The School of Greatness - 297 Dan Harris on the Power of Meditating Even If You're A Skeptic

Episode Date: March 2, 2016

"I don't think we should put upon ourselves expectations of perfection that are not attainable." - Dan Harris If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/297

This is episode number 297 with number one New York Times best-selling author Dan Harris. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. So pumped up for today's episode.

It's with my man, Dan Harris. And for those that don't know who Dan is, he's a number one, your time bestselling author of 10% Happier. He's the co-anchor of ABC News Nightline, and he's also the co-anchor of the weekend edition of Good Morning America. He has covered many of the biggest stories in recent years, including combat in Afghanistan, Israel, and has made over six visits to Iraq. He has led ABC News coverage of faith and spirituality and is just an incredible human being. I had a great time with him in my studio covering all the topics we talk about in his book and

so much more that he's learned over the years of being on TV. And we also talked about the breakdown he had on live TV a number of years back and how it transformed and triggered him into learning about all this that he's going into right now. And some of the things that we're going to be talking about today is how to stay present when there's so much happening and there's so much overwhelm. How do we actually stay present in the moment? Why we react so quickly to challenges instead of remaining calm and how to shift this, how taking drugs led to Dan's panic attack while filming Good Morning America, why Dan views mental exercise the same way as physical exercise, and so much more.

This is for the skeptics that don't believe in mindfulness or meditation. Dan is the ultimate skeptic who didn't believe in any of this, and he's going to share why he believes in it now and how he applies it to his daily life and how it's improved his life. So I hope you guys enjoy this one. It's going to be a fun one. And make sure to check out the full show notes at lewishouse.com slash 297. You can watch the full video interview there. Share it with your friends as well because this one's going to help a lot of people. Now, without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the one, the only, Dan Harris. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast.

Very excited about our guest today. His name is Dan Harris. He's got a book out. It came out a while ago. It's a number one New York Times bestseller. It's called 10% Happier. How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works, a true story. Thanks for being here, Dan. Thank you. Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited. We were just talking about making a murderer and podcasting and many other things.

Maybe we'll show some of these videos later. But I'm excited to dive into everything you've been up to because I don't know too much about you, actually. I've heard about you and I've done some minimal research for this. But I know you have been on air. How long have you been on air for now? I've been on ABC News for 16 years. And before that, for seven years, I was in local news. Wow.

16 years on ABC. 16 years on ABC and then seven years on was in local news wow 16 years on on abc 16 years on abc and then seven years all with gma or uh no i i uh so i i when i started abc news i was just a general assignment reporter meaning i just covered whatever so i went i spent a lot of time after 9 11 in places like iraq and afghanistan pakistan israel West Bank. And then I started anchoring shows. I anchored the Sunday night news for a while. I like this product placement. I'm going to place it up there for you so we can see it. Yes.

I anchored the Sunday evening news for a little while, and then I started anchoring the weekend edition of Good Morning America, and now I also anchor Nightline. Gotcha. Okay. And what made you inspired to be doing what you're doing? With the book and stuff like that? Or the journalism?

With TV stuff, yeah, journalism. Why get into that in the first place? I had a short attention span. My parents are doctors, and I wasn't smart enough to be a doctor. And I had TV and the movies kind of mixed up in my head. So when I was in college, I either wanted to go into the movies or television television news even though in fact they have like nothing in common so i ended up going to film school for a little bit where was this at nyu i did a semester at nyu and i realized that i sucked at that film so that was useful so then i went into tv news i did a bunch of internships in in college loved it um i really like, because as I

said, I have a short attention span. Every day is different. Every day is unpredictable. That's fun for you. It's amazing. And I get to, and you get to do this on your podcast, and so you know how fun it is. You get to ask people impertinent questions anytime you want. So I love that. That's amazing. And I'm curious and a little bit rude, and so that works for me. What's been the most memorable interview you've ever done? Most memorable interview I've ever done?

And who was that person? I don't think I can pick one, but the one that's coming to mind right now is actually in the book, was right here in LA with Paris Hilton, where she walked away from the interview in the middle of the interview. No way, why?

Because I asked her- For the book or was this for GMA? This was for GMA, for Good Morning America. I was assigned randomly to interview. I don't interview a lot of celebrities. And I don't know why they asked me to interview Paris Hilton. And it's not live? Is it live?

It wasn't live. Okay. It was a taped piece about, I can't remember what the specific reason was. I don't follow celebrities much, but my wife hates when I say this. My wife is a doctor. She's incredibly smart, but my wife hates when I say this. My wife is a doctor. She's incredibly smart, but she really knows a lot about celebrities. So I asked her some questions about Paris Hilton, and she said, well, you know, one thing you might ask her about is that she's kind of lost her step a little bit.

You know, Kim Kardashian's, you know, eclipsed her. Yeah. So I said to her in the interview, I said, you know, you little, does it burn you at all that Kim Kardashian, you know, is like kind of overshadowed you a little bit? She said, no. And I said, do you sometimes think maybe your time has passed? And she just got up and walked away. No way.

