Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 76: Jeffrey Walker, Former JPMorgan Exec, Philanthropist (Bonus!)

Episode Date: May 5, 2017

Jeffrey Walker served 25 years as the CEO and cofounder of CCMP Capital, the $12 billion successor to JPMorgan Partners, JPMorgan Chase & Co's global private equity group, the vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and chairman of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, and said he was "always pretty open" with his coworkers about practicing mindfulness -- even taught meditation to his fellow executives. Walker, who now holds leadership roles in a number of non-profits and has an investor group called Bridge Builders Collaborative, puts a huge emphasis on teamwork and building better relationships to do good in the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 did 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. I got to start this with an apology to Jeff Walker, who's our interviewee. We recorded this a long time ago, like many months ago. And I think Jeff gave up hope that we're ever going to post it. Anyway, Jeff or Jeffree, if you want to be formal, is a fascinating guy and a little story about Jeff. When I first started meditating eight or nine years ago,

my younger brother, who's a venture capitalist, was making fun of me relentlessly and calling me a weirdo and buying me Eckhart Tolly calendars, then I told him that this guy, Jeff Jeff Walker was meditating and his whole attitude shifted. Jeff Walker is a legendary venture capitalist. Somebody my brother had heard of, he's a formerly of JP Morgan, an incredibly successful dude who, as you'll hear in this interview, got into meditation a long time ago and has now become a big figure in trying to scale mindfulness up to something that is widely utilized by all sorts of people.

He is a businessman, a meditator, a philanthropist, and an all around awesome guy. Here's Jeffrey Walker. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. from ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. I think I might have mentioned this to you before, but I picked up a little trick from you that has now infiltrated the format of this podcast, which is because we were having a group dinner one night and you went around the table and asked everybody

to explain how they got into meditation and I realized watching that, that that basically is a way for people to tell the story of their lives, often pretty succinctly, sometimes not so much. So I'll throw the question right back at you. How did you get into meditation? Great.

I love those stories, because they all give you a perspective on the individual, right? So I, 1973, late one night, University of Virginia, first year, probably had a beer or two and it's my guess walked down this Dell so it was this large open field and I had been in psychology class learning about whole body relaxation I had read Carlos Castaneda which some people might remember who was a mystic and talking about it with the Don Juan.

Don Juan, yeah, that's exactly. So I said, I don't want to try something. So I sat down in the field with a moon and was quiet and started doing just sitting with body relaxation and went somewhere that was noticeably different and it was a quiet place. It wasn't probably compared to most descriptions of meditation today, exactly perfect, but it was something that I was noticing that was different and quiet in sitting and I liked sitting. I liked and reminded me of, so that was my first meditation, but it reminded me of playing music. And so I had started playing music in seventh grade with others, and that ensemble effect, that flow state, that being present.

And when I was playing an ensemble, it reminded me of that same feeling. And I said, what is that? I'm here by myself, but I'm kind of feeling like that flow. So I was hooked, I was hooked after that and kind of said, what is going on here? Started reading Joseph Campbell and thinking about, you know, comparative religions and kept practicing off and on and reading and trying to figure out what this is and again this was 43 years ago. So it was like this is It was different And started you know thinking about it's this all crystal people's things and too strange and who's doing what where and then over the years after

exploring Terranism and Buddhism and others started saying you know there is a practice and so I developed a practice over that early period Probably a bit more Buddhist oriented. I got involved a friend of mine deepak Chopra introduced me to Meditation with a mantra so it's a Hindu-based practice and I've used some of that and kind of where I've come out long answer to a short question is that It all kind of works in different times in different places and for me I'm more of a me-collectic practitioner and I'm really interested in learning other Practices and what other people are doing and using and that it's probably not all just about mindfulness. It's all about different practices using these line training tools to concentrate better, to work better in teams, to be more compassionate, to be more aware and open to other ideas, be more creative, and

starting realizing, ah, the deeper I go, the more interesting it gets. And finding others to have this conversation with, like yourself, is my bliss. That's awesome. I mean, you are really one of the more ecumenical dudes I know in terms of practice, which we'll talk about in a second, but just staying with your chronology for a second, you went off and became a pretty successful venture capitalist, JP Morgan, if I recall correctly. And so, were you open in that environment, as you were coming up the ranks in the 80s, 90s, the odds about your spiritual excursions, or did you have to stay in the closet?

No, I was always pretty open though. I was always a strange dude. Because then luckily, as a venture capital, private equity guy, you were, it was okay to be that because honestly, we made some money for the organizations and they kinda said, okay, whatever.

