Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Perform Under Pressure With Both Peace And Confidence Jim Murphy

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

A performance coach and bestselling author shares practical tools for thriving in crisis, shaving down the ego, and designing the life you want.   #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Murphy is a Performance Coach to some of the best athletes and leaders in the world. In addition to coaching professional athletes and executives, Murphy is the president of the Inner Excellence Freedom Project whose mission is to build communities to alleviate spiritual and physical poverty around the world.   In this episode we talk about: A counterintuitive secret to performing under pressure How to "relanguage" the story you tell about yourself A crucial life question that everyone should be asking themselves Practical tools for "inner excellence" Jim's Four Daily Goals Cultivating non-attachment to results  How to be less afraid of fear The "expect nothing" rule  And the role of faith in his life   Join Dan's online community here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel   Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here!   Tickets are now on sale for a special live taping of the 10% Happier Podcast with guest Pete Holmes! Join us on November 18th in NYC for this benefit show, with all proceeds supporting the New York Insight Meditation Center. Grab your tickets here!   To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris   Thanks to our sponsors:  AT&T: Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. Function: Our first 1000 listeners get a $100 credit toward their membership. Visit www.functionhealth.com/Happier or use the gift code Happier100 at signup to own your health. Fabletics:  Treat yourself to gear that looks good, feels good, and doesn't break the bank. Go to fabletics.com/Happier, sign up as a VIP and get 80% off everything.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing? As somebody who once famously or infamously had a panic attack while delivering the news in front of 5 million people, I am deeply intrigued by the question of whether it is possible to perform with both peace and confidence while under massive pressure. That is the driving question behind the work of my guest today, Jim Murphy, who, is perhaps best known for his book, Inner Excellence. There's a really cool backstory here. Before January of this year, very few people had heard of Jim Murphy, or the concept of inner excellence. But then the star football player, A.J. Brown went viral when he was caught on camera,

reading Jim's book on the sidelines of a nationally televised Philadelphia Eagles game, which immediately propelled the book to bestseller status. And as you will hear, it also radically changed. Jim Murphy's life, which at that moment was a little dicey. It's an amazing story, and you'll hear Jim tell it. A little bit more about Jim before we dive in here. He is a performance coach to some of the best athletes and leaders in the world. He began his career as a professional baseball player for the Chicago Cubs. Then he had some vision issues that ended his career. He went on to become a coach. He's worked with the Texas Rangers, the South African Olympic baseball team, and now with individual

clients all over the world. In this conversation, we talk about counterintuitive secret to performing under pressure, how to relinquage the story that you tell about yourself, a crucial life question that everybody should be asking, a set of practical tools for inner excellence, Jim's four daily goals, cultivating non-attachment to results, harder than it sounds, how to be less afraid of fear. The Expect Nothing Rule, which landed particularly hard. hard with me. And we talk about the role of faith in Jim's life. We don't talk a lot about Christianity

and God on this show because I'm neither a practicing Christian nor a believer per se in God. But I do value ideological diversity. And that's why I have guests, for example, like Father Gregory Boyle on the show. And as you will hear Jim explain, his advice can easily be followed by people who do not share his faith. You can think of it a little bit like when I interview Gregory Boyle, the famous Jesuit priests, you do not have to believe in God in order to adopt his brilliant advice. Just a few things to say before we dive in here. Given that rewiring your inner dialogue is a key part of peak performance, we've got a guided

meditation today that comes with this podcast, tailored to this podcast, and it comes from our teacher of the month, Sabine Selassie. It's called How to Rewire Your Inner Critic. It's only for paying subscribers over on Dan Harris.com. If you sign up, you'll also get weekly live meditation. and Q&A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is with Seb. She'll be going live on October 28th.

Next month, by the way, our teacher of the month will be Dr. Cristiana Wolf, who's incredible. One more thing to say before we dive in. If you want to meditate with me in person, I've got two events coming up. There are a few tickets left for the meditation party retreat. I'll be doing with Seb and Jeff Warren and Afosu Jones Cortay, the weekend of October 24th at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. We do a mix of meditation Q&A.

socializing. There's also plenty of free time for yoga, massage, tennis, hiking, pickleball, you name it. It's a good time. If you can't make it to that, I'll be doing an event, an evening event in New York City on November 18th. It's a live taping of this podcast with the comedian Pete Holmes. It's a benefit for the New York Insight Meditation Center. If you want to come to either or both, there are links in the show notes. All right, we'll get started with Jim Murphy right after this. Jim Murphy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Dan. It's great to have you here. Can you tell the AJ Brown story?

Yeah, it was a really interesting, unique time in my life. My mom was dying. She's 91. Had an amazing life. And I prayed that she would stop suffering. And so she died four days later. So January 12th was the wildcard game, Eagles playing the Packers. January 16th was when she died. And that week, my life was just kind of somber and slow and business was slow. first time in years didn't pay off my credit cards that month. So it was the most incredible change of scenery for me. And one thing that was really amazing was Sunday, January 12th is when the wildcar game was. So that afternoon, I'm walking around downtown Dallas. I'm there to lead a retreat. I look up to the skyscraper and I feel like now it was God asking me. The question was,

would you rather, and we'll get into your thoughts about that, would you rather own this building straight out for whatever hundreds of millions of dollars it's worth, or would you rather have written the book that you just wrote called The Best Possible Life, this book on the Spiritual Life? And I thought, no, I wouldn't trade it for hundreds of millions of dollars. That book I wrote, I'm really grateful to have written it. And so I thought, well, at least you got that, Jim. That's pretty cool. So walking around lonely downtown Dallas, and then a couple hours later, sitting on my bed, watching my laptop, I was watching a bowl game, Notre Dame play Penn State. and then I look at my phone and I see all these texts.

And so I thought my mom died. The text obviously said, you need to check out the wild card game. Turn it on and I looked at it and I was like, I think this is going to be significant. It was very significant. My life completely changed on that day. But to finish the story about the skyscraper, a couple days later, I'm in Philadelphia.

I'm going to go to the next game, the snow game against the Rams. And the Skyline Street asked me for some money. And I didn't have any money. So I said, hold on right here. I'm going to run to the ATM and get $300 and get $300 out. It says insufficient funds, 200 insufficient funds, 100. I get the money. I find the guy, give him some money.

The next day, my mortgage payment bounces. My checking account is negative. And it's not like I was at my last penny. I had money in savings or investments, whatever, but I just don't check it very often, and I didn't know where I was at. And that was the week we sell 100,000 copies. and so all right let me just reset for a second so just to restate the basic facts here as of January of this year 2005 you were in a reasonably bleak scenario where business was

slow you were having non-trivial financial problems your mother was very ill and you were in a a strange city and feeling lonely. So I haven't a pretty bad day. I wouldn't say non-trivial financial problems. It's more, I don't really check my finances too often. So someone else, they wouldn't have bounced it. I just didn't know, I don't really look at it too often. But you hadn't been paying off your credit card bills. So there was- That month, the first month, they didn't pay off my credit cards. So, yeah, the income was a little slow last month or two. Okay, so we've established that. And then in the middle of a Eagles, who were the Eagles playing that night? Eagles Packers game, star player, A.J. Brown is seen on camera reading your book. Not the book you had just written and published. Right. But your earlier book, which I believe you wrote in like 2004? 2004. 2009. It came out. McGraw Hill. And I got the rights in 2018 and republished it. It worked on for a couple more years part time. And that came out in 2020. So it was only available on Amazon. That's the one that AJ Brown was reading. Okay. So he's reading it on the sidelines and a huge game.

game. And so there's a lot of eyeballs on this game. There are a lot of eyeballs on every NFL game, but particularly this game. Yeah, it was Sunday Night Football. There's no other game that I know that it was the game on. Well, the card. And so he's sitting there reading your book. Yeah, during the game. Yeah. I was as surprised as anybody. And then he gets asked about it in the postgame press conference and says a bunch of very kind things about the book and your life explodes in the nicest possible way. Yeah, that's right. What a reversal of fortune. It's pretty incredible. Yeah.