She got up and walked away. Did she say anything to you after that? Did you say, I'm sorry, or go after her? She said, off camera, she said that my, she said that I was rude and that the question, she used some words that I won't use here to describe the question. And so we kind of like had it out a little bit. And then she tried to tell me that I couldn't use that moment where she walked away on television. And I was like, well, you can't really tell me what I can do. You agreed to do this.

Yes. And so then we kind of made up. She gave me a hug. And then we ended up using that moment on TV anyway. Wow. So I don't know how she feels. Not that it matters because no one's going to watch her when she's being overshadowed by Cam anyways. I'm just kidding.

I'm sorry, Paris. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm teasing. I'm sure she's a great girl. Interesting. So how do you prepare for your interviews and how do you prep your your guests before is do you ask them a set of questions before you begin like did you ask her is there anything off limits no so we don't do that you don't do it we just show up and let's

go yeah so you can talk i mean you definitely talk to them and broadly about what you're going to talk about but we are it's against our, we have very specific, at ABC News, very specific standards and practices. Gotcha. You can't give people questions beforehand. Really? No. You can talk about broadly what you want to discuss.

You can say like, hey, how are you? It's good to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Or like, hey, we're going to talk about your book or we're going to talk about this, but we can't, I can't say I'm going to ask you X, Y, and Z. And if they tell me that certain things are off limits, is my – You can still ask them.

Yeah. They don't have to answer. Right. But that almost makes me – it almost pushes me into where I have to. Interesting. Because I don't want to be dictated to as a journalist. I'm only covering these things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting. Okay. So – But so you asked me before we went on, is there anything off limits? I said no. Yeah, yeah. Which is – I wish you would have told me something so I could have delved in. Right. Okay. So you asked me before we went on, is there anything off limits? I said no. Yeah, yeah. I wish you would have told me something so I could have delved in. Right, exactly. That would have been more provocative. Exactly, right? Okay.

What's a big guess you had on that afterwards you thought to yourself, man, I really wish I would have asked something different? Or I really missed the opportunity to ask that one question that maybe could have like made this story complete or made it that much better. Is there one guest you can think of? Well, you know, I talk about,

I talk about this a lot in the book too. I had one, a formative interview from me was, have you ever heard of Eckhart Tolle? Of course. Eckhart Tolle. Sorry, I'm losing my voice a little bit.

So Eckhart Tolle, I, you know, the book's about meditation and which. Is that the fourements, right? Is he a book called? What am I thinking of? He wrote The Power of Now.

The Power of Now. I'm thinking of another one. This is Don Miguel Ruiz. Ruiz, yeah, yeah. I've seen The Four Agreements in the bookstore, but I don't know who wrote it and I haven't read it. I think that's Don Miguel Ruiz. Ruiz, yes. I have it here.

I'll give you a copy somewhere here. Okay. But The Power of Now is Eckhart Tolle. Yes. Yes. So I, as I was saying, the book's about meditation, which I wasn't like not really my thing. I mean, I'm kind of, I grew up thinking meditation is bullshit and had no interest in doing it. But interviewing Eckhart Tolle is actually one of the things that kind of set me on the path toward. Really?

Yes. Because he was the first person I ever heard talk about having a voice in your head, which I know you've talked about in your podcast, the voice between your ears. Yes. He is really the first person I ever heard articulate it so clearly. He says that you have this inner narrator that chases you out of bed in the morning and is yammering at you all day long and has you constantly wanting stuff or rejecting stuff or comparing yourself to other people or thinking about the past or thinking about the future to the detriment of whatever's happening right now. And I had never heard anybody actually say that so clearly. And so I went and interviewed Eckhart Tolle because I was interested in that.

And my question for him was, what do you do about the voice in the head? What can you do about it? And he seemed unwilling or unable to answer that question. I just pressed him and pressed him and pressed him. And maybe I'm a moron and he did answer it, but, and I didn't understand it. And that's entirely possible because I have, I definitely retained the capacity to be an idiot. But that was super frustrating for me. That was an interview where I walked away thinking, the guy's clearly smart. He's definitely different. He seems like he's kind of in a different headspace than most of us.

But I did not get what I came here looking for. Gotcha. All right. But ultimately, wouldn't his answer just been meditation? If he had said meditation, it would have simplified things immensely for me. But he didn't say that. He did not say that. He did not say that.

Although, you don't have to say any Eckhart's defense. In some of his books, he does talk about meditation, but it's kind of like not front and center. It's not the focus. Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. So for those that don't know the catalyst for why this journey began, what happened? Something happened to you on the news, correct?

What is this that happened? When was it? Can you tell the story? Yeah, sure, sure. I had a panic attack on a little show we do called Good Morning America. Primetime. Primetime. How many people are watching you now? Morning America. Primetime. Primetime. How many people are watching you now?

I know. I know the exact number. 5.019 million. Okay. Do you remember the day? June 2004. I don't remember the exact day. 2004.

Yeah. It was a while ago. Yes. So I was in the middle of, I was actually doing the news updates. So that's the guy who comes on at the top of each hour and reads the headlines. And I had done the job many times, so I didn't have any reason to foresee that I was going to freak out. And a couple seconds into my shtick, where I was just going to read six or seven stories off the teleprompter, I just lost my mind, basically. My heart started racing,

my palms were sweating, my mouth dried up, My lungs seized up. I couldn't talk. I could not talk. And that, as far as I know, is the job of an anchorman, to talk. And I couldn't do it. Yes. I was supposed to be saying things. I couldn't say things. I couldn't squeak out any noise.

