Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to Take Risks (an Experimental Episode) | Marissa Schneiderman

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

We’ve been trying to do a bunch of experiments here on this show, and our latest is a weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for here!To celebrate this new endeavor, we’ve put together a whole episode about risk taking and experimenting. We thought this would be helpful and educational while also giving you a fun peek behind the scenes (and also allowing us to be blatantly self-promotional in the process—a win/win!). In fact, this episode itself is experimental in its format, because we don’t have a typical guest.I sat down with the show’s Senior Editor Marissa Schneiderman—who has been collaborating with me on the newsletter—to talk about how we’ve been putting into practice the wisdom from some of our best guests, including Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Rick Rubin, Sarah Cooper.You can sign up for Dan Harris’ Newsletter at:https://www.tenpercent.com/podcastIt’s a weekly roundup of life hacks, cultural recommendations, pod news, and upcoming events.Related Episodes:Adam Grant on the Science of Potential and AchievementLegendary Record Producer Rick Rubin On: Creativity, Habits, Self-Doubt, Intuition and MeditationComedian Sarah Cooper On: Humiliation, Perfectionism, and Taking ChancesVulnerability: The Key to Courage | Brené BrownHow to Speak Clearly, Calmly, and Without Alienating People | Dan Clurman and Mudita NiskerFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/take-risksSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marissa, is there anything you want to get off your chest here before we start? Just how is your day? You try to find out how scared you should be. Just curious. My day was fine. How about you? It's been good. All right. Well, let's do it. This is the 10% happier podcast.

I'm Dan Harris. Okay kids, this is an experimental episode about how to be more experimental in your own life, how and why to take more risks. A little backstory here. We've been trying to do a bunch of experiments right here on this show over the past couple of months. We've tried chat-ear episodes that we call Meditation Party. We've tried doing a few interviews with celebrities. We've tried adding a third episode on Fridays.

We've got our first live episode coming up. That's with Joseph Goldstein on the subject of Nirvana. And I've just launched a weekly newsletter. I'm only five or 10 years late to that trend. Anyway, on the subject of the newsletter, the most recent experiment we've been running, we wanted to do a special episode to announce it to you and get you all to sign up. By the way, the link to the sign up is in the show notes. The newsletter is a weekly roundup of life hacks, cultural recommendations, pod news, and upcoming events. But we didn't want to do something in a lame that would waste your time, you know,

just make a big deal about the newsletter and not add a lot of value. We wanted to do something that would be fun and interesting and useful. So we are doing a whole episode about risk taking and experimenting. We thought it might be helpful and educational while giving you a fun peak behind the scenes and allowing us to be blatantly self-promotional in the process. Win, win, win. This episode, I should say, is experimental in its format

because we don't have a typical guest. This is me and senior editor Marissa Schneiderman, who's been collaborating with me on the newsletter, chatting about our own attitudes towards risk, and then playing some key sound bites from some of our best guests, including Brunei Brown, Adam Grant, Rick Rubin, and Sarah Cooper. Marissa, I should say, is a fascinating person who's a key member of my little team, and there's also a deep Dharma practitioner herself who once did a three-month silent meditation retreat, which was controversial with her family. To sign up for the newsletter, by the way, go to 10%.com slash podcast. Again, I will put that link in the show notes now on with the show after we pay some bills.

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and the things that come back to haunt us. Follow Ghost Story on the Wondering app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes at free right now by joining Wondering Plus. Hi Marissa. Hello Mr. Harris. How are you? I'm going to demand that you call me Mr. Harris hands-forth. I like that. It's got a ring. Once in a while. Are you nervous? I mean you just stumbled on the word nervous. So I'm wondering if you're nervous talking to me. I'm normally behind the scenes telling guests that they should be calm. So I'm wondering if you're nervous talking to me. I'm normally behind the scenes telling guests that they should be calm and that I'm in service of making them sound good,

but now that I'm in the hot seat, I'm having different feelings about it. So you're taking a risk, you're making an experiment good on you. All right, so why are we doing this episode? So we are doing this episode because right now in the 10% happier world, we are going wild with experiments. One first and foremost, the newsletter. As you mentioned, your five years late to the game, but you're finally sending out a weekly newsletter, which I have a hand in and I'm really happy about. But there's also a bunch of other experiments that we're doing. And those are really risky. You know. We have our bread and butter, we have our Monday episodes, our Wednesday episodes, but we want to expand, we want to create more for the listener.

Yeah, I will have said this in the introduction, but we wanted to do an episode where we announced the newsletter and some of the other experiments we're working on. We wanted to add some value so that people could hear the news of whatever it is we're trying to promote, but also talk about the importance of taking risk, which we're gonna do at length right now. Exactly, it's so loud out there, there's so much. And every choice we make in a sense is a risk and experiment.