But I kept focusing on that feeling of ensemble. And so we, for example, from the original days it came to go back after eight mergers and became JP Morgan, but we had a partnership in a real one. And so where we as a team work together and tried to say, how do we work with our CEOs that we invested in our companies as true partners?

Now, and they all knew I was into mindfulness and my full approach, probably 15, 17 years ago, we set a course up at the University of Virginia called Mindful Leadership. And it was very strange to have this course, but I happened to be very active in the University of Virginia and the business school in particular, and kind of said, I want to play with this idea.

And we did. We brought kids from all over the campus. And so people knew that I was interested in talking about these kinds of questions. But it evolved into ethics. It evolved into spiritual center playing with others. But it doesn't mean I wasn't, at times I bet you the people thought I was scary,

as my guess. My kids, friends, called me the intimidated at times, but there were times when your kids come home and you're gonna be tough and say, you know, these are certain rules that you have to follow. So I probably got a little bit softer over time at JP Morgan. I taught meditation to the fellow executives or to the fellow executives. Really?

And they were willing to do this because you were way ahead of the... Well, my group was somewhere open, some were not so much. They kind of did it and you have to be careful as a senior exact telling people what to do. You can't do that, obviously, but you can ask them to try things. It's something that's interesting to try. So when our groups retreats, we do yoga, which is a form of contemplation, meditation, obviously. And some would tell you, hey, that's really interesting. I'm going to do more of that. Or I have a practice and gee, my wife always did that. Gee, I'm going to do that too.

Or my boss is doing it. So maybe I should at least pretend to do that. Well, I had people tell me that, you know, over time, as I continued to do a practice that you're different. You're different than other people in a good way. I hope. But that I've seen you change personally over time. And my wife has said that as well.

And I hope for the better. God, we all need to continue to work on our tools because it's always gonna be maybe more than 10% happier, but 15% you know, how do you get into joy and joy states. But being able to take that breath, being able to not respond quickly is a real power in all worlds, but the business world in particular. And so we talked that. We said to young associates coming out of business school, listen.

You know what you know. You don't know what the other guy knows. And isn't an advantage to be able to hear from them what they're thinking? And isn't that an advantage in a negotiation? Isn't that an advantage to be able to notice if you're being quiet, another person, and what they're experiencing.

And then when you're trying to work with them in partnership when you're investing with them as CEOs, you want them to consider you a partner. And it doesn't mean that you're going to do what they want or they're you're going to do what they want. But that you work together for a common goal and what that is. And to do that, you have to be able to settle. And you have to be able to listen well. And you have to be able to be open, you know, and Buddhist philosophy right on beginner's mind. You have to create your opportunity to bring yourself back to that base so you can rebuild a solution together and have people really believe they're working with you. And so people started seeing, hmm, these are kind of tools that I'm trying to work on myself

to be successful in the business world. Maybe I'll listen about this. Maybe I'll think about this one. And you're right, there is, hey, he's doing that one, and then we started finding other financial types coming out of the closet. We started finding friends of mine who were running major hedge funds all had a practice. Well why? Because it allowed them to have a competitive advantage. And is that a good thing to say, oh, we're just going to do this to have a competitive advantage? I don't think so, but I think experiencing it starting to

But I think experiencing it, starting to take that breath, starting to listen to others, bleeds over to your whole life, and starts making people potentially more interesting in people that I want to hang with. So that's a good thing. You touched on this, but there are some critiques of what some people call corporate mindfulness or make mindfulness, you know, bringing this, you know, distilling certain parts of ancient traditions, bringing them into the workplace and saying, hey, this can make you, give you a competitive advantage, this can make you more focused, this can make you more productive. And yet we have this capitalist system that some people have very serious complaints about.

You know, that it's not doing great things for the planet, that there's an enormous amount of income inequality, that it along those lines can work better for the people at the top, then the bottom, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think that what we're seeing in terms of this practice being brought into the corporate world do you think it is going to help change the system from within, or is it just a little add-on that people embrace to make them better workers within the system? Sure.

