
about actually getting to the root of it, because I
think you're spot on that we often discover a new symptom,
and there will always be a new thing we'll discover
every day that causes or triggers stress, because there'll be
a new change, a new uncertainty, and a new thing
we can't control. But at the core of it, you've

(07:20):
highlighted this need for connection and this need for belonging,
and this need for human touch, both physical and mental
and emotional, that we seem to be feeling further and
further away from. I was talking about this with my
best friend today, who I speak to probably like three

(07:41):
or four times a week, and it's the person I
probably speak to the most in the entire world. And
he was my best man at my wedding. He introduced
me to spirituality, so we have a long history of
eighteen years of a friendship. So he knows me very
well and we still talk three or four times a week.
He lives in London, I live in la and we
still find the time to connect, and that's mainly because
he always makes time and he's very kind. And I

(08:03):
often think about it in that I don't know how
I would navigate life without that friendship because of having
someone who understands me deeply, someone who allows me to
be seen, someone who allows me to be flawed and
imperfect yet allows me to process. All of that is
so profoundly needed, but it required certain deposits that had

(08:25):
to happen eighteen years ago in order to get there.
Do you find human connection is easier with people you've
known for a long time, or have you found it
to be building new relationships and new friendships? What have
been the pros and cons of the ways you've navigated
both of those.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
One of the things that I really try to do
in my work is move away from abstractions or cliches
or big ideas and get really practical about how you
can actually act on these things. Because it's easy to
scroll on Instagram or read a book or hear a
Ted talk and you hear the these inspirational notions like

(09:02):
we're built for connection and we need belonging and you
need to invest in relationships, and then what do you
do about it? And so I think about that a lot,
and I think you just gave us an example. You
made a deep friendship eighteen years ago. But it's not
enough to just have a connection with somebody, you need

(09:23):
to invest in it over and over and over again.
That's true for any level of deep relationship. It's true,
I would imagine with your wife. It's I mean, you've
written a whole book about this, So I'm not talking
to you like you don't know what you're talking about.
But I just think you're giving a great, concrete example
of one little thing you can do, which is figure

(09:44):
out who you like and then make an investment in
that person and hopefully a few other people consistently over time,
because the rewards are huge and this isn't just like
a nice to have. I know you're familiar with this research,
but the study that comes up for me all the
time is this study that was done that's still ongoing
at Harvard University. It's overseen now by Robert Waldinger, and

(10:07):
the idea is that they've been following several generations of
people who live in the Boston area to see what
contributes to a long life, a longevity, health, happiness. And
what comes screaming out of eighty ninety years of data
is that the people who live the longest have strong relationships,

(10:28):
and what's the mechanism for that stress is what kills us.
You started this whole conversation with the idea of stress.
Stress is what kills us most of the time, and
the best way to reduce stress is to have positive relationships.
Waldinger has this great expression, never worry alone. And that's
what you were doing three times a week with your buddy.
And there are obviously things you can talk to your

(10:49):
wife about, of course, but the whole and again, again,
you know all of this, but can't You can't your
wife can't be the alpha and Omega, your wife can't
be everything to you. And again there's data to support
this contention too that the strongest marriages or romantic relationships,
in those relationships, the participants have other relationships that support it.

(11:10):
You know that you're getting certain needs filled through your
best friend. And yeah, so I just go back to
what you said that that seems to be a direction
that people can move in when they're trying to think
about how to operationalize this stuff in their own life.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah no, and I'm glad that you brought it to
this And I genuinely couldn't agree with you more. And
that's why I've always wanted to talk to you. Is
this idea of well, how do we actually do that?
Because these big ideas and big concepts often, as you said,
I give you that short term inspiration, but then it
doesn't translate into any discipline or habit or creation of

(11:48):
a routine or rhythm that allows us to repeat it
and make it real. And so let's kind of sewn
in on that for some of the points you made.
One of the things you talked about, of course, is
social media, and the truth is that all of us are,
in some way, shape or form addicted to this. It's
designed to make us addicted. It's not that we're addicted

(12:12):
because we have some flaw or some weakness, or because
we're not, you know, because we're alone. I think a
lot of us share this. I've found myself doomed scrolling.
I've found myself wasting hours and hours on social media,
feeling like I didn't achieve anything or gain anything from it.
So no one's immune to this. I don't think there's

(12:32):
a select few people who've beaten it. I think it's
it's consumed all of us. What have been the practical
steps that you maybe have put in place for yourself,
people that you known in your life that you think
have actually helped people develop a healthy relationship, because I
think it's also not just like saying, well, just don't
be on your phone, which is often again one of
these big ideas that's portrayed, which is like, well just

(12:53):
turn it off or you know, don't be on it,
and we know that that's not sustainable either, like we're
both carrying our phones to this.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yes, first of all, you said this thing about how
you have struggled with social media. I just want to
add that I have too. I mean I just started,
as we've discussed, and I can't tell you many times
I've gotten sucked into either scrolling and looking at things
that I mean, you know, I could be like talking
to my child during that time, or and this is

(13:19):
even more embarrassing, you know, compulsively checking back to see
how a specific video is performing. And and so yeah,
I don't come to this conversation with any superiority. I
also think and I will get to some things that
have been useful for me. But I also want to
say that I'm not against social media. I think there
are beautiful aspects to it. I think they are also

(13:41):
very difficult aspects, and we can talk about that if
you want, but it is popular not only for the
negative aspects for it, and I think it's you know,
you can get some degree of pleasure through social media,
for sure. I think it's true just for any dopamine
hit in our life. You can get addicted to anything
that is the source of fleeting pleasure, from food to cocaine,

(14:04):
to alcohol, to gambling to shopping. And there's healthy use,
healthy involvement in all of these activities, and then unhealthy
And it really just depends on the circumstances of your
own brain, your own life, and it's a thing everybody
has to work on for themselves. As it pertains to
practical things that work for me with technology addiction. One

(14:27):
is just being pretty disciplined about putting it away at
a Usually at the end of the day, I try
to put it away and have a proper evening with
my family. Don't always succeed at that, but I notice
when I do it, I feel better. And that leads
to the second piece of advice, which is, as you know,
I'm a big advocate of meditation, as are you, and

(14:50):
I think the self awareness that can be generated through
contemplative exercises like meditation can help wake you up to
the fact that you will feel better if you don't
get sucked into your phone for you know, prolonged periods
of time, and that can the brain is always looking
for pleasure, and if you can show the brain that

(15:10):
there's what my friend Jeded Brewer calls a bigger, better offer,
which is that it will feel better to connect to
your family most of the time, because sometimes our families
are annoying, But it will feel better to connect to
other people, to read a book, to take a walk
in nature. Then it will to you know, attach your

(15:33):
arm to the iv drip of fomo that that social
media can be. And so I think meditation is a
great way to do that. The final thing is see
if you can ask yourself this question. And I get
this from a woman named Catherine Price, who wrote a
book that I recommend called How to Break Up with
Your Phone. She encourages people to ask themselves to try

(15:54):
to get in the habit of asking themselves a very
simple question when they're when they find their zombie arm
reaching for the phone.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
What do you need right now?

