Dan Harris on Becoming a Business-Minded Entrepreneur

This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Holds on Bloomberg Radio this weekend on the podcast Wow, I have a fun, extra fun, extra special Anyway, I have a really fun guest. Dan Harris wrote the book Ten Percent Happier. It's a short read on how he was kind of messed up, depressed, using drugs and literally had a panic attack on Live TV where he was a newsreader and an anchor. And he tells the story of how he

Harris, Thank you Berry, happy to be here.

So let's talk a little bit about your background. Bachelor's in English at Colby College was the plan Oway's journalism. From day one.

I had TV news and the movies mixed up in my mind. I kind of thought they were the same thing.

So I sometimes they are.

Yes, Yes, I had this desire to do something fun and glamorous. TV news is fun, but not very glamorous. But I went and did film school here in New York City at NYU for a semester while I was at Colby College, and it was not very good at film, but I did love the documentary course I took. So I then took a lot of internships and TV news and then I went off in that direction.

So glamorous, You're in Baghdad covering the war, you fly right into the middle of Katrina. That seems like sexy, real stuff happening. Was some of television glamorous.

Yeah, I think when I got to the national and international level, it was pretty glamorous. I was more talking about right out of college. I spent seven years in local news in places like bangor main or Portland, Maine. I was covering tire fires and murders with a musket and like lots of random stuff.

So let's forward a little bit. Not only you at ABC for a while, but eventually they you to be a fill in nights and weekends and late and then you get a call to fill in working with you know, some of the bigs, and you have what can only be described as a panic attack on live television. Tell us about that experience.

It was awful. This was two thousand and four. I was filling in as a newsreader. That's like the person would come on at the top of each hour and read the headlines on Good Morning America. And I was a few seconds into my spiel and just lost it and my heart started racing, lungs seized up, I couldn't breathe, which is inconvenient if you're trying to do the news that can be Yeah, it what didn't work And I had to quit right in the middle of my thing.

Now, to be fair, and you can find it on YouTube and elsewhere. You look like you're in a little bit of distress, you have a little bit of difficulty breathing. I'm sure it felt much worse on the inside. But credit to you. You kind of kept it together long enough to finish one of the segments and then tapped out, even though you had a couple more segments to go.

Yeah, I mean it helps to be a sociopath, you know, like I can really hide my emotions. I think you know. I was thirty two at the time. I had spent basically my whole adult life on camera. I really knew how to keep it together in every circumstance. I'd been in war zones, and so, yes, you're right, when you look at the video, it's not like I'm there's flop sweat and I'm ripping the mic off and running right with the.

Scene from broadcast news with Albert Brooks like just drenched as always cracks me up. But that said, it leads to the obvious question. You've been in harrowing situations where there's death and destruction literally, not no hyperbole. You were in Iraq and Baghdad and Katrin and a bunch of other horrific situations. What led up to this moment that made it so disorient I.

Think it was being in horrific situations and then coming home and having undiagnosed depression and anxiety, and then self medicating with recreational drugs.

I love the expression self medicating. We're just getting high.

This is what you're saying, Yes, getting high before we self medicate or get high with lots of stuff, sure, shopping, gambling, entertainment, social media, sex, we are food.

There were constant being junkies as.

We're soothing this this inner insatiability, this inner fear. And so for me it was cocaine. And I was not high when I was on the air having the panic attack, So it was only afterwards when I went to a shrink and he asked, what you know, do you do drugs? Could that may be a contributor? And I was like, oh, yeah, well I don't really do drugs, just some blow on the weekend and then I'm back on the desk ready to go.

So let's talk about how this led. I hate the expression journey, but how this led to your next couple of steps. Your preconceptions about meditation were misconceptions, you write in the book tell us why It's funny.

I hate the word journey too. It's like, right, I feel it's so it's so wilful. It's also it's just like played out. It's hackneyed, cliche, And I think a big being personicity about language, or like being picky about the words that I use, is really the only value

Very woo, it's it's uh. And kudos for using the word persnickety, which is a great word. I really appreciate it.

As soon as it came out of my mouth, I was like, oh my god.

