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

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Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Both things are probably at the worst point they've ever been since we started keeping those records.

Speaker 4 Former ABC News anchor, author of 10% Happier, Mr. Dan Harris.

Speaker 3 People who live the longest have strong relationships. Dose yourself with some discomfort.
Go to that party. Accept the invitation.

Speaker 3 The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 2 Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.
The one, the only Jay Shetty.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 My community has asked for us to get together. I've seen so many comments tagging you, saying you have to have Dan on the show.
And so this is really exciting for me.

Speaker 2 And I want to thank you for taking out the time and being here with us.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me. 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.

Speaker 3 And well, I had an Instagram, but I didn't really post to it much.

Speaker 3 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. 2020.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I answered it and that's why we're here.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And I love it.
Yeah, I reached out. Yeah, I'm glad.
Glad you remember. Yeah, I reached out 2020 and was probably aware of your work even before that.

Speaker 2 And I feel feel like there's so many similarities and uh differences that we can explore today in our in our personal journeys. But let's dive straight in.

Speaker 2 I think I'm at this point in time, it feels like we've talked about this topic for a long time, but it still feels like we have a slightly unhealthy relationship with it and somewhat a subconscious relationship with it.

Speaker 2 And I'm talking about stress.

Speaker 2 And it seems that year upon year, people's stress increases, people's variety of causes of stress increase.

Speaker 2 Even after the pandemic, 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 3 It's not good.

Speaker 3 I recently learned, this is embarrassing that I recently learned this, the difference, the specific difference between stress and anxiety.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 The difference between the demands on you and your ability to meet those demands.

Speaker 3 And anxiety is a little bit more fretfully projecting forward into the future and fearing that bad things are going to happen.

Speaker 3 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 tell,

Speaker 3 anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, and loneliness are, according to the numbers I've seen, at unprecedented levels. Now, I don't, we haven't been keeping these statistics for that long.

Speaker 3 So I suspect when we were like on the edge of World War II, things were worse. But in the modern era, things have not been worse from what we can tell.

Speaker 3 And I think a huge contributor to that is the pandemic that we just lived through.

Speaker 3 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 social media, which we were just talking about, war, climate change, and you have a very tough situation for individual minds.

Speaker 2 Which one's been the one that you feel you've heard about the most from the people that follow your podcast, that have read your books?

Speaker 2 Like, what's the stress that you think is weighing them down the most?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So we might fasten on to things that are real, for sure. I mean, like work stress.
economics.

Speaker 3 So there can be stress about the state of your job and then economic stress about the larger state of the economy. There's increasing stress around inequality and bigotry, increasing awareness of it.

Speaker 3 So, the question is: Are those

Speaker 3 the proximate causes for your stress? Or could it be, could there be subterranean contributors that you might not be aware of?

Speaker 3 So, I think today's media environment, particularly social media, and I'm not anti-social media.

Speaker 3 We just talked about the fact that I recently went on it, but I think there are aspects of social media we need to be aware of. And

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I think also if you're spending too much time staring at a screen, two things can happen.

Speaker 3 One, you can get a distorted view of the state of the world because the algorithms feed off of conflict and anger and outrage.

Speaker 3 They feed our anxiety.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 We are, and this is to state the obvious, social animals. You hear this in every TED Talk.
I think I said it in my own TED Talk, so I'm like deeply unoriginal here.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Everything drives us into our own information silos, into curating our own resumes and working on our own little homes.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And it probably is those things too. But I just wonder for many people whether it's this deeper contributor that they're not looking at.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It sounds like what you're sharing is that there's a capacity challenge and then also a control challenge.

Speaker 2 And when you're naming all those things external to us, there's a feeling of, I can't control any of those things.

Speaker 2 All of those things are uncertain and therefore I'm dealing with constant states of change. And that, in effect, creates a sense of stress.

Speaker 2 And to some degree, if I'm forward projecting, then anxiety as well.

Speaker 2 When I think about all of that, and I love what you just said about actually getting to the root of it, because I think you're 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.

Speaker 2 But at the core of it, you've highlighted this need for connection and this need for belonging and this need for

Speaker 2 human touch, both physical and mental and emotional,

Speaker 2 that we seem to be

Speaker 2 feeling further and further away from. I was talking about this with my best friend today, who I speak to probably like three or four times a week.

Speaker 2 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 18 years of a friendship.

Speaker 2 So he knows me very well. And we still talk three to four times a week.
He lives in London. I live in LA and we still find a time to connect.

Speaker 2 And that's mainly because he always makes time and he's very kind.

Speaker 2 And I often think about it 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 to happen 18 years ago in order to get there.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 What have been the pros and cons of the ways you've navigated both of those?

Speaker 3 One of the things that I really try to do in my work is

Speaker 3 move away from

Speaker 3 abstractions or clichés or big ideas and get really practical about how you can actually act on these things.

Speaker 3 Because it's easy to scroll on Instagram or read a book or hear a TED talk and you hear these inspirational notions like we're built for connection and we need belonging and you need to invest in relationships and uh and then what do you do

Speaker 3 more and so i i think about that a lot and i think you just gave us an example

Speaker 3 you made a deep friendship 18 years ago but it's not enough to just have a connection with somebody you need 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

Speaker 3 figure 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

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It's overseen now by Robert Waldinger.

Speaker 3 And 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, longevity, health, happiness.