So I basically just ended it. I tossed it back to the main host of the show. How long did this go on for? It went on, it felt to me like the length of Ben-Hur, but it was actually just a couple seconds. Right. And if you watch it, and it's actually a lot of people watch it on YouTube, if you watch it, I get one of two reactions.

If you've ever had any taste of panic in your life, you know exactly what you're looking at, and it's very painful. If you haven't, some people say, eh your life you know exactly what you're looking at and it's very painful if you haven't some people say you know it's not that bad it really doesn't matter because for me i know exactly what it was and it was the worst moment of my entire life no question about it um so after the panic attack i went to actually i had two panic attacks um the second was much more mild so after the second panic attack, I went to a shrink, was an expert in panic. And I was, you know, trying to figure out what was going wrong. And he asked me a bunch of questions. And one of the questions he asked was, do you do drugs? And I kind of sheepishly said, yeah, I do. Uh, and so here's the backstory. Um, I, as I mentioned before, spent a lot of time in war zones when I was a young reporter. Very ambitious guy, type A, striver, also very curious, and also a deep, firmifada. And I came home in the summer of 2003 after spending like four or five months in Iraq and I got depressed. And I didn't even know I was depressed. And I did a very stupid thing, which is I started to self-medicate with cocaine and ecstasy. I had never done drugs before. I was 32 years old. I'd smoked weed, but never done

hard drugs. And so this doctor asked me, do you do drugs? And I say, yeah, I do. And he says, okay, idiot, mystery solved. And he pointed out that even though my drug use was kind of intermittent, I never, I wasn't, you know, I make this joke a lot. It wasn't like that movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. I don't know if you saw that where he's like doing lewds every day. I was, you know, I was doing it once in a while. But the doctor said, and I wasn't high that morning. It was like I had done it maybe a couple weeks prior. He was like, it was enough to artificially raise the level of adrenaline in your brain and make you more likely to have panic attacks. So stop doing drugs. So I did. I stopped doing drugs and I started to see this guy once or twice a week for years. I still see him once in a while.

Then something else happened. So this is like a multifactorial story. My boss at the time was Peter Jennings, assigned me to cover faith and spirituality for ABC News. So I started covering religion. And that's how I interviewed Eckhart Tolle, because I started covering religion. And so after this interview with Eckhart Tolle, it put so many things together for me. When he started describing the voice in the head, I realized that is why I had a panic attack. Because the voice in my head told me to go off to cover wars without thinking about the psychological consequences.

That voice in my head allowed me to come home and get depressed and be insufficiently self-aware to know it. And then it gave me the terrible idea of using drugs. Drugs, yeah, yeah. And so it put so many things together for me, which is why I wanted to go interview Eckhart Tolle, who was not the type of guy who normally – I was not a big consumer of self-help. I was raised by scientists. I'm married to a scientist.

I grew up in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. I'm not a religious or spiritual guy at all. But I ended up talking to Tully because I was so interested in this idea about the voice in the head. And I was very frustrated that he couldn't tell me anything to do about it. A couple weeks later, my then-fiancée and now wife-slash-baby-mama, Bianca, gave me a book by a guy named Dr. Mark Epstein, who is a shrink and a Buddhist. And I read that book, and I realized, oh, A, all the stuff that I like the most in Eckhart Tolle seems to be lifted without attribution from a dude named the Buddha. And B, the Buddha had a really simple thing to do about the voice in the head, which is to meditate. There you go. That's the long answer to your question.

There you go. Okay. So when did you apply your first meditation, or when did you get into it and test it or sample something yourself? This was like 2009. My problem was, even though I was really interested in it, I was- You never did it. Well, it took me a while and here's why i

was of the view that meditation was like the hardest of the hardcore bullshit like i just thought it was only for weirdos and people who are really into kat stevens and aromatherapy and and you know yes yes and and you know make you know flower crowns and kombucha whatever so like not my scene yes well i'm not so i'm not i'm not against burning men but but for a variety of reasons but but but nonetheless i i uh culturally had a lot of resistance to doing it then i learned a couple things one was there's an enormous amount of science now that suggests the meditation is really good that lowers your blood pressure boost your immune system literally rewires key parts of your brain.

Yes. So that was the thing I learned first. Then I learned that mindfulness meditation, which is the kind of meditation that is being studied the most in the labs, is totally secular. You don't have to believe in anything. You don't have to join a group. You don't have to- Not religious.

No, you don't have to be a Buddhist. You don't have to be anything. It's very doable and secular. And third, that it's simple. You don't have to wear robes. You don't have to clang bells. Chant. None of that.

You can if you want, if that's your thing. But you don't have to. It's really just about feeling your breath coming in. And then every time you get distracted, which is going to happen a million times, you start over and over and over and over. Especially for someone like you who has got ADD. Correct. I don't know if I have ADD, but I certainly – Likes to jump from thing to thing.

Correct. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And it's probably in a newsroom too. It's like you've got one story, then the next story. Yeah. You've got to go from the next to the next. Million TVs.

