Ashlyn Harris
speaker
188 appearances
15 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Ashlyn Harris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You need to find as many ways as possible to wake back up, and you just described meditation is a great way to pound this stuff into your neurons. It's probably too aggressive of an analogy, but it gets it into your molecules in a way. And another thing you also described earlier is having good friends.
You know, if you can surround yourself with people who are also taking this thing seriously, that is a great way to wake yourself back up. And also, by the way, is a great way to get you out of your attachment to the sort of, I don't know if this is the appropriate term to use, but the sort of smallest, most superficial version of yourself, the brand of Dan, the brand of Jay.
Well, if you're talking to your best friend and he's got a problem and you're helping him with it, another word for that would be generosity, right? If you're being generous in some way, that's going to get you out of your head. That is a form of letting go.
There's a little line that I have, which is impolite, but the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass. And, you know, if you're being generous, your head's out of your ass. Even if you have ulterior motives, which I think we unfairly demonize. Like, it's okay to give because, you know, you have some... There's something in it for you.
By the way, there is something in it for you. The brain is wired to experience intense reward in the act of generosity. That's cool. But you're still more of your bandwidth...
focused on the benefit to somebody else than there would be if you were like mindlessly scrolling or binging or eating or whatever it is and it is just fundamentally getting your head out of your ass in whatever form you choose and it doesn't have to be giving money it can be holding the door open for somebody like i i sometimes ask people to do this little mental
very easy mental game of like pay attention the next time you hold the door open for somebody what does that feel like feels good if you're paying attention that feeling is infinitely scalable in a way that the pleasure of instagram or ice cream is not and i just you can ride that insight not that i do it perfectly if at all but you can if you're so inclined ride that insight all the way to a significantly greater levels of happiness
Yeah. It doesn't mean you should ever do it. I just, it's just the endless part that you should lose.
There's a way in which you can assume that sitting and meditating or even going to a, can you believe this dude went to a monastery for 10 days a couple days ago? That's not going to help him with his edge, but actually it does help you. It does help you. Do you want to be less emotionally reactive? Do you want to be more focused? Do you want to have better relationships with your collaborators?
Okay, do you think going to a monastery is going to help or hurt with those things? It's going to help with all of those things, and those are the things we need to be successful. We've been sold through hustle culture, this idea that, you know, thank God it's Monday. I've got to rise and grind and all of that stuff.
But that that is, in my experience, a great way to burn out when, in fact, the cycle that you just talked about of. uh, retreat to advance kind of, you know, you, you take some, you don't have to do it. It doesn't even have to be a retreat. It can be just five minutes of meditation every day that that is filling your tank in a way that allows you to engage in the world more effectively.
And so these, these two things are not in opposition in my experience. And you're a walking example of that. Like you spent time being a monk and that has helped you build a business that helps other people that helps you do more inner work. Boom.
I'm actually, I'm excited. You're interviewing me right now, but in like two minutes, we're going to turn this around and I'm going to interview you. Because we come from different traditions. So I actually come into my discussion with you with a lot of curiosity about what your meditation is like. So from a Buddhist standpoint, it's for beginners, really not complex.
And a lot of people worry that it's going to be, you know, esoteric or impossible, but it really isn't. There's really three steps for beginning mindfulness meditation. And by the way, I keep talking about Buddhism, but this meditation that I'm talking about now is secular. There's no religious lingo or metaphysical claims. It's just a very simple secular kind of exercise for the brain.
And the first step is just to sit or lie down comfortably, close your eyes. And the second step is to bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. For some people, the breath can make you a little anxious if you're focusing on that. And if that's you, then you just pick something else like the feeling of your body sitting or lying down.
So that's step number two. First, get into a comfortable position sitting or lying down. Second, pick something to focus on like your breath or the feeling of your body. And then the third step is the most important because as soon as you try to do this... Your mind is likely to go into mutiny mode. You're having all these random thoughts and urges and emotions.
And at this moment, the voice in people's heads often swoops in and tells them this whole story about how they're failed meditators. I mean, you were talking about this earlier, but that voice is wrong. The whole goal in meditation is just to notice that you've become distracted and to start again and again and again. And the waking up from distraction is not proof of failure.
It's actually proof of success because the whole goal here is to get more familiar with this inner conversation that we're all having, this inner narrator that is chasing us out of bed in the morning and is yammering at us all day long. You just want to get more familiar with this cacophony so that it doesn't own you as much. And so it's really that simple.
Pick one thing to focus on, usually the breath. Then in a few seconds in, you'll start having random thoughts about like what kind of bird was big bird or where do gerbils run wild, whatever. All these random thoughts. As soon as you wake up from those thoughts, blow them a kiss and go back to the breath, back to the breath.
over and over and over again, and that's like a bicep curl for your brain, and that's what we see on the brain scans of people who meditate, that the area of the brain associated with attention or focus changes in a positive way. Meanwhile, the area of the brain associated with stress shrinks, and this is an exercise that anybody can do.
Showing 121–140 of 188 · page 7 of 10
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