I think about that, like I said, I think that was God asking me that. It was almost like this little test. Like, are you in it for the money? Like, where's your heart, Jim? So the moment where you're looking at the skyscraper, in your view, was a test. Yeah, kind of a question, where's your heart from God? You've referenced God a couple of times. For one reason or another, it's quite rare that I have anybody on the show who's devout in that way.

There's a guy I've had on the show twice. father Gregory Boyle, who is this incredible guy and author, and he works with past and current gang members in L.A., just an incredible human being. But other than that, it's pretty rare that, because this is a Buddhist show and there's no real God and Buddhism. And we basically either interview scientists who are largely secular or Buddhists who are not particularly secular from the outside, but like actually, if you scratch, there's not a lot of theism in there. And you're a Jew boo agnostic happiness meditation evangelist. Yes, yes.

So it's pretty rare that I'm sitting with somebody who talks about prayer in this way and God in this way. No beef. But I'm just curious, when you reference God, what is your conception? Is it the God of the New Testament, of the Old Testament? Is it like Father Boyle's conception of God is sort of a loving presence in the universe, but that doesn't necessarily resemble the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. So where are you? Right, yeah, I believe that there's a God that created the universe,

send his son to die for us and to be the model for us. Christianity is the model of sacrificial love, which you talk about a lot. So I'm looking forward to get into that. And so trying to model my life after, you know, to become like the son of God, that's what I aspire to do. I hear that as evangelical Christian. Well, that word has really taken on a unique meaning. in the last, I'd say, five or ten years, that maybe it's a little different than it was a while back.

But this book I just wrote, The Best Possible Life, is really, it's a book about the spirit-led life. So Inter-Exlance is based on the Bible. The fundamentals are based on the Bible. And the best possible life is really getting deeper. Like, if you really want to go deeper and get to the core of, why is it so powerful? This is the explanation. And it's really about understanding that to be a Christian, which is not really a word used in the Bible, but that's kind of a, I guess, a recent word. It's really to live a life of sacrificial love. That's the essence of it. And so I think a lot of times the word has really maybe meant something else to other people. Yeah. So when I say evangelical Christian, I'm not talking about it from a political standpoint,

because I know that even I spent a lot of time with evangelicals who are very political, but I more mean it as, and this may be the perspective of an ignorant, unchurched person. But generally speaking, when somebody describes themselves as believing the basics of the Jesus story, son of God, born, reborn, I classify that as an evangelical Christian. I could be wrong about that, but that's just generally how I classify it. Because I know a lot of Christians, who I don't think take the Jesus story to be literally true. Does that land with you the way I think about this? Yeah, that's great. So one thing that I love about you is is 21 years with ABC and you're kind of, I don't know if the word obsession is. but your devotion to empirical evidence. I love this. I'm becoming less obsessed with it, but I definitely like to have a foot in that territory.

I guess the point I want to establish here is my understanding, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is that the practical, actionable advice that you have in your books does not require one to be a believer in the same way you are. No, I mean, I think it's just kind of looking at, Buddhism, for example. If you read Inter-Excellance, you'll go, wow, this guy, there's a lot of similarities to Buddhism. There are, actually. I noticed that. Yeah. And even maybe Hinduism or the Bavagita, a lot of similarities. And so the way I think about it, whether it's yoga or whatever,

is there's some truths that people have learned through the centuries that are really powerful. It's like the universe has created a certain way, like with gravity, with certain laws. And when you understand those laws, then you can thrive. And so, you know, I think yoga is just this understanding of how the body works that is in Eastern culture has just really understood a lot better than American culture for that aspect of it. Yes. So you're drawing upon millennia of contemplative wisdom. You happen to have your view of spiritual truth. Right. And I mean, there's no two people that have the exact same view anyway. Right. Right. Right. So I have mine, but I don't push it on people.

In fact, I had this one client who told me, he said, Jim, I drink, I smoke, I do all these things, gamble, whatever. I don't think you do those. Can we work together? And I said, look, if you don't judge me for not doing those things, I won't judge you for doing those things. And we became great friends. All right. So that was a brief digression. But just to reset, you had written this book back in 2009, and then you written another book in 2024.

But your business was pretty slow, and all of a sudden, AJ comes along and change. changes everything. But I want to talk about what you were teaching in both of these books that was so electrifying for AJ and now tens of thousands of other people who've gone back to look at your work. Maybe let's start with you and your professional sports career and then the decision you made in I believe 2003 or four to go to the desert. Can you tell that story? Yeah. So my whole life I've obsessed about being a professional athlete since I was 70 years old. I told everyone I'm going to be a pro athlete, whether it's in the NFL or NBA or. Major League Baseball. And so I got drafted by the Cubs and it was a dream come true. But, you know,

whenever you have a dream right next to it is the fear of losing it. And it was totally my identity. And I got injured and had to retire. And when I lost that career, I felt like I lost everything. My identity, like Jim Murphy, pro baseball player, my ego. And I defined ego as a part of your mind that's always comparing, always threatened, never satisfied that we all have. I was just felt so lost. I'm nobody. I felt like I was nobody now. And I want to talk to you about the five remembrances because the fifth one is about action. You are what you do kind of, I'm kind of new to it. Because this is a big point in inner excellence. And so I'm just kind of feeling so lost. And then I get asked coach high school baseball team in inner city Seattle O'Day High School and

we go undefeat. I had no interest in coaching. Just never thought about it. And didn't know if I could help anyone or if I would enjoy it at all. And it was amazing. We went undefeated and just was like, oh, I love coaching. So then maybe kind of similar to you, I have this kind of obsessive personality, and I was like, okay, so I just coach these 15-year-olds, how do I go to coach the New York Yankees and win the World Series?

How do I get there now? So I went through this kind of a longer-term plan, like a 10-year plan in my mind to get a master's in phys ed, so I can get a job teaching PE and coach the baseball team at a high school and win a state championship, get a job in university,

do the same thing, and then get a job in the pros. And I ended up going to the University of Brits'Colombia, playing football there, hadn't played for eight years. It was an amazing experience. I started a baseball team there as well. Got a job with the Texas Rangers two weeks after graduation. I was a personal trainer in grad school and this kind of life coach said let's go for a job right out of grad school in pro baseball, skip the first two levels by getting to know the people that can hire you. So I send a snail mail letter to every major league team, every manager in

GM. Say I'm studying how to build a championship team. I'd like to speak to interview you in person. So I did that. That actually became my first book, Doug out, was some 10 principles of championship teams. And then I got a job of the Texas Rangers two weeks after graduation. And then I quit six months later midseason in tears. Why? It just wasn't a good fit. One time I was the assistant coach for the Savannah Sand Nets, now the bananas.

Savannah bananas. Yeah. After one of the games, he's saying his spiel to the team and he's like, Murph, what do you got? And I said something. And then afterwards, he's like, Jim, when I say, what do you got, don't say anything. And so in other words, they really just wanted me to put in my time and not really say anything. So that was hard for me.

And there was just a lot of egos in pro baseball that was two coaches almost got in a fist fight from our organization when I was there. And that's just kind of the culture that I was in. And I felt like a total failure when I left. The realization came from me. We had a rare off day. And I was making probably $35,000 a year. I mean, it's like you're $5.50 an hour, your first job.

I was making my first job as a pro baseball player. I think I was making $5.50 a month, $550 a month. So on a rare off day with the Rangers, I'm golfing by myself, and I see this gal with a lineup of, as her cart for lattes. And I was like, what would I give to trade my life with hers? Have a little apartment here in Savannah.

And I was like, okay, Jim, if that's where you're at right now, you need to quit, so I quit. And so devastated again, lost my identity. I have my identity completely wrapped up in my role and my actions. And then I get a call from Major League Baseball saying, would you like to coach South Africa be their hitting coach for their Olympic trials? And so I fly down to South Africa.

