Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 160: Jordan Harbinger, Networking and Relationship Development

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. What's your podcast? What's your podcast?

For ABC, this is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey people, the guy we have on the show this week has a really interesting life trajectory. Jordan Arbenger is a very, very popular podcaster and he started out kind of lightly in the dating advice realm, but kind of quickly turned his, the show he was doing at the time called the Art of Charm. He kind of quickly turned it into something much more serious. So serious that and you'll hear him tell the story. He ended up leaving and starting his own show called the Jordan Harbanger Show and where he really just talks to people who are very impressive and figures out how they do what they do to quote his bio here.

He basically taps into the untapped wisdom of the world's top performers and in the process he has learned a lot about healthy habits, how to make them and sustain them and has a lot of interesting things to say about it and of course, given what kind of show we do, he's also in a meditation has a very interesting things to say about the world that's played in his life. So I'm looking forward to as you should, should be hearing from Jordan Harbinger. That's coming up in a second. Let's do your voice mails first. Here's number one. Hi Dan, I love the podcast in your books. They've helped me out a lot. My question is about moods and how they can affect the session. I've noticed that my baseline mood heading into a sit has a drastic impact on how well

I'm able to zone in. I find that when I'm uptight or angry, it can be very difficult to calm down and get into a rhythm, which usually results in kind of a racing month, which is hard to tame. I've heard you say that these types of sessions can make you a better meditator, but just wondered if you had any advice about how to get into more of a comm-mute and advanced of the session. If you have any preset techniques that I can possibly utilize. Thanks. Bye. Great question. I'll just give you again as my, as is my want. I'll just tell you what I do. What's worked for me without pretending that I'm the meditation maestro. The thing I'm hearing in your question that I would get you to think about is getting into a rhythm

or getting into a groove, or calming down. I actually think counterintuitively, even though meditation is often now presented as, you know, press this button and you're going to get calm. I think that's a misunderstanding in terms of how I understand at least what meditation, mindfulness meditation is really supposed to do for you. I think coming into it, wanting or expecting to feel a certain way is going to present problems. I mean, in fact, one of the, and I'm going to talk in Buddhist terms, but in classically in Buddhism, one of the hindrances to meditation, one of the things that is guaranteed to mess you up is desire and wanting to get into a groove, wanting to feel calm. That's desire.

That's an expectation, which as I've said before is that one of the is probably the most noxious thing you can bring to the meditation party. So what I think of is, and believe me, these sits are harder. It's great when you're feeling calm, and then you sit and you're really super focused, and that's awesome. We think of that as a good sit. But I think dropping that expectation, being willing to be with whatever is there, that's like a hard workout in the gym,

where you're actually building up the cardiovascular strength or the muscular strength that you that you need to build up because what is the point of doing this point of doing this is so that we can weather the ups and downs of an entropic and impermanent universe better. And so we're not in control of a lot of the things that are going on. Well we all we can really control is how we deal with stuff. So if you're in a bad mood and your mind is racing, that's a good time to sit down, meditate, try to drop any expectation of feeling any sort anyway.

Just be with whatever is there. Now you may, I don't know what kind of meditation you're doing, but it may be a meditation where you're just trying to focus on your breath, and then when you get distracted by your racing mind or feelings of anger, then in that moment, I mean, go into investigative mode. Go and this is what I do. I'll just check out, where is anger showing up in my body? What is anger actually like? What kind of thoughts am I thinking? Where is my chest buzzing? Is my head aching? Is my mouth getting dry? Why is that useful? Because

then when you're ambushed by anger or anxiety in the rest of your life, then you're less likely to do a bunch of things that you later regret. And that's what we're training here. So I would just urge you to kind of get out of the mindset of thinking a good sit is a certain way and you want to get into that groove, get into that rhythm, feel calm. I understand why you want to feel that way. We all want to feel that way. So I'm not picking on you. I'm just trying to sort of reorient you a little bit toward just being cool with whatever's happening to the best of your ability. Of course, you're not going to be able to magically do that. Just kind of sit and investigate whatever's happening so that, and that curiosity, by the

way, is a great tool to harness an inner resource that you can harness so that, again, so that you are when you're out in the, you know, off the cushion, as we say, then, then you're better able to handle all of the vicissitudes of life. That being said, you did ask about sort of pre-sit routines that can maybe help. I find stretching and taking a few long deep breaths can really be useful because relaxation is a good thing in meditation. It's just if you take it too far and are just trying to like

grit your teeth and, you know, to horse whip yourself into relaxation, that I think is probably a recipe for trouble. But, you know, a good stretch, a little bit of breathing. I think that's a great way to get yourself into meditation. And, you know, notice if your body's tightening while you're sitting, I find that I might notice my shoulders are into meditation and notice if your body is tightening while you're sitting. I find that I might notice my shoulders are hunching, I'm gripping my hands. You can relax that at the beginning and even in the middle if you notice you're doing it.

All of that can help, but again, I think the attitude of curiosity and investigation rather than desire is in my experience likely to lead to better results. All right, keep practicing. Here's voicemail number two. Hey, Dan, this is Laura calling for Minnesota. I love all your work and I'm a teacher who practices mindfulness myself and I also teach it to my middle school students who are new to the country, refugees and immigrants and have been trained through mindful schools. So anyway, if teachers are looking for a resource, as you've mentioned, mindful schools is a great one. But anyway, my question is more about what you think the place of humor, like heartedness,

sarcasm, even, are in a mindfulness practice. And I ask because sometimes it seems like meditation is pretty serious, and that's okay, but I've found a lot of richness in practitioners like Jeff Warren and how he leads meditations. And I just find that sometimes bringing humor and a sense of light hardness really helps a lot. So I do thoughts on that and thanks for the work you're doing. I mean, I totally agree.

You're preaching to the choir here. I totally agree that humor has a place in meditation. Let me just back up for one second before I tee off on that. Mindful schools, you mentioned mindfulness schools. You're a teacher and you got trained to teach your students how to meditate through a group called Mindful Schools. They're nonprofit based in California. I've met a few folks from there. I've been very impressed with them. So if you are a teacher

or you have a student in a kid in school and you want to mention this to your child's teacher, I think this is a pretty good resource. It's also a really exciting way to get the practice in a secular way into schools all over the place. So good on you for doing the work. Jeff Warren, you mentioned on the humor tip, he's a really wonderful meditation teacher based in Toronto. He and I wrote a book called Meditation for Figuity Skeptics that came out 10 months ago and he's a really good friend and somebody I admire. And one of the main reasons why I really wanted to write that book with him is because he's incredibly funny. And, you know, look, not all meditation teachers are comedians and you don't want to ask teachers to try to be funny when it's

not really in their wheelhouse, but I will say that one of the things I've noticed, and I sort of inform a litmus test I use for meditation teachers that I work with either on the 10% happier app or personally, do they have a sense of humor about themselves? Because it is very, I have a hard time understanding how you can take a sustained look at your own mind and not have a sense of humor because it's nuts. It is a zoo. We are crazy and sitting and seeing that, you know, what option do you have really other

than to laugh at it? And I find that when teachers can laugh at it, again, they don't have to be, you know, Dave Chappelle, they don't have to be like incredibly talented comedians, but to give us permission to be flawed by making fun of their own minds, I think that is just an incredible gift to us from them, because that's the way it is. I was listening recently to a Dharma talk, given a Dharma talk is what meditation

teachers do, Buddhist meditation teachers every evening on a meditation retreat when they're teaching retreat. They'll spend an hour giving what's called a Dharma talk. And I was listening to my teacher, Joseph Goldstein, give a Dharma talk recently on, on, I was just listening to recording of it. And there was another teacher who said a few words at the beginning of Joseph's speech. It was toward the end of the retreat. And this other teacher was saying, what an honor it was to teach this retreat together.

