Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dan Harris on Meditation's Powerful Mental Health Benefits EP 424

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

https://passionstruck.com/passion-struck-book/ - Order a copy of my new book, "Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life," today! Picked by the Next Big Idea Club as a must-read for 2024 and winner of the Best Business Minds book award. In this episode of Passion Struck, I interview Dan Harris, a former ABC News anchor and the driving force behind the transformative platform 10% Happier. Dan shares his personal journey from experiencing a panic attack on live television to discovering the benefits of meditation and mindfulness. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/dan-harris-the-life-changing-power-of-meditation/   Sponsors Brought to you by Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at Try Nom dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. https://www.trynom.com/passionstruck  Brought to you by Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth provided an exclusive offer for my listeners. 35% off site-wide when you use the code “PASSIONSTRUCK” at https://cozyearth.com/ This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/PASSIONSTRUCK, and get on your way to being your best self. This episode is brought to you By Constant Contact:  Helping the Small Stand Tall. Just go to Constant Contact dot com right now. So get going, and start GROWING your business today with a free trial at Constant Contact dot com. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/ Unlocking Inner Peace: How Meditation Changed Dan Harris's Mental Wellness Journey Dan Harris's journey from skepticism to advocacy for meditation underscores the transformative power of mindfulness in enhancing mental health and overall well-being. Through his insights and experiences, listeners are encouraged to explore the benefits of meditation and conscious engagement for personal growth and resilience. All things Dan Harris: https://www.tenpercent.com/  Catch More of Passion Struck My solo episode on Why We All Crave To Matter: Exploring The Power Of Mattering: https://passionstruck.com/exploring-the-power-of-mattering/ Watch my interview with Jerry Colonna On How Longing To Belong Influences Leadership Listen to my interview with Jeffrey C. Walker On: The Criticality Of Collaboration In Systems Change Catch my episode with Dandapani On How To Harness The Incredible Power Of Your Mind. Listen to my interview with Dr. David Vago On How To Experience Personal Growth And Awakening Through Meditation and meta-awareness   Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! How to Connect with John Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMiles and on Instagram at @john_R_Miles. Subscribe to our main YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Subscribe to our YouTube Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@passionstruckclips Want to uncover your profound sense of Mattering? I provide my master class on five simple steps to achieving it. Want to hear my best interviews? Check out my starter packs on intentional behavior change, women at the top of their game, longevity and well-being, and overcoming adversity. Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/ 

Coming up next on Passionstruck. I picked this concept up from the Dalai Lama, who I've had the great privilege to interview a few times. He has this idea of wise selfishness, which I really like because I don't love admitting this, but it's true. And wired, I find to be selfish. And that is one of the biggest flaws that I've worked on inside of myself. And I just naturally go in that direction. I don't think this is totally uncommon, but it's a part of my mind that I've wrestled with a little bit. And the Dalai Lama's argument is that

we're all selfish, but there's a way to do it correctly. There's a wise or enlightened self-interest. And I think what you're describing fits that bill, because if you can focus on what you're doing that's valuable to other people, in my experience, it makes you less anxious and it improves the quality of your work and will likely, I'm not guaranteeing this, but it's certainly what I've experienced personally, make you more successful. Welcome to Passionstruck.

Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become

Passionstruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 424 Passionstruck. Consistently ranked as the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week eager to listen, learn and discover new ways to live better, be better and make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this to your friends or family and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes

that we put into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the path to becoming Passionstruck? Dive into our engaging Passionstruck quiz crafted to reflect the core principle shared in my latest

book. This quiz offers you a dynamic way to gauge your progress on the passionstruck continuum. Head over to passionstruck.com to embark on this insightful journey. With just 20 questions and roughly 10 minutes of your time, you're on your way to uncovering where you fit in the grand scheme of creating a passion-struck life. Don't miss this chance to gain valuable insights into your passion-driven journey. Take the quiz today. In case you missed it, last week I had two fantastic interviews. The first was with Cass Sunstein, the nation's most cited legal scholar, a prolific author, Harvard Law Professor, who is renowned for his co-authorship of the groundbreaking book Nudge, alongside no other than Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler.

We explore his new masterpiece Look Again, the power of noticing what was always there, which offers an enlightening journey into the concept of habituation, our psychological tendency to get used to our surroundings, and how it shapes our thoughts, actions, and ultimately our lives. I also interviewed neuropsychologist Dr. Julia DeGangy who takes us from the deaths of the brain's neuroelectrical energy to the pinnacle of personal and professional fulfillment. After groundbreaking work at Harvard and with leaders worldwide, she unveils transformative insights on harnessing our inner power. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and

reviews and if you loved today's episode or any of those others we would appreciate you giving it a five-star review and sharing it with your friends and families, and I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Today, we're diving deep into the world of mindfulness, personal transformation, and the pursuit of happiness with none other than Dan Harris. Dan, a familiar face from ABC News

and the driving force behind the transformative platform, 10% happier, joins me to unravel the intricacies of living a more mindful and fulfilling life. In this intimate conversation, we explore the remarkable parallels between our journeys, each of us propelled by pivotal moments that demanded that we reevaluate our paths in the essence of true satisfaction and fulfillment.

Dan shares his compelling story from the dizzying heights of global journalism to the groundbreaking practice of meditation following an on-air panic attack on Good Morning America. His candid reflections offer a beacon of hope and a roadmap for anyone standing at the crossroads of personal and professional life seeking clarity and purpose. We delve into how Buddhist teachings have sculpted his approach to leadership, the continuous need for self-reinvention, and the profound realization of what it means to truly matter to ourselves and to the world. Our conversation spans the spectrum of human experience.