So I think pretty much anyone listening can get something from this episode. Yes. So let's bring in some voices of past guests who've talked about risk-taking and experiment making with a high degree of eloquence and also evidence. Let's play a clip to start from Adam Grant, who is a professor at Wharton and multiple number one best-selling author. And he's got a new book called Hidden Potential and it's all about the science of achievement. And one of the things he recommends for people who want to achieve great things is to take risks and to get comfortable with discomfort. So here's Adam. I think that seeking discomfort, though, is about much more than just confronting unpleasant or

unwanted thoughts. It's also putting yourself in situations where you are likely to fail, where you might be judged negatively, where you might even embarrass yourself. So, one of the things that happens when you seek discomfort is you will make a lot of mistakes. And I found over time that the people who end up growing the most are the ones who are able to tell the difference between an acceptable mistake and an unacceptable mistake. They're the people who know how to strike a balance

between when I need to strive for excellence and when it's okay to say, this is good enough. And I think that's a difficult skill. Back down with Marissa. So I think about this a lot, like for us, you know, with the newsletter, we launched it. We kind of soft-launched it a few weeks ago, and the first couple of additions weren't my best work. They were fine. They were like, what, in the tech world, we call the minimum viable product. For me, that seems like a model. Like, we're trying something new.

And also, we're trying something new, and also we're not putting all this pressure on ourselves to ace it right out of the gate. Do you agree with that? Yeah, and it was really nice working on the back end because I feel like we didn't have to stop our momentum. You know, we were going, going, going, building, building the past couple of months. And then we had a certain framework, which we are working with. We were going to do it based on the Buddhist concept of the six-cent stores and launch the newsletter, but realize that actually we didn't quite want to have the fanfare for it yet. And we just needed to see how it was landing and see how it felt for you.

It's like trying on a new pair of shoes or something. And I think it was great that when we weren't 100% sure of what we were gonna do, we didn't just stop the work and say, okay, let's not put anything out there, let's not do this, let's see who's gonna read it, let's see how it feels for us to make it, and then just continue to evolve with it. And already we've been making like big changes

on the newsletter, and I'm sure more changes will come. Yeah, I think it's a thing that we'll just get better at. Over time, we pretty much know as no one was reading it for the first couple of weeks because we didn't really announce it. Now we're making a big deal out of it and people will start reading it after we've gotten a little bit better at what we're doing

and a little clearer on exactly what we're trying to do. And we'll probably continue to iterate as we get feedback. And that strikes me as, I mean, that's so different from the way I used to work because in TV news, like you work all day or you work for several weeks and you create a report and it's out. And then there's no taking it back.

It's been broadcast. In tech, you know, when I first was involved in co-founding a meditation app, we made it, we made a MVP a minimum viable product, and then we just started changing it as consumers told us what they didn't like and what they did like, and I find that to be a much more satisfying way to work.

And it makes producing a TV show, or in my case now, like a book. It makes that so much more terrifying because you can't really take it back. Yeah, but there's something for you to offer everyone every week is really great, and you can't really take it back. Yeah, but there's something for you to offer everyone every week is really great. And you can continue to build on that. Another thing I think about when I think about making experiments and taking risks and

we're doing a lot of that right now is how to do it without driving ourselves crazy. I have this and I'd love to hear you speak candidly about this because you're laughing already because you know, I think where I'm going with this. So I can, this is an area where I can get a little nuts because I am so ambitious and I think beneath that ambition is some fear and some greed. And so I can come up with a million ideas, maybe a couple of them are good and definitely not all of them. And then at my worst, I can insist on doing them all

immediately. We've come up with a term on our team that I think has been very helpful, which is insanely ambitious. So we have sessions, brainstorms, where we come up with a million ideas and then we kind of let it settle and then we figure out what are the best ones and then we figure out okay, how and when can we do this in a way that doesn't burn everybody out. Am I fooling myself or is it what I just said, is that land with you? What you said is definitely accurate. And I actually love being around someone that is filled with ideas. So for me, that feels very inspiring.

Like as a creative person, I love that you constantly have ideas. But then again, a senior editor of the show, I'm one of the main people that need to help execute those ideas. But then again, a senior editor of the show, I'm one of the main people that need to help execute those ideas. So there's definitely attention there. There's the Buddha Sutra of the sitar, the loot. And Dan, I have a feeling you love this story. So I'm going to let you tell it. I love this example. Marissa, yeah, it's somebody comes to the Buddha and says, how do I know how much effort to put in meditation? Sometimes I feel like I'm trying too hard. Sometimes I feel like I'm trying not hard enough. And the Buddha's like, if you play the lute

or the sitar or some sort of stringed instrument, you want to tune the strings not too tight and not to loose. And that's like a process where you get better at finding like what is the right amount of effort. And I think what you're saying is we're trying to figure that out for ourselves. Exactly.