Big question. Take as much time as you want. And I chair the Contemplative Science Center in the University of Virginia, and we have 11 schools that are working together to bring these tools to everything from nursing to medicine to education, we get major projects around education, but also business. And the idea is that these tools can lower suffering and there's a lot of people suffering in my experience can lower suffering. And there's a lot of people suffering in my experience in all the world from doing global development, which I've been working on for 10 years or others. But in the business world, there's a lot of stress. And there's a lot of suffering. And if

you can get people to experience some tools that they can pick from, you're not telling them the answers. And you have to really avoid, and Mark Bernoulli at Edna, I know believes this, saying he can't be what he wants. It can't be what I think. It has to be a set of tools you make available to say try these, see what happens. And so I was a breakfast two weeks ago with a CEO of a major international bank here in New York and he was talking about my fullness and I'd been teaching off and on some of his staff and what these tools can be and how to mentor using some of these tools. And he kind of was still listening but not convinced. And we start talking about what his daughter was

doing and she's into global development. And they started, I said, well, what are the issues? I said, how are you sleeping? And he goes, I'm taking Ambien, I'm going to put a lot of stress. And I said, OK. Do you know there's some books you can look at? There's some practices you can do. And the lean four, and he goes, can can you give me those and I think I've had

three emails back and forth between him in the last two weeks kind of like okay I read those that was really interesting it made it real and it's saying you know you could probably sleep more easily and maybe you can decrease some of the ambient you're using, and maybe that's a good place to start. And I find that when you go down to that personal, actionable place, then he kind of comes back going, this is really interesting. I can see why I'd like to support it. And I don't know exactly what I'm doing,

and I'll get my HR person to help me out, to think about that. And there's more things you can do. I said, yeah, there's actually really great evidence against depression. And so, you know, there's a lot of people in your business that are depressed. And wouldn't be good to get it early as opposed to waiting until it gets tough, where it's impairing their families, because, you know, they're going to be better employees. There'll be better partners with you if you use some of these tools. But who knows,

better employees. There will be better partners with you if you use some of these tools. But who knows, it might be yoga, it might be Tai Chi, it might be open to all those potential ideas. So I think, you know, in this world, if there's no quick fixes, even though it right tries to sell some, this is an opportunity to go down that path of opening up other tools that allow people to address some of their suffering without looking for the silver bullet solution of a drug or one doctor that has necessarily the answer or one teacher.

You know, you and I love Sharon Salzburg and she's awesome and really talking about loving kindness and teamwork, etc. But it's not all the answers to all things. You know, let's go talk to them after we're fired. Let's go talk about Christian thought. Let's talk about all these larger issues with guys like David Brooks and others are trying to think about. These are just pieces of the puzzle and working on them with people like yourself and

our friends in the area that are saying, this puzzle we're all just finding little pieces of and we're showing each other, this is a cool piece I just found isn't this great. That's what it works really well in business, it works really well in healthcare, it works really well in education. I think that's what gives me hope is that we're all now asking that question about how it should work as opposed to, that's weird, keep it out. I haven't heard that almost anywhere.

I want to avoid, I want to write an article at some point about the mindless pursuit of mindfulness because it means almost everything and nothing. And so how do we start peeling that away, peeling the onion away, saying how you sleepin'? How you feeling? Well, there's some things you can probably practice. And there's this encyclopedia

We're thinking about doing in a psychopedia of contemplative practices and you know if you're trying to work on this one issue You may want to try this you may want to try a retreat. You may want to try reading a book You may want to try sitting in a group of people, you know, Oshanga equivalent of a group, you know, they can reinforce and help you, a community. Use social media to kind of pull that together. Or you might, you know, actually want to use that with your family. Use that in the way you're working with your spouse

and the way you're communicating with them. So these are all tons of different opportunities. And let's start sharing that knowledge, you know, with each of us. I just would stay in my experience, I'm more eclectic as you say, I always stay away from the person that has the answer. I run from those people a little bit or, gee, just read my book and it will be great and follow my practice, which is a little counter to an Eastern tradition of, you know,

listening to a master who's been taught by a master who's been taught by a master and going through that whole traditional hierarchy. I think we're today actually able to start to consume more sources, but then we all have to hold ourselves accountable a little more for evaluating it and how it's working with ourselves. What we're trying to sell everybody else, you know, we have this project in Louisville, Kentucky called the Contemplative Schools Project. And we've raised a lot of money for bringing contemplation to right now 8,000 kids, K through 5, and contemplation defined as mindfulness, yoga, social-emotional learning, and health. And multiple times a week, I'm sitting and listening and thinking about those kind of questions,

and having teachers that are trained on how to do that. But we didn't adopt one program. We didn't adopt one non-profits thought. We didn't take transcendental meditation and quick time and say, okay, that's the answer we're done. We didn't take mind up and say, that's the answer when we're done. We didn't take social, what you said, you're going, let's work with the local school system and figure out what works for them. In this social emotional strategy, building a foundation so that kids in the inner city and others understand how to manage stress, how to listen better in class, how teachers are able to teach those skills.