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Like?

Speaker 3 (16:02):
What need are you trying to fulfill when you pick
up that phone?

Speaker 1 (16:07):
For me, it's often because I'm bored, or I'm in
an uncomfortable situation, or I'm tired and I don't have
the wherewithal to do something, or I'm lonely, or I'm hungry.
And actually, if you run that program, you run that
algorithm internally for yourself. You know you're only going to
remember this ten percent of the time. But if you
can remember to do it some percentage of the time

(16:28):
and ask yourself, what is it that I'm actually going
for here, you might realize, actually the phone is not
what I need right now. And for me, I found
that really helpful. It doesn't work all the time, but
it helps.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah. Absolutely, I like that idea of how we're almost
having to sell to our brain, Like the idea of
selling this you call it the great What was it?
The great?

Speaker 1 (16:48):
It's not my phrase, but it's from this guy, doctor
Jed Brewer, and he's written some books about anxiety, and
it's called the bigger, better offer.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
The bigger better office. Sorry, yes, the bigger better offer. Like,
I love that idea of having to sell that idea,
pledge that idea, propose that idea to the brain. And
I definitely see that as valuable. And I've found that
with the way that that worked for me was having
to remind myself after I made the right decision. So

(17:16):
what I mean by that is, if I'm going to
reach for my phone right now, and I have the
courage enough to not reach for it, but I end
up spending time with my family as the bigger better offer. Now,
after I've spent time with my family and I've enjoyed
it this time, they're not annoying, Then after I do that,

(17:38):
I need to deeply code that into my memory, like
I need to make a feel out of it, like
I need to tell my friend about it. I need
to journal about it. I need to record it, I
need to take a picture of whatever it is. Because
what I found is that the mind needs to be
reminded again when I reach for the phone that the bigger,
better offer will win, but that memory he doesn't get

(18:00):
stored deep enough for us to be able to rediscover
it when we most need it. Yes, and so that's
definitely helped. And I loved what you said a couple
of seconds ago about being able to switch it off.
I I fail at this all the time, but I've
at least set the rules, and I think that's what
we have to do with this, because it's it is hard.
But a few years ago I set no technology times

(18:24):
and no technology zones in my home. So I almost
envisioned a no phone sign in the bedroom and at
the dining table. And at one point I used to
envision like lasers around the room. And second, if I
walked past him with my phone, then you know whatever
the floor is laughter, Yeah, like mission impossible. I just
to give that feeling. And yes, of course, have I

(18:46):
walked through a laser with my phone. Of course I have.
But I like the idea of knowing that. Look, there
are certain rooms in my home where technology is not
the space. So actually, if I want to use my phone,
I have to leave that room to use it. And
like you're saying about leaving your phone in another room
or whatever it may be, I think is really powerful.
One thing you brought up, which I actually think is

(19:07):
that the crux of so much of this, And you
mentioned the word you've been embarrassed sometimes in your social
media usage, and I find that to actually be one
of the deepest routes of the challenges we have with
change and habit or even with meditation. Like I think
as you know you've been teaching meditation for years, as

(19:30):
if I and when I first started meditating, and even
now when my attention is not as present as it
can be, or I'm not as focused or I'm distracted,
which still happens today after all these years of meditating,
it's so easy to feel embarrassed or ashamed or guilty,
and we can often start to develop it in a

(19:51):
critic that can say some of the most hurtful things,
like I'll often say to myself like, come on, man,
you've been meditating for eighteen years, now, how are you distracted?
Or you know you've been you know by now you
should have been an expert because you're surrounded by so
many experts, or what's wrong with you? Like, oh, how
can you teach meditation if you can't meditate deeply like

(20:13):
you know, whatever it may be. And it's so easy
to get into that space. And one thing that I
came across recently for myself was recognizing that you can't
hate yourself into change, like you can't guilt yourself into growth.
You can't make yourself feel so guilty that you'll suddenly
achieve your goal. There almost needs to be grace there
needs to be kindness. There needs to be a safe

(20:35):
space for you to have imperfections. So I wanted to
ask you, like, what have you done with that emotion
of feeling embarrassed, because I actually think meditation is powerful
for helping us overcome embarrassment. But I'd love to approach
that with you.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Well, I've had the same thoughts of you know, I
don't know if you've experienced this, but you know, once
you step out into the world as like something approaching
a self help person, as soon as you're an asshole,
you tell yourself a story about how like you're a
total fraud, like the first day you screw up, you
know you you're You're like, all right, well I got
to close this whole business.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
I can relate to that.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah, I'm sure, I mean I I and I think
it goes to something really important, which is personal growth,
spiritual development, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Is hard and messy and perfection is not on offer.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
And I think just knowing that and even hearing Jay
Shetty talk about making mistakes and getting his shins cut
off by a laser as he walks into the bedroom
with his phone is useful because people need to know.
It's not a straight, unbroken upward trajectory. That's that's not
what this is. That's not what this is about. There's

(21:44):
a great tweet or I guess we call him X's
now or whatever whatever. There was a great X the
other day from a zen rochie Roachie Joan Halifax. She's
this incredible human being, and she posted a picture that
was basically a bunch of squiggly lines just going nowhere,
and then she the caption was the path. That's the

(22:07):
thing we are. This is messy. We are messy animals
and that's okay. And what I think is important to
know is that growth is possible, but it is impossible
without making a bunch of mistakes. And if you can
get that into your head, you're better off. So how
do you get that into your head? There's a bunch
of research that I've become increasingly interested in about the

(22:30):
possibility of reprogramming your inner dialogue. We most of us
have really nasty inner weather.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
I sometimes joke that if anybody said to me the
types of shit that I say to myself, I would
be punching that person in the face. And yet I
talk to myself in a quite a scathing, venomous way.
I know this is not unusual, so what can we
do about it? Well, you can get into the habit
you can develop. And again this is a an evidence

(23:01):
backed assertion. I'm not making just making this up, nor
is it an original observation. But what I've learned is
that you can get into the habit of talking to
yourself the way you would talk to a friend. And
there are some little hacks that make this easier. One
of them is to actually refer to yourself by your name. So, Jay,
I know you just got distracted in meditation, but dude,

(23:25):
as you know, getting distracted is a part of meditation.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
If it was possible to.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Clear your mind, then we'd have lots of people walking
around with no thoughts.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
But that isn't possible.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
What is possible is to focus your mind for a
few nine a seconds out of time and then start
again and again and again. And we are very good
at taking advice, at giving advice to other people, but
not taking our own advice. And so this technique, which
is called distance self talk, where you use your own
name to create some distance, can allow you Jay or

(23:57):
me Dan to give our tells the advice that we're
so willing to give other people and then actually to
hear it, And does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Truly? Absolutely no resates. That resonates so deeply, and I
actually feel that makes complete sense because even the negative
of that is true. And so I was reading just
a couple of weeks ago, maybe around how the two
ways we talk to ourselves negatively are either I am
so we say things like I am lazy, or I'm

(24:27):
so I'm not good enough for I'm the worst, or
you know, I'm the least intelligent out of all my friends,
or whatever is right, I am statements. And the other
one they were saying, which was even worse, was we
have a voice in our head that sounds like an
authority figure that says you're the worst or and you
aren't good enough, or you're behind, or whatever it may be.