Speaker 3 And what comes screaming out of 80, 90 years of data is that the people who live the longest

Speaker 3 have strong relationships. 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.

Speaker 3 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're doing three times a week with your buddy.

Speaker 3 And there are obviously things you can talk to your wife about, of course, but the whole, and again, again, you know all of this, but you can't,

Speaker 3 you can't, your wife can't be the alpha and omega. Your wife can't be everything to you.

Speaker 3 And again, there's data to support this contention too, that the strongest marriages or romantic relationships in those relationships,

Speaker 3 the participants have other relationships that support it, you know, that you're getting certain needs filled through your best friend.

Speaker 3 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 Yeah, no, and I'm glad that you brought it to this.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Because these big ideas and big concepts often, as you said, give you that short-term inspiration, but then it doesn't translate into any discipline or habit or creation of a routine or rhythm that

Speaker 2 allows us to repeat it and make it real. And so let's kind of zone in on that for some of the points you made.
One of the things you talked about, of course, is social media.

Speaker 2 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 we're addicted because we have some flaw or some weakness or because we're not you know because we're alone.

Speaker 2 I think a lot of us share this. I've found myself doom scrolling.
I found myself wasting hours and hours on social media feeling like I didn't achieve anything or gain anything from it.

Speaker 2 So no one's immune to this. I don't think there's a select few people who've beaten it.
I think it's consumed all of us.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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 turn it off or, you know, don't be on it.

Speaker 2 And we know that that's not sustainable either. Like we're both carrying our phones today.

Speaker 3 First of all, you said this thing about how you have struggled with social media. I just want to add that I have too.

Speaker 3 I mean, I just started, as we've discussed, and I can't tell you how many times I've gotten sucked into either scrolling and looking at things that, I mean, you know,

Speaker 3 I could be like talking to my child during that time, or, and this is even more embarrassing, you know, compulsively checking back to see how a specific video is performing. And so, yeah,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I think there are beautiful aspects to it. I think there are also very difficult aspects, and we can talk about that if you want, but it is popular not only for the negative aspects for it.

Speaker 3 And I think it's, you know, you can get some degree of pleasure through social media for sure. And I think it's true just for any dopamine hit in our life.

Speaker 3 You can get addicted to anything that is the source of fleeting pleasure, from food to cocaine to

Speaker 3 alcohol to gambling to shopping. And there's healthy use,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And it's a thing everybody has to work on for themselves.

Speaker 3 As it pertains to like practical things that work for me with technology addiction, one is just being pretty disciplined about putting it away.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And that leads to the second piece of advice, which is, as you know, I'm a big advocate of meditation, as are you.

Speaker 3 And I think the self-awareness that can be generated through contemplative exercises like meditation can help wake you up.

Speaker 3 to the fact that you will feel better if you don't get sucked into your phone for

Speaker 3 prolonged periods of time, and that can

Speaker 3 the brain is always looking for pleasure. And if you can show the brain that there's what my friend Judd Brewer calls a bigger, better offer,

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 read a book, to take a walk in nature, than it will to

Speaker 3 attach your arm to the IV drip of FOMO that social media can be.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 I think meditation is a great way to do that.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And she encourages people to ask themselves, to try 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 What do you need right now? Like, what need are you trying to fulfill when you pick up that phone?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And actually, if you run that program, you run that algorithm internally for yourself, you know,

Speaker 3 you're only going to remember this 10% of the time. But if you can remember to do it some percentage of the time and ask yourself, what is it that I'm actually going for here?

Speaker 3 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 Yeah, absolutely. I like that idea of how we're almost having to sell to our brain, like the idea of selling this, you called it the great, what was it? The great.

Speaker 3 It's not my phrase, but it's from this guy, Dr. Judd Brewer.
And he's written some books about anxiety. And it's called The Bigger, Better Offer.

Speaker 2 The Bigger, Better Offer. 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.

Speaker 2 And I definitely see that as valuable. And I found that with

Speaker 2 the way that that worked for me was having to

Speaker 2 remind myself after I made the right decision. So what I mean by that is

Speaker 2 if I'm going to reach for my phone right now

Speaker 2 and I have the courage enough

Speaker 2 to not reach for it, but I end up spending time with my family as the bigger, better offer.

Speaker 2 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, I need to deeply code that into my memory.

Speaker 2 Like I need to make a deal out of it. Like I need to tell my friend about it.
I need to journal about it. I need to record it.

Speaker 2 I need to take a picture, 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 doesn't get stored deep enough for us to be able to rediscover it when we most need it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 is hard.

Speaker 2 But a few years ago, I set no technology times and no technology zones in my home. So I almost envisioned a no phone sign in the bedroom and at the dining table.

Speaker 2 And at one point, I used to envision like lasers around the room. And it's like, if I walked past it with my phone, then, you know, whatever, the floor is laughable.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like mission impossible, like just to give that feeling. And, and yes, of course, have I walked through a laser with my phone? Of course, I have.

Speaker 2 But, 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.

Speaker 2 And like you're saying, about leaving your phone in another room or whatever it may be, I think it's really powerful.

Speaker 2 One thing you brought up, which I actually think is at the crux of so much of this, and you mentioned the word, you've been embarrassed sometimes in your social media usage.

Speaker 2 And I find that to actually be one of the deepest roots of the challenges we have with change and habit, or even with meditation. Like I think.