No, no, that that works. So we don't love the wou side of dressing up what is really a way to quiet the inner voice that sometimes is really noisy, which leads us to the next step on your path. And again, sorry, you end up either seeing or meeting Eckhart tool tell us a little bit about and I'm not pronouncing his name.

Right, it's a hard name to pronounce, right, But tell us a little bit about him. Okay. So the first thing that happened is I got assigned to cover faith and spirituality for ABC News, which I didn't want to do, but it turned out to be great and I learned a lot. And through that I ended up reading a book by a guy named Eckhart. Totally is the way

Tell us about tole and what did you learn from?

So he presents, at least to my eyes and ears then as just totally off putting. You know, he has this otherworldly ethereality to him. He's this small German Man who writes about having a spiritual awakening and he uses the word vibration a lot. He was not really my cup of tea robes. But but, but I wouldn't be surprised if he given what I read in his book, I wouldn't have been surprised if that's how he showed up. But he's actually just like a guy who wears khakis.

This were canceled at the very least for.

Damn sure, you'd be canceled. And for all of us, like we wake up, we get you know, chased out of bed by this voice, and it's yammering at us all day long, constantly, we're wanting things, not wanting things, judging people, comparing ourselves to other people, running ourselves down. And when you're unaware of this NonStop conversation, which totally calls the ego, when you're unaware of the ego it owns you. And that to me was a huge aha, because I was like, Okay, this is just true and

So you go from the tole a book name of it is.

The one I read is called a New Earth.

But he has like a run of books, a whole run of books.

He's written a whole bunch of books.

And from there you start meditating, tell us about what that initial experience was and when you realized, hey, this is something I could do on a regular basis.

So totally is frustrating because he describes the voice in the head very well, but doesn't actually give you anything to do about it. A friend of mine has joked that he's correct, but not useful, so I was frustrated after meeting him. It was only after bouncing around for a little while in the aftermath of that, that I stumbled upon meditation. And this was like two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, so it was before meditation got cool. It was cool in the sixties and then it then

How did you find you.

With the science? I started reading about all this science that at that point was not well publicized that showed that meditation can rewire key parts of your brain, help with anxiety and depression, both of which I've been dealing with since as a kid. It can help with your blood pressure, boost your immune system. So as a diet in the wool optimizer, the science really made me, you know, intrigued. I was like, oh, okay, maybe I should try this.

Hum. I was struck reading the book how similar some of the advice about mindfulness is to good investing advice. And I'm gonna give you a few lines that I pulled out from the book about how your experience and I can't help but point out how similar it is to good investing advice. Let's start with striving for success is fine as long as you realize the outcome is not under your control. Tell us about that.

First of all, I think it's a really good insight on your part. I do think there is a big overlap between the sanity you want to bring to your everyday mind and the sanity you want to bring specifically to this important area of life investing. So non attachment

Yeah, the best traders I know focus on the process, not the results, because if you have a good process, even if you have a great process, sometimes outside listen, we can't control what the Fed's gonna do, well, what corporate earnings are, or hey, this debt sealing thing, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But the results are only gonna be as good as your process. Plus some randomness of the world.

Absolutely, China shuts down, supply chains get clogged, there's a monsoon in India. I mean, there are so many factors that are hard to predict, political upheavals, and so what do you want to do? Do you want to beat yourself up every time something happens that's outside of your control. Is that gonna help your resilience? Is that gonna make your team feel happy to be at the office. No, what you want to do is have a good process and hope for the best.

So another one, a simple question to ask yourself when you're worrying. Quote is this useful? And I find that to be fascinating. I frequently get calls from clients freaked out about I just saw this new story on TV. What good does worrying about it do? What value is that stress?

Sometimes sometimes some amount of worrying and stress helps I call it constructive anguish motivation. Yeah, or just like thinking through the angles. You know, there's a little bit of hand rigging, and you know, you know, there's a great expression, never worry alone. So I think talking to you, talking to your colleagues, or your friends, or your spouse about investing or anything else actually makes a lot of sense. However,

So this kind of reflects the title itself. Small improvements, incremental changes are much more viable than giant transformational wins. That's a huge insight.