Extraordinary experience, completely opposite. The head coach says, I was the hitting coach who said, they're your team. Coach them however you want. And so that was amazing. I'm still friends, 25 years later, we're still on a WhatsApp group with this team. It was the most incredible experience. I had never seen poverty like that before. bat boys living in the shed of our baseball field with his mother and little brother,

Gifton Gouppe, went on to playing the big leagues. Huh? Pittsburgh Pirates. I got to meet Nelson Mandela, march in opening ceremonies. We had one of the biggest upset victories in Olympic baseball history in the Sydney, 2000 Olympics. It was an amazing experience. But then after that, what do I do now with my life? This guy who has this obsessive personality, I want to do something extraordinary with my life.

And I went back to personal training for a couple of years, and then one day I was just getting really restless. And then my girlfriend just kind of said, Jim, what are you doing? I know you're restless. And that same time, my teammate in Pro Ball, Ricky Scrugg, my former teammate, he calls me and says, I'm starting a baseball academy in Tucson, Arizona. Can you come help me launch it? And then I just, this idea said, why don't you move down there, give away your possessions, move there, live a life of solitude, and figure out what to do with your life.

So that's what I did. So you didn't do the baseball academy? I flew to Arizona to help him, the baseball academy in Tucson, give away. most of my possessions, including my TV, because I knew that I didn't want to waste my time down there and be lonely and waste my time. So, yeah, it was a lonely time for a couple of years. And when I was there, I decided to become a personal coach to pro-based-all players and teach them how to have peace and confidence under pressure. First two athletes do amazing. Okay, I'm going to give them, I'll put together a little manual for future clients on how to have peace and confidence under pressure.

That becomes five years of full-time writing and research. That becomes the book Inter Excellence. I see. And you were upset. with one question when you were writing inner excellence. Can you restate the question? Initially, I was just like, okay, I'm going to write the best book ever written on mental toughness. So I decided to call up a sports psychologist and ask him, how can a pro baseball player game seven of the World Series,

bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, full count, how can that guy have peace and confidence under that sort of pressure? And similarly, how can an Olympic athlete train for four years for an event that may last less than a minute. How can she have peace and confidence with so much out of her control? I didn't really get the answers I wanted, so I called another psychologist and another and another,

and that turned into five years of full-time writing and research. That became internextalance. What's the punchline? Well, there's a couple of things that I learned in those five years. Should I share with you? Please. Well, the first thing I realized, as I'm going down this rabbit hole of research,

was I went there to go find something that I could devote my life to that I was willing to live and die for, which I just didn't have. I realized, why would I devote my life to helping someone perform better become a world champion or Olympic gold medalist if it doesn't improve their life or make the world a better place? Like your tattoo, F-B-O-A-B. Yeah, you have a good memory. For the benefit of all beings.

Yeah. And so why would I spend my life doing this if it's not even, meaningful. So I was really kind of caught in this quandary, like, I want to do something meaningful with my life. And then the thing that I learned changed my life. And what I learned was that the path to having the most peace and confidence under the most pressure is the same path as living the best possible life for anybody, both paths, for anyone. And in fact, a lot of people in America and around the world have a lot more pressure than a pro athlete because they're working two jobs, kids at home, They've got no coach like me to help them to motivate them, give them some skills to work on,

and they don't have massage therapists, they don't have an off-season. And so, yeah, this path is a wholehearted path. It's developing yourself, your spirit. When I say heart, I mean your spirit or your will, the deepest part of you, like your soul. And that's what Inter Excellence is about, is this transformation of our human nature that is naturally self-centered to become someone who puts other, first, like in meditation, who responds with love rather than reacts with emotion. That's what Inter-Excellance is, this heart transformation to become someone like that.

Is it interesting? Because I can imagine the motivation of somebody who wants to be a champion. I can imagine the initial impulse would be pretty self-centered. I want to be on the winner's podium. I want to be the guy kissing the trophy surrounded by adoring crowds. What you're saying is actually the best way to get there is to shave down the ego. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's really to understand what I mean when I say ego, because that can be very confusing. And like you've talked about, the Holy Grail is this non-attachment to results. But then we have the fifth remembrance, which is your actions are what matters.

You've kind of shared how you've been wrestling with this idea, like serenity versus ambition. And this is really what inter-excellance is. I was at the Ryder Cup in a top 10 player in the world golfer. He said, Jim, I'm too attached to my results. What do I do? And I said, well, answer this for me. Imagine there's a little kid who loves lollipops. And you want to take that lollipop from him very easily where he readily hands it to you.

Is there any way to do it? And, you know, he says, I don't know. And I said, what if you had a bigger lollipop? and you said, do you want to trade? What kid wouldn't want to trade? Right? So you give him a bigger lollipop. And I said, that's what you need.

You're obsessed about getting birdies and getting a good score and winning a match. And there's far too much out of your control. We need to focus on pursuing the life that you want to live, which means becoming the person that you want to become, which means this heart transformation. And having a bigger purpose for your life than just these temporary things that as you talk about in Buddhism, or life is, you know, it's temporary, right? Everything is temporary. And so you need something beyond results in circumstances if you want to have

something that's going to really carry you under the pressure. I think you might have just, with those final words, answered the question that was simmering in my mind, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. Just to say to the audience, I will explain the five remembrances for anybody who doesn't know what those are in a second, but let me just stay with the current flow of the conversation here. What I was wondering in my mind, which again, you may have answered it, is how is it that, to use your term, transforming your heart, will actually help you in crunch time, in bottom of the ninth basis loaded, et cetera, et cetera. It's the respond versus react. We need to get to the subconscious level, so you're responding, not reacting. And so I think what you mean,

and similar to what I mean when we say respond, not react, is react. React, generally means this emotion that's not really in control. And respond means to respond in a way that's empowering, for example. And so we need to get to the subconscious level. And that's what's different between inter-excellence and sports psychology, which is great. But we need to get to a deeper level than just your thoughts. We need to get to the heart and your subconscious, which work together. And so when you're squeezed, I always think about when you squeeze an orange,

what comes out. It's orange juice 100% of the time. I was talking to my friend Darren McMaines, he showed this example with me. It's so true. And so when we're squeezed, when we're under pressure, what comes out of our mouth and our actions is what's in our heart, our spirit. That's why we need to train it. When you're under pressure, you're not really thinking about, and when you're performing your best, you're not thinking about what's happening. It's more of a subconscious thing, right? And so we need to get that subconscious connected, like you say, always trying to line up with a, I don't know if you say it this way, but align with the universe. There's an energy in the universe, and this is what inter-excellency is we're constantly trying to align with a power

that's spinning the earth and growing the grass and holding the stars in place. There is a power that I personally believe comes from God, the creator. It doesn't really matter. The truth is, there is this power that we can all connect with. And that's what heart transformation does. connects with that. Let me see if I can state this in my own words and you tell me if I'm in the neighborhood. When we're under pressure, so it could be for an athlete, big moment in a competition, but for a regular person, it could be giving a public presentation or having a tough conversation with our boss or our spouse or our kid or it could be just going through a crisis in our lives. When we're under pressure and we need to perform, we are going to be better

able to perform if we've designed our life for maximal peace and confidence. And if you want to design your life for maximal peace and confidence, you will learn how to be less focused on yourself, not in a catastrophically altruistic mode where you're in a hair shirt, but plugged into the quality of your relationships in a service mode. As I sometimes say, the view is better when you pull your head out of your ass, like just not so stuck on your own petty concerns. Not to say that you never worry about yourself, but this kind of notion from the Dalai Lama that wise selfishness really is about being in service to other people. And that gives you the calm, the perspective to perform your best under pressure. It doesn't mean you're going to nail it every time,

but it does up the odds that you will perform. How am I doing? Yeah, it's very, very good. very close, if not, exact. So the human heart is created for love. Our greatest need is for love and connection. Most people spend their entire lives trying to get more, as I talk about inner excellence, more possessions, more achievements, better looks, more money, more status. Their whole life trying to get these things improved so they can get that love and connection that they desperately want.