From the quest for originality to setting healthy boundaries to the art of empowering others and leading with intention, absolutely an episode you do not want to miss. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. Today, I am absolutely thrilled to have one of my favorite podcasters on the show and someone that our community has asked for repeatedly. I am so excited to welcome Dan Harris to Passionstruck. Thanks so much for having me. Dan, I think it's such a small world to tell you the truth,

because when I started Passionstruck over three and a half years ago, 10% happier was one of the podcasts that I ended up studying because I thought it was one of the best ones out there. I thought it set the benchmark, and also the professionalism that you showed really shined a light. You've been doing this now for such a long time, and you've cultivated a large audience. the benchmark and also the professionalism that you showed really shined a light. You've been doing this now for such a long time and you've cultivated a large audience. What do you think are some of the keys to that success?

Well, first of all, thank you. I really appreciate that. It's very nice to hear. I would say maybe two things are coming to mind. One is very much in line with your work, which is that this is an area where I have a lot of passion. I am very interested in the subject of how to train your mind. And not just from an academic standpoint, but as somebody whose mind has mutiny in many... That's probably a tricky word with a Navy guy, but a guy whose mind has worked against

him in many ways in terms of panic attacks and substance abuse and depression and anxiety. So I have real skin in the game and I think that's been helpful in terms of helping me do these interviews in a way that land with people. And I would say the second thing that's been really helpful for me that I've learned somewhat recently in the last few years. And actually, if you go back and listen to the early episodes of the podcast, because we've been around for eight or nine years now, I think I was a much worse interviewer in those days.

What's really helped me over time is to learn, I almost never interrupt, and I have this little hack that was given to me by some communication coaches that I've worked with for a long time, and it's called reflective listening. And so when somebody says something to me, especially in an interview setting where somebody's trying to explain an esoteric or tricky subject, I will repeat it back to them in my own words very briefly. And I find that people really respond to that both as listeners who appreciate the recap

and my interlocutor or the person I'm interviewing, it always feels so good to be heard. And so this is a great skill that anybody can use in any context. No, I think that is such great advice. And one of the things that drives me crazy is I listen to so many podcasts when the interviewer talks over the guest on the show. And I personally have always gone with the approach of trying to serve my community. And the best way that I can serve my community is by honoring what the guest is there to talk about and to making them be the person who shines during the interview. Because I always am trying to add value to the audience, and that's something

that I think you strive to do as well. Yeah, thank you. High casting, it's such an intimate medium. You're in people's ears, often with earbuds. Occasionally, if there's some cross talk, that's fine. If the interviewer gets excited and jumps in or something once in a while, that's fine. But if there's too much of that, it's really jarring. It can come off as really rude. I'm just picking up on something you said there, John, and your listeners couldn't hear the conversation we had before we started recording,

but I'm just struck in knowing you for all of five minutes now how you do return to this idea of serving your audience. And I just find that for myself to the extent that I can remember, that is my goal. Everything gets easier, clearer, better, and smoother. I find, unfortunately, that I get knocked off my center sometimes, usually because of fear, anxiety, some flavor, and I can forget that, oh, well, my job on the planet is to help my audience. And I just hear you coming back to that in a way that I think actually is... It's actually just a good reminder for me personally. Thank you for that.

And I'm not sure if you're familiar with Christina Monlacchiani. I was interviewing her not too long ago. She's the co-founder of Mindvalley and something she said really hit the spot for me. She was getting prepared to do this huge keynote and she was following some larger than life keynote speaker. The way she described this person, I think it might have been Tony Robbins, but she didn't give out who they were. And she said that she was petrified

to have to follow in the footsteps of this person. And I remember back in the day, you and I are about the same age, and I went to go see the tour that Guns N' Roses and Metallica was a warmup act. So if you're Guns N' Roses, you're thinking I have got a lot to prove if I'm following

Metallica. But getting back to Christina, she told me that when she looked in the crowd and she started examining the faces of the people in it, she realized that she wasn't here for herself. She was here to serve the audience. And people paid money to come and hear her speak. And when I hear that perspective, it's the same thing I try to do with my audience because this podcast, it's not about me. It's about serving the audience and giving them content that can change their

lives. And I think that's one of the most important things, this podcast is that we can do. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said. I think a lot about this concept that I picked up from, and now I'm going to do the most obnoxious name drop in the history of name drops, but I picked this concept up from the Dalai Lama, who I've had the great privilege to interview a few times. He has this idea of wise selfishness, which I really like because I don't love admitting this, but it's true, and wired, I find, to be selfish.

And that is one of the biggest flaws that I've worked on inside of myself. And I just naturally go in that direction. I don't think this is totally uncommon, but it's a part of my mind that I've wrestled with a little bit. And the Dalai Lama's argument is that we're all selfish, but there's a way to do it correctly. There's a wise or enlightened self-interest. And I think what you're describing fits that bill. Because if you can focus on what you're doing that's valuable to other people, in my experience, it makes you less anxious and it improves the quality of your work and will likely, I'm

not guaranteeing this, but it's certainly what I've experienced personally, make you more successful. So, what you're describing is a kind of interesting form of altruism. I mean, it's altruistic for sure, and it can redown to your own benefit. Does any of that make sense? Dan, that makes perfect sense, and I'm glad that you brought up His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. I've had two or three other people on the show who have met Him personally, and one of the people I was talking to was David Vago, and I'm not sure if you know him.