How many times have you had giant transformational moments They don't come across or come they don't come over the transom that often, And often what you think is a giant transformational moment becomes a good memory but doesn't get integrated into your life. Change is hard changes, that's the bad news. The good news is it's totally doable. If you commit to making small changes. The ten percent happier will compound annually like any good investment, and that is

Here's another quote that I really like. Mindfulness represents an alternative to living reactively. Yes, so let's talk about the difference between reacting and responding, which you describe as two very different ways to interact.

With some input, I can imagine a lot of people who are in the world of investing or finance business generally having the feeling that if they get too happy, they'll lose their edge, and that is not what this skill is all about. There's a reason why you see people in c suites and locker rooms meditating because it

Them, surfing the changes of life like that. I have a colleague, Mike Batnik, who has this wonderful chart going back thirty forty years and it's called reasons to Sell. And you see, every year there's some crazy thing that happens that's an excuse to react and sell. But over the whole time, that chart goes from the lower left to the upper right, and the markets compound and go over time. If you react to the reasons to sell,

Absolutely, yeah, you don't want to miss out on dollar cost averaging because you're freaking out about every little jot and tittle in the news. I've like you. I also have a podcast also it mine is called ten Percent Happier, and we spend quite a bit of time talking about the psychology of money and because that's a huge part of the human condition. We need money, but we also don't want to get so obsessed with it that we make irrational decisions.

So you mentioned executives, athletes, a lot of wool streeters very famously meditate, Ray Dallio, pol Tutor Jones, Michael Novogratz, Dan Loebe. The list goes on and on on. Have you worked with any people in finance and how have you found their intensity level and their ability to throttle back a little bit?

Well, then there's acts and billions.

Well, I'm trying to stay away from the fictional character.

It's very interesting get I do a lot of corporate speaking, and a lot of banks bring me in investment banks, big banks, And I think it's really about wanting to wanting to have people who are a more business friendly term, might be emotionally intelligent, who can ride the waves, you know, as we said before, rather than drowning in them, and who can be good leaders instead of acting out all of their neurosis. These are important skills and in any field.

You mentioned some people are concerned they would lose their edge not be competitive. Do you have to be paranoid? And worried all the time to stay at the top of your game.

Do you think it helps like I. I mean, this is something I've wrestled with a lot. To be curious to see what your point of view is. You know, I do a lot of worrying, but at some and I do believe up unto a certain point, it's useful. But at some point it's completely degrading my judgment. It's degrading my sleep, it's degrading my capacity to have an open mind with peripheral vision for new opportunities because I'm

So the key, since you asked me, I'll answer. The key from my perspective is you have to worry about the right things and recognize. So my favorite joke is talking to a manager who is complaining about the FED. First it was quantitative easing, and then it was zero interest rates, and they're complaining, complaining, complaining, And I in the back of my head, I'm always thinking, Oh, this guy's underperformed for a decade and he's blaming the Fed.

I love what you said, worrying about the right things. Prioritize your worry and then stop it, and you know, live your life, get enough sleep though. All of those things will help your performance. Writ large and useless miismatic. You know, constant freaking out is rarely helpful.

So explain to me how do you go from Hey, this meditation thing helps me stay a little centered, quiets the voices in my head to I know, I'll write a book on this.

This is a business story, actually, because I had an entrepreneurial feeling back in two thousand and nine. I think that I was reading all of these books about meditation that were really helpful, but they were also really annoying, and they were written in a cloying sentimental way, and I thought, well, I'm going to write one that has the F word in it a lot, and that tells

That's kind of interesting. I love the premise that practicing meditation and mindfulness will make you a little happier. Why ten percent?

It's funny. I mean it was a joke. I mean I was. I was in a conversation with somebody, one of my colleagues at ABC News, and she was asking me, like, why are you into this meditation thing? What's the matter with you? And I said I was kind of reaching for some answer that would satisfy her, and I said, it makes me like ten percent happier. And I could see that it just made her go from scorn to mild interest, and I thought, Okay, this is my shick.