And most people don't know that's why they're doing it. they just know that I'll feel better if I get this. And at least they think they'll feel better if I get these things. And so they're desperately trying to get that. And so the opposite of what we want most is rejection. And you've actually spent 48 hours in a place where the American penal system has understood this basic concept. The greatest punishment is solitude. It's this, you can't talk.

to anyone, see anyone, you're by yourself. How would you describe that? Well, just to give some context, you're referring to the time that back when I was a TV news reporter, I spent 48 hours in solitary confinement in the Denver County Jail as part of a story on whether solitary confinement is a humane thing to do in a correction setting or any setting. This is a guy that goes all out, obviously. Yes, yeah, less so now, at least not in that way. Yeah, I think it's a horrible punishment. It goes right back to what you said before. It's funny because I was listening to you say these words and I was thinking this is the type of language that the old me would have just either reflexively rejected or tuned out or have had some sort of gag reflex. When you say

the human heart is designed for love, that is actually not a hallmark empty sentiment. If you think about it through the lens of evolution and I'm not sure where you are on evolution, but if you think about it through the lens of how we developed as a species, we survived because we have this capacity to work together to communicate, collaborate, cooperate, and so in that sense, the human heart really is designed for love because without love, we're screwed. We're eaten by the tiger 100% of the time. And so, yeah, when you take that away in a pandemic or in a correctional setting, bad things happen to the human mind and heart. Yeah, and I think, you know, in many ways, always evolving. And so I think to me that's really, it doesn't matter. The truth is, like we talked

about very empirical, the truth is, just think about the greatest moments in your life. What did you feel? Like there's love, right? These are the greatest moments in anyone's life. There's this love. And what's the greatest starro is when that love is gone. I mean, it doesn't take a scientist to understand this. One of the things I talked about a lot on the show is that I have panic disorder and I get really bad claustrophobia. And I've been doing a lot of exposure therapy and airplanes. And one of the things that my exposure therapist had me do was to make my wallpaper on my phone or my lock screen or whatever a picture from the night before I retired where my son and wife were hugging me. Yeah.

There's sort of a cheesy concept or a cliche. concept of safe place, what's your safe place, what's your happy place. That's what it is for me. And I think that is kind of universal. If we all interpolate back through our lives and think about, as you said before, when are you the most happy, the most fulfilled? It's going to be when you feel connected. Can I share something you mentioned about, you called it my claustrophobia and panic or something? What do you think about not calling it yours? I think that would be a really helpful move. In America today and around the world, there's so much anxiety. And one of the first things that I do when I work with somebody is I help them speak the truth. This is one of the nine disciplines of inter excellence.

It's not in the book. It's to speak the truth about the past to create possibilities in the future. And so we want to make sure that we don't put labels on ourselves that we don't want to be in the future and we don't say anything present tense that we don't want to continue. And so it's very common for people to say my anxiety because they identify with it so closely that it's been so much a part of their lives, they kind of, they start to own it as mine. And so as soon as we say the anxiety that I've had, now the subconscious, which is running your life is like, it's not mine. It's starting to break from that a little bit. It's very similar to be under the waterfall. Behind the waterfall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Where we got this separation. We're kind of watching the

thoughts. We want to make sure that we attach. We'll get into this to what is eternal and powerful and detached from what is not. Same ideas. We don't want to put these labels on ourselves that we don't want to continue. I can tell you a quick example. At least today, yeah. In front of mine, Olympic athlete was telling me about his day and talking about his sleep and he said he woke up and then all the night and then he says, no big deal. And I said, oh, you woke up? He's like, yeah, every night. It's always no big deal. It's all the whole lives. It's been like that. I'm used to it. I was like, oh, okay. Is this something you want to continue? And he said, no. And I said, can you do me one favor tonight before you go to bed? Rather than saying, you know, I wake up every night. I want you to say, I'm very grateful for being able to sleep through the night every night.

Since then, since the last time I talked to him, that's been his reality. Sleeps through the night every night. now this is Mr. Skeptical Newsman, Empirical Evidence. I'm not saying this will happen to you. I'm just telling you what happened to one person. Yeah. And how powerful it is. Beliefs is what's running your life. And beliefs come from what you think, say and feel, especially what you feel.

And so we want to make sure that what we say, like I said, when someone wants to work with me, the first thing we do is make sure their language is empowering, especially what they say to themselves. Well, there's so much in there for me to react to is I'm just trying to. line the planes up on the runway to get them to take off in the right order. First of all, I think it's setting aside the story about the sleep. I don't think there's any question, but that the unconscious has an enormous effect on our lives and that we can use our conscious mind to have an impact on what our unconscious mind believes. And that could be very powerful. The second thing to say is that one modality for that is using language really skillfully.

And your point about my anxiety reminded me of a teaching that I've heard many times from Joseph Goldstein, who's my meditation teacher I've worked with for a long time. And he often gets people to do this little linguistic trick that I suspect you'll like. Instead of saying, I am angry or I am fill in the blank, there is anger or there is anger or there is sadness, then it becomes much more workable. You're not so identified with it. You're not so owned by it. It's a meteorological phenomenon as opposed to some sort of innate aspect of you. That makes sense. Yeah, well said. Coming up, Jim talks about cultivating non-attachment to results, how to relinquage the story

you tell yourself about yourself, practical tools for inner excellence, a crucial life question that everybody should be asking themselves how to be less afraid of fear and more. You said something before about attaching and detaching, and you made a reference to maybe we should come back to that. Yeah, so we'll say more, please. So people come to me, pro athletes mostly, but everybody, they come to me because they want better results in circumstances,

better outcomes. And the problem is that we have this, single story in our lives of how we think things should be. And when they don't go that way, because we get attached to it, because our identity is involved, then we run into problems like frustration and fear and anxiety and stress. But the truth is, say we look at your top 10 goals for Dan Harris. Are you 100% sure that those top 10 goals are good for you and your family? No. I believe that the top 10 things that you have, like say your top 10 goals, and the top 10 things that you think would be the worst for you and your family, it's possible they could be flip-flop.

The worst things could be the best things for you, the things that you think are the best, could be the worst. Right. So sometimes I think about my business failing and me having to sell the house. I literally was having a negative fantasy about this this morning, stepping out of the shower. I was thinking about the business fails, I have to sell the house. How am I going to explain that to my son? Yeah. And what you're saying is maybe actually the thing that I'm fearing the most would be the best thing.

Could be the very best thing for you, for sure. Yeah. And this is really important for you to know going forward. That for sure could be the very best thing for Alexander. To watch his father endure adversity. Yeah. To learn and grow. there's so many more aspects to it.

So you sell your house, now you're going to move into a new neighborhood because Alexander's a huge part, if not the most significant part of his growth, is his peers, right? At least that's what Malcolm Gladwell said that the book that influenced him the most, who I love is an amazing writer,

The Nurture Assumption, that was the assumption that your peers influence your kids more than you do as a parent. And so it's possible that if this happened, he goes to another neighborhood and the peers there or some kid or some parent influences him in the most dramatic way that changes his life for the better. Is that possible? Possible. Absolutely. Yeah. All these things are possible. But we get so caught up and it's like June 7th, 2004 on the set of Good Morning America. The way you described it was

I knew with rock solid certainty that I had a panic attack in front of five, 019 million people, right? Your command of my biography is really impressive, but carry out. And so I watched that multiple times, and I thought, I would bet 95% of the people did not know you had a packet. I would agree with that. And so, but your version, your belief was rock solid. Yes.

Right? And as you said. And so it doesn't matter what happened. What matters is what you believe. And in that moment, you believe that. And so that most horrible thing that you probably feared the most, I would guess, one of the things you feared the most actually happened. Fear is a very powerful energy.