Speaker 2 As you know, you've been teaching meditation for years, as have I. And when I first started meditating and even now,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And we can often start to develop an inner 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 18 years now.

Speaker 2 How are you still 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?

Speaker 2 Like, oh, how can you teach meditation if you can't meditate deeply? Like, you know, whatever it may be. And it's so easy to get into that space.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 space for you to have imperfections.

Speaker 2 So I wanted to ask you, like, what have you done with that emotion of feeling embarrassed?

Speaker 2 Because I actually think meditation is powerful for helping us overcome embarrassment, but I'd love to approach that with you.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Like the first day you screw up, you know, you, you, you're like, all right, well, I got to close this whole business.

Speaker 2 I can relate to that. Yeah,

Speaker 3 I'm sure.

Speaker 3 I mean, I, I, I, and I think it goes to something really important, which is personal growth, spiritual development, whatever you want to call it, is hard and messy, and perfection is not on offer.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 That's not what this is about. There was a great tweet, or I guess we call them X's now or whatever, whatever.

Speaker 3 There was a great X the other day from

Speaker 3 a Zen Roshi, Roshi 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 the caption was, the path.

Speaker 3 That's the thing.

Speaker 3 This is messy. We are messy animals and that's okay.
And

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So how do you get that into your head? There's a bunch of research that I've become increasingly interested in about the possibility of reprogramming your inner dialogue.

Speaker 3 We, most of us, have really nasty inner weather. You know, I've sometimes joked that if anybody said to me the types of shit that I say to myself, I would be punching that person in the face.

Speaker 3 And yet I talk to myself in quite a scathing, venomous way. And I know this is not unusual.
So what can we do about it? Well, you can get into the habit, you can develop.

Speaker 3 And again, this is a data, an evidence-backed assertion. I'm not just making this up, nor is it an original observation.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 One of them is to actually refer to yourself by your name. So,

Speaker 3 Jay, I know you just got distracted in meditation, but dude, as you know, getting distracted is a part of meditation. If it was possible to clear your mind,

Speaker 3 then

Speaker 3 we'd have lots of people walking around with no thoughts. But that isn't possible.
What is possible is to focus your mind for a few nanoseconds at a time and then start again and again and again.

Speaker 3 And we are very good at taking advice from, or at giving advice to other people, but not taking our own advice.

Speaker 3 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 me, Dan, to

Speaker 3 give ourselves the advice that we're so willing to give other people and then actually to hear it. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 Is that something you've ever tried? Absolutely. No, that resonates.
That resonates so deeply. And I actually

Speaker 2 feel that makes complete sense because even the negative of that is true.

Speaker 2 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 so.

Speaker 2 I'm not good enough or I'm the worst or, you know, I'm the least intelligent out of all my friends or whatever it is, right? I am statements.

Speaker 2 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 you aren't good enough or you're behind or whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And now it's internalized as a negative authority in our minds.

Speaker 2 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 and nourished through meditation?

Speaker 2 Or do you see that as separate to meditation?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You're, you're more aware of all of these wild thoughts careening through your head. And so it's easier to wake up.

Speaker 3 Now, I mean, I get lost in, you know, homicidal fantasies and, you know, unspeakable fantasy, other kinds of fantasies. That's just the mind.
But I'm more likely now to have some self-awareness.

Speaker 3 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 up in it.

Speaker 3 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 other tools.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 the inner critic comes to the ball masquerading as wisdom, but it's not wisdom.

Speaker 3 It is your ancient

Speaker 3 fears.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 Sonia Renee. What am I? Sonia Renee Taylor, I believe is her name.
I'm embarrassed and I'm forgetting her last name, but she's a great writer.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Well, who's by whose standards? It's the culture's standards. And I have two modes that I'm least proud of.
One is greedy, and the other is

Speaker 3 angry.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Usually, you know, like they're, it's a five-year-old's version of doing their best to protect this body. But I don't need to listen to them.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And just to get it back to your question, combining these, I would say, modern psychological tools with ancient contemplative tools has really been helpful.

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Speaker 2 Absolutely. Yeah, I love you just reminded me of making that point about the system that you quoted there.
Reminds me of

Speaker 2 years, years, 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.

Speaker 2 And then it was like all these things that products that can help you get the natural look. And just that idea of purchasing a natural look is fascinating because as if you weren't born with one.

Speaker 2 yeah exactly and and 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 cons I mean you know 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 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?

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Can I tell that when I'm listening to the voice in my head as to whether it's truly mine or whether it's been picked up or nurtured by some other external force?

Speaker 3 Another fascinating question is, what is me?

Speaker 3 Close your eyes and look inside. Can you find some core nugget of J? And

Speaker 3 spend some time with that question. That'll pop you out of

Speaker 3 ruminating about lots of other unhealthy things.

Speaker 2 Where is that question taking you?

Speaker 3 I think you come more out of the Hindu tradition. Yes.
And I come a little bit more out of the Buddhist tradition, even though I don't look like it.

Speaker 3 But, you know, that's where I've spent the last 15 years of my life really doing a lot of study.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 one of the things they say in Tibetan Buddhism is that

Speaker 3 the not finding is the finding

Speaker 3 because there's nothing to find.

Speaker 3 Yes, I mean,

Speaker 3 on the level of consensual, conventional reality, I'm Dan and that camera's taking a picture of me. And yes, that is true.