Ten percent happier, the whole concept of incremental change and not over selling it. And here's the bar, and then we're going to pass the bar. That's a great approach as opposed to all the other books that promised to transform your life and then sit on the shelf, yes, a third read and point.

If you if they really were going to transform your life, those authors wouldn't keep writing more books, right, And that over promising, that kind of reckless hope that is peddled in the darker precincts of the self help world is I think what I was really trying to counter program against.

So the first line of the book just cracked me up. My inner voice is an explain why your inner voice seems to be disagreeing with you.

I think it's a pretty much a statement of the universal you know, of the human condition. We have these gnattering, chattering inner voices that are constantly running us down, constantly making negative comments about other people, and that is you know, we don't that's not actually something we should feel guilty about. I think it's because of evolution. You know, evolution bequeathed

So I don't find my inner voice to be as distasteful as yours. But I have a very noisy internal dialogue. It's lots of distraction, constant input. And my wife says, you know, nothing escapes my notice with sitting out having dinner and after every now and then she's like, tell me about the people in that corner. So well, he came in from the bathroom, zip was open. After the second he walked away, the wife pulled out the phone and stud just peripheral vision. And it's not that I'm

Yeah, I mean, it's it's as with a lot of the things I say. It's meant to be kind of poetic language in the form of a joke, and so yes, what you're describing isn't necessarily as noxious as some of the thoughts that come up in my head. And yet it is making you less happy, and in that sense, it's so. And what my point is is that there are practices that can turn the volume down.

So let's talk a little bit about writing the book. I know, sometimes it's exhilarating, sometimes it's a slog, sometimes it's both. What was your experience like putting this down on paper. I know you spent four years writing.

This, five years, I think, ye I. Whenever anybody says I really love writing, I think, oh, you must be a bad writer, because it's awful. And it just took so much sweat and grit, and I was doing it as a side hustle. I had a full time job as the anchor of Nightline and the anchor of Good the weekend edition of Good Morning America. It was so hard, and I'm now on a I'm writing the sequel right now, and I think I'm in my sixth or seventh year.

It is just so.

Hard for me to write. I'm trying to learn these important lessons and then give it back to you in the form of a narrative. I want you to feel like you're watching a movie and that you could read it in an afternoon, because the story's good and it tugs you along, but I need to weave in all of these teaching points, and for me, the blocking and tackling of that is very, very hard.

It's work, and it's very hard to do on the side if you're just doing that. And then when I was writing my first book, I remember I had to do less because your discipline, your creativity, it's a very very small tank and it gets exhausted pretty quickly. So at the end of a long day to sit down and pound out twenty thirty pages, that's really hard.

You're absolutely right. I mean, that's an insight. I hadn't really thought about this. It's true. I mean, I have retired from ABC News, so I have fewer things on my plate, but I host a podcast which is two almost three times a week.

That's a lot.

It's a lot. And I'm writing this book, and I'm I'm working on some TV stuff and I give so I have a lot of stuff going on still. And one of the biggest battles for me is the tank issue that you just talked about, because if somebody gets on my calendar in the morning, well that completely derails my creative time. And any there's an opportunity cost any amount of time I'm thinking about something else or being creative in somebody else's lane. It reduces my capacity to finish my own work.

When do you do your writing, I personally have found like five to eight in the morning is just the golden hour.

I for me, will get up at around seven or eight, and because for me, I really try to get enough sleep, so I'll get up around seven or eight. I don't have a boss, so I can do whatever that I want, and I work most of the morning, but I interrupt it. So I'll try to not have anything else on my calendar til one or two, and so I will write for that time, but I will interrupt it with meditation and exercise so that I'm not You can't really write for within ninety minutes at a time, in my experience.

There's something to that and then get up from your desk, take a walk around the block, come back. That's when you could do the edit, revise it. But that creative first flow. I love that feeling early in the morning, when it's like a clean paper in a fresh reboot, where it's just tumble out. It's very very different.

I really don't have I have very few moments of joy. It really is mostly suffering for me, and I'm wondering, like can I do this again? I'm fifty one, almost fifty two, and you know, I think I could write small books or more like how to books. But these big books like this one I'm writing now, that is like a movie of a true narrative or like ten percent happier they just read. It takes so much out of me. I'm not sure. Maybe I could do one more before I die, but I don't even know.