Yes, I do. And the other person was David Yadon. And they were both telling me about the audiences that they had with him. And it was very interesting because their perspective was when they were in his audience, they were the most important thing in the earth that was happening at that period of time to the Dalai Lama. And his full attention was centered just on them. And it's interesting because I have another friend, Andreas Woodmer, who runs the business school

at the Catholic University in D.C. I've talked about him before on the podcast, but if you're not familiar with him, Andreas earlier in his life was lost, and his parents encouraged him to become a Swiss guard. He didn't think he would ever become one, but it in fact happened. Before long, he was the Swiss guard for Pope John Paul II. And similar to the Dalai Lama, he said that when he was in the presence of the pope, he felt the same way. Here's a person who's leading a flock of over a million followers.

Yet when you were around him, you felt like the whole world melted, except for the two of you. And what he told Andreas when he saw that Andreas was suffering himself from an identity crisis and not knowing what he was supposed to do with his life, he said that the reason God put any of us here is to exploit our uniqueness to solve a problem that only we can solve for the benefit of the rest of humanity. And to me, that's a real cornerstone of how we should approach our lives, because going after that uniqueness to serve others brings us the most contentment and happiness and anything that we can do. Yeah, and there's a way in which, at least for me that I've thought of self-interest

and altruism or other interests of being interested in other people's issues as diametrically opposed. But in fact, it's a mutually reinforcing double helix. I call it the cheesy upward spiral. When you have good relationships with other people, you're going to be happier because we're social animals. And the happier you are, the better your relationships will be. And then you'll get even happier and the big relationships will improve and up you go. I can tell you from experience,

I'm not perpetually on the upward spiral, the opposite what I call the toilet vortex of being mean to myself and then being mean to others. That is perpetually available to me as well. But just understanding this conversation between what's good for the world and what's good for you, I think that can be very valuable. Dan, thank you for highlighting that. And I wanted to jump back into your career at ABC. As I was researching you and your life, I found that although we lived very different lives, we had a lot in common.

We both have observed combat situations and it's such a hard thing to experience and not be changed coming out on the other side of it. And I know for me, it caused me to go down a rabbit hole or as you call it, this toilet plunge of creating addictions to keep me from the demons that are occurring inside of myself. And for me, the two biggest culprits were my focus on career and alcohol. And I use those two examples because they kept me stuck where I was. And I wasn't able to really explore the self-awareness that I needed to do to get over the stuck points that were holding me back. And in the end, it caught up with me in a big way. When I was at the pinnacle

of everything that I wanted to achieve, here I was, a C-level and a Fortune 50 company, and I should have been on cloud nine. And instead, inside, I felt like I was numb and empty. And at that point, I realized that I'd been hearing this inner voice for a very long time. And I was ignoring it because I wasn't keeping an open mind to it. And I know in your case, you also went through something very similar. It happened to be on a much larger stage than the one I was on,

because yours happened on Good Morning America, but I was hoping that you could talk about it. Yeah, we could have partied together back in the day. I was really into work and instead of alcohol, cocaine. I have nothing but empathy. I spent much of my young adult years, my 20s and 30s trying to climb the ladder of network news. And in the early aughts, the early 2000s, I spent a lot of time in combat zones. After 9-11, I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Israel and the West Bank during the second Intifada

there and Gaza as well actually. And then I spent a lot of time in Iraq. And during this time I got depressed, although I didn't actually know, I wasn't self-aware enough to know that I was depressed. And I started to do something incredibly dumb, which was self-medicate with recreational drugs including cocaine. And that occasioned a panic attack on live television on a little broadcast called Good Morning America. I sometimes joke that I'm such a masochist

that I actually asked the research department to find out how many people were watching and they gave me the number of 5.019 million. So, yeah. And actually the audience is much bigger now because if you Google panic attack on television, I'm the first result. So my mom is so proud. Anyway, that sucked.

And in the aftermath, I knew I needed to make some changes. And one of the things I did was to go to see a shrink. He was trying to figure out why I had this panic attack. No, I wasn't high on the air. So I didn't know that there was any connection, but he pointed out that, of course, was what was causing it. And so that started a big long chain of self-improvement. At first, I stopped doing drugs. I went pretty deep into therapy for many years, and then

through therapy, stumbled upon meditation. I sometimes joke that it was the first time in my life I've ever been ahead of a trend because I started getting interested in meditation 2008, 2009, before it got cool in the culture, although it had been cool in the 60s and then dropped off and then started to get cool again in the early 2010s, but I was a little bit ahead of that trend. I started doing it, I found I had a lot of benefits, we can talk about that.