Speaker 3 But on the deepest possible level, if I look for some core nugget of Dan, there's nothing to find. And that not finding

Speaker 3 is the answer. And if can 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?

Speaker 3 One little linguistic trick.

Speaker 3 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 with this.

Speaker 3 It's Joseph Goldstein, who's a great meditation teacher, but he often advises his students to say, instead of, I am, fill in the blank,

Speaker 3 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 now.
There's no you to find.

Speaker 3 The adding of the you on top of it is just adding insult to injury, right? You don't, that's extra. But

Speaker 3 it's true that hunger or anger or sadness can be here right now. But if you can take the I am out of it into the there is, well, then it's workable, right? You can do something with it.

Speaker 3 You can let it pass. You can observe it.
You can try to work with it. But if you add in a whole story about how I, Jay, or I, Dan, am incurably fill in the blank, well,

Speaker 3 that's a much bigger problem.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I love that. I mean, I've never heard that there is.
That's beautiful. That's, that's really,

Speaker 2 I, I can totally see how that is such a beautiful tool and an insight for people to use as language. Because it's, it's interesting, though, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Because it feels like we're all so obsessed with identity and our stories. And almost what you're proposing is this idea of recognizing that

Speaker 2 there's somewhat of a distance between us and our identity and story.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 there's stories to be lived, crafted, told, and almost we're all living our own stories in our own mind.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, how are you able to operate as Dan Harris, the teacher, the guide, the, you know, podcaster, et cetera, and then also have the

Speaker 2 balance of this recognition that actually there is and there is no I am.

Speaker 3 Well, can I turn it around? I think

Speaker 3 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 How do you balance that?

Speaker 2 There's an understanding of the needs and interests of

Speaker 2 the different

Speaker 2 vehicles in which I live.

Speaker 2 So the body being one vehicle, and the body has certain needs in order to operate and in order to function. And then the mind has certain needs and

Speaker 2 awareness

Speaker 2 that it will easily be a support or as the Gita says, the best friend or the worst enemy. So recognizing again, as you said earlier, the befriending of the mind requires an awareness.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 at a deeper level, looking at our emotions, looking at our spiritual or consciousness connection. And so to me, it's the outlining and awareness of the needs for that specific vehicle,

Speaker 2 but not falling into the trap of believing the vehicle is me.

Speaker 2 And the balance comes from recognizing,

Speaker 2 using there is is beautiful, actually, but recognizing that there are needs for each aspect. that need to be taken care of, but that one should not accept each of them to be oneself.
And

Speaker 2 I think for me, that comes in the form of having to remind myself of that which is beyond the physical self,

Speaker 2 because it's easier to get connected and identify with the physical self than it is with the non-physical self.

Speaker 2 Because the non-physical self is intangible, it's unseen, we're 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like while I lived there, I didn't really, I forgot deeply what I look like.

Speaker 2 And so if I was out on the streets, when I was traveling, I would always try and look at my reflection in a, you know, in a shop window, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so I'm already from the moment I wake up living in my physical self. I'm now living, believing believing that I am this body and this is all there is.

Speaker 2 And so that automatically sets me up on the opposite end of what I'm trying to practice spiritually.

Speaker 2 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, the, you know, that which is not or that which is unseen.

Speaker 2 And in the Hindu tradition, the accepting of us being pure, eternal,

Speaker 2 full of knowledge and full of bliss as 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.

Speaker 2 I don't know if any of that made any sense, but.

Speaker 3 Well, it does. I think you're aware through your own practice that there's more than just the J you see in the mirror.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 yet you live in a busy world and you're actually, like me, you're kind of building a business. around

Speaker 3 the small version of yourself, like the physical corporeal version of yourself yourself that presents here and now, smaller than the sort of vast, infinite, mysterious,

Speaker 3 we don't know what that is somehow lives in your mind. And the way that you balance it, I heard, is

Speaker 3 just engage in the messy business of trying to remember to the best of your ability.

Speaker 2 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 as the prime focus.

Speaker 2 And I think that's why retreats and experiences are so supportive where 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.

Speaker 2 And I find that starting my year off that way helps.

Speaker 2 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 they said it was the only retreat they've ever been on but they plan on coming on more and it was for that same reason of to be reminded and I think that's why we do anything right I think we most of what we do is to remind ourself of something that we care about and something that's meaningful to us like whether it's spending time with our family or why we celebrate the holidays like so much of I think the most beautiful things in our world are reminding us of what truly matters.

Speaker 2 And I think spirituality and meditation, to me, meditation is my daily practice of reminding myself of what truly matters.

Speaker 3 Exactly. I mean, I think the biggest problem,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 get satisfaction from the next thing.

Speaker 3 Oh, no, no, the next thing. I'm going to keep scrolling.
I'm going to get that next sip sip of a latte. I'm going to get the next promotion.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 because the way the human animal is designed is that natural selection didn't want us to be satisfied because then we'd stop, you know, having babies.

Speaker 3 And that wouldn't be good for the species. So you need to wake.
You need.

Speaker 3 This is a urgent mission. You need to find as many ways as possible to wake back up.
And you just described, you know, meditation is a great way to like pound this stuff into your neurons.

Speaker 3 It's probably too aggressive of an analogy, but it gets it into your molecules in a way.

Speaker 3 And another thing you also described earlier is having good friends.

Speaker 3 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 And it also, by the way, is a great way to get you out of your attachment to the 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.