So if you break it down into smaller pieces, it's much more doable and putting out, you know, a thousand word columns, eight hundred word columns. So that's all a book is, is a collection of those shorter chats.

Not my books though, because it has this yard it is a movie.

Oh you could have the the thread weaving through the whole tapestry. You could certainly do that.

To me. As soon as that you get into that, it's like it's too it's too real. It's too it's like building the taj Mahal. You know, it's just too that that for me and I maybe just don't have a good brain. But it doing a discrete thousand word s occasionally I write something for the Times or whatever that's hard, but it's it's discrete and I can get

I have two projects I'm working on, and one of them is just trying to stitch together all these previous and the other is something from scratch that's a whole broad overview of something that word one. I wrote the introduction that was pretty much it. It's easier stitching together the previous thoughts then coming up with a whole holistic tapestry from scratch that said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and breaking big projects up

I completely agree with you. I just think the difference here is that in books like ten percent Happier. And in the next book I'm writing, which is called Me a Love Story. I'm glad you get that joke. Some people don't get it.

I think that's very fun.

I'm really trying to make a movie when I mean. What I mean by that is it's a yarn. It's not a it's not me sharing a bunch of ideas with you. It should feel like you're on one person's story the whole way. And weaving the teaching points into that is just really anyway, I'm rambling at this point.

No, no, this is so all good. So what do you make of the claim that really you just need twelve and a half minutes of meditation today to see positive results? I keep seeing ten minutes, twelve minutes. How realistic is that?

Okay, So that twelve and a half minute number I believe comes from a neuroscientist. He's a friend of mine at the University of Miami. Her name is Amishi Ja, and she studies high stress people in high stress fields like first responders and marines. And she has found that the minimum effective dose for her populations is twelve and a half minutes a day. And I believe her. However, I feel like it's daunting for most people to hear

So what has the response to the book been like? And let me just tell the listening audience. You were fifteen minutes late from speaking upstairs because we couldn't get you out of there because it was a giant line of people asking you to sign books. So I have to think the response has been really positive.

The most amazing thing that's happened in my professional life, you know, right below having a child and getting married. I mean, I can't believe it. It's almost ten years since the book came out. I honestly, honestly thought that it would go nowhere.

You describe it as a fiery failure, Your mom begged you not to write about your personal failures.

Yes, I was terrified and that this thing has turned into something that's so helpful for so many people. It swallowed my life, you know. I mean, I quit this career that I loved in TV news to do this full time, to host a podcast, to write more books, and to give speeches, and it's just incredible. It's absolutely incredible. And this is a cliche thing I'm about to say, but I'm like, really grateful.

Nothing wrong with a little gratitude, can't go wrong with that. What practical tips do you have for incorporating meditation, mindfulness, whatever into people's daily lives. Because the thing that makes the book so interesting versus all the other books is you really tell people do this, do this, do this, as opposed to this sort of woo ooo spiritual be at one with the universe, which really, all right, I'm one with the universe now, what it really isn't very helpful.

Yes, So a couple of ways to get started. One is there are lots of meditation apps out there, and they all are either free or they have free trials. I would do some taste testing. You can also read a good book there are plenty of them. One book that's coming to mind it is called Real Happiness by Sharon Salzburg. Very very very very practical. Another thing you can do is, if you live in a major city, most of them have meditation centers where you can drop in.

Buddhists tends to me kind of low key.

I consider myself a Buddhist and I'm not like trying to convince anybody to join me in that. In that tradition, it's really about giving you exercises to train your mind in terms of fitting it into your day. Just like I said before, and you can't hear this enough, set the bar low, don't try to do too much off the bat, and don't beat yourself up when you fall

I think you can really intriguing. Let's talk about the podcast. What made you decide to say I know, I'll talk to people about this three times a week.