And that feels really good to realize it is in process. It's the middle way and it's all, there's not necessarily perfection. We're striving for something. And again, we're trying to be saintly ambitious. We're trying to create a culture where everyone on the team is able to contribute ideas and we can keep building on those. So there's a lot going on, but it feels really good that there's so many different ideas that are floating around.

And some of them we already have said into motion. Yeah. Well said. And we're going to talk about how to create a culture where risk taking is rewarded and failure is okay. Brunei Brown is going to talk about that in a few minutes. But while we're at this point with just getting people comfortable with the idea of taking risks and being uncomfortable, let's bring in the voice of Rick Rubin. He's a legendary record producer. He was on the show recently and he has a new book out called The Creative

Act and he talks about the importance of creativity. And one of the things that he and I discussed was how do you know what success is? You can try a bunch of stuff, but how are you gauging whether you've done well? And I loved what he had to say, so here it is. Well, who's to say what success is? You're judging success in a very particular way. Success isn't necessarily material success. Many of the great works of art that we look at now

as great works of art were in their day, not considered that. Rolling Stone put out this book of all of the articles written about Neil Young that appeared in Rolling Stone. And each one of his albums would come out and they would get a terrible review. And like after the Gold Rush, more boring cowboy songs from Neil

and then harvest another stinker. And then, and we would talk about all of them. And then you would get to the best albums of the decade and Neil's albums would all be at the top of the, but in the same publication, the best albums of the decade. So you never know. And sometimes an artist needs to do something really challenging

for themselves that allows them to get to their next phase of work. If they do another in the mold of the successful ones before it, that could be the end of the whole thing. In a creative life, there are these peaks and valleys and dips and dives and twists and turns, and we take crazy risks. But they're all in the pursuit of making the best thing we can over a long period of time, over and over again. And if you don't like this one, it's okay. You know, that's okay. It's like you're entitled to your opinion.

It's usually the best you can do in that moment. The times when there, what I've seen is the opposite of the artist thinking, okay, now we're successful. Now we have this obligation, what do they want from us? We have the thing that we made that was successful. We made purely out of passion when nobody was looking at nobody cared. We were being true to ourselves. That's how we got here.

And now we have all these people counting on us and telling us what to do. So if we listen to them, who knows what's going to happen? And often the sophomore slump comes from just too much well-meaning input from people who, again, they mean well, they just don't know. Nobody knows. That's the thing. Nobody knows. I love Rick Rubin. That was a great episode.

And something I think about when I listen to that and think about our taking risks and setting up experiments on our team is something that my friend Gretchen Rubin, who's also been on the show many times, has her own podcast called Happier. Something she said to me off mic in our personal relationship when we talk about work is that often she and her team will try something new and it doesn't succeed by the conventional metrics like maybe they'll launch a new project and it doesn't sell as much as they thought. I'm just making something up hypothetically. but it leads to a bunch of other things. And so you can't necessarily judge every risk

or every experiment by traditional metric. You have to judge it, and I think, in a sort of holistic way. So this new newsletter we've launched or some of the other experiments we've done, like putting episodes on Fridays and maybe interviewing a few more celebrities and doing live events, which people will hear about soon from us. Some of these other experiments we've done, they may not work

in one way, but I think we'll learn something for sure, and they might work in other ways that are surprising and really cool. Yeah, I really agree with you. One thing coming up is airing live shows on the podcast. And that's gonna be happening in a couple weeks, so everyone get excited for it. We hosted the event in Boston in September. And there were a lot of different layers to what made this experimental. First of all, we had a very special secret guest on the bill

and we decided not to reveal it. We were just like, okay, can Dan Harris sell out a room? And we were really happy to see that. Then we also decided to have an extremely esoteric topic. And it's a topic that we've all heard about, but normally you've heard about it selling a smoothie, which is the concept of Nirvana. So even Joseph had a little trepidation like,

are you sure you want to bring this up to people and it was so great I felt like in the room there was so much excitement one for everyone to see this special guest Joseph Goldstein to to have this really niche topic that not many people talk about and then see a different side of Dan Harris Which is the Dan Harris that's working the room and really engaged with the audience. But the experiment on top of that, too, will be airing this on the feed and seeing how does having like a live show coming through our earbuds and the intimacy of a podcast land for people. I'm currently editing it right now. I think it's going to be great, but we're going to find out. Yeah, this is a great example. I'm glad you brought this up. We taped this with Joseph a few weeks ago. It's going to air soon and we can't we talk about Nirvana or as he calls it,

Nibana, which is that's the word and a different ancient Indian language. And yeah, we Joseph was nervous about it. I was nervous about it for a bunch of different reasons. You were nervous about it. And I think it really worked, although I really do want to hear from the audience after we post it. Please let us know what you think. So just to be clear, the interview we do with Joseph, which is going to post soon, that's the first live podcast we've recorded. Although I think we did a one-off up many, many years ago, but it was not connected in any way to the current iteration of what we're doing. So this is really, really our first true live event where we're selling tickets to come see me in conversation with somebody.