Maybe them being able to pick from all these different tools and build something that was uniquely theirs is a better strategy and they have. They've had great results so far. We have Penn State, we have University of Wisconsin auditing us and coming through and making sure the measures look successful or are being achieved. But they've also promised up to the mayor level and up to the school superintendent level that they will make this available to all the schools. So after about two more years when we finish it it'll go to 25,000 kids. And so

this is a scaling strategy. This is a population level impact. But what was the difference was a system orientation where let's look at the local system and figure out what makes sense for them and what works on low level may not work in New York, may not work in Chicago because there's going to be different tools. So finding the answer is probably the wrong strategy. If they show you the way, run away, And that's kind of been my philosophy of life. So just let me, I, you, you touched on so many interesting things there.

I want to stage this for a second on, on corporate, on the corporate part, because there's been so much. Sturman drawing around that area. So I just curious because you have so much experience in the corporate world. Do you, I, I, just for what it's worth, totally agree that we should be bringing mindfulness into corporations because more mindfulness, well, we should be bringing contemplative tools into corporations because more mindfulness, more compassion, more time for contemplation, more health, healthy living is better than less. There's no question about that in my mind.

But from the side of the critics who worry about this stuff being co-opted by corporations, I just wonder what you would say to them. And do you think that these tools have the potential for making businesses more ethical in the world? In the world, not only to their employees, but in the way they ethical in the world. And in the world, not only through their employees, but in the way they behave in the world. Yeah, I mean, I'll take it backwards maybe, but that absolutely have seen people

potentially operate more ethically and open to working with others as a team who have some of these skills. And people noticed that. There's two things that you said in the business orientation for contemplation that people who one think it's co-opting some of the traditions. Tough.

And to my mind, it's a small group of the pure Buddhists who say, hey, we're supposed to be on a path to enlightenment. This is a tradition, and you need to go sit with a master, and you need to go long-term retreats, and you have to follow a whole particular path. And I have not seen that. Be actually a problem in the business side. I haven't seen individuals who deviate from that and focus just on one particular tradition. We have investment in our investor group called Hapify. It's meant to be a curator for bringing

tools and techniques to others in LithuMPIC. I'm saying with wanderlusts and Jeff Rousen I was the CEO there is trying to do as well. So using the kind of business tools to bring these ideas to the world, people seem to be pretty open to them. So there's certain small traditions that say I always followed this path. And I was working with one woman who is awesome, who's working on yoga and saying, you know, yoga freed me. It solved my pain. I used to be, you know, a horrible back pain and kind of create. And so this particular Batavi Joyce tradition is exactly what you should be doing. And I'll set up

centers and everybody up and you're kind of go, oh my god, here's somebody who's had a great experience who's trying to sell the answer that she's achieved to others. I think that is a little scary and that does scare people because also in the depy comes almost religious and it's energy and then saying, saying, selling an answer. So I think there's a little bit of scaring us in that. And when companies see it and others see it, if the CEO is trying to sell one thing or one way.

But then I haven't, no matter where we've gone in healthcare, in education, in business for sure, I have seen none of that. I've seen no, you know, fright and fear. They're actually a lot of curiosity and understand a business environment, particularly on the younger growing companies. They're all want to be sponges for innovation and ideas. And so they'll try a lot of different things and they'll stop things and don't work. But then they'll really adopt things that do and so you're seeing in Silicon Valley, you're seeing

it here down in the Flannern District and rest in New York. You know if you're 35 and younger you're doing all of this. In fact you don't know anybody that isn't doing all of this and I don't care if it's in New York or Chicago or St. Louis, we've seen it in Birmingham, Alabama, it's everywhere. it's in New York or Chicago or St. Louis, we've seen it in Birmingham, Alabama, it's everywhere. And so then how do you start bringing these tools in, I think, is the question. So the small arguments over G, you know, it's not so perfect, you know, let's not bring it out. Let's not offer it as pieces. I think the pieces are good tools. I think that's how you start changing the world slightly good tools. I think that's how you start changing the world slightly and slowly migrate.

Machiavelli and Plaud is to have people working together for things and they get used to it so much that they can't do any other way. And so build these teams, you know, have them experience some success and failure. Have them sit with each other and be quiet. I did a TEDx talk a couple of weeks ago and right at the end of it, I said, okay, we're going to experience this kind of ensemble of change, because I was talking about system

change and building and working on some walls. I said, okay, we're going to hum together. And so we as the audience hummed together. I said, that's an experience. You're present, you're connected, you just experienced the meditation. And it is. It's performing together. It's bringing that musical experience together. It's that kind of energy that I love to support and have people experience. And when they do that, they're open to most things. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich,

where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Rue off course.

