Dan Harris
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This message comes from The Thrive Center. Their podcast, With and For, hosted by Dr. Pam King, explores big questions about meaning and purpose through conversations that bring psychology and spiritual wisdom together.
Follow With and For wherever you're listening. My own mind. My favorite thing I ever wrote was the first line to my first book, which was, the voice in my head is an asshole. And I think that is true. I think it's true for many people.
I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation.
Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me.
My guest this week is Dan Harris.
The next time you're in a spiral of anxiety, ask yourself this question. Is this useful? We often and very quickly cross the line between constructive anguish and useless rumination.
Dan Harris and I have been on parallel tracks for much of our career. We both covered faith and spirituality as reporters.
We were colleagues for a while at ABC, and then several years later we both ended up leaving our news jobs. I started this very show, and Dan created the incredibly successful podcast 10% Happier, based on his book of the same name. He's generous and wise and the only Buddhist I know who can drop the F word into a mantra, and somehow it works. I'm so happy to welcome Dan Harris to Wildcard. I love that. That's my innovation in the worlds of the Dharma. That's your value add to the Dharma. We're just going to start with memories.
What is Dan Harris's journey to becoming a happiness expert?
First three cards. I hold three up, and you pick randomly. One, two, or three? Two. Two. Feeling two. Two. At what point in your life did you spend the most time alone? Well, there was a strange twist in my life. That you made a reference to, which is after decades of being a hard-charging news anchor, I got interested in meditation. As a result of that, I now every year do a 10-day silent meditation retreat. And in fact, this year I'm going to do, on the urging of my teacher, I'm going to do 14 days. So that is a lot of alone time and in silence. And it's challenging. I... A lot of people focus on the silent aspect of silent retreats. Not talking isn't a huge problem for me. It's loneliness. And there's a way in which it kind of brings up this primordial sadness, like a homesickness.
And even though I am homesick for my actual home, it's kind of I don't know. It's deeper than that. I think one of the psychological trends for me in looking back at my life is a fear of feeling unmoored, alone, adrift. And some of the earliest traumas, and this may be a small T trauma, for me, I've had a very... charmed life. But going to summer camp as a kid was incredibly hard for me. And I used to have these really intense, gnarly bouts of homesickness. I have a very clear memory of sitting in the back of my dad's shit-brown Plymouth Valiant and weeping in his lap on visiting day. And I would be bereft every summer for a period of time, and then I would recover.
So loneliness is a root of sadness for you, yeah.
Yes, loneliness.
How does mindfulness help in managing anxiety?
Yes, but it's loneliness, but it's also this kind of yearning for some connection or stability. Homesickness feels like a better word for it, but like a much, much bigger than wanting my actual home, wherever that happens to be in the moment. But why – what do you get out of putting yourself intentionally in that position? I mean, 10 days is a long time. Now you're going to do 14 days, silent retreat, no people, hardly. I mean, I guess it's exposure therapy. I don't know. Well, a couple things to say about it. The perfect question – I'm laughing because it's perfect – One of the immense sources of power in mindfulness meditation is that you see that some poet said this, maybe Rilke, I can't believe I'm the kind of guy who quotes poetry now, but anyway, that no feeling is final.
Yeah.
Everything changes all the time. And so when you get really quiet and your mind is tuned up because you're doing this exercise of trying to focus on one thing at a time, usually the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, and then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again, what it helps you see is
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:53
2
What is Dan Harris's journey to becoming a happiness expert?
1:53–4:09
3
How does mindfulness help in managing anxiety?
4:09–11:07
4
What challenges does Dan face during silent meditation retreats?
11:07–13:45
5
How does loneliness influence Dan's understanding of happiness?
13:45–18:42
6
What is the significance of 'good-ish' in Dan's philosophy?
18:42–50:58