I'll just say finally that I had this idea as I was getting interested in meditation that there were a lot of really good books about it, but they were to me just a little bit annoying. And so I wanted to write a book that would be aimed at skeptics and use the F word a lot and tell embarrassing stories. So I wrote a book called 10% Happier. It came out 10 years ago, actually, that we just put out a revised edition or there's a revised edition coming out like a 10th anniversary edition with a new preface and blah, blah, blah. It happened in 2014. And then after that, I started the podcast. And I thought all of this was going to be mildly embarrassing and then go, when I was like a C-level network news anchor talking about a pretty niche concern,

meditation, it all ended up becoming, as a result of following my passion really, ended up becoming pretty successful and it's really changed my life. Yes, I was originally exposed to mindfulness practice through yoga when I was in my mid-20s. And it was ironic because of all places I was assigned to Naval Special War for Unit 10. And a couple of the people who were stationed there had learned mindfulness practices during their time as they were coming up in the seals. And they learned the importance of breath control, positive imagery, self-awareness, etc. And so I got exposed to it in my 20s, but then I let it go by the wayside. And similar to you, I ended up picking it up later on in life. I think I was exposed to it again through my sister who became a Buddhist. And she was discussing with me how important she found her mindfulness practice to be

in bringing her contentment and happiness. And I talked earlier about the fact that I had this inner voice. And I'm not talking about the crazy schizophrenic inner voice. I'm talking about this inner voice that's present there for most of us. However, we're too distracted by the world around us to hear it, because we're not listening for it. Did you find that same thing happen to you when you started to practice? Were you able to start hearing that inner voice and its impact that it could have on your life?

A thousand percent. To me, there's so much to learn through Buddhism, and I would call myself a Buddhist, and we can talk about what that does and doesn't mean if you want. But there's so much to learn in this space of meditation, Buddhist or otherwise. But for me, the number one initial learning was that we all have a voice in our heads as you've been describing it. When I talk about this, I, like you,

try to make clear that I'm not talking about schizophrenia or hearing voices. I'm talking about the inner narrator who chases you out of bed in the morning and is yammering away all day at you through right between your ears or behind your eyes. There's this voice that has you wanting stuff or not wanting stuff, judging people, judging yourself, comparing yourself to other people, thinking about the past or the future instead of focusing on what's happening right now.

And when you are unaware of this nonstop conversation, which if we broadcast aloud, you would be locked up. When you're unaware of this inner cacophony, which is a human universal, the cacophony that is, when you don't see it, it owns you. It's like a malevolent puppeteer. Every thought, every neurotic impulse that goes marching through your consciousness, you just act it out like it's a tiny dictator. When, in fact, there is this technology that's

many millennia old that is designed to help you see the contents of your consciousness to help you see how wild your mind is so that it doesn't own you as much. And it's called meditation. And that to me was absolutely the number one. That was the gateway for me for all of this. Actually, the first line of my book, the now 10-year-old book, is something to the effect of, I wanted to call this book, The Voice in My head is an because it's a little harsh, but and sometimes the mind does offer up good ideas.

But a lot of the time the mind is just spinning on what's for lunch. Do I need a haircut? Where do gerbils run wild or you're planning a homicide or you're thinking about eating a sleeve of Oreos, whatever it is. And if you don't have any visibility into the machinations of your mind, then you're cooked. Dan, I love the endorsement that Gretchen Rubin gave you. Specifically, she writes, in 10% happier, Dan Harris' argument for the power of mindfulness, which he bases both

on cutting-edge science and his own hard-won experience will convince even the most skeptical reader of meditation's potential. And what I found when I read your book and I was reading her quote, is that you were one of the biggest skeptics of meditation and mindfulness of anyone I have possibly ever heard of before. And I think that's how a lot of people probably feel before they start getting into the habit of practicing it. And I know for me, I felt the same way. And I remember buying this little book that was basically meditation or mindfulness for beginners because I needed to find the easiest blueprint that I could to get myself back into

it. Dan, what would be your thoughts for someone who's listening today who might think this whole meditation thing that we've been talking about is a load of baloney and there is skeptical as you and I were. Well, I have a lot of thoughts for that person. First of all, respect. I get it. That's absolutely the way I felt.

I thought this was hippie nonsense right in the same bucket with crystals and aura readings and hacky sack. I was raised by hippies and so I had an even higher level of hostility toward all of this. What changed my mind is the science. You mentioned a prior guest of yours, David Vago, who's also been on my podcast, who is a fantastic human being. He's a neuroscientist based out of Vanderbilt and Vanderbilt University. He is one of many neuroscientists who've been looking into what meditation does to the human brain.

And I'm not talking about live in a cave level meditation. I'm talking about short daily doses of meditation. And it's been shown to rewire key parts of the brain. It's like when you meditate, this is a little glib, but when you're meditating, it's like you're performing neurosurgery on yourself. So the area of the brain associated with self-awareness or attention regulation, focus, the area of the brain associated with self-awareness or attention regulation, focus, the area of the brain associated with compassion, these all have been shown to grow. And the area of the brain associated with stress has been shown to literally shrink

as you practice for a few minutes a day meditations. I think there's pretty strong evidence. And the science is in its early stages. I think we need to be humble about it and still plenty of open questions. I'm not a scientist, but I'm married to one and both of my parents were scientists. From what I can tell from looking at the data and living with it for 15 years now, there's a very strong case to be made that short daily doses of meditation can confer a long list of health benefits, not only changes to the brain, but also it's been shown to help with anxiety and depression, both of which I've struggled since I was quite young actually. It's also been shown to help with ADHD and age-related cognitive decline. There's a lot to recommend it, and I think this

science is why we're now seeing it take off in so many interesting quarters of our society. I've spent a decent amount of time with folks in the military who, like you, practice mindfulness because it's been shown to make troops who are less reactive in the field and more resilient when they come home in the face of what was a scourge of PTSD. I think the idea that it's, I think there's quite a bit of evidence to argue against that. I know for me, and it's probably the same for many people, they don't think that they're doing meditation correctly.