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That ensemble, working on puzzles together, we created these ideas called Jeffersonian dinners where you have a whole table conversation. I can't stand 15 people at a table that are all talking to the person next to them and having no integrated conversation. It just bothers me because there's so many great minds around the table that could be talking about something interesting. I don't care. Talk about your favorite music and talk about the film, but also maybe talk about how we

bring these tools of contemplation to lower stress on the world. That's a more interesting experience for me, and I've come and become truly addicted to it, but it was also why I was successful as an investor. For 25 years, we built these ensembles, these partnerships with CEOs and others to create value and create value in their teams. And so it's something I started in the seventh grade playing music and continued to evolve to today. And when I was talking to our friend, Sharon Salzburg, we brought her up several different times. She's such an amazing spirit. And she said, you know, Jeff,

we forgot to bring Sangha to the West. You just defined Sangha for people. And Sangha is a Buddhist term of, there's lots of different other terms for this, but you know, of a group of people who work together, who talk with each other, who are mirrors to each other, and in my mind, you can't find yourself without reflecting off the mirror of another, and the better, and more clear that mirror is, the more you're going to see yourself. And so you can go in the cave while your life and continue to practice the wrong golf swing. This won't work. But others kind of like, you know, it's, you're, he just how you're coming across.

And so what what Sharon said, you know, is that in the east, they had sangas, they had groups of people that actually connect with each other. And here in the west, we had churches and we had, you know, groups that were naturally connected, rotary and other things. And we're losing that. And she said, you know, when we came in the early 70s to the U.S. we talked about the self-inquiry approach. John Kebetson had amazing mindfulness-based stress management program. But we forgot to teach the group. We forgot to teach bringing others together and having stable. Instead, we forgot because we had it naturally. So Sharon had it with Joseph Goldstein, she had it with John Kevin Zenz, she had it, it was there. She said, we just thought it was normal.

Let me just jump in for a second, because I just want to make sure people know who you're talking about. You're talking about the group of people who really brought meditation to the West in the 70s, primarily. and they include people like Sharon Salzburg, very prominent teacher, previous guest on this podcast, Joseph Goldstein, also very prominent teacher, Hapson Mimai teacher, John Kabatzen, who invented mindfulness-based stress reduction, really has been a huge force in bringing mindfulness

out into the secular world. These people were all hanging out together, they did have their own little group, and they started teaching meditation But I think the way it's happened and I grew with you is we've all gone off and just done it in our bedrooms But we don't really do it as a group Well, you do it as a group and I find that that's a different experience Actually meditating or doing or anything else is

Part of a with others Even being quiet with others, you know, and a bazaar practice, that's a different experience than being by yourself in your room, as you say. I think both are good, but you need both. And then actually having a group of people you can talk to, to actually call and say, I'm not getting this, or life is hard right now. Let me talk about my practice or let me talk about what I'm doing and the practice isn't working as well.

I've seen to be thinking a whole lot, you know, and what do you think about that? Or I'm not sleeping well, you know, how do I start building that back, building my practice back? Or I stopped doing it for a couple of weeks. It's frustrating. I need somebody to remind me that it's important. So with the social media world and others,

we're starting to explore and find ways to allow people to find others and connect, and not just online, but to find others that they can connect with and come together with, but then my challenge is, and you and I have talked about this before, is how do you then build that into your schedule? How do you build that time with others into your schedule when you get a wife and kids, and you know, you've got a lot to work, and so that is a really interesting thing to explore, whether it's in the business world

or nursing or schools, is how to build the time in. And if you do, in my experience, it's going to leverage your output, impact, joy in life. And if you forget it and you stop doing it then it stops starts going away So having others to remind you and then actually others to say you're not crazy And I think in the early 70s I saw a mirror all the crew that came in and kind of said hey There's a really interesting practice, but I think they all helped each other stay aligned You know Danny Goldman and I wrote him about emotional intelligence and others he was part of that group And he and sharing would help him going,

it's okay, Danny, keep calling. This is a good thing. You mentioned, I didn't plan on going here, but you mentioned it, so I think it's worth going there. You talked about the challenge of scheduling. I think not only do people have trouble scheduling, there's a bigger problem than scheduling time to get together as a group.