But then what happened? It became this life-changing thing for millions around the world. I've been dining out on it ever since. Yeah. So I think what I'm hearing you say, at least I think there are two things that I'm hearing, but please correct me. One is that we can't get overly attached to some specific vision of how we want the world to be,

how we want our lives to be, because first of all, that vision may be wrong, and second, and relatedly, it kind of leads to an inner clench. We're too locked up around this particular vision and therefore can't respond well to things as they are. Well, I never tell people what to do. I ask a lot of questions about their lives

to see what they really want, and then I help them get it, and then I'll share, like, if this is really the situation that you're in right now, rather than saying this is what you should do. But, yeah, that's correct. And the other thing I was hearing you say is just about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and you've made multiple references to this,

that you work with people to kind of relinquish their stories about themselves. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. So one of the biggest reasons that people do not reach their potential is because the store they have about themselves and their past, they're not willing to let go. Either they don't know how to let go, or they're not willing, one of the two. And so, Inter-Excellency is about expanding

what you believe is possible and becoming someone you've never been before. I mean, the number one goal every day for Inter-Excellency is to learn and grow, which by definition means you're going to become someone you've never been. And so in order to do those things, it's like in baseball,

to steal second base, you've got to let go first. And most people are, not willing to let go of their past because they're so afraid of if I let go of my past, if I let go of who I've been, and who will I be? And they'll lose their identity. And your identity is one of the most important what I talk about in my retreats. The five deepest needs of the human heart is your identity is one of them. So how can we get better at using language to empower instead of ossify or stick us in place? Well, let's look at what you called your claustrophobia and your panic attacks. If I was working with you, I would say,

do you want to continue the claustrophobia and panic attacks? No, thank you. I never assume. I just always want to make sure that I'm helping you get what you want most. And so if you don't want to, the first thing would be, it was like we said, we never call it yours, either one. And so you would always say them as past tense, the anxiety that you've had in the past, the claustrophobia you had in the past. Never say it is mine and never say it is what I have. Make sense? We could do a little test right now, actually, if we got a moment. Of course, yeah.

So I want you to say the claustrophobia that I have and panic attacks that I'm having, say that out loud and see how it feels inside. The claustrophobia I have and panic attacks I have. Yeah. So see how that feels. And then now I want you to say the panic attacks I had in the past, and the claustrophobia I had in the past. Right. The panic attacks I've had in the past and the claustrophobia I've had in the past.

And see how that feels. Do they feel identical? No, definitely not. Beliefs or feelings. And so to expand what you believe is possible, we need to make sure we're saying, empowering things. Like, for example, the thing that you say every morning when you wake up, my purpose is to make incredible stuff, although you didn't use the word stuff. No, I didn't. And so I don't use that word only because I may be hyper focused on saying only empowering things for me and others. And I just want to make sure that every word out of my mouth, I'm not saying I'm good at it. That's another thing.

I'm not saying I'm an expert at anything, really. It's just that I try to make sure that the words that I use are empowering about myself and others. So I just want to nudge you to say a little bit more about why that's so important and how it works in terms of the messages it's sending to your unconscious and to your body, that this isn't just being a language police. There's a real purpose here. Beliefs are what's running your life. Beliefs come from everything you think, feel and say, especially what you feel, and your feelings

are going to come largely from your thoughts and the words that you use. When you say, the claustrophobia I have, your subconscious goes and looks for it. Oh, yeah. Okay. Like a month ago, a year ago. Yeah, okay. So it looks for that. memories, and then the patterns like, okay, got it.

That's exactly what we don't want it to do, but that's what happens. As soon as you say that I had in the past, you're subconscious, because it's got two main rules to protect you and to line up your results in circumstances with what you believe. And so as soon as you say that's in the past, your subconscious is like, okay, what's next? Give me more. But as soon as you say, this is who I am, this is what I have, then you're like, okay, I got I don't know how to do that one. We grab onto that one, bring it from the past and to the present, which is obviously what we don't want to do, which you're not going to do anymore.

This reminds me a little bit of this communications technique, this technique I got from my communications coaches. So that's going to sound like a strange phrase communication coaches. But for the last seven years, I've been working with this fantastic couple, Dan, Clerman, and Mudita Nisker, and they teach people how to communicate better. Not all of it for the reasons that you're articulating, but some, it for sure. You know, some of it is just about having better relationships, which is really important. But some of it is like, how are you talking to yourself about yourself or to others about yourself because that can, it can create a reality that you don't want. Right. And so they have this

concept called provisional language, which takes into account that everything's changing all the time. So instead of saying things are this way or this is going to happen, to just get better at using words like maybe or perhaps or probably or possibly as a way to and I notice as I do this my nervous system feels better because there's a subtle pain to dogmatism to certainty but actually if you're just getting yourself in the habit of talking about things provisionally tentatively it aligns you with reality and it feels better so anyway that's a lot to say does it land with what you're saying absolutely so since January 12th I don't know how many flights I've taken, say 20. I would say at least two-thirds of them have changed since

when we book it and then the one I take is changed. And so I remember I was in Madrid and someone said, when are you leaving? And I said, I've got a flight tomorrow to Seattle. Am I getting on the plane? I don't know. I don't know what God's going to do. And so I no longer, I try to not any longer say, yes, I'll be here then and this is what I'm going to do. I'm saying, this is the schedule or this is the plan. And then I always try to add, you never know what God's up to. You said before that I was maybe obsessed with empirical evidence, which I think is maybe true. But what I'm even more obsessed with is giving people, in this context, I mean listeners or viewers, practical things to do. So if it's cool with you, for the remainder of our time, I would like to

focus on practical steps people can take toward inter excellence. Yeah. As I say those words, are there exercises that pop into your mind that you want to talk about? Well, you know, the first thing I think about when I worked with someone is how do you want to feel in your life? So if we start with you, like, how do you want to feel in your life? Like when you're in studio in Gotham Studios, how do you want to feel? Gotham Studios is where we're working today. It's funny. The answer that came into my head immediately is so not what I would have said before because not what I would have said maybe 10 years.

years ago even because it's going to sound a little cheesy. Side note, I heard a great expression right here on the show once. If you can't be cheesy, you can't be free. Unembarrassable. Unembarrassable. Yeah. There's something to that. The answer that I was going to say is connected.

You know? Powerful, yeah. And it goes right back to what you said about the human heart being designed for love. The first time I heard there's some, I think it was Am Forster or somebody, some great writer has these words, this kind of exhortation, only connect, as a life guide, only connect. And I thought that was a little overwrought the first time I heard it, but I'm growing into a conviction that that actually is pointing at something crucial.

Powerful. I like it. Okay, so you want to feel connected. So this is the first thing that I do, I want to work with somebody is I want to know how they want to feel in their life because we're going to start to design habits of thought and action around getting that feeling more and more often. And because essentially, I have a good idea, even though we met before we're friends,

but what you want even before I met you. But you can tell me if I'm wrong or how far off am I? You'd like to live a life with amazing experiences and deep enriching relationships where you're learning and growing and making a difference in the world. Because I already know that, that's kind of like the human...

Inter excellence is about human optimization. I already know that most people, like, we're all going to want to walk in love, not fear, for example. And so I help them learn, okay, what I really want, I think I want to have this podcast that's number one in the world and just getting more and more viewers and more money and just happily ever after. That's what I think I want. What I try to do is help you understand what you really want is not that circumstance or outcome. What you really want is to live a certain life, this meaningful life that has these amazing experiences and deep enriching relationships.

And so we do that by starting off with how you want to feel connected. And one of the big challenges that people run into is, as one, they're not really clear on how they want to feel in their life. And then they let trivial things take them out of that feeling. And so get cut off in traffic or any sort of circumstance that they didn't have time for, then, you know, they lose that connection. And so I want to know how you want to feel and how you want to live, like how you want to face adversity like we talked about earlier,

and the type of person you want to become. So then we're going to design your life around that. And that's really what Inter-Excellance is. And then there's tools. A tool is something that you do in the moment. I'm frustrated. I'm afraid, nervous. What do I do right now?