And then he said something like, I can't believe the stuff you admit about your own practice. I would never feel comfortable doing that because everybody would think I'm a terrible meditator. In other words, Joseph makes a lot of jokes about how crazy his mind is. In fact, there's one line attributed to him.

I don't know if he came up with it. He might have where he was at the finish a meditation practice. He was sitting with a mutual friend of ours. At the end of the sit, they looked at each other and Joseph just said, the mind has no pride. And you know, that's the way he, that's the way he completely opened about the fact that his mind too, after decades of meditation, still has the capacity to get really chaotic. And I'm sure Joseph's mind is much less so than the rest of ours,

but I think having a sense of humor about this is incredibly important. And obviously that's what I've endeavored to do in my public profile around meditation, because I think it really sends the signal. One of the big problems we have around meditation is that people think they can't do it because they sit and try it once and then it gets distracted and to be lighthearted about the chaotic nature of our minds and to give people permission to be distracted and to point out like no, actually the moment you see you're distracted is the moment you know you're succeeding at meditation.

That's the point. We're supposed to see how crazy we are so that the craziness doesn't own us. I also think it's important because it kind of destigmatizes having a sense of humor about the the nature of how greedy and hateful and impatient judgmental we all can be. It just kind of gives us permission to not to necessarily act those things out, but to see that it's okay that we are this way. The point of meditation is to see it, smile at it, and not to fight it or feed it so that it doesn't control us all the time. And so that we are showing up as humans in a more constructive way. That's what that's the deal. And so I think humors

are a really powerful tool in that in that regard. That's just my opinion. Anyway, you that was a softball. I appreciate it. Let's get to Jordan Harbinger. He is, as I said before, a really popular podcaster. He used to have a very successful popular show called The Art of Charm. He walked away from that for reasons. you'll hear him describe in this interview. He's now got the Jordan Harbinger show. I really enjoyed this interview. I learned a lot. He's had quite a ride. So why don't I shout up and let him talk. Here he is, Jordan Harbinger. Thank you for doing this. Yeah, my pleasure, man. I really appreciate it. Nice to finally meet you in person. Likewise, it's because I've seen you a lot. Yes, and I've only seen, I've only

interviewed with you. Right, right. Yeah, but that happens all the time to me. People go, man, I feel like I know you because I've listened to your voice for 100 hours. I'm like, well, I feel like I know you a little, but mostly I've heard you talk about totally random things.

Or I'll hear you on a clip on my car radio. And I'll go, there's Dan. Yes, yeah, I do talk about random things in my day, Joe. Yes, yeah. But here we talk about, well, we try to sort of start with meditation and then branch off. Yeah. So, are you interested in meditation?

Have you done it? How did you, if you did, how did you start? Yeah, I had a rocky start with it too, because when I was in high school, I started meditating because I thought it was told and instructed that it would make me better with the martial arts things that I was doing. Oh, wait, so how old are you now? I'm 38. Okay, so you're not your ways away from high school. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is you look young. Thank you. I got a baby fish. You wear it well. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's it's great now. I hope I look young when I'm like 50, you know, I'm open for that. Don't just turn the corner and say, Oh, what happened to him? Everything's sad.

Yeah, wake up one morning. I'm like, wait, that was up here yesterday. I started meditating probably when I was 14 or 15. And I didn't get it. It's like, how am I supposed to sit here and not think about anything? Because I didn't have a good teacher. It was don't think about anything, which makes no sense.

It's impossible. And is impossible. Yeah, especially for a teenager. They anything, which makes no sense. It's impossible. And is impossible. Yeah, especially for a teenager. It might as well say, do you go fly? Right. Because it's not going to happen. So I was looking at a wall, like a white wall in my room, with the light slow on a Zafu, a meditation cushion that was the gear. I had the gear, the official gear. And I did it every day for 20 minutes in high school and in retrospect that helped me get through high school. I can see how it would have benefits but even though you weren't getting instruction, just the simple calming effect of sitting doing nothing, even if your mind is racing, you're not being bombarded by video game or the internet or anything like that,

you're I don't know if the internet existed. We really didn't even use the internet. So, you were, at least you weren't being hit by all the stimuli of pubescent life. That's true. But what I was being hit by, my dad thought it was the dumbest thing in the world. So he would come in every time I was quiet for more than five minutes, he'd go, what are you doing?

What are you doing? Hey, hey, what are you doing? And he would just wait for me to come out of whatever, and I put meditative state in the air quotes because I was probably just still staring at a wall, trying not to think about anything. I go, meditating, and he'd be like, what's that all about?

Every day. You'd ask the same questions, my mom was finally like, if you just keep bothering him, he's gonna hate you when he's older. Which is, I don't hate my dad by any stretch, but I thought about it for a while. I thought I was like, you know, she's right. Which is, you know, I don't hate my dad by any stretch, but I thought about it for a while. I thought I was like, you know, she's right.

This is really annoying. So I kept doing that, and I did it a little bit in college, and then I just stopped doing it, because one, I didn't get any better at karate, two, I didn't get it, and I thought it was never gonna get any better at it. So I just thought, I'm not getting any better

at staring at the wall, so I'm out. I'm done. Fair enough. But I still have the Zafu. It's still in my house, even now. It's not the same house. Like, the wall, so I'm out. I'm done fair enough, but I still have this affu. It's still in my house, even now. It's not the same house. Like, of course, I have my own house now with my own wife and family. And it's, it's there.

And occasionally I'll go and I'll sit on this thing and it's still so hard that I go, you know, I must have just not done this enough because you think by now it would be as flat as a pancake. So you are meditating now. Did somebody ever give you instruction, or are you still staring at the wall? I have your app, so I use that. And sometimes though, I just sit down and I don't have to stare at the wall.