Because you're doing it and a minute and a half later, you feel completely distracted. And I think what they don't realize is that is completely normal. And what you want to do is catch yourself when you're drifting and to bring yourself back into focus. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. And you'll be able to extend into longer periods of deep thought, etc. And I'm wondering, did you find something similar when you started your practice?

Gold star. That's exactly right. And I actually think in the 10 years since I wrote the book, at the beginning, back in 2014, when that my book first came out, I was really aiming all of my fire at folks who thought meditation was completely ridiculous and would never consider it. I think the culture has changed quite a bit. There's still plenty of people who think it's ridiculous, but in many parts of our culture, it's not embarrassing anymore to admit that you meditate. I think the bigger problem now is just what you articulated, which is that people know

meditation is good for you, and yet they tell themselves a story that they somehow are the one person who can't do it. I call this the fallacy of uniqueness. The good news and the bad news is if you have a wild mind, you're not special. We evolved to have these racing minds because it kept us safe. I think that's probably why we evolved to have these wild minds that are super

distractible and always casting forth or casting back to the past because it really kept us safe during evolutionary times. It kept us on the hunt for food and mates and it kept us on vigilant for predators and things like that. However, the evolutionary mindset doesn't always serve us in our current environment. And so to get to the point you were making about folks who think they can't meditate, I have very good news on this score, which is meditation does not require you to clear your mind.

That's impossible unless you're enlightened or you have died. The goal of meditation is to focus your mind for a few nanoseconds at a time, usually on the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again. And this is like a bicep curl for your brain, literally exercise for your brain.

And this is what shows up on the brain scans. This is one of the mechanisms by which your brain changes. I want to say, actually, it might be worth describing beginning mindfulness meditation. Really it's not complicated. Sit in a chair, lie on the ground, fold yourself into a pretzel. I can't do that. I'm 52 years old and insufficiently limber, but if you can sit cross-legged, great, whatever. So find a dignified, comfortable position or not an undignified one, just throw yourself

on the ground and try to pick one thing to focus on. Often we start with the breath. For some people, the breath doesn't work, so you can just feel your full body in whatever position it's in or pick one part of the body and focus on that, focus on sounds and the environment. You're just going to pick something to focus on and then you'll notice that you get distracted over and over again. And a lot of people, what happens in that moment

is the voice in their head swoops in and tells them a whole story about how they're failed meditators. But actually the correct and accurate story is, noticing you've gotten distracted is proof that you're meditating the right way. The whole goal is just to see how wild the mind is. And that's what happens when you wake up from distraction.

You're seeing what your life is actually about, which is these random thoughts and plans and emotions and urges. And then you're starting again and again. And there are many benefits, I'll just name two. One is you learn how to focus, which is we live in an era that's been described as the Info Blitzkrieg.

So our ability to focus is under assault. So this is a great way to boost your ability to focus. And the second thing is you develop mindfulness, which is this self-awareness. How does that happen? Because the more you watch your mind and see how crazy it often is, the less it owns you. And that is an incredibly important skill. That's just great news that we have this capacity to understand our inner landscape so that it doesn't own us, so that we can respond wisely to

the things in our lives instead of reacting blindly, instead of just being like puppets on the string. It's a really powerful skill. Thank you. And I just wanted to tell the audience the way that I practice my meditation is I get up really early in the morning at 5am, because I find that to be the most tranquil part of the day. There's not a lot going on outside. And so it allows me to really be fully in the presence of the nature that's around me. I can see the stars, the moon, I can hear the birds just waking up. Sometimes I hear a rooster, etc. And I'm able to use that to start tuning in to my inner thoughts,

which then allows me to really get inside my mind. And what I like to do is start my day with a gratitude practice. And then I think about setting intentions for the day and how I want to live it. But to your point, I still get disrupted. There are things that cause me to lose my focus, and I have to catch myself and bring myself back to being present in the moment. And when that happens, I have to be really intentional about making sure I'm thinking about how I want to live that day. I want to live that moment. It's had such a profound difference in how I live my life. I can't imagine not doing it. Well, not that you need my approval, but that sounds great. There are some differences between what I described and what you described, but at its core,

you are attempting on those walks with your dog to drop below the level of random reflexive thinking and into your senses, the raw data of your senses, what you're seeing through your eyes, what you're hearing through your ears, and then quite naturally, you're getting distracted many times. And you're just starting again and again. That's meditation. It can take many forms, but that is the essence of at least mindfulness meditation.

Dan, I wanted to talk a little bit about Buddhism because I've seen the dramatic positive fact that it's had on my sister. And we all grew up in a fairly strict Roman Catholic family. And I consider myself now to be the moderate because my brother is an evangelical Christian. My sister is a Buddhist, as I just mentioned, and I'm in the middle of both of them. And unfortunately, over the past four years, my sister's been fighting pancreatic cancer. And she credits her meditation, her Buddhist practice and her diet for helping her fight the fight that she's doing. And I have Sharon Salzburg coming on the show. And I remember telling my sister that Sharon was going to join me. And she goes to me,

John, you don't understand who you're interviewing and how important they are to the world. She said, if you can't get the Dalai Lama on your show, Sharon is about the next closest thing that you could possibly get to them. And she said, that would be a dream come true for me to get to interact with her. And I said to her, would you like me to introduce you to her? And I was able to connect the two of them and sharon actually spent time talking to my sister and discussing life with her, which was just profound to my sister to see how giving sharon was. And the two of them talked about life and mortality

and the power of introspection, especially during periods where you're ill. But her conversation with Sharon opened up her mind to see her own mortality in a way that I don't think I could have myself ever helped her to see. I want to ask you, why are these teachings so grounding like that? Well, first thing to say is back to my habit of name dropping.