I'm just not present. What do I do in the moment? So we would use a tool. But this is all under the overarching theme of, I want to learn and grow and become someone that lives this meaningful, fulfilling life. I want to get to the tools in a second, but sounds like the foundational move that somebody at home could do right now

is to ask themselves the crucial question, like how do I want to feel in whatever remains of my life? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then so you can just think about it like the best moments in my life. What does it felt like? If you're a parent, maybe it's with your kids or if you have a dog or usually it's some aspect of love.

So then once you come to that answer, you look at your life circumstances and say, how can I design, how can I optimize for more of the good stuff? Yeah. And so I want to learn and grow to become a sort of person that feels connected more often. And so what adds to that and what takes away from it? And so like, for example, being attached to your results and circumstances, this can take away from it,

obviously because so much is out of our control, right? And so that's where I said we want to attach to something that's eternal and empowering, not things that are temporary. So it's something that would be eternal is, given that the human heart is designed, for love, I want to feel more of that. That's a good thing to attach to. Yeah, and joy comes from love. And so this is something we haven't talked about yet, but I think would be helpful as 10% happier is the name of the podcast. So I define happiness as a positive temporary feeling based on what's happening. And I define joy as a deep sense of well-being, freedom and gratitude, independent

of circumstances, and inner buoyancy and delight that comes from. love. This is how I define joy. And I think the thing that would help people the most that are focused on meditation or stoicism or asceticism, Buddhism, is to understand that joy is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. We need joy to thrive. We're created for joy. This joy comes from sacrificial love. And so if you want to have more joy that kind that I described, it's living this life of love. You use that term sacrificial love early in this interview, and I made a mental note to come back to it. This strikes me as a type of thing that could be easily misunderstood. There's a term that Tibetans who are big fans of compassion, but they

use this term idiot compassion. You could hear a term like sacrificial love and go right to, I think I said this before, like catastrophic altruism or people pleasing or something like that. Can you say a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. So personally, I love high fives and hugs. But if I spend my whole time high fiving and hugging everybody, I'm not going to get anywhere. I want to make a difference in the world. I told you how I want to live and feel like everyone else. Unconditional love has strict boundaries. And so in the Bible talks about give to all who ask, which is what I try to do. However, it doesn't say give what they, ask to everybody. And so what I try to do is give to all who asks is give them what I think is the most loving thing and thinking of the group first. And so sacrificial life, you can think about as a five-year-old. My nephew, Boaz, he's six now. Like, if he asked me, can I go play out in the highway? It doesn't matter if he asked me 10 times or 100 times. It's going to be no every single time because sacrificial love has strict boundaries. So to me, love is the most powerful

force in the universe. It's completely fearless. That's where I think this Buddhist ideal can really come into play here. Selfless is fearless. The problem that we have as humans is that we're naturally self-centered, which leads to fear. We need to think about ourselves to get through life. But the problem is when we're constantly thinking about ourselves, now our subconscious, which is designed to protect us, which is always on the lookout, it reminds us of our failures and our weaknesses. And we don't like to feel like a failure or a week. So then we look around to compare, then the ego says, oh yeah, look at that person, look at that person. But there's always someone that has more better things than you. So then it goes down to this road of anxiety and frustration because our deepest need, the ego

knows, your deepest need is for love and connection. And so if I'm lining up a put or if I have a podcast that I really want to be successful, if I do it well, if I make the pot, if it's successful, I'm going to get the love that I want theoretically. If I don't, I'm not going to get a the love that I want, which is the worst possible thing. What you're describing completely lands for me that we get into fear and insecurity because we're outsourcing our self-worth to something not eternal to use your language. So the work around here is, because I can imagine people listening to this and saying, well, that's very hard to undo that wiring. But it sounds like what you're saying is that actually, you know, it really starts with what we've already been

discussing, which is asking yourself, how do you really want to feel? Anchoring that to something true and abiding, as opposed to temporary and unreliable, and designing your life from there. Am I saying this? Yeah. And then there's a lot of tools, like, for example, the four daily goals is something that we can talk about. Please.

I want to hear about it. So, like I said earlier, the number one goal every day is to learn and grow. We want to learn and grow and what I call love, wisdom, and courage. love because selfless is fearless and wisdom, which is this deep connection to possibilities to God and the universe and to others and to self, connection to beauty. Or as I also describe wisdom, is to know who God is and therefore who you are, what he's doing in the world, and how you can join in. If I'm talking to a Buddhist or atheist, I probably wouldn't add that last part because I don't want them to shut me out.

The third part, courage, I think that's the biggest superpower that we all have the access to. Like Tom Cruise said, he's famous for his doing all these stunts and being this megastar. The difference, I think, between myself, Tom saying, and others is, I'm afraid, but I'm not afraid to be afraid.

And when I heard that, I was like, oh, that is so powerful. Are you willing to face your fears? Are you willing to have this feeling that you've been afraid that you didn't want to feel? Are you willing to have that feeling? And the great question to ask is, are you willing to face any feeling? Because if you're willing to face any feeling, then you've got possibilities. And I think panic attacks often happen because of the fear of certain feelings.

And like, oh, I just, my idea will be fine as long as I don't get that one feeling that I hate the most. And so what I do and help people overcome mental blocks, for example, is that we go look for the feeling that they hate. because that's our teacher. Where we're the most uncomfortable, that's the edge of our beliefs, of what's possible in our lives. That's showing you, it's like you want to live an extraordinary life,

here's the edge. Are you willing to sit in this discomfort? Are you going to run? And if you're willing to sit in it, then the fear goes away. Well, the fear diminishes, I should say. As somebody who's in the middle of extended exposure therapy, to my era,

it's exactly what you're describing. I've been taking these airplane flights with my exposure therapist, well, once I did it with my wife, where I don't take any medicine and I just, you know, meaning I don't take any anti-exiety medicine, which I've been using for flights, and I just feel the panic. They're like, really sit in the panic, which is extraordinarily uncomfortable. Well, I can tell you something about that.

We'll get to the four goals after this. Yeah. But exposure therapy can be very helpful. I think it's helped a lot of people. The only thing is, I think it's a very slow way to go through this and it doesn't help everybody. I'm open to both of those possibilities, but I was just going to say that the realization I had on the fourth flight was, I'm probably going to panic today, but like, okay.

That's powerful. You're like, okay, that's okay. That's really powerful. I'm less afraid of the fear. Yeah. One other thing about that, people that have some sort of a phobia, for example, it came from an experience that you had in your life. And so what I would do, or someone that's better than me would do. My background is in neurolinguistic programming. Anthony Robbins, you're probably familiar with how he started. I don't actually. I've heard that term, NLP many times.

I don't actually know what it is. This is kind of, yeah. So Anthony Robbins kind of made it famous, but it's really a study of the subconscious mind. And a lot of what I learned came from that. So with a phobia, there's this experience that you had at some point in your life. You may not even remember it,

where all of a sudden the belief became, airplanes are scary. Yeah. And so what I would do, or someone that's better than me would do in NLP, would ask you, how do you want to feel in your life and how do you not want to feel? And then the feeling that you've gotten in the past on airplanes, that's how you don't want to feel. We would look through that one of you had that feeling through your whole life.

And we'd go to the earliest, most strongest negative feeling when you've had that exact feeling that you got on the planes, and we would rewire that feeling, that memory from maybe you're 10 years old and something happened. And I don't know if you remember it or not, but when you started to become afraid of in the past, afraid of planes. Coming up, Jim talks about his four daily goals, the expect nothing tool, and much more. Okay, so the four goals?