I kinda get now that you're allowed to, you're allowed to have your mind straight away and then you just kinda bring it back. But what I was doing 20 years ago was, oh, you suck at this. Why, you can't even think about nothing, how hard can it be? Oh wait, you're beating yourself up again. You're not supposed to do that. Oh, well, you suck at this. Why, you can't even think about nothing, how hard can it be? Oh, wait, you're beating yourself up again.

You're not supposed to do that. Oh, well, you're talking to yourself about beating yourself up. That was the whole thought loop. Now I just go, okay, this is normal. It's like lifting a weight, right? The weight's gotta come down sometime. You just lift it back up, lift it back up. But nobody told me it was about the reps.

Nobody told me it was about the reps. It was always, you gotta get it right. So how and when did you get back into it in a biting fashion? Probably sometime after, I don't know if it was right after reading your book or right before then, around then, but I also, I'm probably a meditator, like some people are religious,

where when something really stressful happens, you're like, okay, I'm getting back into meditation. And then other days you wake up and you're like, oh, I'm happy, I'm fine, I'm just gonna go to work and do it. But you don't notice everything slowly unraveling, right? And then you go, oh my gosh, my life is a shambles. You meditate for a few days, you go, oh, I'm good now. It's like going to the gym after Thanksgiving.

Well, right, I was just gonna say, first of all, that's not something, that's very common. So I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about that. The second thing is, I think the right comp is exercise. It's like you kind of, you gotta be, you have to have a baseline of fitness so that you're feeling good all the time. You don't just exercise when you start to feel flabby.

Yeah, it doesn't work very well to go to the gym and go, all right, I'm in shape, so I'm done. Yes. And I'm gonna quit for until the holidays are over and then I'm going to go back. When you say it like that, it makes no sense. But what do most people do? They go to the gym up until Thanksgiving. All hell breaks loose with the diet and exercise through January.

You make a New Year's resolution. You do it again. Maybe if you're really good about it, you keep the habit for a few weeks or months. Things unravel again. You make another resolution. That's, I know better than, I mean, I do a few weeks or months, things unravel again, you make another resolution. That's, I know better than, I mean, I do a whole show about habit change in psychology, right? So that, I know doesn't work.

So I'm pretty good about habits generally, but with meditation, it's been slow to stick, even though I had a really good meditation habit for years in high school, like I mentioned. What do you think would help make it stick? I think if I thought I was getting better at it, but it's so hard to measure whether or not you're getting better at it, at least for me. It's hard to measure whether or not I'm getting any better at meditation. Here's one yardstick that you can use. I talk about this a lot because people ask me this a lot. How do I know if I'm getting better? There are a lot of yardsticks you can use,

but my favorite one is, are you less of a, I'm not allowed to say this word, but it starts with an A, are you less of a word than you used to be? That's the metric, and I would say the addition to it is it to yourself and others. So how is your inner weather, like how are you treating yourself,

and what would your wife say behind your back? Those are your face. Or to your face if you have a good marriage. Yes. So that's a way to look at it. I would say. That's good, because I think most people might go, yeah, okay, I'm less cranky,

but we don't think about being cranky to ourself. We only think about our level of patience with our wife, kids, friends, co-workers. We never really think, I know a lot of people that are really nice to everyone around them and I know that they're not nice to themselves because they ask me questions like, how do I stop being such a worthless POS? And I'm thinking, wow, this is a person, this is like a pastor, right? They're so nice to everyone. They've always got a smile and they're asking me how just the language

they're using, I just think, wow, if you talk to yourself like that, you're in trouble. A lot of people I think, if we talk to our friends, like we talk to ourselves, we wouldn't have any friends. That's right. You get punched in the face. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's a really, I mean, I talk about the inner weather, you know, like I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. If you have some level of self-awareness, you'll start to see it. I think that one way to measure whether meditation is working is it balmy or in there. I can see when I fall off the wagon because I don't want to sound like a braggart, but I actually don't really fall off the wagon that much. The one situation where it can happen is big breaking news stories where I'm just like getting

crushed and I get my meditation. I'm not getting as much sleep and I'm not meditating as much. I can really see how it's both things. It's the sleep and the lack of meditation where I'm more obnoxious in an interior way and in an exterior way. Huh. So do you catch yourself in the moment or do you usually go, man, this week

I was really hard on myself? With reduced capacity from sleep and from less self-care, actually often I go further down the road of being a dummy than I normally are. I'm thinking recently I was, when Barbara Bush got sick and died recently I got sent down to Houston to cover it and I hadn't actually done one of these big breaking news things in a while where you're on this treadmill of doing good morning America really early and then doing world news tonight and then getting up and doing it again and again and again and again I for years that was basically my whole life but I'm old now and I don't really do that

that much. And I was just like not me in that nice and snapping at people. I mean, I guess I don't know how other people would have described it. You know, maybe I wasn't like I was pulled pot, but I still felt like I was being much snippier than I normally am and it felt really bad. It's tough for you guys too because since you're a public figure, if you're not extra nice people are like,

yeah, I met that guy, not very nice guy. It was a patient. It wasn't to members of the public. It was to my colleagues. Okay, well that's probably even worse because you see him all the time. Yeah, I didn't feel good about it. And I was meeting myself up about it.

And so anyway, long way of saying, I think that's a way, you know, that what we know about habit formation, you probably know even more than I do, is that the way to get pulled forward is not through willpower, which is so ephemeral. It's through having the benefits show up. It's through getting the dopamine of the benefits.

Right. And so that's what I would focus on if I were you. Yeah, I did a show on the Jordan Harbanger show with the Sky Benjamin Hardy, who might be a good subject for you as well. He wrote a book called Will Power Doesn't Work and what he talks about is setting up your environment so that basically the path of least resistance

becomes the thing that you want to do. And the easiest example is people go, oh yeah, whenever I'm hungry, or whenever I'm really hungry, I break my diet. It's like, well, why do you have a cupboard full of corn chips and chocolate and cheetos? If you don't buy that stuff and then you're hungry, you can't eat it, it's not there.

That's a really simplistic example, but for him, for the meditation thing, which we discussed as well, it's, all right, is your cushion or whatever it is that you sit on, is that out or is it in a closet or is it packed in a suitcase in the garage that you never use? If you go downstairs and get it, and then is it going to be in a room where there is your kids are also watching TV or is it in a room that they never go into? And there's all these little things that you can do to set it up so that it's out. You basically trip over it in the morning so you can't forget because you would actually trip over the thing if you did. It's in a quiet place. You wake up early enough so that you have time. You take all these excuses off the table and then suddenly you kind of have nothing better to do at 6.30 or 5.30 or whatever you get up in the morning other than knock out the meditation thing.

Your phone's charged, you got the 10% happier app, you're logged in. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Yes, 10% happier.com, I don't know. And that's actually good. Good, that would have been out of time. Yeah, we don't own that one.