You know, generally throughout this whole thing, I've had no idea what I was doing, So I'm almost like the opposite of a master's a master in business. I've been just stumbling through. I wrote the book because I had this idea that I could maybe that maybe there was a space in the market for this. And I turned out to be right about that, but I didn't I

Huh. Really interesting you have on the podcast His Holiness the Dali Lama. How does that come about? Does the Lama have an agent or pr firm? How do you how do you land the Dali Lama as a podcast?

You know. One one thing that is interesting is I'm basically like the beat reporter for Buddhism, Like I know most of the Buddhists.

You know, all the big Buddhists.

I guess I do. Like I'm a little bit like, uh, what's that in Caddy Shack Bill Murray talking about getting Yeah, I got that going. That's nice.

Right, You're gonna achieve total consciousness on your deathbed, so you have that going for you.

I do, which is nice.

So by the way, I literally have that line written down on the off chance that you would reference it, and I'm so happy you did. Yeah, I mean I'm eleven percent happy.

Any chance to reference Bill Murray or so. I mean, I've found myself in this foine. I was like a traditional hard charging newsman. I was covering wars and natural disasters, mass shootings, political campaigns, and then all of a sudden, I'm like I got interested in meditation. And now I'm like, you know, I know all these spiritual leaders. They sleep at my house, you know, like this is my life.

You know, it's very strange. And so.

The dollar alumb was the first guest on my podcast because one of his best friends is an eminent American neuroscientist by the name of Richard Davidson who's friends of mine, and so I will call Richie once in a while and be like, hey, can you get the Dollar Lama on my show? And he makes it happen, and so I actually have had him on four times. And in the fall, I went over to India and I spent two weeks hanging around him and we did this whole, big,

To say the very least. When he's in America, does he crash on your couch? Or where does the Lama stay?

Well, he's eighty seven or eighty eight now, so he is not traveling much. He tends to stay in highly secure hotel rooms.

And you said something earlier that I let slip by unnoticed because I was so entranced with the Bill Murray reference. But you said, you're not a master's in business. You never expected that. I can't tell you how many people sat across from me who are wildly successful, very accomplished people, and they talk about the role of serendipity and random luck and just recognizing an opportunity that hey, am I crazy? But is this a market that's untapped, And well, it's

I think it's a mixture. I mean, I will never underplay luck. I mean, I've been lucky in just so many areas of my life. And I also think there's some strategy and some lucky insights, you know, like I have a animalistic sense. I think for what is going to work in this area and where the shortfalls and pitfalls are and self help and self development, and you know, I think that is actually doing a service. It's been

Buddha a lucrative side hustle. Whoever would have guessed that. So before we get to our favorite questions that I ask all my guests, I have to just ask about the rain technique Recognize, allow, investigate, non identify. How familiar are you with the loop from the fighter pilot I want to say, Boyd. I'm trying to remember his name,

I mean, I love that. I think there are lots of these acronyms out there that help you just navigate life. Rain is recognized, allow, investigate, non identification. So that sounds like a mouthful, but it's pretty simple. You're in a tough moment, you're struggling, and it could be something internal or external, and very quickly you can learn how to do these four steps. Recognize it, just to notice what's happening.

Right now, figure out what's going on, Wake up.

To what's happening right Allow is instead of fighting it or acting on it in some way that is fighting it, Like I'm feeling like some tiny pang of hunger and I'm just gonna randomly eat the most recent thing, or my wife said something mildly annoying and I'm going to snap at her instead of acting blindly, just allow the feeling to be there. I is investigate, which doesn't mean like where did this come from? And you know it's not a cognitive thing. It's more just like, how is

I like it. I like a lot. Let's jump to our favorite questions and we'll get you out of here in time to hit your next gig. Starting with tell us what you're consuming for entertainment, What are you streaming or watching? What podcasts you're listening to give us a little bit about what's keeping you.

Entertaining success Baby, I was Succession, you know. I mean not only am I, you know, watching the show as it wraps up, but my wife and I love it so much we went back and started watching from season one as really, and I think it's just a masterful piece of art. The writing, the acting, it's all just incredible. And it's hard to watch because you're just watching it. It's one of the most violent shows I've ever seen.

So funny you say that I couldn't get past the second episode. I didn't have that experience with the Sopranos. I didn't have that experience with a lot of other great television I had a hard time with.