(24:49):
And that almost sounds like there's an external authority, whether
it could have been a teacher or a parent, a
family member who may have said that to us, and
now it's internalized as a negative authority in our minds.
And so what you're actually saying is the positive authority
also works that if someone says your name Jay or Dan,
and then coaches you and guides you through that. Would
you say that that's a skill that you have harnessed

(25:12):
and nourished through meditation or do you see that as
separate to meditation.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
I think it's absolutely complementary. You know, as you know
in meditation you are. One of the benefits is that
you're more self aware. You're more aware of all of
these wild thoughts careening through your head, and so it's
easier to wake up now. I mean, I get lost
in you know, homicidal fantasies and you know, on speakable fantasy,

(25:37):
other kinds of fantasies. That's just the mind. But I'm
more likely now to have some self awareness. I mean
another word for that is mindfulness, to be able to
see what's happening between my ears, behind my eyes without
necessarily being caught.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Up in it.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
And so the sooner I can wake up to the
fact that I'm in the middle of a jag of
self judgment, then I can bring in these tools. Oh yeah,
you know what I need to do right now is
have a talk between the sane part of myself and
the insane part of myself. And as you said before,
the the inner critic comes to the ball masquerading is wisdom,

(26:15):
but it's not wisdom. It's it's it is your ancient fears,
and it is the dysfunction of the larger culture. So
you might be telling yourself you need to look better. Well,
that's not your voice. That is as to invoke another
amazing person, Sonya Renee or one of my Sonya Renee Taylor,

(26:39):
I believe is her name. I'm embarrassing, I'm forgetting her
last name, but she's a great writer. And she said
something to the effect of, when I see self criticism,
I realize it's not my voice. It's the voice of
the system. And so you're telling yourself you don't look good. Well,
who's by whose standards? It's the culture standards. And I
have two modes that I'm least proud of. One is

(27:01):
greedy and the other is angry. Angry, And as over time,
I've learned to actually have some affection for these modes
because it's just the organism trying to protect itself. It's
just my ancient fear based patterns doing their best. Usually,
you know, like it's a five year old's version of

(27:22):
doing their best to protect this body. But I don't
need to listen to them, and in fact, the radical
disarmament is to actually make friends with them, to kind
of high five those demons instead of trying to slay them.
And for me, that's been really useful. And just to
get it back to your question, combining these, I would
say modern psychological tools with ancient contemplative tools has really

(27:44):
been helpful.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Absolutely. Yeah, I love you just reminded me of making
that point about the system that you quoted there reminds
me of years yes, and years and years ago. I
was when I was a student in London and I
remember walking through, you know, like a department store and
there was a big advert that said get the natural look,
and then it was like all these things that products

(28:06):
that can help you get the natural look. And just
that idea of purchasing a natural look is fascinating because.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
As if you weren't born with them.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Yeah, exactly, but it is that voice right saying okay, well,
even to get a natural look. And again, you know,
I think there are pros and consom in you. I'm
a big fan of so many products, so many services,
so many things, and so it's not to say it's
all bad, but there is a need in mindfulness to
I think what you're saying is to differentiate and have

(28:35):
the ability of discernment between is this voice me or
is this something outside of me, whether it's a system
or a person or whatever it may be. And I
think that's the quality that we need, because it isn't
necessarily saying I'm just going to shut everything off and
nothing matters. It's this idea of can I tell? Can
I tell that when I'm listening to the voice in

(28:57):
my head as to whether it's truly mine or whether
it's being picked up or nurtured by some other external force.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Another fascinating question is what is me? Close your eyes
and look inside. Can you find some core nuggative j
and spend some time with that question that'll pop you
out of ruminating about lots of other unhealthy things.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Where is that question taken you?

Speaker 3 (29:23):
I think you think.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
I think you come more out of the Hindu tradition,
and I come a little bit more out of the
Buddhist tradition, even though I don't look like it. But
you know, that's That's where I've spent the last fifteen
years of my life really doing a lot of study.
And one of the things I say in Tibetan Buddhism
is that the not finding is the finding because there's

(29:47):
nothing to find there. I yes, I mean on the convention,
on the level of consensual, conventional reality, I'm Dan and
that camera's taking a picture of me, And yes, that
is true. But on the deepest possible level, if I
look for some core nugget of Dan, there's nothing to find,
and that not finding is the answer. And if can

(30:09):
you stay with that ambiguity, there is something healing about that.
So how how do you take that out of the
esoteric clouds into your actual life? One little linguistic trick.
You kind of teed me up for this before, because
you use the phrase I am like, I am so,
and so what if you just and this is I
want to give credit to the person who came up

(30:29):
with this. It's Joseph Goldstein is a great meditation teacher,
but he often advises his students to say, instead of
I am fill in the blank, there is fill in
the blank. There is hunger right now, there is anger
in my mind right now, there is sadness in my
mind right.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Now, there's no you to find.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
The adding of the you on top of it is
just adding insult to injury, right, you don't that's extra,
but that it's true that hunger and sadness can be
here right now. But if you can take the I
am out of it and to that there is, well
that it's workable. Right, you can do something with it.
You can let it pass, you can observe it, you

(31:09):
can try to work with it. But if you add
in a whole story about how ij or I dan
I mean curably fill in the blank, well that's much.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
That's a much bigger problem.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, I love that. I mean I've never heard that
there is. That's beautiful, that's that's really I can totally
see how that is such a beautiful tool and an
insight for people to use as language. Because it's interesting, though,
isn't it? Because it feels like we're all so obsessed
with identity in our stories and almost what you're proposing
is this idea of recognizing that there's somewhat of a

(31:42):
distance between us and our identity and story. Yet everything
we've been discussing today, whether it's social media, whether it's
the system, whether it's the story your parents laid out
for you, all of that, there's stories to be lived, crafted,
told and almost we're all living on our own stories
in our own mind. And so yeah, how are you

(32:03):
able to operate as Dan Harris, the teacher, the guide,
the you know podcast, et cetera. And then also have
the the balance of this recognition that actually there is
and there's no I am.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Well, can I turn it around?

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Of course?