Sharon Salzburg is, as your sister has said, an extraordinary human being. This is the name dropping part. She's a very good friend. I'm actually having dinner with her tonight. And I highly recommend her work. She's written many books. And she is one of the pioneers who helped to bring meditation from Asia where it was invented and pioneered and taught for millennia to the United States. She didn't do this alone. There are many others, including Asian Americans, who've helped in this process. But Sharon was right there at the forefront and is just a towering figure. For me, I find it personally endlessly surprising that I am somebody who would self-describe

as a Buddhist because I have traditionally and continue actually to be an agnostic. I was raised by atheist scientists in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Like I said earlier, I married to a scientist. I am not generally a person of faith. I sometimes joke that I had a bar mitzvah but only for the money.

This was not something that I saw coming in any way. However, Buddhism, and I learned this rather late in life, while it is practiced as a religion by many millions of people, and I think that's beautiful, at its core is a series of practices and life principle that could be practiced by anybody, whether you are like me and Agnostic, or like you, a person with a pre-existing faith life.

One of my favorite expressions about Buddhism is it's not something to believe in, it's something to do. And so there's meditation, there are ethical concepts, and they're not like wag your finger kind of ethical precepts, they're really like guidelines. And they all fall firmly under the idea of wise selfishness that if you can comport yourself in a way that will lead to a life of less guilt and remorse then you're likely to be happier and as your relationships improve you're likely to be happier. Another big aspect of Buddhism that I find really interesting that might might be something that your sister's spending time thinking about is this notion of impermanence. It's obvious to anybody that everything's changing all the time, but we don't live our

lives that way, most of us. We live as if we're gonna have this body forever or we're struggling or suffering because we don't have the body we used to have or we don't have the body that one of our friends has or then people we love get older and we struggle with these changes because we don't take into our molecules that everything really is changing all the time, including you. into being will go out of being. And Buddhism, one of the main thrusts of the practice is to get you very familiar with this non-negotiable truth. There are many deep and profound aspects to Buddhism. I just don't want to take up too much airspace right now. Those are the aspects of the practice that have really spoken to me. Well, thank you for sharing that. I Can't believe you're having dinner with Sharon.

Please tell her I'm looking so forward to our interview that's coming up. And this episode will come out just shortly after your episode, Dan. And I thought I would do something a little bit interesting on the show because I have been spending a lot of time listening to many of your episodes,

trying to learn more and more about you so I could make this episode unique. And I found so many principles that you actually talk about that align to things that I talk about in my book, Passionstruck. And I just wanted to cover a couple of them. And the first concept that I explore

is something that I call the mission angler. And this is really about life crafting the ideal self that you want to become. And you had this profound change in your life after you experienced the panic attack. Can you share with the audience how mindfulness helped you to think about your life and craft it in a way that you wanted to become your own best self and led you to what you're doing now?

Yeah, I don't think I would have been able to crystallize what my life's mission was before. I don't think I was a bad actor or anything like that on the scene. I was practicing journalism. I believed deeply in journalism, but I don't know that I would have been able to crystallize or articulate what it is

that my goal in life was. What I do know is that I had a lot of stress and anxiety, both related to work and related to just being alive. And meditation really helped me with that. And then writing the book and hosting the podcast and taking my career in that direction actually just retired from ABC News two years ago. And I'm now doing all things 10% happier full time. It was only through really two things that the impact of the practice on my mind and then the impact of the practice

on my career that I've been able to in any way think about, and I think it's a very healthy exercise and I applaud you for pushing people to do this, that I've been able to think about, okay, what is my job on the planet? What is my mission? What is my goal? And I roughly describe it as, again, maybe a little glib. I think of my job as making awesome that helps people do their lives better. So I make books, I make podcasts, I make social media posts, and the goal of it all, when I can remember, when I can wake back up to my highest aspiration, is to be useful in or to be like I sometimes say a node of sanity in an insane world. And I think of this as wise selfishness that hopefully it's useful to other people. And if it works and it does do well,

then I can make a living and I can get some of the positive feedback that actually, you know, sometimes I worry that in the past, maybe I liked it too much, but now I really just think about it as fuel. And so it's nice when somebody likes my book or likes my work, I try not to take it too much, but now I really just think about it as fuel. And so it's nice when somebody likes my book or likes my work. I try not to take it too personally, but it's, I think of it as like a mutually reinforcing cycle. You could use a grandiose term like love. It's like, there's a lot of love that

goes into my work. And if I can get the love back in terms of people liking it or buying it, then that helps me keep to continue doing more. Dan, I wanted to double down on just one more question. One of the things that I talk about on the show pretty commonly is the concept of anti-mattering or un-mattering, because I think it's absolutely one of the biggest epidemics that we're dealing with on the planet. And I think it's ultimately what's linked to things like the chronic hopelessness, helplessness, loneliness, and this widespread

increase of mental health that we're seeing worldwide. How have you come to see this concept of mattering and its importance in life? And can you share your perspective on the importance of feeling like one matters, both to themselves and to others? I guess I think about it through evolution. We are intensely relational animals. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, which I don't understand because I'm not good at math. But a new way to think about the theory of relativity is that we live in relationship to other people and everything else in the universe.