Yes, the four daily goals. So the first one is to give the best of what you got each day. And so understanding that some days, you're only going to have 30 or 40% of your best. This is important to understand. A lot of days we're not going to be very good. Results-wise, skill-wise, we're just not going to be great. And so the reason people really struggle, a lot of it, is because they don't assess themselves and understand, I've got all this adversity happening right now, the stress, whatever, and I may not be very good today, but that's okay. All I can do is give my best. And so if you recognize that I'm just going to give the best of what I have, because we want to have four goals that we can control, because there's so much out of your control in the world today. And so the first one is to give the best of what you have. And then the second one is to be present. There's no fear in the

the present. Fear is a future self-centered thing. And so when I say present, what I mean at the highest level, this fully engaged, heart, mind, and body unattached to what you're trying to do, there's a real sense of freedom and joy in a sense that anything's possible. It's far more than, I think, some psychologists say, of just like being where your feet are. To me, what we're going for is something far beyond that, this amazing connected feeling. That's, too, it's work on being present. And because when you're fully present, like I said, there's no fear, no concern for self. There's no self-protection, any of those things that lead to fear. And then three is gratitude. Gratitude is directly linked, so be grateful, directly linked to inner peace and inner

strength. And then four, focus on your routines and only what you can control. And how do you recommend people effectuate this, that they get up in the morning and is it a into the five daily remembrances, which I still haven't explained. How do you get this into your life in an abiding way? Inter excellence is really a series of habits of thought and action. And so from the moment we wake up, we're starting to put in these routines. Like, for example, music. Music is a big one for me. Because music has such a powerful impact on how we feel. And so when I wake up, I want music that's connected to my purpose and how I want to feel. I have a playlist in my morning playlist. I'm going to play the same playlist every day in the same order. And I got this from

Tim Ferriss. Essentially, we don't want to make any decisions the first hour. We want to have that first hour of your day kind of pre-planned. Like, I want to know what my purpose is. I want to have music that lines me up with that purpose gets me feeling a certain way. And then I'm going to do whatever it is with hydration and exercise and meditation, these sort of things. So as it pertains to the four daily goals, would you write them down and put them up on the wall? Yeah, so okay, that's a great question. So you run him down and then you're going to, you can grade yourself every day, say a scale of one to five, for example, five is the best. How did I do on giving the best?

At the end of the day. Yeah, end of the day. And how did I do on being present and being grateful and focusing on my routines and only what I can control? Just to say the five daily remembrances, which you've referenced and I've also referenced several times, I might mangle this, but my understanding, these are five things that the Buddha said you should remember or call to mind. I think once in the morning, once in the evening, there was a teacher on the show, a meditation teacher showed up on the show several months ago, Vinnie Ferraro, who was talking about this, and I've now tried to get it into my life twice a day. So the five are, this body is of the nature to get old, to grow old, his body is of the nature to get sick, this body is of the nature to die.

The fourth is, I will someday lose everything and everyone I hold deer. And then the fifth is, the only real possessions I have are my actions. And I found it really helpful. And these four daily goals seem like a cousin in that, you know, when you wake up in the morning and you've got your morning routine, you want to be thinking about these four North Stars for your day. And at the end of the day, you want to come back to them and think, okay, how did I do? What can I learn? Yes. And the fifth remembrance of all I have is my actions. My concern is that what if your actions weren't very good, which being human means that's going to happen a lot. Or, for example, if you're a pro baseball player, what if you went 0 for four and, you know,

made an error and had a couple strikeouts? So you're going to be like, oh, what a terrible day. And so the way I think about it is you're responsible for two things, your effort and your heart, not your results. To me, actions and results are so closely intertwined. So I wouldn't say you're not responsible for your actions because in a way you are, like it's so closely tied to your decisions, but your results, now that's different. Yeah, I think in the Dharma and Buddhism that there is a clear separation between action and results. And there is, as you discussed before, kind of idea of not being attached to the result and instead being focused on the effort and crucially, your motivation during that effort. So I believe that what the Buddha was talking about

is fully consonant with what you're talking about. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And motivation is a huge emphasis in the idea of like karmic unfolding or the law of cause and effect. It doesn't mean that if you have a good motivation, the outcome will necessarily be positive, but it's just if you think of karma,

and again, not in a metaphysical sense, just as I said a moment ago, the law of cause and effect, what leads to what this happens, so this happens, then when motivation becomes really important in your unfolding of your life because it will have

maybe over my skis now but I think it ups the odds that you'll have a positive result and even if it's not the result that you had in mind, it's more likely to be wholesome or beneficial. My making sense in these around links? Okay.

All right, well, in our remaining time, let's do some more practical tools because your book is filled with them. I can look at my list of questions or you can say whatever's popping into your of what you'd want to discuss. So, yeah, I'll give you, so I was doing more meditation. In my life, I do this meditation, which is like a tool or a habit or routine.

You can think of it as a tool. I have this 10 to 20 minutes with, I think of it as time with God. And so in that time, the way I do it is I put on my timer, say, like this morning, it was 10 minutes. Put my countdown timer on 10 minutes. As soon as I see it hit 9.59, then I'm putting it away. So I don't have to think about how much time's left. and then I'm putting on this music that's connecting me to my purpose and to God that I feel really connected.

And again, it's the same music. This is different than my morning playlist, different playlist. It's the same music every single time in the same order. And this is important. So a lot of people, they wake up and they're like, okay, how am I feeling what I want to listen to? And they start scrolling. So I think this is a mistake. So I think it's way more powerful to think about these things that we've talked about, like, what's my purpose?

How do I want to live? How do I want to feel? Who don't want to become? start to arrange your life around that, like with your music. Because the music is not just, I'm bored, I want to not be bored. It's doing two things. It's aligning you with your purpose, and it's programming your mind. We're getting the words of the person that you want to become into your mind.

And so every day. And so I have this turn on the timer for 10 minutes. I put in the music. And then I sit there, and it's this prayerful meditation. And I have this thing that I got from front of mine, Ken Shigamatsu in Vancouver, B.C. And he says, and this is God talking to Jim, Jim, you are the beloved, like someone that I love, and whom I delight.

And so I repeat that over and over for 10 minutes. It's just like meditation, right? Your mind starts to wander. And so, like today, I don't know, I probably said it maybe 10 times. Like our greatest need is for love. If you don't feel that love when you start your day, what are you going to do when you go out?

You're going to try and get it. How? Generally from what I call the palms, possessions, achievements, looks, money, status. You know, you're going to try and be someone who deserves love. But then the problem is you could do everything right and they may reject you. Do everything right and your boss may not like it and, you know, way too much out of your control. And so then it leads to this obsession, frustration, et cetera, this cycle. Whereas, but say if you don't believe in God, it's really connecting with having a purpose beyond yourself where understanding that love is the most powerful force in the universe

because you do the loving kindness meditation. This is very similar to have this purpose. I want to walk in love and share that with the world. This is really powerful. Would I be correct in saying that what you're doing here is kind of teaching your nervous system and your unconscious that you're safe so that you're not scrambling for what you call the palms

all the time? Now we're getting into what we talked about, like the heart transformation. So it's daily transforming the subconscious security. We're definitely part of it. So you're not there, like, trying to be someone that other people can love. And I would imagine when you're going through a difficult day, like before the game on January 12th, when your mother is desperately ill and work life isn't going the way you wanted and you're a little lonely in a town that's not your home, having taught your nervous system that you're okay, that you're loved,

allows you to perform well in extremis. Yeah. Well, it really comes down to, like, what is the purpose of your life and what are you doing all this for? Why are you doing the podcast and what is my life about? Is it about so Jim Murphy can have certain pleasure and things and be somebody? Like, what is that? What am I all about?

And, like, I think the whole understanding that selfless is fearless. I want to go out into my day every day where there's no concern for self. And you've used the term self-referential a lot, right? So this is kind of a human condition. It's so self-referential, which I say in inter-excellance leads to fear. It's constant referring to self because there's so much out of our control. And we try to build this security, but they become walls that imprison us. And so the best possible life is a life of deep connection to others, where you're serving and connecting to others.