You never get to slow down. Correct. A million TVs going and you're jumping from story to story. It's – Five million people watching everything. Yes, yes. You're like, ah, I can only imagine having a panic attack. Correct.

Interesting. So do you find yourself – okay, so what was the first thing you implemented or tried? So I read a book, I read a bunch of books about meditation, finally got comfortable with the idea and I just set the alarm on my phone. Back then it was a Blackberry and I like sat on the floor for five minutes and I tried to do it and it was terrible. It was like my, it was terrible. I had a full frontal collision with the voice in my minutes and I tried to do it and it was terrible. It was terrible.

I had a full frontal collision with the voice in my head and I realized that – This is stupid. It hurts. Yes, yes. It's not doing anything for me. It's annoying. All of that. Yeah. Basically, what you see head on is that you're an asshole.

Right. Like you see like I'm a complete asshole. Like I'm just like – all I'm thinking about is when is lunch? Do I need a haircut? What's my relationship with my boss right now? What can I get out of this person? Who's throwing a haircut? You know, what's my relationship with my boss right now? What can I get out of this person? Who's throwing me over? Yeah, yeah, yes, yes.

And the whole game is just to notice, like, these are just thoughts. These are just thoughts. We spend so much time enchanted by these stories we're telling ourselves, but they're just stories. And you can let them go and go back to your breath. And that is a huge change in your life it doesn't mean you're going to become a master meditator if such a thing even exists uh you know i mean i i think maybe you can become a master over decades but you're not it's not gonna this you're not gonna win at meditation it's not like it's not like a competitive sport yeah the the

whole you are winning as soon as you realize that this circus in your head is just a circus and you don't need to listen to the ringmaster all the time. Correct. Unless you make it reality. Correct. Yeah. Okay. So did you have a teacher or someone coach you or you said you were reading these different

books and learning about it? Have you found something that you do every single day now or do you try different types of meditation? I know obviously you talk about it in your book. You've got an app out that we'll talk about as well, but what does it you specifically do that works for you? So I guess this was pre-app period. There weren't a lot of apps that I knew of when I started meditating. 2009? Yeah. So I think it was before apps were out and I didn't want to do guided meditations. And so I just read some books and it's not complicated. Right. Breathe in, breathe out. Right. Right. Although frankly, we make it complicated and

it's really helpful. Apps can be really helpful. So I did about a year of on my own and then I did a crazy thing, which is I went on a 10 day silent meditation. Yeah. I have a lot of friends who've done that and they say it's unbelievable what'd you learn about yourself during that um well first of all the first four or five days are the worst thing that ever happened to you it's the worst the worst no there's like a little bit of talking here like with the teacher or something maybe at night if you have a question that's essentially it yes and you're just alone you can't look. Yes. The silence is not the hard part. What's the hard part? Because it's not like the other people there that I'm dying to chat with.

Right, right. The hard part is meditating all day long. You wake up at five in the morning, you're basically meditating until you go to bed. It feels like time is forever. The seconds are landing hard, man. It's- Tick. Yes.

Tick. Wow. That's the tough part. It's like eight hours of meditation or more. You have breakfast, lunch. You do some walking or something. I added it up. I can't remember.

Between seated and walking meditation, it's like between six and eight hours a day. Unbelievable. And you're supposed to be mindful on your mindful game, basically paying attention all the time. So as you eat, you're supposed to eat really slowly. When you're walking between things, you're supposed to be doing it really slowly. There's some people on this meditation retreat that I was on who were like moving in slow-mo all the time. But what happened was the first four or five days, terrible. And then I had, I don't know, breakthrough that I don't know if you, whatever. I don't want to be overly dramatic. I just had a moment that lasted, I would say, about 36 hours where I was probably the happiest I've ever been.

Wow. Why? I was dragged kicking and screaming into the present moment. Instead of wandering off into rumination or projection, I was like right there with whatever's happening. And my senses were incredibly sharp. Everything looked vivid. I could hear the birds in the trees my food tasted amazing um i wasn't obsessing about things i was just enjoying and uh being right there with everything that was happening right there and that's your life by the way i mean that should be our lives except we're uh cursed with these prefrontal cortesies, which gives us the ability to make iPhones and build skyscrapers, but it also yanks us away from reality all the time.

On a day-to-day basis, is it to be present? Is it to have a vision and dream and be thinking forward, thinking of how we can become better for this better future? What do you think is the, or is it to focus on the past? What do you think is the purpose? I think that's an amazing question that I am probably ill-suited to answer. But let me give you a, I would, my, I haven't thought this through as you can probably tell. So let me say my gut tells me there are several purposes. The first of which would be to be of use to other people and to the world, I would say.

And the second of which is you can't do that if you don't have your shit together. So this is not my analogy, but the analogy that I've heard used is a little bit like when the oxygen comes down in an airplane when they're having trouble, they always say put your own mask on first before you help others. So I think those are the two arenas in which we should be playing. How do we stay present when there's just so much happening and so much in the past and so much in the future that we're thinking about? How do we come back to the present? Look, I don't think you need to be perennially present.