Yeah, so that things all loaded up and ready to go and you don't have these dumb excuses Set up or I not set up in your way and that goes for food that goes from meditation It goes for pretty much anything and so whenever I look at a habit where I go Well, you know, I kind of don't do it all that much anymore It's as long as you're willing to not blame external factors. It's fine. You know, oh, I don't really have time Well, you just deprioritized it. That's it.

And when you start changing the language you use around that stuff, I deprioritized meditation so I don't do it as much. It's a lot harder to let yourself get away with it. You know, habit form, again, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Habit formation is so tricky because what works for you right now might not work for you in six months

and what works for you right now almost certainly won't work for everybody else on the planet. Right. We're so variable not only among humans but even within you as an individual human things can work at different times. And I was just gonna say you'd mention you do you have kids? Not yet. Oh you don't. You're working on having kids. But a lot of course a lot of other people go well you don't understand you don't have kids. And I go wow no one with kids meditates that's incredible. Oh I course a lot of other people go, well, you don't understand, you don't have kids. And I go, wow, no one with kids meditates, that's incredible. Well, I have a kid.

Yeah. People with kids meditate, although it becomes trickier and I actually, we need to salute that. But I was gonna say is that there are some folks who will change habits more easily if there are external expectations. So for example, if you had kids and you were noticing that you were crankier with the kids

and you noticed that you were doing it less cranky with meditation on board, that that actually, for some people, will become a very powerful motivator. And it's less about the setup of the cushion in the room or your schedule. It's more about this desire to be a better dad. And so, there are lots of ways you can vector towards solution on this, bro. I believe that. I love the dopamine system that you're talking about here. The reward system is generally pretty powerful.

I think if you're just starting a habit, probably setting up your environment is a great way to make sure that you fall into the groove. But keeping you in it is going to be that dopamine hit. That whole, well, I went to the gym. I remember when I started running, which I don't do anymore because I dislike it it's not a habit I broke I just don't like it made my joints hurt and apparently it's also not that great for you a lot of time but I got addicted to it so it's started by going oh man I got to force myself to go run it's cold I grew up in

Michigan it's freezing I'm it's icy out there it's gonna be annoying and then after a while it was all right it's icy and there, it's gonna be annoying. And then after a while, it was, all right, it's icy and snowing, but if I just don't run on the sidewalk, I'll be fine. And I really wanna go for a three mile or five mile run. So the dopamine kicks in later, but you gotta get the plane off the ground first. You do, yeah.

And I think there's a peer, I often tell people, I mean, some of my listeners will have heard me say this, but I've been in the last four years since 10% happier came out. I've said publicly a million times, try meditating every day for a few minutes for a month. And at the end of that month,

if you're seeing no benefit, send me a note on Twitter and tell me I'm a moron. And I get told all the time on Twitter that I'm a moron, but never for that. Not for that reason. Yeah, definitely. And I really think that if you can power through the first month on any habit that there are, it just gives you a big leg up.

Do you find that it's easier for you to stay on the wagon now that you have the 10% happier app because otherwise you would look pretty bad if you didn't use your own app. That's an external expectation, right? That's an exogenous factor that keeps me in the game. But I wouldn't say it's the primary one. I definitely would be afraid of looking like a hypocrite, but I didn't have to up it to two hours a day, which I did a couple of years ago.

And that, you know, that my company's reputation does not depend on that. And that really came from, I think, really internal motivation. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I remember in the book when you wrote about what you were going through and you were kind of coming off of one bad habit and trying to get into a different one, then two hours a day make sense. But I think when people hear that, they go, I don't have that kind of time.

So I love the idea of meditating for a couple of minutes a day for a month. For sure. Because nobody can say, I don't have two minutes or five minutes in the morning. But I also think you don't have to build two hours. I think actually, if you stay at a couple of minutes every day, you're going to be, you'll have a look up. I would rather see you, for example, at a small amount every day, rather than streaks of 20 minutes a day that are, you know, three months in between. Yes. Yeah. I think my personal sense is that would be better, but you know, who knows? I think that's correct. I mean, I'll tell you that when I feel stressed, it takes about 30 seconds of what do you call a conscious breathing or whatever. I hate terms like that because it sounds like I'm

at cartel. Yeah. But you can feel things release in your body. Yes, it's basic biology. So what is, what in your life are the primary sources of stress, would you say? So right now I started the Jordan Harbanger show. I used to run the show called The Art of Charm, which was really big. So I'm basically rebooting my whole business, which is a nasty legal split with my former partners. So that's a huge source of stress. Well, I don't know how much you can say about it.

It can just sort of, to the extent that your lawyers will allow, just tell the story. Sure. So I wanted to, I, the interview I was doing with were with neuroscientists. I interviewed great actors and authors and things like that on the show, but my business partners wanted me to talk

about dating and relationships. Hence the name of the old show, the art of charm, and I was just like, I'm not into this. So you started about dating and relationship. Right. name of the old show, the art of charm, and I was just like, I'm not into this. You started about dating and relationships. Right. And I just, after a while, I couldn't do it anymore. I just didn't care enough about the subject. So I remember actually the first time you guys pitched us for me to come on the show. I was like, I don't think I should go on that show. Right. Because it was a dating and relationship show. And I was like, is this going to be like a pickup artist type of thing? Right. Yeah. And then I didn't, and I didn't the first time,

but then I, you were so later I did, and you were like really into the meditation, you didn't ask me anything about dating or really. Of course, yeah, yeah. So there was some sort of like cognitive dissonance there for you. Yeah, and it was embarrassing, because I would pitch somebody and they'd go, wow, this is one of the biggest podcasts,

and then then three weeks later, they're pert, they're PR, or publicist or assistant would go actually his schedule is really full and it just kept happening over and over. I did that to you. Yeah, you did that. I was at first like, you know, come on, but I also understand I wouldn't go on a show. If I, if it was like, oh, we're the alt right hour, I would be like, I don't know if I want to go on that show.

Oh, no, no, no, we talk about all kinds of nonpolitical stuff. No thanks. So, so we take me back for a second, we talk about all kinds of non-political stuff. No thanks. So, so take me back for a second. I'm pushing you out of your story a little bit, but I will get to it. Take me back to the beginning of the show. What was in your mind? Why did you want to start?

Were you, you must have been interested in dating in relationship? Yeah, I started it, the show's 11 years old. So I've been doing podcasts for over 11 and a half years. And when I first started, I was a lawyer on Wall Street, and I started to show about networking. But that wasn't as interesting to any audience. The dating stuff was interesting.