But, you know, one of the things that I'm so attracted to vis-a-vis my own tattoo that you referenced earlier, F-T-B-O-A-B for the benefit of all beings, is that A, the penultimate letter there, all beings includes me. So self-interest is not off the table. And yet you're saying, and this kind of goes back to sacrificial love, and I want to walk through the day, as you just said, with no concern for self. And yet you're putting out books. You're starting a podcast. like you have to have some concern for self. Yeah, so now we can talk about the wise self-selfishness. Yeah, from the Dalai Lama.

Being human means that you're going to be thinking about yourself. What I know is that the more I think about self, the more chance I have to move towards anxiety and fear. But it's just like when I'm coaching an athlete or a teen, our goal is to win a championship. We don't need to talk about it. I don't need to say, Jim, look out for self. like that's inherent.

I'm just being human. I'm going to look both ways when I cross the street and feed myself and whatever. The problem is not me losing concern for self. The problem is my concern for self turns into fear.

This is the issue. So how does that work practically? You can put out as many books and start as many podcasts as you want, but you try to the best of your ability to have your overarching goal. Can I interrupt for a little? one second. I'm thinking about Dan's book and his career, 21 years in ABC and how he was like,

Peter Jennings is like, okay, Dan, you're going to take over the religion section or whatever. And then you're like, Peter, do you know where I grew up and who I grew up to? Like my parents said I've, there's no Santa and there's no God when I was nine. And so I think you got the wrong guy. And then, you know, it led to this life-changing experience. Yeah. And so as you're saying that I was thinking about your life and how, Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. Go again.

That's okay. I think what you're saying is you can take action in the world. You can build your own career. But if you can frame it as a service, like, okay, I, Jim Murphy, I'm going to start my own podcast in the future. I, Jim Murphy, I'm going to put out a couple more books in the not too distant future. But the goal is not for the aggrandizement of Jim. It is for the benefit of all beings.

Yeah, very well said. It's like one of the big challenges that a lot of, say, Christian pro athletes have. Like, how do I devote my life to God, but also try and be world number one? To me, I think it's a state of your heart. Like, why am I doing these things, podcasts coming out and writing more books, etc.? Is it for me? And this is the default that it's going to be for me. What I'm saying is that this is not the best possible life.

This sort of selfish bent is going to hurt me. in the long run, at least compared to a selfless life. And so the selfless life is a fearless life. It's the best possible life. Most people spend most of their day judging self, circumstances, or others. And this creates a negative energy. They lose their vision. They lose their creativity because they're concerned for self.

And this is most people, most of the time, most of my life has been like this. And I don't want to live like this. I want to have deep contentment, joy and confidence every day of my life is how I want to live. And through how I understand the universe is created, how it works, this is the best way to do it. Right. But I think where it gets tricky for me in my own life is, and this is really, I think, part of the art of life is because we do need to take care of our needs and pay our mortgage and things like that, we can't be utterly selfless in the way most people understand that word. we do have to look out for our own interest to a certain extent, but that can be a very slippery slope.

And so where would you say is the part where you can't be selfless? What does that intersect? It's not that I can't be selfless. It's that it's just very easy for my old conditioning to kick in when I'm thinking about, okay, what projects should I take on and why? Should I write this next book? Why? What's my motivation really?

I do have to kind of police myself pretty consistently so that I'm not being carried away by the lesser angels of my own nature, which are deeply wired in. Does that make sense? Yeah, so where was the point where being selfless would lead you away from being able to achieve

or live a great life? Because I think that's what you were saying earlier. Yes, I think it may be in how you're understanding selfless, right? Because I think most people hear that word and they think I can't have any thoughts for myself. I can't design a life where I'm happy. But I think what you're saying is,

well, if you understand happiness or joy or well-being, human flourishing as being of service and of benefit, well, then it all works together. Yeah, yeah. And in that context, start as many podcasts as you want, be as ambitious as you try to be world number one at whatever you want, but frame it as... altruism, selflessness.

Well, yeah, and when you say frame it, I think what you mean, and what I mean is, why are you doing it? Yes. Because if, like, for example, the inner excellence mindset is I compete to raise a level of excellence

in my life, to learn and grow in order to raise it in others. It's for others. I'm still going to work every day as hard as I can to raise a level of excellence in my life, which to me really is focusing on learning and growing in love,

wisdom, and courage. And it's all so I can, Raising another people's lives. Right. So I can want to be number one at whatever because the process of doing that is going to, if I pursue that in the right way, it is going to challenge me in many,

many helpful, self-actualizing ways that can make me a better, more impactful, more beneficial human in the world. Yeah, I mean, I think wisdom is calling out every day to all of us all day long. The question is,

are we going to notice it? And also, like I shared earlier, is having a great podcast the best thing for you? Yeah. It may not be. And so that's why we want to hold it loosely and say, okay, I've got these goals. And like, I think both of us, we could say we're both fairly ambitious. And so we have these goals that we want to achieve. For me, I don't know if these goals are good for me, let alone the best thing for me.

And so, of course, I have these goals. And I want to have the best podcasts in the world. and I want to live an extraordinary life or making a difference all over the world and being on Dan Harris' podcast. But I don't know what's best for me, circumstance-wise, what I call the third world, the world of results in circumstances.

And so I want to hold it loosely and understand what I really want is have this deep connection to the creator of the universe and to live the life that I was created to live. And I don't really know what that looks like. That's why it's just holding it loosely. I have my goals, my vision, my dreams,

and then every day it may unfold differently. Maybe this is a good place, a practical place to end it. There was a quote in your book. I can't remember who it was from. You were quoting somebody. And actually he used it in conversation earlier today. I'm probably going to mangle it, but it's something to the effect of,

I don't expect anything and I'm prepared for anything. Yeah, so the samurai, and you have your own samurai code, the 10 kind of principles. So they have this tool that I call Expect Nothing, where you take a long, slow, deep breath, before you're about to perform or compete or whatever, you have some sort of presentation.

You take this long, slow, deep breath in, and you say, I expect, and then hold it, and then you exhale, and then you say nothing. And so to me, what it means is, not that I don't expect good results, it's, I have no needs. I don't expect that person to be a certain way or the crowd to react a certain way

or the weather to be a certain way or the umpire, I have no needs. I can handle anything. So this tool, I expect nothing, I can handle anything. I've found very powerful in my life. Yeah, yes. Because you're not overly attached to some sort of result. You can be grounded in the confidence that whatever comes up, I can handle it because I've done it before. I've handled so much we all have right up until this very moment. We can handle whatever comes next. Jim, it's great to talk to you. Yeah, thank you so much. Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the names of your books if people want to check them out?

And anything else you want us to know about. Sure. So Interexcellance, you can get that in most bookstores. The best possible life, how to live with deep contentment, joy and confidence no matter what. That comes out February 3rd. You should be able to find that in most bookstores. I'm also kind of following in your footsteps or trying to, I should say, getting a substack. And I have a newsletter.

You can go to Interrexelance.com right now to sign up for that. Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Jim. Great to meet him. Shout out to our mutual agent, Jay Surris at UTA.

Jay's awesome. Don't forget. There's a guided meditation that comes with this podcast. If you're a subscriber over at Dan Harris.com, it's called How to Rewire Your Inner Critic. It'll help you take what you've just learned and kind of pound it into your neurons. It comes from our teacher of the month, Sabine-Salasi.

If you sign up at Dan Harris.com, you'll also get invited to our weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions. We do these every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is October 28th, Sabine-Salasi. We'll be going live then. Also, there are links in the show notes. If you want to come to either the meditation party retreat, I'm doing the weekend of October 24th or the live taping of this podcast, I'll be doing in New York City with Pete Holmes in.

November. Before I go, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.