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Like my last retreat was six to nine months ago,
I've got one coming up. So I'm like further and
further away from sanity, but you are much fresher, like
you've just come out of a retreat.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
How do you balance that?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
There's an understanding of the needs and interests of the
different vehicles in which I live. So the body being
one vehicle, the body has certain needs in order to
operate and in order to function, and then the mind
has certain needs and awareness that it will easily be

(32:58):
a support or as the getas as the best friend
of the worst enemy. So recognizing again as you said earlier,
the befriending of the mind requires an awareness and then
at a deeper level, looking at our emotions, looking at
our spiritual or consciousness connection. And so to me, it's

(33:18):
the outlining and awareness of the needs for that specific vehicle,
but not falling into the trap of believing the vehicle
is me. And the balance comes from recognizing using there
is is beautiful actually, but recognizing that there are needs
for each aspect that need to be taken care of,

(33:42):
but that one should not accept each of them to
be oneself. And I think for me that comes in
the form of having to remind myself of that which
is beyond the physical self, because it's easier to get
connected and identify with the farhysical self than it is
with the non physical self. Because the non physical self

(34:04):
is intangible, it's unseen when unaware of it, we don't
live in a society that reminds us of it. I
was thinking about this while I was actually at the monastery.
So the monastery doesn't have mirrors, and that was something
I've talked about before, where you lose your sense of
your physical self. Like while I lived there, I didn't
really I forgot deeply what I look like, and so
if I was out on the streets when I was traveling,

(34:25):
I would always try and look at my reflection in
a you know, in a shop window, whatever it may be.
And when I was back this time as well, I
was having that realization that the number one thing I
do in the morning when I wake up back at
my home is I look in the mirror. And so
I'm already from the moment I wake up living in
my physical self. I'm now living believing that I am

(34:45):
this body and this is all there is. And so
that automatically sets me up on the opposite end of
what I'm trying to practice spiritually. And so I found
that the balance is kept by making that reminder, that
first thought of the day of recognizing, whether it's in
your language, you know that which is not or that
which is unseen. And in the Hindu tradition, the accepting

(35:07):
of us being pure, eternal, full of knowledge, and full
of bliss is consciousness identifying with that before I identify
with anything else, and that, to me is what helps
the balance, is not falling into the easy identification. I
don't know if any of that made any sense.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
But well I does.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
I think, Well, you're aware through your own practice that
there's more than just the jay you see in the mirror,
and yet you live in a busy world and you're actually,
like me, you're kind of building a business around the
small version of yourself, like the physical, corporeal version of
yourself that presents here and now, smaller than the sort

(35:48):
of vast, infinite, mysterious we don't know what that is
somehow lives in your mind. And the way that you
balance it, I heard, is just engaging the messy business
of trying to remember to the best of your ability.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, I can't, I can't. I don't need to remind
myself that I'm jay this physical version, because I'm reminded
of that every day. But I have to remind myself
of that which is beyond this, because otherwise it's so
easy to lose touch with it. Because we are living
with the bodily needs is the prime focus. And I
think that's why retreats and experiences are so supportive, where

(36:25):
the bodily needs somewhat become a background priority and the
needs of the deeper self rise and the connection with
that self is more prominent. And I find that starting
my year of that way helps. I was actually just
I was talking to someone who was mentioning they came
to one of your retreats at Omega, and they were saying,
what a beautiful experience that was there, said it was

(36:45):
the only retreat they've ever been on, but they plan
on coming on more. And it was for that same
reason to be reminded. And I think that's why we
do anything right. I think we most of what we
do is to remind ourselves of something that we care
about and something that's meaningful to us, whether it's spending
time with our family or why we celebrate the holidays,
like so much of I think the most beautiful things

(37:06):
in our world are reminding us of what truly matters.
And I think spiritual and meditation. To me, meditation is
my daily practice overmind myself of what truly matters exactly.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
I mean, I think the biggest problem in my experience,
the biggest problem in whatever again, like I don't know
what to call this, personal growth, spiritual development, whatever it is.
The biggest challenge is forgetting. Because you hear a great podcast,
you see a great Instagram post, you read a great book,
you go to a great retreat, but then everything about
modern life pulls you back into the I'm going to

(37:39):
get satisfaction from the next thing. Oh no, no, the
next thing. I'm going to keep scrolling. I'm gonna get
that next sip of a latte, I'm going to get
the next promotion. And again I'm not saying these are
bad things, but they won't do it for you. Right,
There's a reason why you keep wanting more because the
way the human animals designed is natural selection. Didn't want
us to be satisfied becase then we stop, you know,

(38:01):
having babies, and that wouldn't be good for the species.
So you need to wake you need this is a
urgent mission. You need to find as many ways as
possible to wake back up. And you just describe, you know,
meditation is a great way to like pound this stuff
into your neurons. It's probably too aggressive of an analogy,
but it gets it into your molecules in a way.

(38:24):
And another thing you also described earlier is having good friends.
You know, if you can surround yourself with people who
are also taking this thing seriously, that is a great
way to wake yourself back up.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
And it also, by the way, is a.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Great way to get you out of your attachment to
this sort of I don't know if this is the
appropriate term to use, but the sort of smallest, most
superficial version of yourself, the brand of Dan, the brand
of Jay. Well, if you're talking to your best friend
and he's got a problem and you're helping him with it.
Another word for that would be generosity. Right, if you're
being generous in some way that's going to get you

(39:00):
out of your head, that is a form of letting go.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Mm hmmm, I like that. Yeah, that really that struck
a corde of like how again, going back to that
being when when we're being a I guess in that
case you said generous. There's an element of us not
living in the system, is what you say? That feels right? Why?

(39:25):
Why is that? Why? Why do you think that breaks
the system?

Speaker 1 (39:29):
It's a little line that I have which is impolite,
but the view is so much better when you pull
your head out of your ass, and you know, if
you're being generous, your.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Head's out of your ass.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Even if you have ulterior motives, which I think we
unfairly demonize, like it's okay to give because you know
you have some there's something in it for you. By
the way, there is something in it for you. The
brain is wired to experience intense reward in the act
of generosity. That's cool, but you're still more of your

(40:01):
bandwidth focused on the benefit to somebody else. Than there
would be if you were like mindlessly scrolling or binging
or eating or whatever it is. And it is just
fundamentally getting your head out of your ass in whatever
form you choose. And it doesn't have to be giving money.
It can be holding the door open for somebody. I
sometimes ask people to do this little mental, very easy

(40:23):
mental game of like, pay attention. The next time you
hold the door open for somebody, what does that feel like?
It feels good if you're paying attention. That feeling is
infinitely scalable in a way that the pleasure of Instagram
or ice cream is not. And I just you can
ride that insight. Not that I do it perfectly, if
at all, but you can, if you're so inclined, ride