A lot of people have trouble, and I hear this all the time, finding time to meditate. I hear this all the time, you know, I get it, it's good for you, but I just can't. My wife says this. My wife sees that it's made her husband less obnoxious and that she's a scientist, and she looks at the science, and she sees that it is pretty strong evidence that it has a long list of tantalizing health benefits, and yet struggles to find the time to do it. And I say this without judgment because I see how busy she is and frankly she does most of the work with our two-year-old. So I have no judgment of her for this but I wonder what

any if you have any wisdom to bring to bear for those who may be listening to this and thinking, yeah, I just can't find the time to meditate. Yeah. There's part of it that is that the goal is to always find time to meditate and then you live life. Or is it to integrate everything we're learning into life? And there was a great teacher, Jeffrey Hopkins, who was the Dalai Lama's interpreter for a while. I was at University of Virginia and I was talking to him. And I would say, I said, so how many times a day do you meditate?

He goes, seven. Wow. How long? Oh, a minute. And he says, it's not like I don't have longer meditations. I said, but I'm trying to remind myself where I need to come back to as I'm living life. And to remind ourselves that there's every breath you're taking, if you feel yourself going into stress, you're saying, hmm, let's take a minute.

You know, let's think about that little meditation I can do. And Sharon Talsberg has a great street mindfulness set of videos that are nothing but reminding us that if we're in line, get a coffee, maybe meditate. If you're walking down the street, maybe do open awareness saying, what's around me. As opposed to holding your cell phone and tying the type in while you're walking,

put it the way and be quiet a little bit. And so finding that time is easier, in my experience, than necessarily, gee, I don't need to do an hour in the morning and how do I really have to get up, gee, I don't need to do an hour in the morning and how do I really have to get up, but then I have to exercise too. And then I got to get the kids, I'm like, oh my God. And then it starts that list.

Now, if you can build into your schedule, which I totally recommend, some period of time where you are quiet, great. Absolutely, that's important. And the science all says that's the neurons will be changed by that long-term practice. But it's also some science saying, you can practice doing a walking meditation and you can practice, you know, by taking a breath in the middle of a negotiation where you're high stress. And that's credit. Give you credit for that.

Yeah. No, I used to be really dogmatic about you can't integrate it into your life unless you have a base of formal practice. But now that I have a company that's teaching people how to meditate and one of this app, I'm hearing from people all the time that we've identified as a corporation the four secret fears that stop people from meditating or mess up their practice. And one of them is this time issue. And I've really started to change my views on this that if you can start, maybe you can start by just integrating it into your walk to work or your wait for a coffee. And maybe you can also do some formal one, two or three minute long

meditations instead of trying to dive in with 30 minutes a day or 15 minutes a day. I mean, I began with the recommendation that five to 10 minutes a day is enough and I still believe that. But maybe, you know, if you do one minute every third day and are just making an effort to be more mindful as you walk or as you wait or in the middle of conversations with people, maybe that's the beginning of growing something or maybe that's just good enough.

I don't know, I'm really, my thoughts are really forming around here. There's over 60 million people who are doing yoga right now. How many of them are in mindful states when they're doing yoga? Some are. Yeah, some. There's a set that, absolutely.

And the purpose of yoga was for meditation. That was what it was originally set up to do, is to get your mind into that present state. So what if you're just doing yoga and said, hmm, at least 15 minutes out of my hour yoga session, I'm going to really be present. I'm going to really be in a position that I'm just gonna go there, I'm gonna center myself. I give you credit, that's credit for contemplation, you know, for me. Yes. Go for that. Yes. And so, you know, thinking about how bringing these ideas out, I mean, I think the tempers are happier sites brilliant. I mean, you guys can have this

individual that checks in on how you're doing. I mean, that's a real innovation, your coach. And so, we used to be investors in headspace and we sold our investments, just because we didn't think it was evolving to where it needed to go. And I think you guys have hit on some of the things that you need to do, which is having a person that you talk to and connect with, right?

As well as a more integrated practice. I think that's part of making time, that's part of reinforcing when people were a jug brewer who's a researcher at University of Massachusetts and I've been supporting in a lot of his research at Yale and then now University of Massachusetts is doing addiction therapy. And he's got a great app that's focused on smoking and getting off of that addiction. Yeah, craving to quit. It's a great, it's a great craving to quit.