So I started the show with my business partners, and we focused on dating and relationships. And did you quit your Wall Street job? Yeah, I ended up quitting that job. So you're in your mid-twenties, and you're working on Wall Street as a what? Attorney. As an attorney. Yeah. So you're like helping Wall Street as a what attorney as an attorney. Yeah So you're like

Helping companies do mergers and acquisitions. Yeah, securitizing subprime loan mortgages mortgage back securities Okay, awesome. So you were involved in that. Oh, yeah, I mean, I was a first year at the associate side and exactly caused the problem I just did the paperwork that was involved in it. Did you know that it was probably not the best stuff? After a while, I remember going, wait a minute. So what happens if people default on their loans? And the other lawyers were like, oh, well, there's so many people in these pools

that you'd have to have a huge number of people defaulting to cause any kind of problem. Because they're, and that's exactly what happened. Yeah. So you're a kid, you're working on Wall Street in this kind of interesting... Pyramids came me, kind of a lack of a better word. And so did you emerge from the pickup artist scene or what was your... I thought that stuff was really interesting and then I met those guys, a lot of those guys in California,

when I flew out there to meet with some friends and I went, whoa, these guys are weird. They're not normal people. And so I wanted to move away from that. And the show, I thought, okay, if we talk about nonverbal communication, persuasion, influence, and things like that, and we put a self-help spin on it, the guys who are interested in the dating

and relationship stuff can actually spin into working on themselves instead of weird pick-up artists tricks. Because I'm not an expert in the pick- pickup artist scene, but it always struck me as maybe like totally, not maybe like definitely objectifying women and like manipulation. And it struck me as pretty, I don't want to paint with a totally broad brush, but to the extent that I know anything about it, I, it put up a lot of flares in my mind. Yeah, I agree and so we wanted to be like this alternative alternative

Source where guys could go. Hey, you know, this is an interesting subject I like the idea of getting better at dating relationships But I don't like wearing a light-up belt buckle Lying about where I'm from and having a fake accent or something like that So we wanted like a wholesome alternative the problem with that is it's kind of like saying, no, I'm the good drug dealer. I don't cause societal ruin. I only sell healthy cocaine, right? It doesn't work. People look at you and go, no, they paint with a broad brush and they're not totally wrong. So I wanted to move away from that. And my business partners really did not want to move away from that. And so gradually year by

year, as my interests evolved into neuroscience and other forms of things like networking, persuasion and influence that had nothing to do with the opposite sex, per se, are divide, my divide between my business partners and myself just got bigger and bigger and bigger. How big was the business? It was multiple seven figure business. Just from the podcast.

Yeah, from the podcast and we ran programs in LA that had married guys and single guys coming out to learn about body language and nonverbal communication i still run programs like that i just have more of the focus on networking and report building then on dating but let's put a pin in the bag i want to share more about networking and nonverbal communication, what that means. Because again, I get, well, flares go up because this how you manipulate people's maps, it's sex. No, I mean, it's has, most of my clients are married and, or military, a lot of military and corporate clients. So it's just about like how to hold yourself in a room when you're, yeah, a lot of what

I, a lot of what we teach now. Now I'm thinking like when the first time I met you in person I walked into a door knob as I was walking into this room So that's probably not the best use of I had nothing to do with that. No, no, no, that was me Yeah, yeah, I don't mind stuff like that. I mean what what we teach are things like So one of the exercises that we do at our live events is we videotape people in interactions and they will go, oh yeah, you know, I was confident in upright and smiling and I'll go, oh really?

Okay, so we'll go to the videotape and you can see these people freeze up or check out or look angry or be kind of overly enthusiastic and we break down the videotape with them and we show them what they really look like and how they really come across. Okay, so I guess we didn't have to put a pin in this. So it's not about how to puff your chest out

so that you can be domineering over. No, no, no, that actually, that stuff doesn't really work. Because if you're trying to create connections with other people, a lot of the things that are, what would you even call it? Like standard prevailing knowledge about how to look dominant.

It doesn't work. It really drives a wedge between you and other people. So the people, one of the tips that a lot of amateur nonverbal communications people will talk about is they're like, take up a lot of space. So you see there are students or the people who go to those classes and I'm right now I'm taking up a ridiculous amount of space

while trying to stay on my, but it's like their legs over here, they're taking up three chairs, and it looks very try hard. It doesn't really work. It's a guy, I don't know too much about this guy, Jordan Peterson. He's got, he's super hot right now,

the Canadian, yeah. Psychologist, philosopher, I don't know, YouTuber, who talks about posture and the importance of posture. I haven't seen this. You haven't, okay. All right. Well, we don't have to talk about it. But then on the other hand, you say mostly these are men, men.

Why are women? Oh, it's men and women. Yeah. Okay. Because then the other thing is the whole power posing thing. Yeah. It doesn't work. Science has debunked that thoroughly.

Okay. Popular TED talk. People can't reproduce the results. Whenever they say the results are, what is it that other scientists are having trouble reproducing the results that I think is code for this doesn't work except this person says it doesn't nobody else can figure it out so when you see someone say yeah stand up and razor arms up like Superman does it work I don't know maybe it works if you believe it works, but that's just placebo, that's not really... Imperial evidence. Imperial evidence.

So we don't teach stuff like that, because I don't know, I like science. I want stuff that's gonna work, not just because I say it's gonna work, on stuff that works because it's been tested and it's got a long term effect. Okay, another digression. Yeah.

And we're gonna get to the legal spat, but I just just my mind is undisciplined and another question is popping up. I have read and you can tell me if I'm recalling this accurately that there was actually, I actually think I did a story about this that there was a connection between the pickup art of scene and the alt-right. I believe that there is now. Yeah, sure. That does not surprise me at all. Yeah. I've been so far removed from that for so many years because I didn't just split with the, they split with my old company recently, but even then, even before then, we didn't

associate with any of those guys on that side. But I do, I do media appearances for things like that where some Canadian or American magazine will go, Hey, can you speak to this because I've been in that world or adjacent to that world for so long. But there's always, always, always for the record. Something wrong with people being disingenuous in order to, or viewing relationships as adversarial in any way is always counterproductive and there's always something wrong with that. Unless you're, I suppose, maybe there are exceptions to this,

but even in negotiation, I think you should be working towards a common goal. But when you're looking at the opposite sex as an adversarial relationship, that is always unhealthy. And a lot of the pickup artists, guys, the whole thing is predicated on that. It's zero sum. If they win somebody else the females They lose the women lose and that is unhealthy. That's unhealthy for women But it's certainly unhealthy for the guys doing it to them because you're doing it to yourself You have to do a lot of you put in a lot of work to figure out how to be

Overly domineering not give other people what they want because you feel like you're losing. You're really doubling down on your own insecurities when you focus on that stuff. And so I think it's inherently unhealthy and I view a lot of the alt-right stuff as an extension of that. It's basically a political expression of a lot of male insecurities turned up to 11. You mentioned you were married. How, if at all, did what you'd learned about dating and relationships again as not necessarily the pickup or dating and relationships and you were really deep in that world, how did that help or not help as you were courting and then marrying your

wife? So I met my wife through the show and her brother and her listened to it together. And she went out with me at least 50% curiosity to see if I would be the same person I was on the show in real life. And she's in the other room. So, you know, if you wanna ask her, you can ask her yourself.