(40:45):
that insight all the way to significantly greater levels of happiness.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah. Wow, I love that. I love that. That's so
interesting that after all these years, you can still open
the door for someone and it still feels great and
you know whether whether the other person responds or not.
But the endless scrolling on social media is kind of yeah,
loses its taste very very quickly.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, it doesn't mean you should ever do it. It's
just the endless part that you should lose.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean, I guess that's one of
the things I loved about in this book when I
first came across it. Your book Ten Percent Happier, which is,
you know, a huge best seller, huge success led to
the podcast. Also, one of the things I loved was
this whole idea about without losing your edge. And I
really appreciated that because I think it's what we've both

(41:36):
been talking about here. Like I enjoy operating and building
and creating like I do, and I've always been. I
feel like I'm at a point in my life where
I've given myself permission to be all aspects of myself.
And up until this stage in my life, I was
just collecting different parts of myself, and so I felt
like I collected to I mean, zero to ten probably

(41:57):
didn't do anything, but ten to twenty collected things. Twenty
to thirty I collected things. And now I'm in my thirties,
I feel like I'm connecting things. And that collection to
connection has been primarily through the uncomfortable process of accepting
and giving myself permission for the paradoxical and contradictory things

(42:18):
that live in within me. So as much as I
love being fully present and mindful and deeply purifying myself,
I also really enjoy building and creating and learning and
being curious and outward. And those two things coexist, and
I actually find that one feeds the other. So I
find that the further I go outwards, the more I

(42:39):
want to go inwards, and the more I go inwards,
the more I want to go outwards in a positive sense,
And that cycle continues, and it's a cycle, it's not
a and I think both of us, having studied Eastern traditions,
the East is fully cyclical and not linear in all
of its practices. So the growth journey looks like this,
and the Western growth journey generally is portrayed as that,

(43:01):
though even though it may not.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Be, there's a way in which you can assume that
sitting and meditating or even going to a can you
believe this dude went to a monastery for ten days
a couple of days ago, Like, that's not going to
help him with his edge, But actually it does help you.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
It does help you.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Do you want to be less emotionally reactive? Do you
want to be more focused? Do you want to have
better relationships with your collaborators. Okay, do you think going
to a monastery is going to help or hurt with
those things? It's going to help with all of those things,
and those are the things we need to be successful.
We've been sold through hustle culture this idea that you know,
thank God it's Monday, I've got to rise and grind

(43:37):
and all of that stuff. But that that is, in
my experience, a great way to burn out, when in fact,
that the cycle that you just talked about of retreat
to advance kind of you know, you take some you
don't have to do it. It doesn't even have to be
a retreat. It can be just five minutes of meditation
every day. That that is filling your tank in a
way that allows you to engage in the world more effectively.

(43:59):
And so these two things are not in opposition in
my experience. And you're a walking example of that, Like
you spent time being a monk, and that has helped
you build a business that helps other people, that helps
you do more inner work.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
Boom.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah, no, And of course, and I love what you
said there, because yeah, we've talked a bit about retreats,
and I don't want everyone to think they need to
disappear for a week or a year or whatever it
may be. All of this can be done in the
microcosm of five minutes. I want to don walk us
through your daily meditation practice. And I'm sure you've done
this a million times, but I'd love for people to
hear it, because I'd love for people to hear how
accessible some of these ideas are on a daily basis

(44:36):
that we're talking about, and of course in a way
that they can start practicing as well. So what is
your data practice.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
I'm actually I'm excited where you're interviewing me right now.
But then in like two minutes we're going to turn
this around and I'm gonna interview you and I because
we come from different traditions, so I actually come into
my discussion with you with a lot of curiosity about
what your meditation is like. So from a Buddhist standpoint,
it's for beginners really not complex, and a lot of

(45:06):
people worry that it's going to be you know, esoteric
or impossible, but it really isn't. There's really three steps
for beginning mindfulness meditation. And by the way, I did
use I keep talking about Buddhism, but this meditation that
I'm talking about now is secular. There's no religious lingo
or metaphysical claims. It's just a it's a very simple,

(45:27):
secular kind of exercise for the brain. And the first
step is just to sit or lie down comfortably, close
your eyes. And the second step is to bring your
full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in
and going out. For some people, the breath is can
make you a little anxious if you're focusing on that,
and if that's you, then you just pick something else,
like the feeling of your body sitting or lying down.

(45:50):
So that's step number two. First, get into a comfortable position,
sitting or lying down. Second, pick something to focus on,
like your breath or the feeling of your body. And
then the step is the most important because as soon
as you try to do this, your mind is likely
to go into mutiny mode. You're having in all these
random thoughts and urges and emotions, and at this moment,

(46:11):
the voice in people's heads often swoops in and tells
them and this whole story about how they're failed meditators.
I mean, you were talking about this earlier, but that
voice is wrong. The whole goal in meditation is just
to notice that you've become distracted and to start again
and again and again. And the waking up from distraction
is not proof of failure. It's actually a proof of
success because the whole goal here is to get more

(46:34):
familiar with this inner conversation that we're all having, this
inner narrator that is chasing us out of bed in
the morning and is yammering at us all day long.
You just want to get more familiar with this cacophony
so that it doesn't own you as much. So it's
really that simple. Pick one thing to focus on, usually
the breath. Then in a few seconds in you'll start

(46:54):
having random thoughts about like what kind of bird was
big bird? Or you know where do gerbils run wild? Whatever,
as random thoughts. As soon as you wake up from
those thoughts, blow them a kiss and go back to
the breath. Back to the breath, over and over and
over again. And that's like a bicep curl for your brain.
And that's what we see on the brain scans of
people who meditate, that the area of the brain associated
with attention or focus changes in a positive way. Meanwhile,

(47:18):
the area of the brain associated with stress shrinks. And
this is an exercise that anybody can do. I will
say small asterisk. If you have significant mental health challenges
or trauma, it might be good to do it under
the supervision of a mental health professional, but other than that,
it really is universally accessible. It doesn't matter what your

(47:38):
religious beliefs are, or if, like me, you're an agnostic.
This is simple secular exercise for your brain.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, and I love what you said is that we're
really just trying to get attuned to that in a
voice that is basically telling us what to do all
day and pushing around in every direction. I find that
that voice has often led us to achieve incredible things.

(48:04):
That voice often leads us to achieve things and still
feel unfulfilled. That voice has almost becomes such a friend
in so many ways, and sometimes a toxic friend. It's
almost a toxic relationship we have with the voice inside
of our head where we listen to it, but we
don't always like it. But sometimes it helps us win,
and sometimes it you know, sometimes it helps us get
one up on someone and then other times it lets

(48:27):
us down. And it's doing all of this. It's almost like,
I think, like a toxic relationship. We're scared of letting
go of that voice because it's almost like, what do
I replace it with? Yes, I'm just going to be alone.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Well, a couple things to say about that. One is
there are many voices. I mean, one of the theories
of modern psychological theories is called the modular model of mind.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
That we have these modes.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
I kind of think about it like you remember magic
eight balls. I still love that, And the tiles compete
for the top space that you that and then we'll
send you a message or whatever.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
So we have a bunch of tiles in our head
and they're all.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Competing for that little for the steering wheel, right, And
so I've got a jealous mode, an angry mode, a
fearful mode, a self critical mode, and I think often
the self critical mode is the one with a steering wheel.
But you have a wise mode, a generous mode, a
compassionate mode, and they're often just not getting that much airtime.