Speaker 3 Well, if you're focusing, if you're talking to your best friend, he's got a problem and you're helping him with it. Another word for that would be generosity, right?

Speaker 3 If you're being generous in some way, that's going to get you out of your head. That is a form of letting go.

Speaker 2 I like that. Yeah, that...
That really struck a chord there, of like how,

Speaker 2 again, going back to that being, when we're being a, I guess in that case, you said generous,

Speaker 2 there's an element of us not

Speaker 2 living in the system.

Speaker 2 Would you say that that feels right? Why is that?

Speaker 2 Why do you think that breaks the system?

Speaker 3 There'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.

Speaker 3 And, you know, if you're being generous, your head's out of your ass.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But you're still more of your 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.

Speaker 3 And it is just fundamentally getting your head out of your ass in whatever form you choose. And And it doesn't have to be giving money.
It can be holding the door open for somebody.

Speaker 3 Like I sometimes ask people to do this little mental,

Speaker 3 very easy mental game of like, pay attention the next time you hold the door open for somebody. What does that feel like? Feels good if you're paying attention.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 if at all, but you can, if you're so inclined, ride that insight all the way to significantly greater levels of happiness.

Speaker 2 Yeah, wow, I love that. I love that.
That's so interesting that after all these years, you can still open a door for someone and it still feels great.

Speaker 2 And, you know, whether the other person responds or not, but the endless scrolling on social media is...

Speaker 2 kind of yeah loses its taste very very quickly yeah that doesn't mean you should never do it i just it's just the endless part that you should lose 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, 10% Happier, which is, you know, a huge bestseller, huge success, led to the podcast.

Speaker 2 Also, one of the things I loved was this whole idea about without losing your edge.

Speaker 2 And I really appreciated that because I think it's what we've both been talking about here. Like, I enjoy.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And up until this stage in my life, I was just collecting different parts of myself.

Speaker 2 And so I felt like I collected, I mean, zero to 10 probably didn't do anything, but 10 to 20, I collected things, 20 to 30, I collected things. And now I'm in my 30s.

Speaker 2 I feel like I'm connecting things.

Speaker 2 And that collection to connection has been primarily through the uncomfortable process of accepting and giving myself permission for the paradoxical and contradictory things that live in within me.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I actually find that one feeds the other. So I find that the further I go outwards, the more I want to go inwards.
And the more I go inwards, the more I want to go outwards in a positive sense.

Speaker 2 And that cycle continues. And it's a cycle.
It's not a,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And the Western growth journey generally is portrayed as that,

Speaker 2 even though it may not be.

Speaker 3 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 10 days a couple of days ago?

Speaker 3 Like, that's not going to help him with his edge, but actually, it does help you. It does help you.
Do you want to be less emotionally reactive? Do you want to be more focused?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 and all of that stuff.

Speaker 3 But that, that is, in my experience, a great way to burn out. When, in fact, 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And so these, these two things are not in opposition, in my experience. And you're a walking example of that.

Speaker 3 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. Boom.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 All of this can be done in the microcosm of five minutes. I want to, Dan, walk us through your daily meditation practice.

Speaker 2 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 that we're talking about.

Speaker 2 And of course, in a way that they can start practicing it as well. So what does your daily practice look like?

Speaker 3 I'm actually, I'm excited.

Speaker 3 You're interviewing me right now, but in like two minutes, we're going to turn this around and I'm going to interview you.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So from a Buddhist standpoint, it's for beginners

Speaker 3 really not complex. And a lot of people worry that it's going to be esoteric or impossible, but it really isn't.
There's really three steps for beginning mindfulness meditation. And by the way,

Speaker 3 I keep talking about Buddhism, but this meditation that I'm talking about now is secular.

Speaker 3 There's no religious lingo or metaphysical claims. It's just

Speaker 3 a very simple, secular kind of exercise for the brain. And the first step is just to sit or lie down comfortably, close your eyes.

Speaker 3 And the second step is to bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. For some people,

Speaker 3 the breath 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And then the third 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 all these random thoughts and urges and emotions.

Speaker 3 And at this moment, the voice in people's heads often swoops in and tells them this whole story about how they're failed meditators.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And the waking up from distraction is not proof of failure.

Speaker 3 It's actually proof of success because the whole goal here is to get more 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.

Speaker 3 You just want to get more familiar with this cacophony so that it doesn't own you as much. And so it's really that simple.
Pick one thing to focus on, usually the breath.

Speaker 3 Then in a few seconds in, you'll start having random thoughts about like what kind of bird was big bird or, you know, where did gerbils run wild, whatever. All these random thoughts.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Meanwhile, the area of the brain associated with stress shrinks. And this is an exercise that anybody can do.
I will say a small asterisk.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are or if, like me, you're an agnostic. This is simple secular exercise for your brain.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I love what you said there is that we're really just trying to get attuned to that inner voice that is

Speaker 2 basically telling us what to do all day and pushing around in every direction. I find that

Speaker 2 that voice has often led us to achieve incredible things. That voice often leads us to

Speaker 2 achieve things and still feel unfulfilled. That voice has almost become such a friend in so many ways and sometimes a toxic friend.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And sometimes it, you know, sometimes it helps us get one up on someone. And then other times it lets us down.
And it's doing all of this.

Speaker 2 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? I'm just going to be alone.