Yeah. What's her name? Jen. And I just nod my face. You heard her. I'm fire-killed. Yeah, I'm really like clumsy today. I was craning over to see Jen

and I banged my cheek up against the mic. Second time I've done something like that today. I was craning over to C-Gen and I banged my cheek up against the mic. Second time I've done something like that today. So legal spat. Sure. What, tell me about it. Right, so ugly did it get. Oh, it's still ongoing and it's definitely not pretty. And what's really frustrating is we had negotiated

an amicable split and it just didn't work out, which is about as specific as I should probably get with that type of thing. But it's such a bummer because I had moved my show away from all of this what I consider to be kind of adversarial BS and now I'm starting over with something completely different where I don't talk about dating and relationships at all. Thankfully, not interested in it.

I'm interested in it in terms of becoming a better husband or a better father and things like that, but that's not exactly what you're referring to when you talk about what you were mentioning dating and relationships in the previous context. And that's what I see the other company kind of going back to those things that we talked about seven or eight years ago. So. And are they doing it under the art of charm name? Yeah.

And even though you're not associated. I'm not associated with it at all. Right. But you're, but you are kind of by in the public imagination. So that's what you're worried about. Um, it's frustrating. I would say it's frustrating because being the face of a brand for so long and then having it go backwards, where I can't do anything about it, I just have to focus on what I'm doing moving forward, which is tough because people go,

you know, this is the best thing that's ever happened to you, just focus on moving forward. It's like, great, but when somebody is looking at what that company does now and is associating it with me, it gives me a little bit of a skin crawl and I feel like a new shower. That's not a good feeling. So I'm, it's like, I wish I had a fast forward button

because in two or three years, that brand association will be weaker as I do the Jordan Harbanger show and don't focus on that stuff at all. But for now, anything that happens over there, it's gonna be impossible for me to escape that gravity of that. So I just have my fingers crossed

that something horrible doesn't happen and then I'm on the news going, no, no, I left. Don't look at me, because nobody listens to that when that happens, right? You have to dissociate yourself, which is really hard to do after 11 years. So tell me about the news show, what are you trying to do? So I like interviews, long format interviews.

I interview neuroscientists, habit change, brilliant thinkers, and what people I think are brilliant thinkers, and great personalities. So like the Benjamin Hardy episode about willpower doesn't work. I have coaches on there that talk about things, maybe not coaches, more like scientists that talk about things like the science of jealousy, why we evolved it, how it's useful, when that goes bad, and what you can do about it, that's about as close to dating and relationships as I'll ever get. And a lot of on Fridays, we do listener questions where we give advice, or we call on an expert

to help give advice based on the questions that we get. So I'll get anything from how do I migrate this sort of thing in my career all the way to should I go to college or this thing is going on in my life. What do I do about it? So, it's a multifaceted show in that way because I love long form at interviews but my audience also occasionally, well, at least every Friday wants to hear from me what I think they should do, which is kind of funny. That wasn't my idea. That was born as a result of having hundreds of emails in my inbox where people go, hey,

I've been listening to your show for years, seems like you'd have an opinion on this. What should I do that we ended up turning it into a whole hour every week? Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or do law or in court. I'm Matt Bellas. And I'm Sydney battle and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell,

where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them.

It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Britney. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wonder App. What do you think drives you in the podcasting? What keeps you interested and motivated? Well, I like learning.

I feel like I spend a lot of time getting educated instead of learning, which there's a difference there. I went to college, I went to law school, and I got a lot of education, but I wasn't really learning a lot of things that I could apply. Every episode of the Jordan Harbanger Show has practical things that people can apply when they listen. And every episode we make worksheets for that episode. So if I have you come on, we talk about mindfulness, we talk about meditation, for example, we

would create a worksheet where people can go, all right, listen to that on my way to work, I don't necessarily remember all the practicals. They can go to the show notes and download the worksheet for that episode and put that stuff into practice right away. And that's really important for me because otherwise you can listen to show or you can read a book, you can read 100 books and you can remember one or two things. I want people to have that sort of 1% better every day or every week kind of change in their lives because that's what compounds over years is, oh yeah, now I understand how habit

change works. Now I understand how habit change works now I understand how Non-brible communication can influence decision-making now I understand how to get myself out of bed in the morning earlier now I understand how to change my diet little by little so that it sticks those are the things that over three to five years people go Like grab my life's totally different now Whereas you feel you can feel good that you've played a role. Yeah, that's what makes me feel good. That's rewarding. I didn't get a lot of fan mails and attorney. I'm fine. Yeah, no, there was not a lot of my email inbox was not empty, but it was certainly didn't have any thank yous in it. So you asked before whether I ever, whether some of what keeps me meditating is knowing that if I stopped doing it, I would

look like a huge hypocrite. Do you ever feel like a huge hypocrite for lack, you know, I'm being a little bit flip? Sure, sure. Because I'm sure your life is messy. We've talked about the stress over the this legal battle and maybe you have trouble waking up early or sticking to a diet. And yeah, here you are as this person who gives people advice or at least helps them get to good advice. Well, what's been really fun for the, if there's a bright side to this, if there's a silver lining on the cloud is that I've been really open on my show about everything that I'm going through. So the audience goes, oh, I've gotten a lot of email in the last couple months ago.

It's so good to hear that you're human too. Because I don't do the whole guru thing where it's like, oh, I've answered everything. Look at my life, it's perfect. I go and wear everything on my sleeve to the point that I can do so without having legal liability come back on me for it. And the audience, at first I thought, this is risky, you know, I will alienate or lose people and they'll go, oh, stop telling us about this problem you're having. I was worried about that. What I found instead was not only did I get a lot of support from the audience, but a lot of people went, it's really good to have you teaching us this stuff by yourself going

through it and watching how you handle it. And even when I fall off the wagon or do something where I'm like, oh, I shouldn't have done or said that or I shouldn't have maybe, I should have stuck to my habits more. It's been useful for the audience to come back and see that according to them because then they realize, oh, I don't have to beat myself up if I get something wrong occasionally because even Jordan has that problem and I think that's important because I think when you look at if you follow some sort of guru you read some sort of book by I don't want to mention any names but some of the people that you even maybe talked about are alluded to in 10% happier where you go this guy doesn't look like a stress-free guys may emailing people on his blackberries.

We run 10 blocks down Manhattan late for something. Those, the disconnect between that, they're trying to sell an ideal. And I don't want to sell an ideal to my audience. I want them to see that everybody struggles with pretty much everything when they're trying to get better, but you can still persevering it through it. Not look how great and easy and effort this is for me.