And so, so, Judge, kind of been working on this kind of theory is to how do you start building yourself away from these addictive practices? And it's through mindfulness, work, and it's through reinforcement of others saying you're achieving the goal together. Weight watchers is the same thing, right? This team effort, it's groups and so you say I keep coming back to the team because I don't see any other way out of this. I don't

see any other way because of the stress of this election and what we're all working on and it's we're all having to recenter ourselves back to our core teams, our core groups of people that we know are still there, right? And we're still going to work, we're all having to recenter ourselves back to our core teams, our core groups of people that we know are still there, right? And we're still going to work together, right? To lower suffering in the world and we're still doing this now, even though we've got somebody else in office. And we're going, yep, it's okay, we're re-basing ourselves, right? And that's stress.

So yeah, I go back to that team approach because without it, I'd be scared. What is your personal practice? What is your daily practice or whatever? Because we talked about your eclecticism, so I know a little bit about what you do, but can you share it with the rest of us? Yes, sure. It's an eclectic approach because I give myself credit. So I give myself credit for, I usually meditate late at night. My intention was to start in the early morning because I thought that was a really good thing, but then I have my, I have exercise or do something else. So late at night, my wife tends to go to sleep and I have older kids and so they're out

of the house now. So that's the quiet time for me because I don't sleep that much. And so it's like, you know, let's experience the quietness there, or listen to a meditation learning for a guy named Reggie Ray now about somatic, you know, let's figure out what the body meditation is. And so I'll do some of that. I do yoga three times a week at least an hour and I have a trainer that helps me do that and keep on target and online.

And I try to be mindful during that entire practice. I'll have done chitchief for extended periods of time and we'll cycle in and out of that. And then I do retreat, I retreat at least twice a year somewhere and I usually mix it up. So I'll do Zen Buddhist retreat or I'll do a depositor or I'll do loving kindness with up in IMS and psych meditation, society up in Massachusetts, which I think is awesome. Or I'll do it on the Virginia, yogaville or, you know,

I don't know, different kinds of practices there. And then I try to every minute be present and thinking through that. And then I also, again, this is too much, but I see live music probably twice a week. And there's something about listening to live music that my mind does something else. It connects in a different way.

It's a slightly more creative place, more present place, so I do that too. Yes, it's eclectic. I wish I had, and then we do, I have groups of people we connect with, and some of my friends are yours in mine, and so we'll get together, but not regularly enough. But we all connect with each other by phone,

by text, email, to kind of reinforce our practices, and we do that all the time. What you just described sounds awesome to me for what it's worth. I give you a lot of credit. Tons of credit coming across the death statue. You are technically, quote unquote, retired. You stopped, you stepped down from JP Morgan a while ago, but you're the busiest retired person I've ever met. And you're doing tons of stuff from an enormous amount of philanthropy. But you also, you referenced several minutes ago, your investor group, bridge builders,

which is investing in contemplative technologies, businesses that are giving people the contemplative tools. Can you describe who's involved in this with you and what you guys are doing? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I retired 10 years ago and you're right. My wife says, why do you have to continue to grow? I don't know.

I'm like a shark. Keep going, you know, but it's really fun. So one of the things we did was say there's a group of guys. We need some, we need that. I actually find some women. But guys who kind of said, they're in their second careers. They want to do good for the world. We were all investors of some shape or form and Scott Crenz and I first first connected and he's

building a multiversity which is an amazing. Now he's best known for what businesses was Scott and Broadcom and having a big CEO of a very high tech business that's very successful. And so he has a really important focus on bringing people together. How do you start building tools for people to achieve more effective results together? Teamwork, and so he was interested in funding some of these. Some of the other guys involved are Austin Hearst. Austin Hearst is a Hearst Foundation Hearst family, and Scott Beck and Colorado, who was very successful franchisee, brought blister, and a bunch of others.

And we've got a guy we've hired, Charlie Hartwell, who is our collaborative glue. He holds us together. Yeah, I need to have Charlie on the podcast. He's got through you. He's become a friend of mine. He's a great guy. So you can talk about what the mission is.

So we want to focus on things that are related to mind training, to building better relationships, and using the tools of my fullness to reduce suffering. And so we found headspace and we're seed investors there. So we invested in some called hapify, which is a curated site for these kind of tools and practices. And it started out and using some of the University of Pennsylvania's positive psychology strategies. And then we kind of tools and practices. And it started out in using some of the University

of Pennsylvania's positive psychology strategies, and then we kind of sat with them. And they talked a lot of things, saying, there's more than that, there's more tools than that. So let's open up and say they have. And now they're serving the business world. So it's a B2B kind of strategy. We also invested in Muse Interaxon, which is a headset

