Chapter 1: 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.
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Chapter 2: 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.
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Chapter 3: 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 is how quickly the mind is working all the time. We're moving.
We're like, as my meditation teacher says, throughout the day, we're kind of like a bee in a jar, moving up through excitement or interest and then down through loneliness or anger or fear or whatever. We're just cycling through these thoughts and emotions and urges so quickly all the time. And what happens on retreat is
you start to, and this can happen in a daily practice too, you just start to see how wild and chaotic the mind is. And as a result, you're not so owned by it. And so I do go through a period of loneliness or homesickness, usually in the first couple of days of retreat. But the power is seeing Oh, yeah, I can be with this, and it's going to change. And you can be with you, right?
It's also like, I'm just going to sit with myself and all that myself contains. Not all of it's awesome. Yes. And this is a little out there, so you may want to cut it. But then you start to see, like, what is this thing I'm calling a self? How solid is that? And that's a very interesting, sometimes a little scary, but ultimately liberating thing.
Because then you don't take your emotions, your anxiety, your anger, whatever...
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Dan face during silent meditation retreats?
We're just constantly moving through the world and meeting other people, baristas, the people you give your clothes to at the dry cleaner, coming into NPR today. I met Summer, who's one of your producers. And these don't have to be long exchanges. It's just like a little chit-chat. Summer grew up in Las Vegas, and I was telling her about how I took my son to Vegas, and he loved it.
And, you know... neither of us may ever ultimately remember this interaction, but it's a little hit of dopamine that is available to all of us as we move through the world. So let me answer your actual question about a stranger interaction that made me feel loved. Just to set this up a little bit, I, notwithstanding the fact that I'm
allegedly some sort of happiness expert, you know, continue to be... Only 10% happier. Yeah, exactly. Thank God I called the book 10% Happier. I have lots of challenges, you know, and one of them is that I have really intense claustrophobia. Oh, yeah. I know this one. It's gotten worse over the years. Really? And... So I struggle on elevators and airplanes. It's a real challenge for me.
And there's a... A studio in New York City where I often record podcasts when I'm not recording from my home studio. And one day I showed up at the studio and I was in the middle of this, I was in a particularly bad place with my claustrophobia. And it was the first time I'd been there. And I saw, I looked at the elevators and they looked really small and scary to me.
And I kind of was panicking and I had a suitcase and all this stuff with me And the security guard looked at me and I said, hey, can I just, can I walk up? And he's like, it's 16 flights, dude. You've got all this stuff. And he said, he got up from his desk, put his blazer on and said, I'm going to ride with you. He somehow knew what was going on with me. His name is Barry, B-A-R-I.
And I see him all the time because I go to the studio. And he rode with, he said, I'll hold your hand if you want. And I didn't need him to hold my hand, but he just talked to me about where he's from and where his family lives. And we made it to the 16th floor.
And even though I'm slightly more stable in my claustrophobia, having done a lot of what's called exposure therapy, every time I go to the studio, Barry rides the elevator with me.
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Chapter 5: How does loneliness influence Dan's understanding of happiness?
Oh, come on. This is a beautiful story. Mm-hmm. That's a beautiful story. I love that he just saw that and didn't make a big deal out of it. He was just like, this is what we're doing. I'm just going to wind up with you. I got you. Last one in this round. One, two, or three. One. You knew. One. You're feeling one. When did you first find a group of peers who really understood you?
I remember the exact moment. Really? Yes. So I had a really good group of friends in high school and also some good friends in college. But I was always jealous of my little brother who loved his college so much and really had this crew that just he felt they were so smart and he felt so embedded in it. And I never had that.
All through my 20s, I was kind of moving around in television news from small market to small market. And I had friends, but I just didn't – I never felt like I had my crew. And – And then when I turned 30, or actually in my late 20s, I moved to New York City and started working at ABC News. And for the first couple of years, I was traveling so much. It was post 9-11.