What's wrong with you? Because that disconnect, that gap, when you do that, that's where people try to market. Like, well, if you were just a little bit more like me, your life would be easier, $2,000 you can get there. And that's BS, right? That's not cool. I don't like to sell things like that.

I don't like to have people, I don't want people to feel bad so that they would buy, I don't want people to feel bad so that they would buy their wallet. I want people to feel really good about what they're learning and see results from the things I'm giving them for free in the show. And then, if we come out with a product or an event,

then they can go, well, this other stuff works for me, not like, oh, I have the secret and I'll tell you for two grand. I don't like that gap. Do you understand what I mean by the gap between the ideal? I don't like that. I don't like to create mean by the gap between the ideal? I don't like that.

I don't like to create that because what it does is it creates bad feelings in other people so that you can get their money. And I think that's kind of the definition of huxsterism and you and I have seen that a lot, especially in industries that are self-help or meditation. There's a, you can't throw a rock in a meditation industry without hitting somebody who's selling a shortcut to it that has not meditated for a decade.

How is the business going? I mean, how is the, are people listening to the podcast? People, so good. Yeah, the first month we ended up with 1.3 million, 1.4 million downloads the first month. It's a lot. That's been encouraging. I talk about networking and relationship development all the time.

I think that's the highest lever for people that are really young in starting their career. Your network is really the best thing you can focus on because you got to dig the well before you're at Thursday as a common book title from a million years ago. But also when you get to the top of your career towards the C-suite people go, oh, okay, well, it's all about relationships and networking. And yet when you think of networking, you think of throwing business cards at people or emailing them on the holidays or your card deal or sending you a Christmas card.

And that's not really what we're talking about. So that skill, I think, is the highest leverage skill, especially for young people. What are you talking about? So I'm talking about things like Leading with value which means instead of looking for you have you ever seen Glenn Gary Glenn Ross or the ABC always be closing That's a hard way to do business because you're always trying to match Your skill set or your technical idea of whatever you provide with the person that you're talking to. So if I'm talking with you at a friend's party, I go, well, I'm a graphic designer and you go,

oh, well, I'm a broadcaster, reporter, journalist. I go, oh, well, do you need graphics? No. All right, now I'm looking around the room because there's nothing I can get from you. That's sort of a ABC mindset. I'm trying to close business. But if I'm looking to connect you with someone else in my network because I'm not worried about what's in it for me, I don't have an attachment to anything in return, I'm like, oh, you know what? I know you have a book about meditation. I've got a friend who has a show. He sells a lot of books on his show. It's a very self-development oriented audience. Do you know this person? No, look, I'll introduce you later. That's leading with value and a lot of people don't really do that. They talk about doing that, but then they secretly

in the back of their head gola, and then later, when I need something from Dan, he'll own me a bunch of favors. But that just poisons the well too. It's called the keeping score. So I go, and then if you don't help me in return, and I go, hey, I got a dog grooming ebook. Can you sell it the next time you do your podcast?

You go, that's not really a good fit for my audience. Then in my mind, I'm thinking, well, Dan's not a very nice guy, you know, I helped him out. I got him a bunch of book sales and he's not going to help me. So now I'm poisoning the well of my own relationships by keeping score through what I would say as a covert contract, right? I have an agreement between you and I, but it only exists in my head. Did you read Give and Take by Adam Graham? I did. I love that book. Yeah, it's a great book. And he talks about, there are three types of people in the business world, givers, takers, and matters. Yeah, this has been a long time since I've read it.

It's probably been about four or five years. Yeah, it's been a couple of months. I reread it recently, and I really do think it's very good. And he's just brilliant. Yeah, I have a beef with some of the ways he talks about meditation publicly, but that's separate. But I do think he's in the main, just a really positive force.

He also has a really nice podcast that's, I think it's called Work Life. Yeah. But I noticed that in myself, and I'm not super proud of it, that like keeping score type situation. Keeping score or, you know, like my interest in somebody could elevate if I feel like, oh, well, maybe they could do something for me or something like that. That's natural, though. Yeah.

And that's okay. You shouldn't beat yourself up about that, but the difference is how strongly do you act on that? So if it's natural if you meet somebody and they've got a really big podcast and you go, oh, good, I want to get more listeners for mine, that you would be more interested in them. The question isn't, are you more interested in those types of people? The question is, are you disinterested in other people that are not, that don't have an obvious value to give to you?

And, and then also what I would teach or what I do teach is systemizing, keeping in touch and keeping in contact with people that don't have a readily apparent value for you directly. Because if you build a really strong network and you're connecting other people in that network to each other, so you're creating an actual network instead of just hub and spoke, where you're the center of everything, then it becomes a muscle that grows with use

and not that transactional type of network where you go, well, I could introduce you to that person, but then I'm using it up, which is a negative, unhelpful mindset that doesn't really work. But I'm always in awe, but the book talks about true givers. And we'll be back up for a second. I totally appreciate what you said about not being yourself up. And I do think that meditation is useful in this. So I'll see my enhanced interest in somebody who I,

you know, I'll see my sort of self interest arise when, when I see somebody who maybe could be helpful to me. And I try to, you know, let that come and go without necessarily acting on it. And I can see maybe some boredom arise if I'm talking to somebody and there's, you know, no value, quote unquote value that is to be had. And I try to see that and let it go and not beat myself up for having those feelings because I didn't invite them anyway. It's more just about surfing it without acting on it. I think part of that could be helped by,

if you wanted to, by reframing the value that you look, that you look to get from other people. So if I meet somebody who's a cryptocurrency investor, which is really trendy right now, and I meet a CPA who's really good at tax planning, I'm not terribly interested in either of those subjects, but I'm excited that I have both of those people at hand because I can connect them to each other. And you just think of it as banking social capital, right? Eventually, I might need something from my network if you really have

to think about what's in it for you, but those people might not be the ones to give it to me. But the truth is you never know who's going to be the person that's going to help you. So it just, you just have to play the numbers game. So that brings me to the point I was going to make beautifully. Which is that I know a few of the and Adam Grant writes about takers people who would like have these huge networks and expect nothing out of them. You know, truly give us. Sorry, givers. Thank you. People who truly have seemingly built these huge networks with no motive other than the joy of making connections and watching them flourish. And I know there's one person coming to mind

in my own personal life. I'm going to use her name. I think she listens to this podcast. She used to work here at ABC. Hopefully she doesn't mind. But my friend Susan Merkin Daddy, who is used to be a senior executive here at ABC News and is now does lots of things and works at Random House and does consulting for ABC. But she is just one of these people who, you know, just connects all sorts of people for no reason other than that I can tell she enjoys doing the connecting. It's really fun. But I don't know that I feel I say this was some shame.