(49:25):
And there are ways through meditation, through therapy, being in nature,
exercise that can bring the healthier tiles to the surface.
And so that's just one thing to say. And then
the other thing to say is that, yeah, it's true
that this self criticism. We're scared that if we let

(49:48):
it go, that will be on the couch eating ice
cream until the end of time. And that's just not
what's going to happen. Back to Tibetan Buddhism, and I'm
not an expert in it, but they have this expression
that I have a couple of colleagues wh are sitting
on a couch over here who have heard me say
this a million times, but I really love this. This

(50:08):
there's the Tibetan word for enlightenment. As far as I
understand it roughly translates into a clearing away and a
bringing forth. You clear away the noise of our All
of our demons are unhelpful demons. What can come out
is what is already there in all of us, which

(50:31):
is the good stuff.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
You know.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
You might use the word the loaded word love, and
I think of love as like sort of an overarching
term that encompasses things like generosity, compassion, kindness, patience, ethics,
and that is in us. Of course, it's in us
because back to evolution as a social species, we needed
all that stuff in order to cooperate and collaborate and

(50:54):
become the apex predator on the planet. And when you
turn the volume down on the shittier aspects of our nature,
the good stuff will come out. And it's it's it
has an edge. It has the edge that you want.
It does want to create beautiful and important things in
the world. It does want to take care of you too,

(51:14):
as well as it wants to take care of everybody
it it does. It does want to stand up to injustice.
It does want to be tough, but not motivated by
hatred instead by the good stuff, which is like giving
a shit caring anyway. That's that's all my experience about this. Absolutely,
and you're not. I'm not perfect at it by any stretch.

(51:36):
I mean I've been. I made a reference to the
Liz a TONI were sitting in the room with us,
like give them the mic. They'll tell you, you know
ninety still a moron.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Absolutely, no, no, no, But but I love the idea
of how we're simply reconnecting with and reawakening something we've forgotten.
So it's almost like we're associating with that angry mode,
that envy mode, that jealousy mode, that ego mode every day,
and so we've started to accept that it's our reality
and normality. Whereas you said, we do also have a

(52:05):
wise mode. It's just that we haven't experienced it either
outside of us or inside of us for so long
that we've forgotten it's there. But it is there, it
is accessible, And I think that is not only true
based on the wisdom traditions we've studied, but it's also
empowering to recognize that this isn't something new you're having
to figure out or develop. It's an ability that almost

(52:27):
exists within you already that has just been buried and
covered over by all these other layers of identification and impurities.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
You've been so vulnerable a couple of times to mention
this thing inside of you as an anger mode. You
were saying earlier you have two modes, and one of
them was anger. And I wanted, if it's okay, to
kind of hone in on that, because I think that's
something we've actually never really discussed on the podcast, in
all the guests we've had, and I think it's something

(52:57):
that often is something people are scared head of talking about.
It's a taboo topic because of the connotations that anger
is associated with. And I was wondering how as meditation
and mindfulness, what have they shown you or helped you
understand about anger? Because I think I think our mind

(53:18):
often goes to what I want to stop being angry,
rather than I want to understand anger. And I think
this is so true for so many things in society.
We're like, I wish that would just stop. And it's
almost like, well, before it stops, we may need to
get to know it a bit better and understand it
and befriend it. Going back to the high five point
you made earlier, and so I thought, let's start with

(53:38):
anger for that.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
I mean, there's this great I know you know who
he is, but there's this great Vietnamese zen master, tiknat Han,
and I love he has this this expression about like
holding your anger like a.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
Like a baby.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
I don't love that because I'm such an anti sentimentalist,
and I you know, I find it like sohat annoying.
Even though he's completely right. He's a genius, or was
a genius he passed recently. There's something to that. First
of all, the anger is trying to tell you something.
In my case, it's like some infantile usually desire to protect.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Myself and.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Often it's Sometimes anger has been described as a secondary emotion,
so it's an emotion that's covering up for another emotion.
And for my case, it's usually fear. So I'm a
guy and we don't like to admit fear. And often
if I look closely, if I hold the anger like
a like a crying child, if I get over myself

(54:47):
and do the thing that the wise person has mentioned
that we should probably do, I actually see, oh yeah,
I'm scared of something here. And that's really helpful because
then I can I can respond wisely to the thing
that's making me angry slash scared, rather than reacting blindly.
There's a difference between healthy anger and destructive anger. Again,

(55:11):
this is not my insight. This is the way in
psychological circles they talk about it. Healthy anger is that
can get you off the couch to do something about
a problem, and it's clarifying it.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
It can help.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Healthy anger can help us see clearly where somebody's full
of shit. Although there's a reason why we talk about
anger as seeing read because it can also be you know,
blind with blind rage. And so that's the destructive anger,
which where that's an anger fueled by hatred fueled by bias, bigotry,

(55:43):
and it can get us into endless conflict, and that's
what you want to avoid. That's what I've failed to
avoid for too many times in my own life and
still screw that up, you know, regularly. But it's nothing
can happen until you identify the problem. You talked about

(56:06):
this earlier, you know, like one of the things that
meditation does for you is it helps you be aware
of stuff so that you can work with it. And
so yeah, this is one of my big things that
I have to work with.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. No, I really value
that understanding of the difference in the two angers that
you just mentioned there. But also yeah, just being able
to recognize the fear that sits beneath it. And I can.
When I get agitated or irritated, it's always because there's

(56:38):
something I'm fearful of, and often it's even the fear
of messing up. You know. It's for me, I'm thinking
of when I'm asked a question and I feel like
I don't have any enough time to solve it, and
then I'm like, oh, just you know whatever, Like that
kind of agitation, that irritation comes out, and really it's
a fear of I'm like, I wish we had more time,
I would be able to solve this, like I don't

(56:59):
want to mess up. I don't want to give it
and so and it's so interesting that what is actually
well intentioned of a desire to want to get things
right turns out to be experienced as that. And like
you said, and like you mentioned Tikna Hunt said of
being able to hold it as a baby or being
able to Yeah, it's almost like it's so interesting though

(57:22):
what you said about the not the skepticism that you have,
but the you know, you were saying, the overly sentimental
version of holding a baby. And I think often that
is the perspective people have of these ideas, right with mindfulness,
with meditation, that oh, it's sentimental, it's a bit fluffy,
it's a bit woo and we know there's science behind
it now and those those days should be gone, but
they're not, because there's still a skepticism and cynicism around