And I was really nervous because it felt like you're throwing a party and you don't know if anybody's going to show up. And it feels like a referendum on your relevance and, you know, likeability. And for me, that's the scary part of doing these live events. And I think we're going to move into doing more of them. But I don't know if I'm going to be able to get over that aspect of the fear. Yeah, that's something really interesting to work with. And I think with fear, what Adam said about seeking discomfort,

I don't like being uncomfortable. I like being comfortable. We all do. So the fact that you're like, okay, I don't know if I'll get over this aspect of fear. And I'm still going to give it a whirl is really saying something. We all do. So the fact that you're like, okay, I don't know if I'll get over this aspect of fear and I'm still going to give it a whirl is really saying something. And who knows, you don't actually know what will happen. Right now, I feel extremely charming and comfortable.

10 minutes ago, I was so nervous to talk to you. So impermanence sometimes is really good. Right. I think by that I'm meditation retreats. And you've done a lot of meditation retreats, including a three month retreat. And impermanence is a thing that you start to get quite intimate with because you're seeing how, like in some ways, you're slowing your whole life down,

but you're more awake and aware of what's happening in the moment, and like you're seeing how a pain in your knee gives way to a venal thought, it gives way to the sound of a bird chirping, and that can get quite rapid. And it's scary in some ways, but it's also, when you're dealing with something uncomfortable, it's reassuring to know that it's going to change in one way or another.

And for me, I don't know, like, we're going to talk about motivation coming up, and maybe we should talk about it now, but you said something nice about, you know, it's telling and exciting that you're nervous about these live events and you're doing it anyway. And I wonder, like, am I, am I, am I, am I doing that? Why am I doing that? Am I doing that because I want to be in service to all beings everywhere. I want to face my fears and grow. Or is it because I am super ambitious and I want to like, it's not about personal growth, it's about professional growth of this show and wanting to make more money and be more successful and is it, I once described my TV career, I used to be a news anchor and I have panic disorder

and I once described my career as a triumph of narcissism over fear. And so I like, I try to have some degree of visibility into why I'm doing things. And that is something I struggle with. I don't know, you think I'm being too hard on myself or is these questions I really should be asking? I guess I don't see it as being hard on yourself. I think it's self-awareness.

And I think self-awareness is great. I don't know how much judgment I hear. Maybe I'm like mishearing, but I think you're kind of really living the question as real because you're sort of mulling it over and saying, what is my motivation here? Like, I think the fact that you're investigating it to me seems fruitful. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think you're, you know, and I think you're right. You can not let yourself off the hook, and you can also not be too self-lacerating where I've done quite a bit of wrestling with this for myself. These of you might work in the meditation space for a while.

And I think where I've landed with it with the help of my coach, Jerry Kallona, has also been a guest on the show several times, is that, I'm a human being, so I'm gonna have self-interest. And that's okay, That's normal and healthy. And I can also be motivated by a desire to help other people and create awesome shit that helps people do their lives better. And, and in some ways, in many ways and profound ways, those two interact in a positive way because the more I'm being helpful, the better I feel. And the more I bend with, I have to do more.

But it is about having enough, I try to be really diligent about some visibility into why am I doing what I do so that it doesn't get too corrupted by the natural self-interest. And it's why I'm always yammering about how I have this tattoo on my wrist for the benefit of all beings to remind me, because I am so naturally selfish, to remind me to open the aperture and go beyond mere self-interest, to also be thinking about what is the benefit to other people from whatever it is I'm doing. Yes, and I think it also speaks to the sanely ambitiousness of it all is that we're trying to balance reaching as many people as possible for the sake of having this message come out.

But also it can feel like, oh, is that a key that we want to build the numbers? But I always feel like I'm so happy to work on this show because it really is in service of uplifting people. So there's an impact there. And once in a while we'll get an email or a message or I'll see someone on the street and they hear what I do. And the ways they talk about it impacting their lives really is meaningful. So what's also exciting about these experiments

is that maybe we can reach new and different listeners. Of course, without alienating our current listeners, and that's why we always want feedback as well. We want to make sure that they also pick up what we're putting down. But this idea of being able to reach more people feels really vital. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. This part of being insanely ambitious is not just doing things in a, as I like to say, a calm, stately way and orderly fashion, not my usual frenzied headless chicken way.

