Dan Harris

It's not chill.

That was a hard thing.

So I think at its core, the question tends to be about what's a thing, a negative thing you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn.

But the thing that comes to my mind is like, well, I thought I was pretty great, and it turns out I was kind of a jerk.

was a revelation to me.

Have you ever heard the expression, self-knowledge is always bad news?

No, but that's so true.

Yeah.

I had a story in my head that I didn't fully crystallize until a couple of years ago.

And the story was that I'm a bad person.

I think it has its roots in

childhood and some of the kind of family dynamics.

And, uh, yeah, I just got it in my head that like, I was just irretrievably selfish and mean.

Uh, I had a bullying incident when I was a kid where I was the bad guy.

Um, and I, I think that was a key moment where I just kind of internalized like, Oh yeah, I'm, I'm the bad guy.

And, uh,

That was just a big part of my operating system and was why I would get very defensive any time I got tough feedback.

I would just overreact because it was triggering this thing that I didn't want to look at.

What shifted?

Well, lots of therapy and meditation and getting feedback and taking it in after periods of defensiveness.