I was in war zones and I was just, you know, away for long periods of time. And I came home in 2003 after, I think, six months in Iraq. And I didn't have... I really just... The few friends I had in New York City had moved away and really didn't have... I felt very lonely. We're coming back to this. A guy from work, a guy I didn't even really like that much, invited me to a party.
At that party, I met a bunch of people I really liked. One of them, who's still one of my best friends to this day, her name is Kayama. Kayama came over to me and said, we're having a party tomorrow night. You should come. Don't bring that guy. She said, I like you, I don't like your friend, but you should come to this party tomorrow night. And at that party, I met another guy named Willie.
And Kayama and Willie, and now our massive cinematic universe of friends, those are my people. And my life is like a before and after that weekend. So I have to ask you, what was it about those people in particular that made you feel understood in a way that you hadn't before? Why did those become your friends? I really like smart weirdos.
I guess I come off as, you know, I was a former anchorman. I kind of still talk like an anchorman. You don't present as weird, Dan. You don't present as weird. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I am weird. I mean, you know, I'm the guy who like needs help getting on an elevator and And, you know, goes on silent meditation retreats. I'm definitely a weirdo.
And part of why I'm so happy not to be in the news industry is, you know, I have a much more creative output these days. And there are in our extended friend group, there are writers and artists and writers. people who do all sorts of things, and that just makes life, and I'm married to a doctor, and so it's very diverse in every possible way, and that just makes life more interesting.
Before we start round two, I'm going to step back from the game and talk about your podcast and where you're at in your professional life, which I think is a good place from the outside, it seems to be. And tell me if my math is right. Is this 10 years of doing your podcast? It is, right? 10% happier? Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. I mean, you're a former news person.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of 'good-ish' in Dan's philosophy?
to all evidence-based stuff to help you upgrade your life. I'm just following my own interests here. I'm interested in how to sleep better, how to exercise without being driven by self-hatred, how to improve your work life, how to improve your home life. I want to talk about all these things because, as discussed, I'm a bit of a mess myself. And so I'm just kind of using this.
The way many of the psychology researchers I interview talk about their own work is research is me search. And that's what's happening on the podcast. Yeah, for sure. I mean— I think that's what's happening in your work. Yes, 100%. No, I started this because I have my own questions.
And it's helpful to hear from other people if they're still in the – if they're in the muck of those same questions and how they've managed their way out or conclusions or if they're just still swimming in the existential goo of it all. I mean, you talk about how the podcast has evolved to be, you know, let's just look at all of our life and different facets of it and how we can improve.
But I do feel like this optimization culture can sometimes feel oppressive. Like everything can always be better. And so how do we make it better in my sleep? And I got the rings and I got the apps that tell me the stuff and everything. And sometimes do you just want to throw it all up and be like, on today's episode, how to just be cool with having things not be better than they are?
It's a huge theme on our show, and it's a huge topic of discussion on my team. I have a really – mixed relationship with this idea of optimization. I am naturally somebody who wants to track my sleep and count my steps and all that stuff, but I think it's a really tricky thing to do without driving yourself crazy. There's a great expression, the subtle aggression of self-improvement.
I think, however, if you can switch the motivation to, and I'm going to use a loaded word, but if you switch the motivation to love, it just becomes simpler.
So one of the things that I've gotten into the habit of saying throughout the day before I meditate or before I exercise or before I go to bed is, and this is a little kind of off-brand in its earnestness, but I'm doing this, fill in the blank, exercise, whatever. so that I can be stronger and happier, so that I can make other people stronger and happier.
That tweak to my motivation... Yeah, it's not just about you. Yes, it is about me. It's cool. I think it's totally fine. Self-love is really important. In fact, I think it's the unlock for a whole spiral of benefits because how we are with ourselves... inexorably redounds to how we are with other people. And so if you can take care of yourself, that's not self-indulgence and it's not weakness.
Um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of how I think about it. And I, I, on the show that the spirit very much is, look, this is a menu, not a to-do list. We're going to explore all these things, but you should take what you want. Like, uh, whatever works for you is, is cool. Like, uh, there's,
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