(57:45):
the idea of like, oh, yeah, my fear is like whatever,
there's no fear, right, because that in and of itself
is trying to protect us from or trying to protect
us from our fear. And so how have you seen
in others and how have you and yourself been able
to catch yourself double bluffing yourself or when you're almost
you know, you're finding that way around doing the actual work.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
One of the biggest and most reliable sources of feedback
for me is defensiveness or dismissiveness. If I am dismissing
something out of hand, it's usually something I should listen to.
And if I'm getting defensive, it's because it's something I
know I should hear that I'm unwilling to hear at

(58:29):
that moment. And I almost never catch I almost never
catch it in the moment.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
I almost never catch it in the moment.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
But it's usually when I feel embarrassed the next day.
You know, it's like, it's just I keep coming back
to this, you know, I'm so pissed that this person
said this thing.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
Is like, ah shit, they're probably right.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
And so I actually got an email the other day
from I won't say her name because she didn't give
me permission, but from a great meditation teacher who was
talking to me about something, and she I didn't recall
her getting defensive. She recalled herself getting defensive about something
that I was pushing her on something, and she wrote
me an email the next station is like, I woke
up thinking about how I was defensive and that means

(59:09):
eitherre's something I really need to listen to there, So
I'm going to go in the direction you push me.
And that's that's usually how I get past the double bluff.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Yeah. I think for me, it comes out in if
I'm judging someone, so fund that if I'm judging someone
that there's a sense of truth that that exists within
me somewhere, and so I need to explore that that
which I'm judging in someone else. And I've been working
on that one, and that's the hardest one, and.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
It's the most embarrassing too, because it's like you it
feels good to point at the other person there's such
a schmuck or whatever, but like, of course you're seeing
it so clearly, and you hate it so much because
it's it's in you.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Yeah, And it's so funny because when you see in them,
you're like, how can they not be aware that they're
like that? At the same time, you're talking about yourself
and you know you've recognized you're not you're not even
aware when you're like that. And I think that's where
I notice where I'm where it's easy to double bluff
myself and I have to be conscious of That goes
along your lines too. It's that you're building a story

(01:00:15):
to support your view without evidence and without research and
without looking at all of the facts, and you know
you've you've created a story that makes sense to you
in order to fulfill your your desire, whatever that may be.
And then you're not forced to actually look at yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
There's a great expression. If it's hysterical, it's historical. You know,
it's like you're getting hysterical about something. There's some it's
some deep programming. And yeah, I hate admitting that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Yeah, I think we're both we're both going back and
forth admitting all of our admitting all of our flaws
and challenges and issues. But but that's well, meditation does
right that this is actually what's transpired without without intention
or maybe with intention. But actually this is the benefit
of practicing mindfulness of meditation is a really healthy relationship

(01:01:17):
with all of your imperfections.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
I mean, you interview all sorts of people, but you
interview a lot of like great folks from the meditation world,
and so do why and so in my experience, the
common denominator among all of the great like spiritual masters, right,
if that's a term that you're okay with, the common
denominator is they all have a sense of humor. Yes,

(01:01:40):
how can you look at this mind without laughing? After all,
the word that my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein uses most
frequently is ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Yes, yes, because we're ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
You were ridiculous, And it's just it's so healthy to
see that and laugh at it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Teachers would obviously always talk about the
monkey mind. Yes, and although that's somewhat of a alien
analogy to some degree at least when you've grown up
in England or in the US, because you're not seeing
monkeys all the time. But when I have gone to
certain spiritual sites in India that are, you know, infiltrated

(01:02:18):
with monkeys, it will only make you laugh. Like I've
seen monkeys, you know, rip bags to steal fruit. I've
seen monkeys steal people's sunglasses and then trade it back
for food. I've seen I've seen monkeys steal credit cards
like and and know how to bather for what they want,

(01:02:38):
Like I've seen monkeys put in sunglasses like all you
need to do. I mean me and my wife ind
A Barley this year and we went to the monkey
forest there and the monkeys are just hilarious. And ridiculous
is the word. And it's almost that when you start
seeing the habits of the mind as a monkey, it's
so easy to laugh at it because you just realize
how ridiculous it is, and how how hilarious they are,

(01:03:01):
and how uncontrollable they are, as opposed to looking at
it as this thing like almost like a Rubik's cube,
which we sometimes see as and you get frustrated trying
to figure it out. Espison, when you look at a monkey,
you go, well, a monkey's going to be a monkey.
So I'm not surprised when my mind is ridiculous. I'm
not expecting my mind to be this. You know, you're
never looking at a monkey expecting it to be sitting

(01:03:23):
there meditag on top of a rock. You're expecting to
see a monkey jump from branch to branch and swing
and you know, whatever else it may be. And all
of a sudden when you can and you have to
have had the real experience of that in order to
even have that really sit and like if I hadn't seen.
And then a couple of years ago I went to
Rwanda and we treked with gorillas, and we saw the
little baby gorillas who were just playful and silly, and

(01:03:46):
the sound of their laugh and and just what they
were like, and you just start to recognize you need.
This is why what you just said earlier, you mentioned
it passively, but observing nature is such a beautiful way
of understanding ourselves. And again going back to your earliest point,
our disconnection from each other in nature means we're only

(01:04:06):
seeing systems and machines and the way systems and machines work,
and now our expectation of our mind to work the
same way. I want to turn my mind off and
I want to turn my mind on, because we've seen
the system of on and off on a light switch,
to a phone, to a tablet for so many years
now that we've lost the idea of wait a minute,
the sun sets and the sun rises, but it doesn't

(01:04:29):
sun off and sun on, and we've lost that concept
of there is no instant on and off, and there
is no instant switch there is only nature doing its
cycle and its phases and its rituals, almost.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
To pick up on the instant part of it, you know.
It kind of takes me back to the first question
you asked around stress, and we talked about some of
the contributors. I think one of the contributors is that
we live in a world that doesn't have enough friction.
That we've created a world for young people. And to me,
you're a young person, but because I'm in my fifties
and you're in your thirties, but I have a nine

(01:05:06):
year old who's a much younger person, and we you know,
there's a way that older people can blame younger people
for their oh this generation or kids today or whatever.
But this is a world we've created for them where
there isn't a lot of friction. You can get everything
you want on demand. And as a consequence, people are
intolerant of discomfort, and that is creating a lot of

(01:05:29):
anxiety because life is uncomfortable and there are going to
be stressful and scary situations and your ability to thrive
is going to be directly correlated to your ability to
handle this. And if we don't get comfortable with discomfort,
we're going to suffer, and.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
There are ways to work with this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
One of them is this thing that it's a psychological
term opposite action, you know, when you I'll give you
an example.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
I have intense claustrophobia.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
When your colleague Jordan came to pick me up in
the lobby of the hotel in which we're doing this
interview and take me up the elevator, I said I
have to ride alone because I didn't want to have
a panic attack in front of her.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
But I got on the elevator. I didn't want to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
I thought about walking thirty flights and I've done that before.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Wow. Sorry, I feel terrible now.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
I wish I have set up dude.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
No, but the lesson here is that I need to
get on elevators regularly. That's the way out of this.
It's opposite action. I need to do the thing i'm
scared of carefully. I don't want to give myself a
panic attack. Although there are some people who argue that
that is a way through this, but for me, I
just kind of gently exposed myself to the stuff I'm