Speaker 3 Well, a couple of things to say about that. One is there are many voices.

Speaker 3 I mean, one of the theories of modern psychological theories is called the modular model of mind. We have these modes.
I kind of think about it like, you remember magic eight balls? Yeah.

Speaker 3 You shake one up. Yeah, I still love that.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the tiles compete for the top space

Speaker 3 and it'll send you a message or whatever. So we have a bunch of tiles in our head and they're all competing for that little,

Speaker 3 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 the steering wheel.

Speaker 3 But you have a wise mode, a generous mode, a compassionate mode. And they're often just not getting that much airtime.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And then the other thing to say is that,

Speaker 3 yeah, it's true that this self-criticism,

Speaker 3 we're scared that if we let it go, that we'll be on the couch eating ice cream until the end of time. And that's just not what's going to happen.

Speaker 3 Back to Tibetan Buddhism, and I'm not an expert in it, but they have this expression that

Speaker 3 I have a couple of colleagues who are sitting on a couch over here who've heard me say this a million times, but I really love this.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 all of our demons, our unhelpful demons. What can come out

Speaker 3 is what is already there in all of us, which is the good stuff. You know, you might use the loaded word love.

Speaker 3 And I think of love as like sort of an overarching term that encompasses things like generosity, compassion, kindness, patience,

Speaker 3 ethics. And that is in us.

Speaker 3 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 become the apex predator on the planet.

Speaker 3 And when you turn the volume down on the shittier aspects of our nature, the good stuff will come out. And

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It does want to take care of you too, as well as it wants to take care of everybody.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Anyway, that's all my experience of how this goes. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 I'm not perfect at it by any stretch.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I made a reference to Liz and Tony who are sitting in the room with us. Like, give them the mic.
They'll tell you, you know, 90% still a moron. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, but, but I love the idea of how we're simply reconnecting with and reawakening something we've forgotten.

Speaker 2 So it's almost like we're associating with that angry mode, that envy mode, that jealousy mode, that ego mode every day.

Speaker 2 And so we've started to accept that it's our reality and normality. Whereas you said, we do also have a wise mode.
It's just that we haven't experienced it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's an ability that almost exists within you already that has just been buried and covered over by all these other layers of identification and impurities. Exactly.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I wondered if it's okay to kind of like 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.

Speaker 2 And I think it's something that often is something people are scared of talking about. It's a taboo topic because of the connotations that anger is associated with.

Speaker 2 And I was wondering, how has

Speaker 2 meditation and mindfulness, what have they shown you or helped you understand about anger? Because

Speaker 2 I think our mind often goes to, well, 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.

Speaker 2 We're like, I wish that would just stop.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so I thought, let's start with anger for that.

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Speaker 3 Sure. I mean,

Speaker 3 there's this great, I know you know who he is, but there's this great Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh. And I love him.

Speaker 3 He has this

Speaker 3 expression about like holding your anger like a baby. I don't love that because I'm such an anti-sentimentalist and I, you know,

Speaker 3 I find it like somewhat annoying, even though he's completely right.

Speaker 3 He's a genius or was a genius. He passed recently.

Speaker 3 There's something to that. First of all, the anger is trying to tell you something.

Speaker 3 In my case, it's like

Speaker 3 some infantile,

Speaker 3 usually desire to protect myself.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 often it's...

Speaker 3 Sometimes anger has been described as a secondary emotion. So it's an emotion that's covering up for another emotion.
And in my case, it's usually fear. So I'm a guy

Speaker 3 and we don't like to admit fear.

Speaker 3 And often if I look closely, if I hold the anger like a crying child, if I get over myself and do the thing that the wise person has mentioned that we should probably do, I actually see, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm scared of something here.

Speaker 3 And that's really helpful because then

Speaker 3 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, this is not my insight.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And it's clarifying.

Speaker 3 Healthy anger can help us see clearly where somebody's full of shit.

Speaker 3 Although there's a reason why we talk about anger as seeing red because it can also be, you know, blind with blind rage.

Speaker 3 And so that's the destructive anger, which

Speaker 3 that's an anger fueled by hatred, fueled by bias, bigotry,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But it's

Speaker 3 nothing can happen until you identify the problem.

Speaker 3 You talked about 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.

Speaker 3 And so, yeah, this is one of my big things that I have to work with.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
No,

Speaker 2 I really value that understanding of the difference in the two angers that you just mentioned there,

Speaker 2 but also,

Speaker 2 yeah, just being able to recognize the fear that sits beneath it. And I can, when I get agitated or irritated,

Speaker 2 it's always because there's something I'm fearful of. And often it's even the fear of messing up.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't want to mess up. I don't want to give it.

Speaker 2 And, 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

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 like you said and like you mentioned tich nhat han said of being able to hold it as a baby or being able to

Speaker 2 yeah it's almost like

Speaker 2 it's so interesting though what you said about the skept not the skepticism that you have but the you know you 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-woo.

Speaker 2 And we know there's science behind it now.

Speaker 2 And those, those days should be gone, but they're not because there's still a skepticism and cynicism around the idea of like, oh, yeah, my fears, like, whatever, there's no fear, right?

Speaker 2 Because that in and of itself is trying to protect us from, or trying to protect us from our fear.

Speaker 2 And so how have you seen in others and how have you in yourself been able to catch yourself double bluffing yourself or when you're almost, you know,

Speaker 2 you're finding that way around doing the actual work.