that measures your brain waves and gives you biofeedback, because that's another tool. Seeing how busy is your brain, and let me have some biofeedback to recognize when I'm settling my mind. Oh, gee, that's working. So I'll do that more often. And maybe we can achieve some of the more mindful practices more effectively. If we have that feedback mechanism, we have E-MineFull. E-MineFull is a site that uses online learning,

but live interaction. So you have 40 people and you're going to work on a weight management. You're going to work on stress. The tools of leadership. And they sell that through Etna, for example. So Etna uses them for their own employees, but then now is selling that product to other companies. So, there's another BDB strategy by bringing these tools and practices that have return-to-investment

calculations linked to them. $33,000 a person at Etna for using these practices, they reduce sickness, they reduce turnover, lots of lots of good things happen for it. So, looking at, and we have lots of good things happen for it. So looking at it, we have something else called pair technologies, which is rather than your doctor giving you the ambient prescription by itself, he gives you another piece of paper that says, and there's some practices you can do to manage stress and to manage sleep,

maybe you should pair these together. And the drug companies are interested in actually pairing it together because they have claims of over-drugging people and also potentially extending their patent lives. And so the FDA is near approval of this process. And so taking it down that path and getting FDA to kind of say, this is a really good thing. So, and we're going to have a bunch of others. But so, thinking about this space, we're finding more and more people people interested in investing, more adventure guys are investing and things like to present happier, which we hope someday will be able to invest in you all, is finding these applications that are health applications and are helping people adopt practices that

will make them happier. If we can use some of these tools and practices so that people are armed with those tools, then this is going to be a better place. And arming people before they need it, or at least knowing that they have tools before they need it, is a much better place than when they're in the middle of suffering and they try to give them these tools. And we're doing that at the University of Virginia. I want the Board of at University of Virginia.

I'm on the board of the University of Virginia and, you know, there's a lot of suffering in high rate. There's a lot of suffering in colleges. There's sexual violence. There's addiction issues. There's alcoholism. There's stress of performance and what classes are going to take. They don't have the tools.

They've never been taught any of these tools in an organized way. And so we have a joint venture with University of Virginia University Wisconsin and Penn State to actually help bring these tools to a higher ed world, not just one university. And say, let's start bringing these curriculum in. Let's work with the advisor groups at these schools. And so when people show up, maybe we'll give them some videos ahead of time so that they know that there's this thing called mindfulness. There's this yoga opportunity. There's this stress management. There's a thing you can go to. There's some groups you can get together with. So we're

in the middle of thinking through that with others, with other schools, research level one universities, because every school is suffering. So that's the case almost everywhere. And so the fun part about what our investor group is doing, and we also do philanthropy together as well. Austin Herson and I are doing some really great work and global health, is finding these things that we can go and bear down on. So whether it's demographic populations,

like K through five in schools, or whether it's higher ed schools or whether it's higher red or whether it's the business world or in fine people to help support. You know, and one of my real joys is finding people who I can back to go even more deeply in the areas that I think have potential for change. And I call them system entrepreneurs, we're studying what they are. This is as opposed to a social entrepreneur who's creating the great new NGO.

There's also system entrepreneurs who are helping pull together solutions for malaria, for community health worker strategies, for modern slavery, for ending neglected diseases. Now we're finding these people who actually have contemplative Experiences almost all of them do saying how do I have a managed ego to be able to pull together these collaborations? How do I have great listening skills? So I can listen

Actually, it's a skill to not know everything. Huh? How does that work? How do I go to Beginner's mind? And so we're starting to have this group of people who now have these contemplative tools who are pulling together these great collaborations to solve the problems of the world. Isn't that cool?

Yes. Use the term manage-dego. I love that. You've been using that for years. I would be a great book title at some point. Where can people learn more about you? You've written a book. Can you tell us what that is? What would you have a website? Is Ernie as we close here, I just want to give people resources if they want to learn more about you. Sure. The generosity of network is a book

that we Jennifer McCray and myself co-wrote. And we have as a class at Kennedy School at Harvard now. It's about this transformational experience between donors and doers when you do something together. Your life is transformed. It's not money going one way or the other, it's about the transformational opportunity that we can bring to every nonprofit and every major cause in the world to build teams. Two is I've written a lot about and you can see it in a hardware business review, there's some information on systems change, well you'll see more coming out of that right now. We might link to the site,

feel free to go on LinkedIn and can type me up and then you can connect with me there as well and we do have a site called the Genre Scene Network as well. Jeffrey Walker, thank you very much. Thank you, Dan. Okay, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at DanB Harris. I also want to thank Hardly the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work.

Lauren, Efron, Josh Kohan, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calp, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dance Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself

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