I think that's a little too much to ask. Although somebody like Eckhart Tolle will tell you that he is. And if that's true, you know, awesome. That works for him. Yes. Hashtag blessed. That's awesome. Um, I, I don't know that that's possible for the rest of us. So, I mean, there's a reason why I called the book 10% happier because, I mean, it's a joke. I pulled that out of my ass, but, but I don't think we should put upon ourselves expectations

of perfection that are not attainable. I think you can get a little bit better all the time. And so meditation is a really good tool to help you not get so yanked down the rabbit hole of rumination or projection because basically you're training your brain to come back to whatever's happening right now over and over and over again. And every time you get lost in thought while you're trying to meditate and you notice you've become lost and you start again, that's a bicep curl for your brain, man, and it shows up on the brain scans. You're changing your brain. You're doing a kind of neurosurgery on yourself.

And we have a lot of science now to suggest strongly that it works. Yeah. Do you have a practice daily that you follow? Oh, you asked me that at one point. Yes. So I do. I do a lot now. So I've kind of jumped into the deep end of the pool, or at least I'm trying to.

So I do two hours a day. But my way of doing that is I tell myself I can do it in whatever increments I want whenever I want. Five minutes at a time. I could do five minutes. So this morning I had time, so I did 70 minutes. And so at some point during my goal during the rest of the day will be to get those 50 minutes in somehow.

And I do straight up mindfulness meditation, which is, there are lots of permutations of that. So usually the basic instructions are just to feel your breath coming in and going out. And every time you get lost, go back to the breath. So I do a little bit of that, but I also do what's called noting practice where drop my focus on the breath and just note whatever is happening in my field of consciousness. So thinking, feeling my butt on the chair uh feeling the cold air coming yeah so it's and what the why that's useful is in a sense you're kind of like objectifying your thoughts and and the sensations that come up in your um consciousness and so you're not taking

it also personally and so when anger comes up in your real life you're not yanked around by it so you when somebody cuts you off on the freeway. It's like someone just cut me off on the freeway. You don't have to. You will get angry. You're not going to be transformed into a bowl of jello. But you don't have to take the bait and act on it and start chasing that dude down the highway with your kids in the back of the car. So the cliche here, and I hate meditation cliches, but the one that I love is that what meditation teaches you how to do

is respond wisely instead of reacting blindly. And that's the game. That is mindfulness. Why do you think we react so much to so many situations in our day-to-day life? Because we're unaware of the central feature of our lives, which is our inner narrator. Nobody points out to us that this voice that's offering up terrible suggestions like you know eat the 18th cookie or say the thing that's going to ruin the next 48 hours of your marriage or whatever nobody points out that that voice is is full of shit you know that it's it's just a

you know it is um has no relationship necessarily to reality sometimes it has just a, you know, it has no relationship necessarily to reality. Sometimes it has great ideas, but you have to have mindfulness. Yes, you have to be able to step out of the traffic and to see it with some nonjudgmental remove in order to figure out, in order to separate wheat from chaff, in order to figure out, oh, this is a good idea. This is a terrible one. And mindfulness is a basic human capacity we all have. It's our birthright. It's not just something like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra have. We all have it.

And all you have to do is have it pointed out to you that you have this capacity to step out of the stream of consciousness a little bit and to see it without blindly reacting to it. And meditation teaches you how to do it. Why do you think we were wired and designed to be this way? You know, the best guess I've asked this question a lot. I mean, we evolved for threat detection. You know, we as a species evolved in a time when there were a lot of threats.

You know, saber-toothed tigers, other dangerous human beings, other animals. And so we had to constantly be on guard. And what made us different from other animals is this ability to plan for the future and learn from the past. And so really, we evolved. This part of the brain, the new part of the brain really evolved and allowed us to do some of the things that are the most remarkable feats of humanity. Like I was saying before, plan and build skyscrapers.

Go to the moon, build airplanes. Yes, yes, yes. But it also, you don't see your dog spending a lot of time worrying or planning. By the same token, the dog poops on the rug, so it's not – Mindful. I don't know if you want to call it – there's a difference between being present and mindful, right? Exactly. But the dogs are present.

Yes. My cats are present. I don't know if they're mindful when they're puking on my bed, which they do. They all do, right? Oh, man. Amazing. So no one's really given you a great answer except for that answer. That's the guess.

Yeah. That's the guess. But clearly we also have in our brains slash minds this capacity to be mindful. So and what the genius of the Buddha, and I say this as a guy who describes himself as a Buddhist, but at the same time, I'm not religious. I think Buddhism is not something to believe in, but something to do. the genius of the Buddha was, and lots of other people in history, by the way, not just the Buddha, but the Buddha is the guy who I just know the most about, is that he saw that we have this ability to kind of hack our own minds and get out of this rut.

How many years ago was Buddha? 2,600 years ago. Pretty incredible. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So what's next for this mindful space, this meditation space? There's a lot happening.

There's a lot of voices, experts, books, apps. Where is it heading and how can we know what's right for us or what can we start with? I think it's awesome. I think there's like kind of an explosion now where you're seeing it in corporations. You're seeing it in locker rooms. You're seeing it in – TV stations probably. Absolutely.

We have a meditation room on the 13th floor of our building. Really? In ABC News. We have a meditation room. Do you go in there? Yes. Do you see other people? I do.