So part of saintly, ambitious is that. And it's a part of it is also having the natural desire to see the number, listener numbers go up while bearing in mind that our job is to help people. And I think for me, one thing that's been really helpful is a concept that I, this is so typical for me, a concept that I wrote off as new age poppycock but is actually based in rigorous scientific evidence from what I can tell is intention setting,

setting and intention. I do it when I wake up in the morning, I do it before exercise, I do it before I go to sleep, I do it before I meditate, and I do it when I can remember to do it on these various projects that we're working on that my intention is to fold. It is to build a successful business and to help people. And those two intentions, I think, can exist in a positive double helix, a reinforcing virtuous spiral. So I don't know if I mean maybe I'm getting high on my own supply here, but that's the story I tell myself. I love that. I've also been getting into intention setting.

I've been thinking about it specifically inspired by your communication coaches, Dan Clermann and Moody Tannisker. They talk about setting a positive intention before every conversation. And I've been finding that so invaluable. I look at my mind, it's proliferating with thoughts, sort of like this sheet of cookie dough, and it's almost like falling over the table. There's so many thoughts everywhere. But what's my positive intention for that conversation? And is what I'm thinking, what I want to say, does it fall in line with, I have a cookie-cutter image? So, for me, it's a heart, but maybe it's a cookie-cutter of a double helix, if that's possible. And we want to think, is what we're creating in line with that intention, and just always try to directionally work in that mode. Yes, well said.

Let's go back to this. You said it earlier, I don't want to be uncomfortable, and that is... actionally work in that mode. Yes, well said. Let's go back to this. You said it earlier, I don't wanna be uncomfortable and that is, I don't need there. And so we talked about this a little bit with Sarah Cooper who's a great comedian. She's perhaps best known for doing these interpretive dances of Donald J. Trump back during his presidency on TikTok

where she would sort of mimic him as he said something ludicrous and she's gone on to write a book called Foolish and it's all about being willing to look and feel Foolish. And so here she is telling the story of running into a young woman who's sitting on a park bench crying and thinking about all her past mistakes and what went through her mind in that moment. This is the last quote from the book that I'll read back to you, but it seems to kind of

sum up one of the core learnings. The quote is, if you're out there thinking about every mistake you've ever made, don't. You did it exactly the way you were supposed to. Get excited about what you'll try next time because there will be a next time. Yes. It was so fortuitous that I came across this woman just crying alone on a bench. I was coming home from doing a set in the neighborhood

and I had to sit down and ask her if she was okay and she said literally, I'm just sitting here thinking about every mistake I've ever made. And I realized that's what I did. I was punishing myself over and over and over again for mistakes that I thought I had made in the past. And I wasn't able to comfort that woman in that moment because I still didn't really have the tools,

but I was so happy to be able to write that in the book because I'm saying it to myself as much as I'm saying it to everyone reading it. I had to tell myself that there will always be another chance as long as I keep going. And so I wish I had said that to her, but I put it in the book and it's something that I have to remind myself, like that's probably some kind of tattoo

I would get is to remind myself that it's never over, you know. Keep fucking up. Keep fucking up. Yeah, I love that. Hell yeah. Okay, Marissa, how comfortable are you with fucking up? I hate it. It's really hard for me. And clearly, I'm not I'm not the only one, but senior producer, DJ Kashmir.

He recently shared some notes from a Dharma teacher, Vinny Ferraro, and Vinny said, don't cheat on the present with the past and the future. And I thought, oh yeah, me and my future mistakes. Or my future mistakes. So I think I do have some discomfort, but I'm practicing and learning. So I'm trying. It's something that I want to get better at. What about you? You know, I don't like it, but I'm more comfortable with it.

I mean, a part of it for me is having had this experience of nearly 10 years ago, writing 10% happier and talking about having a Coke-fueled panic attack on national fucking television and fearing that it might end my career and then finding that I was getting a lot of applause instead. It really emboldened me to be honest. So that's one thing. Another thing is meditation itself is just a series of humiliations. You know, you're sitting down and you're supposed to, you're supposedly this good peaceful meditator in your mind is just filled with all this horrifying embarrassing shit and you keep

getting distracted and you have to start again and again and over time you develop a little bit more of a sense of humor and a willingness to make mistakes. What there's a great expression is an expression, airing and airing, I walk the unairing path and I really like that, that I expect of myself and my team excellence, but I don't expect infallibility. And I find when I can remember that, I find that to be a big relief. Yeah, and I feel like you do message that in the way you communicate and live, at least with us as a team. Again, I don't know how you are in the off hours, but I feel like you really try to message that it's okay to make mistakes, and you're not necessarily seeing them as mistakes. And I might have some stories in my head about how people are going to treat me or how I dehumanize myself when I make a mistake

as though I shouldn't have made one, but I think that you often, you're really good at like seeing something and moving on. I think that's good for the culture, for our little team culture. Do you think that there's some gender and power stuff here? Obviously, I'm the, yeah, so I'm the boss. And also like I'm older and white, male,

neuro-typical. Neuro-typical. So a lot of things that you were not. Yeah. And so I don't know, you have stuff, and white, male, neuro-typical. Neuro-typical. So a lot of things that you were not. Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't know, do you have stuff, do you want to say on that? It's interesting.