But we feel separate. We feel inside, like we are many of us do, isolated egos peering fretfully out at the world that is separate from us. But of course, that is not true. Every atom in your body comes from the first exploding stars. Every thought in your head comes from other people. You are utterly composed of non-John component parts. And yet somehow John and Dan feel like we are isolated and meatbags moving through a hostile universe. But that's just not true. Just understanding how we were designed, we became the apex predator

for better or worse on planet Earth, not because we were the strongest, but because we had this capacity to work together. Understand that's our nature, that's your nature. Can open your eyes to the right kind of selfishness. We live in a culture that pushes us and deeper and deeper into our phones and our curated social media and our individual achievement, but that is not what makes the human animal happy. It's important, absolutely, it's important to do well in life, etc., etc., but these individualistic things are not the things you're going to be thinking and talking about when you're dying. And I've volunteered in a hospice for many years. Nobody was talking about that on their deathbed. So you want to be thinking about how you can build a career and a personal life that goes, in my opinion, right into what you, John, are talking about.

How can you matter to yourself and others? And if you are one of the many people who suffered trauma or had an abusive childhood, I hesitate a little to say too much because I'm not one of those people, so I don't have that experience, but have spent a lot of time interviewing experts in this space. Doing good for other people can help you regain some of that inner nobility that is your birthright. And yeah, that's what comes to mind when you ask about matter. Does that all land for you? Yes, that makes sense to me. And I wanted to hear your perspective on it because I don't think we're giving this

enough air time and I want to talk a lot more about it because I think it's extremely important. So another one of the concepts that I talk about in the book is something called a fear confronter. And this is really about how do you deal with yourself doubt? How do you deal with that inner voice that keeps telling you that you can't do the things that you dream of accomplishing in your life? And at its core, it's really how do you put yourself into radical self inquiry? And this whole idea about coming home to ourself is so powerful. So I

wanted to ask you, as you're interacting with guests on your show or people that you run into, how do you recommend exploring one's past to know the truth of their origins and how they can overcome that because I think that lies at the core of self doubt. So just to be clear, so I can answer your question in a way that's useful.

Are you talking about the importance of facing our fears or the importance of looking at our past, which can be scary or both? It's both because I think they're both interrelated because I think our past causes us to feel a lot of the fears that we face in life. Yeah, you're making a good point. Well, for me, this idea of facing your fears is central. You talked before about this anti-mattering as being a part of why we're in the middle of an unprecedented mental health crisis in this culture. I actually think another massive contributor specifically to the anxiety epidemic, which is gigantic, is that we have developed, and this

is not an original observation on my part, just to be clear, we've developed a real intolerance for discomfort. We've created a world, especially for young people. I don't blame young people for this. This is the world we've created for them where life on some levels is pretty seamless. You can get your groceries and your food and your dates and your whatever obscure product you need via Amazon on your phone very quickly you can get an Uber. You know, life is a swipe away in many instances. But that's not the way the world is. Human existence has always been challenging and it's still challenging. And if we cannot be okay with a certain amount of anxiety and stress, we

are going to suffer. And I think the answer here, or at least one of the answers, is to deliberately bring yourself into contact with the things that scare you. I have a nine-year-old son. He and I talk about this a lot. I try not to lecture him because I know that doesn't work. But I've just kind of picked one thing to come back to in my discussions with him gently and over time is this idea of facing your fears. Instead of talking about it, I actually just try to get him to see me doing it.

So I have panic disorder. Usually it's under control, but I had a big resurgence about a year ago where I was having trouble getting on planes because of claustrophobia and getting in elevators too, airplanes and elevators, so both two big trigger points for me. And so instead of not flying anymore, and I travel a lot with my son because I give a lot of speeches

and my son comes with me, I pull him out of school a lot. But we travel around the country a lot, and we're on airplanes and elevators. And he watched me, my shrink and I would go to the mall and spend an hour riding the elevator so that I could just, it's called exposure therapy. So I could get more comfortable with discomfort and showing that to my first,

I was embarrassed to talk about this with my kid, but now I realized that letting him see me do that is I hope gonna be very meaningful to him over time, because he too has anxiety. What does that have to do with your past? I think it's worth looking at the roots of, for me, it's been helpful. It's been helpful to look at the roots of my stuff. And I come from a long lineage of alcoholics, depressive, and any anxious. I don't come from a...

One likes to think one is descended from royalty, but that is not the case in my family. I, on both sides of my family, there are amazing people in there. And then also a lot of crooks and people who took their own lives and a lot of troubled people. And I actually find that to be a relief. Because then I can take my own dysfunction less personally. So yeah, just making a pitch here for doing

whatever you can do in your life to gently and gently is the key here. Get more comfortable with the things that scare you. You don't want to dive in too quickly or recklessly, but if you can over time expose yourself in a systematic, careful way to the stuff that scares you, I think your life will grow. Dan, and the last thing I wanted to go over with you is something that I call conscious engagement. And I'm not sure if you know who Dandapani is, but he happens to be a former monk and Hindu priest, and he had a great book that came out last year called Unwavering Focus. But to explore this a little bit more, we were just talking about an airplane. And if you use that analogy, you hear

people talking all the time about someone living on autopilot. And when I look at that analogy of autopilot, I think it's the wrong one, because when we're on autopilot, we're still flying the plane in a positive direction. We're still living our life in a positive way, going in a positive direction. So I think the better analogy that we should be using is that we're living our life more like we're a pinball in the game of pinball. We constantly act unintentionally, just bouncing off the things that impact us during our days, weeks, months. And I think our goal in life should be learning how to play the game so that we're controlling that pinball instead of the pinball controlling us.