I don't know that I can, you that, I know I've done some connecting and it is fun to just watch it happen, but I don't know that that is what drives me all the time and I wish it did. It might change if you systemize it. So the systems are important too, and those are really small things. People go, you know, since this doesn't drive me,

I don't prioritize it as much. And I get that, but what if every time you're standing in line for coffee at 9 a.m. because you take a break between 9 and 10, for example, what if you scroll to the bottom of your phone's text message list and you text four or five people, something that, because those are the people you haven't talked to in two years.

You say something like, hey, it's been a while, haven't talked to you in a while, what's the latest with you? I'm standing in line for coffee, the bottom of the ABC News Disney Building. By the way, it's Dan in case you don't have my number, Dan Harris, in case you don't have my number saved in your phone, no rush on the reply. And the reason that you have to sign it is because then you avoid the whole like new phone who does.

Yeah. And also people who are embarrassed because they don't have your number will still reply because you signed it. Yeah, I've done that. And then they can save it. And the still reply because you signed it. I've done that. And then they can save it. And the other reason that you say no rush on the reply is because whenever somebody reaches

out to me from a long time ago, I kind of just think crap, herb life or Scientology, which is it going to be? Right? So if you say no rush on the reply, it destroys the urgency. And if you're selling something, usually you try to build urgency, not destroy it. So if you do that four or five times a day, you're not spending any time, you're spending time, that's Instagram time, right? You're just, you would waste that time otherwise.

Things like that or email roulette where you open up your email program, you type two letters and it suggests people and you go, oh yeah, I just typed in AD and it popped up Adam Grant. Yeah, I haven't talked with Adam in like a year. Hey Adam, it's been a minute. I'm standing in front of Starbucks. Just thought I would send you a note. What's the latest with you?

I know you're working on a book because you come out with a book every three minutes. Like what's the latest one? What can I do to help you? That becomes fun because you start to get opportunities to connect other people and random opportunities then come to you. And so now you're just kind of,

you're kind of playing a slot machine that doesn't cost any money, but occasionally you win. Does that make sense? But what's impressive to me is that you can do all of this without thinking of winning it all. Yeah, it's just a habit. Well, or it's like, so my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein talks about a little

mantra that to hold in the back of your mind always, which is, how can I help? There are people who are just like, like to help. And by the way, we all like to help. When we do it, if we're paying attention, when we're useful and helpful to other people, it feels good. So that I'm aware of that. But I don't know that I wish it was and I am endeavoring to make it the sort of driving force of my life. And what I am interested in and fascinated by are those people who do that effortlessly. I think it's the dopamine hit that you were talking about early on when you build a habit and it works and you feel good about it. I don't think it's the pure altruism where I go. Isn't it great that I introduced Dan

to this other person and he sold 3000 books? That was great. I feel good about that because I get a chemical hitting my receptors in my brain. I fully understand that. But if you train yourself to do that over and over, especially when it costs nothing, I mean, like I said, it's Instagram time.

I'm waiting in line for coffee. Of course, I want to introduce two people via text. And then later on, maybe something will come out of it, but you can never see the opportunity that's going to come to you anyway. To illustrate this point, if I may, you may. When I moved to LA from New York, probably like nine years ago, I don't live in LA anymore.

But I had a toothache, and then this is pre-Uber. There are no, in taxes or a nightmare in LA. So I had a toothache and then this is pre-Uber. There are no in taxes or a nightmare in LA. So I had a toothache. I kept calling Dennis off as nobody took my insurance. Nobody wanted to help me take care of this toothache. And I posted on Facebook and this guy I don't even know was like, hey, my answer, Dennis, then is within walking distance to where you are.

And I thought, what a serendipitous thing that is. And he goes, look, I'll call her and tell her that that you need urgent to dental care. And I said, thanks. What can I do for you? And he's like, no, no problem. My friend listens to your podcast.

I don't even have podcasts. This is so long ago. He didn't even know how to use it. So I go to the dentist to get my toothpicks and I said, hey, man, thanks. Your aunt really came in clutch. I appreciated. He goes, look, I'm a barista, but I want to get

into graphic design. He sent me his portfolio and I didn't even really look at it, because I didn't need graphics. Four or five days later, an entrepreneur friend of mine said, hey, who does your web graphics? I said, we do a mall in house. I got a portfolio from a guy. It looks okay.

All I know is he's nice, and that he desperately wants to get into graphics, so he's probably going to be responsive. Well, as luck would have it, she ended up hiring him, and he got a full-time job doing all the websites for all of her clients. Now, that's lucky, right?

That's pure luck, but all I got, I got that because, well, let me put it this way, he got a full-time job doing what he wanted, no longer had to make coffee every day for other people, because he helped me find a dentist on Facebook. He couldn't have seen that opportunity coming, it was over the horizon. I couldn't have seen that opportunity coming. It was over the horizon. I couldn't have seen my ability to help him with that

because I didn't know him. So you'd really, you're kind of just banging on this slot machine. You have no idea what's inside of anything. Or anything to ever. Yeah, it's a Carmic Slot machine. So then it becomes fun because you know that eventually something's gonna shake out and it's gonna be interesting fun or cool, right? It's gonna, out and it's gonna be interesting fun or cool.

Right? It's gonna, something is gonna happen. Like, I got introduced to you, I think through Sam Harris maybe? Oh, really? Is that possible? Or was it the other way around? Might have been the other way around. Maybe I introduced you to Sam. I think that might have happened. I can't remember. Me neither.

But I didn't go, hey Dan, if I have you on my show, will you introduce me to Sam Harris? That was completely random. In fact, I probably didn't even, that is what happened, and I didn't know you knew each other. I read your book in preparation for an interview that you'd already agreed to, and you had mentioned him in there. I wouldn't have had any of that opportunity either. So you really want to bang on the car,

make a slot machine, and it creates the dopamine hits in your brain And then you don't have to go oh well, you know I'm ashamed of why I don't think about helping people because you will start thinking about it because it starts to feel good Right you just get addicted to it. Maybe yeah, this has been a really good interview I'm glad the final thing I always like to do is just just let people do a fully encouraged round of Plugging the heck out of everything you got. So like, where can we find you in social media?

Remind us of the podcast where it can be found anything at your event, anything you got in the arsenal, just let it loose. All right, cool. So I do the Jordan Harbinger Show. I interview great, interesting people like you, Sam Harris, et cetera, a neuroscientist, anything that can make people better.

Like I said, I create the work sheets for every episode. So it's about what the audience can learn. So if you're like learning and becoming better at anything, then check out the Jordan Harbinger Show. I'm also on Instagram, Jordan Harbinger, Twitter, Jordan Harbinger. If you love or hate the show, you can hit me there. And I answer all my email, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. I won't write a three-page paragraph response to every random question, but if people have questions, I answer them every Friday. Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Appreciate it. OK, that does it for another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also, if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh

Cohen, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com Slash Survey.