I feel like this probably is not for that episode, but I remember that. Oh, that's a sign that it definitely is. Okay, I worked in Silicon Valley 10 years ago. I was like employee number 32 at a startup that's now valued in the billions. It's a very big company, not a great time, pre-me too movement, all that jazz. But I remember just my like motive and my mantra for work is to just be like a mediocre

white man. That sort of just felt like what I wanted to strive for and that was success. And so I don't think you're mediocre. I don't think anyone on our team is mediocre, but I think that's something that we wrestle with in the culture. Like that being a mediocre white man, that being privileged and prized, and often maybe creative non-linear brains, people that don't present a certain way. There's just more scrutiny. Things don't slide by as easily. So that's definitely something that I'm working with and I know other people work with

as well. And let me just, we can cut this if you want, but just to say a little bit more about you, you are female identifying half Jewish, half Hispanic. Oh, yeah. Well, my mom's Argentini Jewish, so full force. Half white, half Hispanic, would that be the right way? You once described yourself as a spicy white Which I thought was very funny and you would describe yourself as neurodiverse as well. Yes

Yeah, so I think it's easier for somebody who came out of the womb as I did to be okay with fucking up then Then perhaps it is for you. Totally, and I think there can also be some grief. Definitely was diagnosed with ADHD later in life in college, but I was just ignored and kept going. Always got good grades, was really successful, but there's still a lot of grief when I look back

and think, wow, I was put in detention every day and first grade for talking too much, or just these little things that I feel like if there was more space for being different, that there might have been more like safety and acceptance and how I could carry that with me now. But at the same time, all those little obstacles, they also build up who a person is and we get to grow with them. And I think it also allows me to see things in

a different light that's valuable. So I also feel proud being on your team because we reach so many listeners and it's like, oh yeah, I'm helping build something like that. Yes, you are. You're doing great. We've been talking in this conversation mostly about the professional world. But of course, risk taking is super important in our personal lives as well. Brunet Brown, who's this incredible author, has been on the show several times. She's written many, many bestselling books, has a show on HBO, a special on Netflix, a bunch of huge TED talks, and she talks a lot about which her term is vulnerability. And in this clip, she talks about how we can do this interpersonally.

She also touches a little bit on a culture of risk taking. So let's listen to Bernie. So the definition of vulnerability that emerged from the data is the emotion we experienced during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. So vulnerability is an affective emotion that we feel when we feel uncertain at risk or emotionally exposed, meaning we may lose control of our emotion or we're showing an emotion and we can't perceive what people think of us because of that emotion. So that's vulnerability.

And certainty risk emotional exposure. And I think the best way to think about operationalizing it is most of us, in order to stay safe during vulnerability, especially growing up, developed effective armor. Like how did we learn to manage uncertainty? And uncertainty is much more threatening as a child than as an adult, right? Because I mean, your survival could be at risk. Over the years, we learned to armor up.

And there are many different forms of armor. Perfectionism is one, cynicism is one, control is one, power over. I mean, there's a lot of different ways we armor up against uncertainty. I'm thinking I've checked all those boxes. Yeah. A lot of times I go into companies

because they're having struggles around innovation and creativity, but they've set up these perfectionistic cultures where failure is completely punished. And so you can't expect people to innovate and create if you don't allow people to fail, because by definition, innovation is iteration failure and iteration. Like that's the definition. Well, there are two questions that come to mind for you, where so one is, and we may have already touched on this, whether we have set up a safe place for iteration and failure

or an iteration, you might not even feel safe answering that question, because you're on the line with your boss. And then the other question is really, I'd love to hear like how well or not you are able to take risks interpersonally. Okay, cool. I thought you were just gonna ask me

what's my favorite armor? I'm happy to hear that too, actually. So let's see on our team, you're constantly saying please take risks, please take risks. And we see you doing that, but I think you can, you know, be like, okay, let's do four episodes a week. And then in our little chat without you were like, oh shit, do we have time to do that? What's he thinking?

But we always have good conversations about it. I guess in a way, maybe the interpersonal and the professional are going to tie in here. So you would mention earlier that I did a three month silent retreat. And that was a big risk for me. Most people in my life were very unhappy about me doing that. They just thought it was insane. Maybe I was going to join a cult. It would definitely not contribute to my professional career. It would set me back. And also it means logging off from society for three months. So there's a lot there. And I did it anyway. And actually we can see how right now

my career is very much supported and bolstered by that three month silent meditation retreat. Did I have any clue when I did that? Absolutely not. I just thought it would be something I do, and that was it. It's not something I'm putting on my resume. It's not something I'm messaging out to people. Well, until I started working at this company.