So I had the similar experience with you with Succession. The first time I watched it, I didn't like it, and I set it aside. And then COVID hit and I got COVID, and I was in bed, and I watched seasons one and two because I was in bed and bored and what it has to do. And then I got it because I really had to live with it for a minute.

It is so a commitment. Here fourteen hours. See if you like it.

Well, if I didn't like it, I would have watched something else. But it is first of all, one reason to stay with it is very funny, extremely funny, and it gets funnier as it goes. The other reason to live with it is it's doing what I love in great art, which is it's transporting you into a different world that feels real, and so that's just anthropologically interesting.

Yeah. I love your concept of transporting you to a world that feels almost real. The Diplomat is just an eight souit Yeah, yes, yeah, just really well written and well afted. And then if you like Bridgerton the prequel Queen Charlotte, it's this crazy, colorful, weird, almost believable alternative world that's like with great characters and great writing. And you know, you did what you made me think of Queen Charlotte, because it's that transporting you to someplace that

I'll give you one two other little entertainment things. One is Hacks on HBO Max or now it's just called Max. It's very funny, she's amazing, she's incredible.

Amy Smart is it not Amy Smart?

What is her name? Yes, she's fantastic, Gene Smart, Jean Smart, Yes, and the comedian Theo Vaughn who's been showing up for me a lot on social media. He is totally inappropriate but also just incredibly funny. I mean, just like he's very clippable. You can make short little clips of him as pithy little things.

That's hilarious. Tell us about your mentors who helped to shape your career.

I mentioned a couple of people in the course of this conversation. David Weston, who's one of your colleagues at Bloomberg, who was my boss at ABC News. Incredible boss and really helped me in my career. Sam Harris, who I also mentioned, who was one of the first people who was a real role model for me in terms of getting into meditation, because here was this guy who's quite well known as an atheist writer and who unafraid to

Oh the three sixties review. Really interesting. Tell us about speaking of books, tell us about some of your favorites and what you've read recently.

I really am into novels right now, and I have been reading a lot of novels as I write my next book, because I'm stealing their storytelling techniques and I'm trying to like up my game as a writer. In one of the ways I'm doing that is by reading the greats. Jennifer Egan is a modern writer. She'd won a Pulitzer for a book in twenty eleven called A Visit from the Goon Squad, and then she wrote a follow up called The Candy House, and I find her to be mesmerizing and bewitching.

Two interesting recommendations. So what sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in either journalism or broadcast television.

Go for it. You know, it's hard, it's tough, but it's awesome and I love as I think. I said this in my first book, that the right that it confers upon you to walk up to important people and ask impudent questions yes, is incredible and if you have curiosity, this is a playground. And I mean it's a tough business. Content creation is hard, and ad supported models are hard.

And our final question, what do you know about the world today that you wish you knew thirty or so years ago when you were a Green Cub reporter.

I heard Scott Galloway, another big business voice, say this recently to me, actually, and he said it about himself, But actually it just comes to mind as my big oversight too. I wish I had been nicer. And you think about niceness as kind of weakness, but it's actually a real strength. And we are social animals. We need other people we may think, in this culture that's individualistic, that we're going to be self made, but nobody's self made.

I'm going to interrupt you. I'm trying to remember what was in the book or something else I had read where you describe, and it might even be a Buddhist precept of there's two types of generosity, the selfish generosity, yes, and generous generosity. And even the generous generosity comes back to you.

Yes. The Buddha talks about why selfishness that all I mean. Sorry, The dollar Lama talks about this concept of why selfishness, that if you want to be really good at being selfish, you will be compassionate and generous because that is the number one source of happiness. Let me just say this finally on a broader note, but it's a related note. There are so many bugs in the human design, but there is this feature that is the way out for

It's not a coincidence that billionaires also tend to be philanthropists, right works out. Dan, Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Dan Harris, author of ten Percent Happier. If you enjoyed this conversation, well be sure and check out any of our five hundred previous such discussions that we've held over the past eight and a half years. You can find those at YouTube. Spotify, Apple, iTunes, wherever you find your