Speaker 3 One of the biggest and most reliable sources of feedback for me is

Speaker 3 defensiveness or dismissiveness.

Speaker 3 If I am dismissing something out of hand, it's usually something I should listen to.

Speaker 3 And if I'm getting defensive, it's because there's something I know I should hear that I'm unwilling to hear at that moment. And

Speaker 3 I almost never catch it.

Speaker 3 I almost never catch it in the moment. I almost never catch it in the moment.
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.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm so pissed that this person said this thing. It's like, ah, shit, they're probably right.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And she, I didn't recall her getting defensive, but she recalled herself getting defensive about something. I was pushing her on something.
And she wrote me an email the next day.

Speaker 3 She was like, I woke up thinking about how I was defensive. And that means that there's something I really need to listen to there.
So I'm going to go in that direction. You push me.
And

Speaker 3 that's usually how I get past the double bluff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think for me, it comes out in if I'm judging someone.

Speaker 2 So I find 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.

Speaker 3 and i've been working on that one uh and that's the hardest one and it's the most embarrassing too because it's like you

Speaker 2 it feels good to point at the other person you're such a schmuck or whatever but like of course you're seeing it so clearly and and you're you hate it so much because it's it's in you yeah and it's so funny because when you see it in them you're like how can they not be aware that they're like that and at the same time you're talking about yourself and you know you recognize you're not you're not even aware when you're like that.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's like you're building a story to support your view without evidence and without research and without looking at all of the facts.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you've, you've created a story that makes sense to you in order to fulfill your

Speaker 2 desire, whatever that may be. And then you're not forced to actually look at yourself.

Speaker 3 There's a great expression.

Speaker 3 If it's hysterical, it's historical.

Speaker 3 You know, if like you're getting hysterical about something,

Speaker 3 there's some, it's some deep programming. And yeah, I hate admitting that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think we're both going back and forth,

Speaker 2 admitting all of our flaws and challenges

Speaker 2 and issues. But that's what meditation does, right? It's just that this is actually

Speaker 2 what's transpired

Speaker 2 without intention or maybe with intention, but

Speaker 2 actually this is the benefit of practicing mindfulness and meditation is a really healthy relationship with all of your imperfections.

Speaker 3 I mean, you interview all sorts of people, but you interview a lot of like great folks from the meditation world.

Speaker 3 And so do I. And so in my experience, the common denominator among all of the great like spiritual masters, right?

Speaker 3 If that's a term that you're okay with, the common denominator is they all have a sense of humor.

Speaker 3 Because how can you look at this mind without laughing after a while? The word that my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, uses most frequently is ridiculous. Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes. Because we're ridiculous.

Speaker 3 Yeah. We're ridiculous.

Speaker 3 And it's just, it's so healthy to see that and laugh at it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Our teachers would obviously always talk about the monkey mind. Yes.

Speaker 2 And although that's somewhat of an 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.

Speaker 2 But when I have gone to certain spiritual sites in India that are, you know, infiltrated with monkeys, it will only make you laugh. Like I've seen monkeys,

Speaker 2 you know, rip bags to steal fruit. I've seen monkeys steal people's sunglasses and then trade it back for food.

Speaker 2 I've seen monkeys steal credit cards

Speaker 2 and know how to barter for what they want. I've seen monkeys put on sunglasses.

Speaker 2 All you need to do, I mean, me and my wife went to Bali this year and we went to the monkey forest there and the monkeys are just hilarious and ridiculous is the word.

Speaker 2 And it's almost like when you start seeing the

Speaker 2 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 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 it as.

Speaker 2 And you get frustrated trying to figure it out. As opposed to 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.

Speaker 2 I'm not expecting my mind to be this.

Speaker 2 You're never looking at a monkey, expecting it to be sitting there meditating on top of a rock.

Speaker 2 You're expecting to see a monkey jump from branch to branch and swing and, you know, whatever else it may be.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I'm like, if I hadn't seen, and then a couple of years ago, I went to Rwanda and we trekked with gorillas, and we saw the little baby gorillas who were just playful and silly, and the sound of their laugh, and just what they were like.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And again, going back to your earliest point, our disconnection from each other and nature means we're only seeing systems and machines.

Speaker 2 And the way systems and machines work and now our expectation of our mind to work the same way.

Speaker 2 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 sun off and sun on.

Speaker 2 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 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 because I'm in my 50s and you're in your 30s, but I have a nine-year-old who's a much younger person. And we,

Speaker 3 you know, there's a way that older people can blame younger people for their,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And as a consequence, people are intolerant of discomfort. And that is creating a lot of anxiety because life is uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 And there are going to 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 there are ways to work with this one of them is this thing that it's a psychological term opposite action you know when you oh I'll give you an example

Speaker 3 I have intense claustrophobia.

Speaker 3 And 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 Wow.

Speaker 3 But I got on the elevator. I didn't want to.
I thought about walking 30 flights, and I've done that before. Wow.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I feel terrible now.

Speaker 3 I wish we would have known that. I could have

Speaker 2 set this up, dude.

Speaker 3 What are you doing to me?

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But for me, I just kind of gently expose myself to the stuff I'm afraid of. And so I actually look, I relish the opportunity to get on an elevator or to take a Subway ride.

Speaker 3 I just have to do it in the right circumstances.