(01:06:47):
afraid of, and so I actually look I relished the
opportunity to get on an elevator or to take a
subway ride. I just have to do it in the
right circumstances. So I didn't inflict it upon Jordan. I
just took a different elevator. And I actually think this
is one of the this is one of the ways out,
one of the ways out of the epidemic of stress
and anxiety that we began this conversation with, which is

(01:07:08):
to whatever way in your own life, to just dose
yourself carefully and gently, with some discomfort. To take the
opposite action, do the opposite of what you want to do,
which may be to you know, hide from the discomfort,
Go to that party, accept the invitation, ask that person
out for a cup of coffee, pressed like on that

(01:07:31):
Instagram post. You know, little steps like that will will
equip you and arm you to move through a world
that is largely out of your control.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Done. Thank you so much. It's been such a joy
talking to you today, and I've really, I've really enjoyed
how you know, this conversation tended to the benefits of
meditation without listing the benefits of meditation, but the u
but the acceptance of the benefits being a deeper awareness
of who we are. We need to improve and doing

(01:08:01):
that with love, with kindness, with gentleness, as opposed to hate,
pressure and stress that we often place on ourselves. But
we end every episode with a final five, and these
final five have to be answered in one word to
one sentence maximum each and so Dan, these are your
final five. The first question is what is the best

(01:08:23):
advice about mindfulness that you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
Just start again?

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
I like that, Yeah, beautiful. What is The second question
is what is the worst advice about mindfulness or meditation
that you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
Clear your mind.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
It's so bad. It's so bad. It's so bad, and
it was almost marketed like that for a long time. Yes,
for a long long time. Yeah. Question number three, how
would you define your current purpose?

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
Make awesome shit that helps people do their lives better?

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
I love that? Question Number four a thought that you'd
like to repeat more often?

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Well, I got a tattoo recently. It's an acronym ftboa B.
It's way off brand for me in terms of like,
it's cheesier than I like to be, but it stands.
It's a Buddhist phrase for the benefit of all beings.
And we talked about my anger habit. But one of
my other habits that I also mentioned that I don't
like is a kind of selfishness or greed, and so

(01:09:28):
I really try to remind myself as much as possible, like, no,
I'm answering this in more than a word.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
No, it's brilliant, it's great on.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
But I try to remind myself, Yeah, this is for
the benefit of all beings and the a the all
I'm included in that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
So it's not like I can't make a living or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
But having it right here next to my watch, I'm
trying to put that thought in my head more frequently.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
I love that. That's a beautiful answer. Fifth and final question,
which we asked every guest has ever been on the show.
If you could create one law that everyone in the
world had to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
How long do most people pause? Because I'm thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
People take forever.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
And that's why you picked up the book. You're like,
you read a chat.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
We either we either allow we either allow people to
edit it out or they can have their thinking time
in the edit whatever they prefer.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Okay, law, take your time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
It's a fun question. So I prefer it when people think.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
About it and I don't think this is something that
you can legislate, so I wouldn't want to force it,
but it would be like a strong suggestion which is
around kindness, which is that maybe I'll use this phrase
from the Dala Lama that I like better than kindness

(01:10:51):
because kindness can sound very planned.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
Why selfishness?

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
That if you want to do selfishness correctly, you will
be thinking about the benefit of all beings to the
best of your ability, because.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
That is how you will get happier.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
And if we lived our lives, all of us with
that as a north star, which again I don't know
if I could make it a law, but I could
make it a strongly held policy. I think that would
change a lot. I think that would change I'm not
a utopian. I don't believe that we can create a
perfect world, but I think that we can create a
much better world if we play to people's self interest

(01:11:34):
in a way that really is in their self interest
instead of the fleeting dopamine hits that we're selling people on.
Now that actually, your abiding happiness is going to be
found in.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
Kindness. And I wish there was a less cheesy way
to say that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
That's a great answer.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
More more than a sentence.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
It's perfect. It was perfect. The tenth anniversary edition of
Dan's book Ten Percent Happy, How I tend the voice
in my head? Would you stressed? Without losing my edge?
And found self help that actually works a true story
is available right now, of course with the tenth anniversary edition.
That's amazing. Congratulations, that's pretty so much.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
For Rayer now when the book came out, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
Of course subscribe to Dan's podcast Ten Percent Happier as well. Dan,
thank you so much for coming onto on purpose. This
was such a refreshing and really really beautiful organic conversation.
And I appreciate you going there with me because that's
kind of the space I've been in on the show
recently of wanting to get lost with someone.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
Right just to go into a flow.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Yeah, it's so interesting to meet you because I mean,
this is a long way of saying thank you. It's
just so interesting to meet you because I've seen you
from Afar for a million years and then just to
like walk into this hotel room.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
You're like this dude who just shows up. Hey, how
you doing? Like you're way more casual.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
And down to earth than I might have expected, and
so it's really fun to like put an actual person
to me there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
That's very sweet. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.
And maybe we're doing a terrible job at the brand
new That's not how I come.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
Across, No, it's it's my own paranoia.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
It's like, I'm like, God, the guys are going to
get it together. No, I really appreciate that. Thank you
so much.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
That's usually when you when I I I meet a
I've met a lot of well known people in my
job as a journalist because I have my job to
interview them, and it's rare that I like people more
after meeting them based on their public persona.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
And so that's what I was trying.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
To thank you. That's very kind of that's very kind.
It's that's I really appreciate that thank you. I received
that deeply, and I think it's really hard. I've I've
definitely struggled with this just I can only be fully
myself with someone I'm in person with. It's it's impossible
to I find it impossible to be your whole self

(01:13:48):
on a thirty second video or you know, if someone
listens to the podcast, I feel they know me because
they're hearing, you know, full conversations of an hour each
week so or every day. Some people listen to it
like IVO. If someone listens to the podcast, they have
a deep, deep understanding of Meal if they've read the books.
But if someone's just seeing something on social media, they
have such a limited view. And it's so hard to

(01:14:10):
portray yourself in that way or in your true self.
So I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Thank you Dan,
thanks for having me. It's been a real treat. Thank
you so much. Thank you so much for listening to
this conversation. If you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat
with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the key to
growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential. If

(01:14:31):
you know you want to be more and achieve more
this year, go check it out right now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
You set a goal today, you achieve it in six months,
and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
There's no sense of meaning and purpose.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
You sort of expected it, and you would have been
disappointed if it didn't happen.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dan Harris: The Hidden Stressors That Are Ruining Your Inner Health & 10 Changes to Make to Reduce Stress