I do. When I go, it's usually – because I usually go before I anchor Nightline and so I'm by myself. But there are 3 o'clock meditations almost every day. No way. Yes. So someone's leading the meditation. Actually, you know, they use the meditations from our app. That's cool.

In the room. Okay. And sometimes people lead it and it's a whole mix, but it's taken off on its own. Lots of corporations have meditation rooms now. Lots of, you know, I mentioned before the lead singer of Weezer is a daily meditator, Katy Perry, Lena Dunham, 50 Cent. A lot of people. A lot of people are meditating.

So I think it's an awesome thing. I don't know where it's all heading. Where I hope it's heading is that this is the next big public health revolution. Yeah. I think that – The next yoga. Like the way yoga is becoming mainstream. Yeah.

It's like this is the next. I think we're going to view mental exercise the same way we view physical exercise. Yeah. Physical gyms. Yeah. I mean, there's a – I don't know if you're aware of the meditation center that's here. Unplug. Yeah, unplug.

Yeah. You know, I'm assuming those are going to be opening up like yoga centers. There's one in New York now called Mindful. I just heard that they're opening up – I just got a call from a woman who's opening up a center in Miami. I know there's one in Austin. So it's definitely happening. It's happening. Yeah.

And it's going to be just like yoga, I'm assuming. And there's going to be mindful or meditation centers everywhere. So the question is, I think this is a big business question. Does it become like there are meditation studios like yoga studios? Or is it more something that people do at home that is an app-based thing? So our bet is that it's a mix, but probably more of a private thing. People like to do yoga in private

than other people like to have the group energy. Yes. And being an unplug, I went one time, and you had someone leading, facilitating it, but there was a lot of silence. So she would just kind of facilitate. I think they had maybe some light noises, like some bowl things or something, rhythms being played.

But it was literally just laying on my back and breathing. You almost forgot there were people around you. So I think it's a little bit of both. I think there's something very powerful about being in a room full of people doing it. It is kind of a HOV lane effect. You know that you move a little bit faster when you have friends with whom you're talking or not who also take this seriously.

So I think that's going to be a big thing. I also believe, you know, as you mentioned before, that apps are going to be a big deal. And we're already seeing it. There are lots of great apps out there. We just started, literally just started. I love your advice as somebody who has infinitely more experience in business than I do. We just started a company to build an app that's called 10% Happier Meditation for Fidgety

Skeptics. So it's really aimed at people. I like the name. Thank you. It's really aimed at people who- People like you. Yeah, exactly. The pre-meditation me. I have in mind I'm designing this for the me of like seven years ago who would have said, you know. Laugh at this. Exactly. So this doesn't work. That's fluffy. That's some woo-woo stuff.

problem in the space with meditation is even though it's being accepted in really interesting areas and even though there's scientific evidence it's still too often served up with a pan flute what do you mean by that it's just served up in like a woo-woo way with like pan flute music and crystals and all that stuff and it doesn't need to be presented that way. It just doesn't. I mean, it's, first of all, as soon as you look into your mind, you realize it's funny. Yes. So you can, there's a lot of jokes to be made. So you can do this with a sense of humor. You don't have to be so serious about it. Second of all, it's pretty simple.

It's pretty nuts and bolts. You don't really need to talk to people and address them as grasshopper. It doesn't have to be that way. And so our whole approach is, with the app, is let's talk to people like normal people. Not like they're 75 years younger than me or as if I'm sitting on a mountaintop with robes on. That's just not the way it works. I should say I am not the meditation teacher because I don't know what I'm talking about.

I mean, what I do is we bring in the world's greatest meditation teachers and every day the user gets a clip, like a short clip of me talking to the teacher and then an audio clip where the teacher guides you through it. And then what we do is we give you a coach who you can text with because when people

start to meditate, they have a million questions. Usually, it's a permutation of one question, which is, am I doing this right? But thus far, we've noticed that there are no apps that give you somebody, a real live human being who can answer your questions. So that's what we do. I love it. And what's it called? 10% Happier Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. I love it. And it's on called? 10% Happier Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. I love it. And it's on the App Store? Yes. It's on Android?

You can get it in the Apple App Store. If you have Android, you can get it through 10percenthappier.com. You can get a version for your phone. We'll have it linked up here in the show notes here after this. How many interviews have you done in the app then? Right now, we have four teachers who've taught courses. So we've got a couple of basic courses we're taught with this guy, Joseph Goldstein, who's my teacher, who I think is among the, if not the greatest living Western meditation teacher. He's been doing it for

upwards of 50 years. He was really one of the key guys to bring it here from Asia. He went and learned it in his 20s. Sharon Salzberg is another person on the course, on the platform. And then a couple of younger guys who are specifically teaching courses about how to use mindfulness to eat better and to communicate better. And we're basically going to do infinite courses. We're going to do parenting, depression, health, fitness, stress, lots of areas. I mean, for me, the reason I like, you know, as an athlete, I felt like it's all about your belief. If you believe in yourself, essentially, that might sound a little woo-woo-y, but, you know, when you go against, when I'm competing at the national championships or when I'm competing

against a great competitor, if we both have the same talent, usually it's the person who is willing to work the hardest, who has the best drive, and who believes more and has that little bit of an edge and belief. And it's the voice between our head, you know, in our head, between our ears that tells us whether we're worthy or we're not worthy or whether we should be reactive or angry or resentful or any of these things that aren't serving us to move forward in a positive way. And so the reason I like to talk about it is because I'm just like jock looking dude who's not some spiritual leader or something, you know, and I feel like it works for me. And I feel like if it can work for you, for me, it can work for a lot of people when it's approached in a different way, more relatable way.