So I feel like that was sort of an inner personal risk that I had taken. And I feel like because of my interest in Buddhism and Dharma, which I know is so important to you and the show, I've also been able to pitch different ideas about ways that we can like message that out to our listeners. And even recently, I was really excited, like I remember just so excited about doing this project

on the 10 paramies, one of the Buddhist lists often translated as the 10 Perfections. I was just like working on the weekend. It felt like 48 hours straight, so excited, just so excited about this topic. And I had such an amazing idea of who we were gonna have and how we're gonna represent it and a whole narrative involved.

And you gave me the go ahead to work on it. Go for it. Go keep going. I message to the entire team. Okay. Dan said bravo. Like this thing. And everyone come on pitch ideas to this.

We're going to do this in January, so everyone can know what kind of a show we are, and we're going to get really experimental, blah, blah. And then we have the pitch meeting, and the first thing you say is, I didn't read this. And then we had an hour and a half meeting after and I'm like, okay, what's gonna happen here? And it was really good because we talked later and what kind of became clear as you had read it, but it was in your two-week magic window of Long Island Beach Vacation and it was sort of a quick thing.

And you hadn't really thought through, again, in the experimentation, what quite makes sense. And in a way, the idea of doing this sort of Buddhist list with maybe having like a Buddhist dominatrix talk about truthfulness, maybe felt a little too risky for January programming. January is the new year. That's really when we're going to get new audience listenership. We want to have heavy hitters. So it made sense that you needed to scale that back. And it was really good. We had a conversation and obviously there was some disappointment like, Oh, wow, I worked

so hard on this. I was so proud. And then of course, we all work remote so it can feel like we're just kind of in our own little silos. So even like weathering the disappointment can feel kind of like, Okay, I'm alone in my house. That's okay. I feel like you kept saying, I don't want you to stop with the ideas. This is important. And it also sort of is lending itself to other ideas that we're playing out and discussing on the team. And then you also message to the team, hey, there was a miscommunication

and also encouraging everyone else to bring all of their exciting cookie, curious, engaging ideas to the team. Well, let me apologize to you again, because I really did fuck that up. And I think we're going to do the Parameas series over the summer. So the Buddhist dominatrix is not lost forever to our listeners. And for New Year's, actually, we have a big blockbuster. Line up that Marissa has been haunching, that is gonna be pretty amazing.

Yes. And I'm really glad you brought this up because it is a great example of me screwing up. And in fact, there is a better example that's been happening recently. And this will, I think, look back to the interpersonal. So, because this is interpersonal among our team members, but it's not like me taking some big professional risk

It's more me taking a interpersonal risk and asking you guys about like areas where I am messing up interpersonal communications generally and We had a big team meeting the other day about how Since I'm so hard to read I have a poker face and I'm the boss, people are scrutinizing every facial expression for, do I like them? Or am I in a bad mood? Or am I unhappy with their work? And I don't often manage that well. I'm not often, we're working on coming up with a common language so that I can tell people, okay, well, if I'm short today, it's because I didn't get enough sleep last night. It has nothing to do with you. You don't need

to take it personally. And I wasn't happy with myself last night. It has nothing to do with you. You don't need to take it personally. And I wasn't happy with myself for having messed that up a couple of times in phone calls or Zoom calls or on Slack. But I was very happy that the team was comfortable telling me, hey, Dan, here's where you need to improve. And I will say just so the listeners know when you say getting short, you're not screaming your head off.

It's maybe being a little curt. And also, I'm so glad that this is an open conversation. I feel like that's so rare. But in a way, because it's an open conversation, it can almost maybe feel more paranoia, depending on the type of person you are. So just being like, oh wait, he didn't say that he didn't have lack of sleep. Now he really doesn't like me or who knows what. But I think it's also, it's just a mirror for us to learn to work on ourselves too because I really feel like I can trust you

and trust you to be direct. Even in preparing for this discussion we're having now, I think there was two or three times where you're like, I don't understand what you're saying. And I was like, oh my God, I'm a buffoon. And then I was like, no, actually, I'm so glad you said that, rather than not saying something. Because Brunei Brown, again, she says,

clearness is kindness. But we're not used to direct communication. And back to the gender question, when we all have the communication discussion, there's a lot of sort of socialization around how we communicate. I was even saying, I'm sort of tired of using exclamation points, but I don't know how to quit them. And I feel like that's something that being socialized female is needing to kind of have a little happy face. So I think we're all trying to, like, deprogram ourselves slightly for the common good.

