TEN PERCENT HAPPIER WITH DAN HARRISHOSTED BYTEN PERCENT HAPPIER
Dan Harris is a fidgety, skeptical journalist who had a panic attack on live national television, which led him to try something he otherwise never would have considered: meditation. He went on to write the bestselling book, 10% Happier. On this show, Dan talks with eminent meditation teachers, top scientists, and even the odd celebrity. Guests include everyone from His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Brené Brown to Karamo from Queer Eye. On some episodes, Dan ventures into the deep end of the pool, covering subjects such as enlightenment and psychedelics. On other episodes, it’s science-based techniques for issues such as anxiety, productivity, and relationships. Dan's approach is seemingly modest, but secretly radical: happiness is a skill you can train, just like working your bicep in the gym. Your progress may be incremental at first, but like any good investment, it compounds over time.
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Circumstances, but I turned to it primarily for my own benefit and my own use. And a part of the stoic tradition is writing about it. And so there really isn't this separation between sort of being a student of something and then writing about that stuff. And so that's what ultimately led to me writing my own books about it, but but it started just because I needed the medicine, so to speak. You were unhappy and stressed. This was the medicine that came over the transfer for you, and you just went deep on it. That's exactly right. I mean, I read Meditations when I was about 19 years old. I was in college, but I didn't hear about it in college. And reading what is essentially the private thoughts, the meditations of the most powerful man in the world, There's something about meditations that I think is so fascinating because on if you were to describe a work of ancient literature, you probably would struggle to come up with something that on its face could be more inaccessible. Right? If I'm gonna describe to you a work written, you know, roughly 2000 years ago by an all powerful emperor who rules over an enormous army, a colonial empire, ahead of the most powerful army on earth, literally worshiped as a god in his own lifetime, and he's writing notes about an obscure school of ancient philosophy to himself in Greek, never intending it to be published. The idea that this would be of use to anyone is absurd on its face and yet when I sort of crack open this book in my college apartment in Riverside, California, it just immediately speaks to me. And it's been speaking to people for centuries because the incredible specificness of it somehow creates a kind of universality and relatability about fundamentally what it means to be a human being in a world that you don't control and to try to make sense of other people, try to make sense of your own desires and aversions.
Whenever it feels like things are uncertain, We can return to the practice of trusting You can open your eyes now and begin to move your hands and feet Thank you for your practice today. May you continue to trust life? Breath by breath. Thanks again to 7 a. You can find more meditations like this one over on the 10% happier app. And if you wanna learn more about the meditation party events we're doing at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck in both May November, go to Dan Harris dotcom, and you can get your tickets. We'll put a link in the show notes.
I'm interviewing you just as you stepped off stage after having given a triumphant TED Talk, which I don't know if it'll be out by the time this podcast goes up, but it's amazing. And one of the things you say in the talk is if you were celebrating your 874th birthday, I don't know if that's exact number, but in that zone, you would be like, as you said in the talk, begging for death. Begging. We'd be so over it. You know, right now we we know that our time is finite, even if we're not living constantly in relationship to it. We know our time is finite. I think death can be a really powerful motivator. If we had all the time in the world, why nothing would matter. Like, why would you try? You know, nothing would make a difference. Death is useful. But why am I so scared of it? Because it's scary. We don't know what's happening. We don't know what dying is gonna feel like. We're so used to how we live and living. It's It's also really hard, I think, for the brain. Part of the function of the brain, to me at least, is to experience consciousness, to be here and see you as solid, and to feel this is solid, this chair is solid, etcetera. And so to ask the brain to no longer do that, to ask it to imagine not doing that anymore, it's really hard for it to do. That's its job. And so it makes us uncomfortable. I can imagine what it's like scuba diving. I've never done it, but I can try to imagine. I cannot imagine what it's like to not be experiencing consciousness the way that I am currently. There will be some people listening to this who have a diagnosis. Most people probably not. One of my great fears is getting that diagnosis, that it will happen. There's some reasonable probability that it will happen unless I die suddenly. I have this real fear of, you know, what's it gonna be like to know I'm walking around with this dagger hanging over my head. Of course, we're walking around with it all the time anyway, but just the certainty of it in that way is terrifying to me. Is that scary to you? No. It's not scary. It's not quite comforting either. It just is. Just the fact. So if you get a call tomorrow from your doctor, hey. Something funny showed up
See it. Thank you. Thank you, and congratulations to you on this not so new but new ish book. It seems to have to be doing really well, and I'm I'm I'm very excited to kinda dive into it today. Thanks. Yeah. No. It's been a thrill. It's been an an interesting experience. The first book I've coauthored in decades, as a matter of fact. Yeah. And you had a a an obscure coauthor that you really, you know, kind of giving her a shot at the limelight. I don't know how you found it in your heart to to have the generosity to bring Oprah on board. Well, you know, that's, Dan, that's how I was raised. You know, it's Was she how was she as a coauthor? Was she sort of, like, picking apart your sentences, or, was she pretty, relaxed? She's pretty relaxed. I mean, the the way that the coauthorship worked is I mean, the book was her idea. The book wasn't my idea at all. She read my last book that you and I talked about in your show called From Strength to Strength, and she also reads My Call in the Atlantic. And she called me and she said, hey. This is Oprah. And I'm like, yeah. This is Batman. But it was Oprah. I mean, it was the voice. Right? And I I didn't know her at all. But as you know, when you're doing something that has a a public audience, who knows who's listening or or reading. And and she said, you know, just read From Strength to Strength. Why don't you come on my show? I went on her podcast. We were like a house on fire. Exactly the same basic mission. Lift people up and bring them together using ideas. But we have different ways of doing it. You know, she introduces ideas and people to her public, whereas I am the ideas, or at least I'm the guy who's supposed to be processing the ideas. I was, trained as a scientist to do exactly that. And she said, you know, if I still had my show, she says, you know, I used to have a show. Right? I said, yes. I'm aware. I'm aware. She's lovely because, you know, she doesn't assume anything. And she says, if I had my show, I'd have you on as an expert on the science of happiness 30 times, and then you'd have your own following. She said, but, you know, I don't have the show anymore. I'm just doing different