So I'm glad you guys are doing that work. You're doing a great thing. I mean, it warms the cockles of my heart to hear somebody who looks like, I don't know, your listeners, your viewers know, but your listeners may not know from being in this room with you. You're a large dude who played football and now plays handball, and you are not the stereotypical evangelist for meditation. So to have you out there is awesome. Yes. This is awesome. Yes. This is different for me.

My friend, Danielle Laporte, was like, you've got to have a crystal in your office. So I was like, all right, send me a crystal. So I'm just like, I'm trying to add a little bit of it to you. I didn't mean to get in your case about that. It's all good. That's all good. But it is awesome that you're doing that. I really do think it's great. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Well, what do you think is the future for you? Besides this app and this movement, what's with your future for TV? Are you still going to continue doing GMA and all these other – what's the plan for you? Being a meditator has not dimmed my ambition. I want to talk about that before I forget though because getting back to your point about how it helps you as an athlete, what you were describing there, and I knew I wanted to say this, was getting in your own way. So when they talk about being in the zone, it means just not letting the voice between your head mess you up while you're trying to make a free throw. That's it. And that is what meditation can help with.

it. So, and, and, and even though I'm better now, you know, 10% better at like not getting in my own way. Uh, and, and I'm a little 10% calmer and a little bit nicer than I used to be. I'm still really ambitious. I still get in my own way. I still say, you know, I make this joke a lot. My, if my wife were here, she would give me 90% still a moron speech. So I'm, I still retain the capacity to be a complete schmuck at times. So at times I'm just trying to be better all the time and I'm still super ambitious so you know you asked me about what I would like to do in TV I still want to keep moving up I love what I do I love being a journalist

what's the dream segment or spot for you? I sort of feel like I have if somebody told me today you're going to continue co-anchoring Nightline and the weekend edition of GMA in perpetuity, I'd be cool with that. But if somebody told me today, hey, we're going to give you an evening newscast or a morning newscast during the week, I'd also be psyched to do that. So I'm – or whatever.

There are a million things I'd be psyched to do. This is kind of the top of the game. Is there another level? It gets – well, sure, there are definitely levels up from where I am. There are people who are significantly more prominent than I am, but I'm in a funny space now where I'm simultaneously very happy with where I am, but also would be happy if somebody wanted to give me a bigger job too. Right, right.

What I've gotten a little bit better at doing is not sort of like burning with the kind of negative style of ambition where I just can't stand that somebody else has something. And we sort of labor under this false impression that if somebody else has a position that they got it instead of us, that we would have gotten it if they hadn't. I don't think that's true. I don't look at people who have bigger jobs than me and think, well, they only got that because, you know, whatever, because they, you know, for some random reason, I should have that job, et cetera.

I don't think that's true. And I think get dropping that illusion has been very useful. Okay. Final few questions. This has been great. And I want to make sure everyone goes and follows up. Check out the show notes. Download the Okay. Final few questions. This has been great and I want to make sure everyone goes and follows up. Check out the show notes.

Download the app. Get the book. We'll have it all linked up here afterwards. Thank you. Final few questions. What are you most grateful for in your life recently?

Baby. I had a baby 14 months ago. Your son, right? Yes, Alexander. You just saw him. Cutie. Every time I'm on the road. Thank you.

My favorite question to ask him is what does a sheep say? He said, that's the only question I can answer the road, thank you. Yeah. My favorite question to ask him is what does a sheep say? And he said, that's the only question. Right. Right. He, you know, the annoying thing about having children is that all of the cliches are true. Really?

Yes. It's the greatest thing in the world. You never felt love like this before. It's all true. Really? All true. I hate to say it. Wow.

As a man who, as I'm on record in this podcast saying I hate cliches, they're all true. And it's the greatest thing. Really? Yes. It's also the worst thing. You know, like the worst thing. Like just when you fall asleep, the little shit starts screaming, you know. Oh, man.

And you have to get used to a poop, which will really make you more humble. Changing diapers. When your baby just throws up on you. Yes. He's puked on my face. He's puked on my shoes. You're like, I got five million people I got to go talk to right now. He doesn't care.

I got to deal with this little baby throwing up on me. He does not care. Amazing. He's a little karmic torpedo aimed at my head. Wow. But it is incredible. And when I'm on the road, as happened right before this podcast, my wife and child will FaceTime me and I'll, you know. Amazing.

It is a huge burst of dopamine. Amazing. If you had all the money in the world to solve one problem in the world, what would that be? What would you use the money for? Poverty. Why? We live in a, well, now as I'm saying that, I'm thinking of a bunch of other things, but I thought they were all interconnected because I think of poverty and climate change. Inequality, obviously, is part of poverty.