And it's great that we're doing it in community. Yes. And now in public. Yep. I'm so exposed. Yeah. I, um, yeah. In terms of taking risks, I've, Yammer Don, probably too much about, and it's not going to get better because I'm writing a whole book about it, but I've talked a lot about how I got a 360 review, which is like this anonymous survey of the people in your life. And this, this was back in 2018 and it was really devastating.

And one of the piece of feedback I got was honesty. And it wasn't about being a liar because I have many shortcomings, but that's not one of them. It was about that I wouldn't tell people if I was upset because I personally wasn't willing to take the risk, be vulnerable and give clear feedback because I didn't want to deal with the blowback. And so I'm really training myself, even though it's uncomfortable, to be direct with people in a respectful, hopefully respectful kind way, because I really agree with what Bernadie

Brown says, which is clear as kind. And even though it may be the harder choice in the moment, it is the best thing for everybody. And you know, you asked first, you're not just doling out the feedback like I think. And so it's like we're creating these norms together. Yes. I mean the Buddha was very clear about this too. As you know, he said to his son, say that which is true and useful and at the right time. And that's not a bad set of rules for feedback. All right, Merissa, we are almost at the end of this. And then by the way, I can hear my wife and my son just brought home a new kitten. And I can hear them cooling in the next room.

And I want to go see this kitten. So just let me ask you, and this may be a little bit a bit of a proffingtery, but is there anything we missed? What's the name of your kitten? I think we're going to go with Curtis because there's a great comedian, Tony Baker, who does videos on Instagram and TikTok where he takes animals doing funny stuff

and he voices them over. And he's got a recurring theme of a cat and a dog, Curtis and Rudy. And so I think we're going to call him Curtis. But I don't know. I'll go find out and see what the bosses have decided. Okay, you'll have to let the listeners know I will maybe you can tell us a little more about the newsletter Yeah, okay, so the newsletter I've read on a shitty job of promoting this newsletter Which was the reason we were doing this thing in the first place? Okay, so the newsletter you could sign up

There's a link in the show notes you can sign up there and every week you're gonna get a wisdom bomb So that some piece of quick actionable piece of advice for doing your life better, then you're gonna get some, what we're calling fixations, some stuff from the culture that I'm really into, whether it has to do with meditation or happiness or not. Often it doesn't. It's just like some video I've seen that I really like

a TV show or a book or a song. In fact, Marissa and I have created a Spotify playlist that we're calling the impatient ear of all of the very, very catchy songs or catchy to me songs that I like. And then I'm doing more live events, both for the podcast and otherwise. And so we're going to put a running list of live events that I'm doing. And we're also going to do a rundown of this week's podcast episodes. And it's all very quick and pithy and it will be in your inbox on Thursday mornings. And yeah, did I say everything, Marissa?

Yeah, and I'm really biased, of course, but I really love your newsletter. I've already watched an amazing documentary. I'm about to start up a great novel. I've heard some new music. I've learned some great wisdom. And it's also just it's pithy and precise. So I really appreciate that. Thank you, and you're a huge part of that. So thank you for taking the risk in doing this, Marissa, I think you did a great job on this. And yeah, I'm grateful. I'm glad, thanks Dan.

Thank you again to Marissa for participating in this experiment. She, by the way, had a revelation after this recording that maybe there's no such thing as a mistake. Dig into that with her at a later date. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter, go to 10%.com slash podcast. And by the way, there will be pictures of Curtis,

the new kitten in the newsletter, I promise. 10% Happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davy Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. DJ Cashmier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davey Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson. DJ Cashmere is our senior producer, Marissa Schneidermann is our senior editor. As you know, Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and podcast production. And Kimi Regler is our executive producer. Alicia Mackie leads our marketing and Tony Magyar is our director of podcasts. Nick Thorburn of The Great Band Islands wrote our theme.

We'll see you right back here on Monday for a fresh, a brand new episode. 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 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Hey you, yeah you. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Jiffy is the fastest and easiest way to get jobs done around the house. Just hop on the Jiffy app, choose from the 40 plus services, and bam, you'll be matched

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Today, hip-hop dominates pop culture, but it wasn't always like that. And to tell the story of how that changed, I wanna take you back to a very special year in rap. Thank you. 88, it was too much good music. The world was on fire. Yeah, yeah.

I'm Will Smith. This is Class of 88, my new podcast about the moments, albums, and artists that inspired a sonic revolution. And Secured 1988 is one of hip-hop's most important years. We'll talk to the people who were there. And most of all, we'll bring you some amazing stories. You know what my biggest memory from that tour is? It was your birthday.

Yes, and you brought me to Shoday's Life Size hard work. This is Class of 88, the story of a year that changed hip-hop. Listen to Class of 88 wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge the entire series right now on the Amazon Music app or audible.