And with that as a backdrop, I wanted you to give your biggest piece of advice for how a listener could be more consciously engaging in their life. Well, unsurprisingly, I will go back to meditation. piece of advice for how a listener could be more consciously engaging in their life? Well, unsurprisingly, I will go back to meditation. I was actually groping toward this analogy earlier. I was trying to come up with a good analogy earlier in the conversation about how when you're unaware of your inner narrative, it just yanks you around. That is the essence of being the pinball. You are helpless. You are enthralled to your ego. And by the way, your ego is not some isolated entity. It's very much influenced by the larger culture.

So all of the noxious messages that the culture is implanting into your head about how you need to be perfect, you need to look the way X or Y influencer on Instagram looks, you need to achieve X or Y thing. You need to have those abs. Whatever it is, you need to have that product on the capitalist. There are some drawbacks to capitalism and it doesn't cultivate in us a sense of insufficiency.

We won't be happy until we make that next purchase. That is unhealthy. That is the kind of patterning you're likely to act out unconsciously, blindly, reflexively, habitually, until you can wake up to what's happening in your mind. I find meditation to be a great technology for going at what I believe you're possibly pointing to about living consciously. And Dan, the last question I wanted to ask you is a little birdie told me that there might be another book that you're contemplating that's on its way.

And I wanted to ask if you might be able to share a little bit about it. Yeah, I have spent six years working on the sequel to 10% Happier. So 10% Happier came out totally changed my life and in many positive ways, but in some negative ways, honestly, I was not prepared for that level of success. There were ways in which I did not handle it well. And I had a very humbling, maybe you might call it humiliating experience, where several years into being this quasi-happiness guru, I got what's called a 360 review. I actually gave a TED talk about this recently that you can look at. A 360 review, if you've never heard of it, it's an anonymous survey of usually it's done in a corporate setting. So it's like your boss, your peers, and then your people who work for you. So it's the idea

is to get a panoramic sense of your strengths and weaknesses. I added in my wife, my brother and a few of my friends, including some meditation teachers, 16 people. And the results were really, I mean, there were a lot of nice things in there, too. People talked about how I changed and blah, blah, blah. But then there were a lot of, it's designed to really draw out your weaknesses. This was a 39 page report. 11 of the pages were on the positive stuff. The rest of it was blind quotes about areas where I retained the capacity to be a schmuck. And it was really hard. I had the instinct, initial this was in 2018.

I had the initial instinct to burn it and go back to cocaine. For whatever reason, I ended up actually just redesigning my life around trying to address the issues that were the deficiencies that were identified in this report. And I would say right below getting married and having a kid, it is the most impactful thing that's ever happened to me.

I would say that the TLDR of the whole thing is love. So the book is really designed to take a concept, a loaded kind of vague and gauzy concept like love and talk about it in very practical science-based ways. Because what I landed on was the thing that we talked about earlier, the cheesy upward spiral, that as you can improve your inner weather, your relationships will improve and that will make your weather even bombier

and then up you go. And so my goal is to really try to put that message out whenever I can finish this book. Yeah, Dan, I went through a 360 evaluation when I was at Dell and I think I'm still recovering from it. Yeah. Dan, at the end of my shows, I'd like to give the guests the opportunity to do some self-promotion. How can our listeners learn more about you and the incredible work that you're doing? Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I've just put up a website, danharis.com, and you can find all of my stuff there, links to the podcast, links to the books.

As I said, the 10th anniversary of the book is in March of 2024. And we're doing a bunch of special episodes over on the podcast, on the 10% happier podcast, to celebrate that, doing some live events in New York City and maybe even around the country to celebrate it. And speaking of the podcast, I'm having a guy named John R. Miles on the show and you should come over and listen to me interrogate him. Stan, thank you so much for joining me on today's show. It was such an amazing honor to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here. Super fun.

You're a great interviewer. It's nice to meet you and I look forward to continuing the conversation over on my feet. What a phenomenal interview that was with Dan Harris. I'm so thankful that he joined us here on today's program. Someone this community has been asking for for such a long time. Links to all things Dan can be found in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.

Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our clips channel at passionstruckclips. Please check both those out and subscribe. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com. Please consider supporting those who support the show. You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter which now goes out to over 30,000 subscribers. In it each week I provide you with a weekly challenge.

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for the phenomenal passion struck podcast interview that I did with Matt Abraham's, a renowned organizational behavior lecturer at Stanford University, graduate school of business, and the author of Think Faster, Fox Smarter. We delve into a session that is all about improving your communication skills and to improve your ability to handle

those conversational situations that we all dread. Join us as we explore the art of impactful dialogue with a true master of communication. I view mistakes differently. Mistakes aren't something that's bad or a failure. In fact, we learn from them. Many know that. But I call them missed takes. If you know anything about television and movies, you know that when they film them, they do multiple takes of the same scene. In fact, they have that clapboard, take one, take two. No take is wrong. They're just looking and exploring

for different ways of doing it. So when you do something and you don't feel good about it, just say take two, we're gonna do it again differently next time. That wasn't bad or wrong. It's now we're gonna try it differently. The fee for the show is that you share it with family or friends

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Until next time, go out there and become a fashion star.