Climate change is disproportionately going to affect the poor who live in countries like Bangladesh and stuff like that. I think climate change is the biggest story of our lives that nobody's talking about, and that the media, myself included, is not doing a good enough job to highlight. Yes, it's a big, difficult story to cover. There isn't a huge appetite for it. So I guess I'm doing this thing of giving you two answers when you ask for one, but poverty and climate change are the two things. And I'll add a third, which is racism and or bigotry of any variety, you know, and these are all intertwined in ways, deep ways, because they all really go back to the voice is in our heads. But bigotry and racism, religious bigotry, prejudice against people of different sexual orientations, all of that, I don't know if there's enough money in the world to solve

this problem, but it's a big problem. Would you call it education? Would you call it being educated in this way? Look, I think mindfulness will help. I do. I'm not a utopian. I don't think that mindfulness is going to solve all of our problems, but I do think... Help us be happier,

friendlier. Yes, I do. I think, and less greedy, and less judgmental, and you know, if in fact I'm right that it's the next big public health revolution, think about the last couple of public health revolutions, oral hygiene and physical fitness. So they had a good effect, but they didn't change behavior so much. This one could change behavior. Lowering reactivity,

lowering your emotional reactivity will impact bullying, road rage, politics, journalism, and perhaps big things like climate change, which is, this is a sort of term of art, you know, a tragedy of the commons where we, it's a problem that's so big that it's easy to ignore because one country and one person often feel like they can't do anything about it. It's so big. I think there are ways that it could boost the sort of global level of wisdom and selflessness that it's possible it could be a positive contribution to some of these deep, deep problems. Yeah. Biggest lesson you've learned from all the years of interviewing people and being on TV? Besides the mindfulness stuff, what's the biggest thing that has come up for you, the biggest thing you've learned about yourself? The hardest thing I've had to learn,

which you are great at naturally, is listening. You have this ability when you're interviewing. I feel like you're listening to me and you're not. You have to know what your next question is going to be, but I feel like you're actually listening and then asking something based on something i just said yes i was really bad at that i was always just kind of like planning the next thing and not listening which made me a much worse interviewer because i wasn't um spontaneously reacting to things right being as present as present. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. So you're really good at that and naturally, and I think for me, that's something that I've over time gotten a little bit better at. I can certainly do better. Sure. Well, it's definitely been training on my end and practice.

So it's not easy to do. That's for sure. No. Okay. Thanks for the compliment. Final two questions. And this is what I like to ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. And, uh, it's the final day for you. Many, many years in the future, all your friends and family are there. It's a happy moment, but everything you've ever created has been deleted and erased all your TV interviews,

your book, your apps, everything, gone. And they say, you know, we have a piece of paper and a pen. We want you to write down the three truths that you know to be true about your life and your experience that you could pass on to us as wisdom for us to live our lives. What would you write down as those three

truths? Don't be an asshole. Try to make awesome shit. Meditate. Awesome. I love it. Final question before I ask it. Is there anywhere we should go follow you online?

Anywhere we should go to connect with you specifically? Where do you hang out most online? I'm on Twitter a lot. We also have 10percenthappier.com, Facebook.com. At Dan Harris on Twitter? Yeah, at Dan B. Harris. The B is for beefcake.

Okay, awesome. That's actually not true. Your viewers will maybe not be able to tell that I'm small and scrawny. You remind me of Bob Costas a little. Has anyone told you that? No, but I see it actually. I've met him and he's also like my height.

He's shorter than you, I think, actually. He may be shorter than me. He's like 5'5", maybe. Yeah, so that's shorter than me. Okay, cool. And final question before I ask, I want to acknowledge you, Dan, for your willingness to see what was in the way for you and to get out of your own way, to start getting feedback and information to support your growth.

Cause it sounds like for many years you were cynical and thought a specific way, but then you had a challenge and you were willing to get out of your own way and see, okay, maybe some of the people know some things that I don't know that could serve me and therefore serve the world in a better way by it helping me. And so I want to acknowledge you for taking a leap and working on this because this is

a big topic that I think not enough people are consuming and taking in. And by you with a platform and being able to get the message out there, you're serving a lot of people in a powerful, loving way. I think it's really important what you're doing. So I want to acknowledge you for that. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah.

Thank you. And final question is what to acknowledge you for that. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. And final question is, what's your definition of greatness? What is my definition of greatness? I would go back to my list before of the three truths. The definition of greatness would be the first two there of doing or building something awesome that you truly believe in. And in the process, building and maintaining great relationships, not being an asshole is a sort of flippant way of saying being a good, compassionate person, because that actually will be the greatest source of your happiness. And also, by the way, you need those other people in order to build the thing that you

want to build. Right. Jerry Harris. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Great job. Thank you. And there you have it, guys.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please tag me on Twitter, at Lewis Howes, and on Instagram, at Lewis Howes, and let me know what you thought. Also, subscribe to our YouTube channel. We are putting out videos two to three times a week right now, inspirational videos, the full video interviews of our podcast as well. It's all on YouTube at YouTube slash Lewis Howes. Make sure to subscribe, like, leave a comment, share it with your friends, and let me know what you think of the new video series. I hope you guys enjoyed this. Make sure to check out the book of Dan Harris.

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