Speaker 3 I didn't inflict it upon Jordan. I just took a different elevator.
And I actually think

Speaker 3 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 to, in 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

Speaker 3 you want to do, which may be to hide from the discomfort, go to that party, accept the invitation.

Speaker 3 ask that person out for a cup of coffee,

Speaker 3 press like on that Instagram post.

Speaker 3 Little steps like that will equip you and arm you to move through a world that is largely out of your control.

Speaker 2 Dan, thank you so much. It's been such a joy talking to you today.
And

Speaker 2 I've really enjoyed how

Speaker 2 this conversation turned into the benefits of meditation without listing the benefits of meditation,

Speaker 2 but the acceptance of the benefits being a deeper awareness of who we are, what we need to improve, and doing that with love, with kindness, with gentleness, as opposed to hate, pressure, and stress that we often place on ourselves.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 The first question is, what is the best advice about mindfulness that you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 3 Just start again.

Speaker 2 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 Clear your mind.

Speaker 2 It's so bad. It's so bad.

Speaker 2 It's so bad.

Speaker 2 And it was almost marketed like that for a long time. Yeah, for a long, long time.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Question number three: How would you define your current purpose?

Speaker 3 Make awesome shit that helps people do their lives better.

Speaker 2 I love that.

Speaker 2 Question number

Speaker 2 four: a thought that you'd like to repeat more often?

Speaker 3 Well, I got a tattoo recently. Oh, nice.

Speaker 3 It's an acronym, F-T-B-O-A-B.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 I really try to remind myself as much as possible.

Speaker 3 Like, no,

Speaker 3 I'm answering this in more than a word. No, it's brilliant.
It's a great answer. It's a great answer.
Please get in there. But I try to remind myself, yeah, this is for the benefit of all beings.

Speaker 3 And the A, the all, I'm included in that. So it's not like I can't make a living or whatever, but

Speaker 3 having it right here next to my watch, I'm trying to put that thought in my head more frequently.

Speaker 2 I love that. That's a beautiful answer.

Speaker 2 Fifth and final question, which we asked every guest who's ever been on the show, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it

Speaker 3 How long do most people pause? Because I'm thinking.

Speaker 2 People take forever.

Speaker 3 That's why you picked up the book. You're like, I'm going to read a chapter.
No, no. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We either allow people to edit it out or they can have their thinking time in the edit, whatever they prefer.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 What law?

Speaker 2 Take your time. It's a fun question.
So I prefer it when people think about it.

Speaker 3 And I don't think this is something that you can

Speaker 3 legislate.

Speaker 3 So I wouldn't want to force it, but it would be like a strong suggestion, which is around

Speaker 3 kindness, which is that

Speaker 3 maybe I'll use this phrase from the Dalai Lama that I like better than kindness, because kindness can sound very bland.

Speaker 3 Why is selfishness?

Speaker 3 If you want to do selfishness correctly,

Speaker 3 you will be thinking about the benefit of all beings to the best of your ability because that is how you will get happier.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 we play to people's self-interest 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 kindness. And I wish there was a less cheesy way to say that.

Speaker 2 That's a great answer.

Speaker 3 I love it.

Speaker 3 More than a sentence.

Speaker 2 It's perfect. It was perfect.

Speaker 2 The 10th anniversary edition of Dan's book, 10% Happier, How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stressed Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works, a True Story, is available right now of course with the 10th anniversary edition that's amazing congratulations i actually

Speaker 2 feel grayer now than when the book came out and and of course subscribe to dan's podcast 10 happier as well uh dan thank you so much for coming on to on purpose uh 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 right just to go into a flow yeah it's so interesting to meet you because i mean this is a long way of saying thank you.

Speaker 3 It's just so interesting to meet you because I've seen you from afar for a million years. And then just to like

Speaker 3 walk into this hotel room, you're like, this dude who just shows up, hey, how you doing? Like you're way more casual and down-to-earth than I might have expected.

Speaker 3 And so it's really fun to like put an actual person to the name.

Speaker 2 That's very sweet. I really appreciate that.
Thank you so much. And maybe we're doing a terrible job with the brand name.

Speaker 3 That's not how I come across. No, it's my own paranoia.
It's my own paranoia. It's so funny.

Speaker 2 I'm like, God, the guys are going to get it together.

Speaker 2 No, I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 That's usually when you, when I, I, you, I meet a, I've met a lot of well-known people in my job as a journalist because I, it was my job to interview them.

Speaker 3 And it's rare that I like people more after meeting them based on their public persona. And so that's what I was trying to say.

Speaker 2 Thank you. That's very kind.

Speaker 2 That's very kind.

Speaker 2 I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Speaker 2 I receive that deeply. And I I think it's really hard.
I've definitely struggled with this.

Speaker 2 I can only be fully myself with someone I'm in person with. It's impossible to,

Speaker 2 I find it impossible to be your whole self on a 30-second video or,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like, I feel if someone listens to the podcast, they have a deep, deep understanding of me or if they've read the books.

Speaker 2 But if someone's just seeing something on social media, they have such a limited view. And it's so hard to portray yourself in that way or in your true self.
So I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Dan. Thanks for having me.
It's been a real treat.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 If you know you want to be more and achieve more this year, go check it out right now.

Speaker 6 You set a goal today, you achieve it in six months, and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief. There's no sense of meaning and purpose.

Speaker 6 You sort of expected it and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen.

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