Dan Harris || Become 10% Happier + BONUS Meditation

unlikely meditation evangelist ever. After a panic attack on Good Morning America, he wrote the New York Times bestselling memoir Ten Percent Happier about would led him to embrace a practice he'd long considered ridiculous. He then started the ten Percent Happier Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics app with a handful of bonafid meditation teachers, including Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg. He's also the host of the ten Percent Happier Podcast.

I'm really pleased to have Dan on the podcast today and hope that you can join in the discussion by going to the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for chatting with me. Today, Dan, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed your article, by the way, Oh yeah, the one about how I was skeptical of mindfulness and then yeah, you know, there's like this band of now I'm part of this club that you're part of people who were skeptical of mindfulness and kind of were sold

once they did it. And it's not a bad club. No, it's not a bad club sold in the sense like we're still a little bit skeptical though, right, Yeah, if you're not a little bit skeptical, I'm skeptical of you. Yeah, I feel the same exact way, because I feel like we both probably still have this like there's still like a bit of a nonconformist gene that we have that maybe some other people don't have. But I feel like we're this club specifically who also have that nonconformist gene

in us. I agree, whatever that is, I agree. I love this skepticism. But for me, I really love that you answered a lot of questions that I had that I get from people that I didn't really know how to answer about, you know, the apparent demonizing of mind wandering and daydreaming in the mindfulness world and the relationship between mindfulness and creativity and all that stuff. I just all that is just super interesting to me, and you

handled it very well well. Thank you so much. I wasn't planning on starting out this interview with a compliment to me. I'm like, wow, Dan Harris, thanks man, my pleasure. You made my day. So back to you now. You know you write this phrase in your book, Our mind is a fever swamp of urges, desires, and judgments. It's fixated on the past and the future to the detriment of the here and now. I thought we could start off talking a little bit about your own private swamp.

I mean, of course the infamous June seventh, two thousand and four instant, but also you know, getting it like you at your personality patterns. You know, these are some things I picked from your book. Your friend Simon said, you have the quote soul of a junkie, or you have at least the I still have still have. Yeah. Your mom described you as an impatient kid and an eighth grade and ext girlfriend said that you quote piss

on the present. Wow, man, I mean, so these descriptions of you kind of do paint the portrait of so and with an attention span maybe not optimal. Yeah, let me be clear, and I don't recall I'm a narcissist, but not so narcissistic that I can recall my own book chapter and verse. But my description of the mind that you read is pretty negative, and I stand by it. But I would also say that the mind is capable of compassion, creativity, and comedy and lots of other great stuff.

It's just that if you take an honest accounting of the voice in your head, often it is negative, repetitive, and self referential. And in my own case, as I look at some of my own personality patterns, there are some good stuff, but that's less interesting to talk about than the bad stuff. So let's talk about the bad stuff. Having cleared my throat dustly, yeah, I mean all of

those things are true. That I have a tendency toward impatience, I have a tendency toward casting into the future or thinking about the past to the detriment of whatever is happening right now. And I have the soul of a junkie. I think those are really apt diagnosis by my friend Simon that even though I no longer use drugs, I still want them, and I have all sorts of new

and maybe not equally destructive, but nonetheless destructive addictions. It will struggle a lot around food, even though I'm slim, so people get, you know, sort of frustrated when I talk about that. But there's a lot of my mental energy taken up around cookies and stupid stuff like that. And my wife sort of talks to me about not talking about this as much as I do, but because people will be frustrated because I am a little guy.

But even the amount of bandwidth that gets chewed up around French fries and cookies and then self flagellation and shame spirals and all that stuff, I guess I just use it as an ex example of the fact that the junkie has not been exercised, well he often needs to be exercised. Well, maybe at the broader point there is you're a dopamine junkie. So it's like, you know what this means is you're a junkie for like novelty and stimulation. Yes, so sorry, maybe we can we can

generalize this. I am too. I mean I would describe it. I've described myself as a dope, not as a soul of a junkie, but a soul of a dopamine junkie, because you know, I'm raviously curious. So the thing that interesting those with meditation, you can still apply that to radical curiosity about your own mind. Right, So you just basically just applied that soul to your own mind in

a way. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean you can have good sort of repetitive slash compulsive behavior, you can have healthy compulsions, I think, and you can have negative ones. I definitely have developed a sort of pretty deep meditation habit, and I think it's largely healthy. There obviously are ways to turn that into unhealthy fixation on meditation, but say, for example,

if I was neglecting my family or my work. But yeah, I think a lot of my life in the years after abandoning drugs has been about finding healthier ways to redirect my search for dopamin Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I think you've done that. I mean, you really dive deep into meditation nowt But this book started five years ago. I think that's what I gathered and inferred from reading your book. Is that a good five six years ago is when you started writing the book.

I mean, are you still into mindfulness as much? So? What's it like for you now? Okay, So I started meditating eight years ago and pretty much got the idea that I was going to write the book right after I started meditating, because I was reading a bunch of books and realized that there weren't any books with any humor in them, and I thought, Okay, there's room for me here. And I had never written a book before. My interest in meditation has only gotten deeper and deeper

and deeper. I am after having done five thousand podcasts and TV shows and radio interviews where I talk about this. I am tired of talking about myself. So I do get tired of telling my story. Yeah, Because that's not to say that you shouldn't ask me about it, because I certainly will talk about it. But that has lost a lot of its juice for me. But what has lost no juice whatsoever, is the value of the practice. Dealing with skeptical questions about the practice, the limits of

the practice, the potential, the science. All of that stuff is incredibly interesting to me. And so I will write more books, but they will all, at least as of right now, be about meditation. Yeah, in your new book. You could start off like June twelfth, twenty seventeen. It started everything for me when I had the podcast. That could be your new narrative, you know that. Yes, that's right. No, you could do that, or you could give me a

panic attack exactly, that would keep it interesting. Well, First of all, I fully have empathy for you. Like I wrote this book called Ungifted, where like I told my story about like being in special out of the kid and stuff, and you know, it was raw and real when I wrote it, but then after like a million talks and podca now I don't even feel like it's me anymore when I tell you story. Yes, yes, that's

exactly right. Yeah, I mean you kind of go through the motions at a point where you're like you're telling someone else's story even though it is truly your story. Did something weird happen on June seven, two thousand and four that was out of the ordinary for you? Yes, you want me to answer that question, Yeah you might as well. You know, you know, we got to get the story in there. But by the way, I don't

want to down play my self centeredness. So it's entirely possible that you could ask me questions about other portions of my life that I would love to talk about, you know, And it's just the story that I tell in ten percent happier that I'm a little tired of talking to. Totally get it. No, it's because of the dopamine hit. You're not getting the novelty from the story anymore. No, I totally get it, right, No, No No, I mean I

totally got that. Yeah, okay, good. So June two thousand and four, Yeah, I had a panic attack on national television on Good Morning America. My job that day was to deliver the news headlines at the top of each hour on the show, and so I would came on at seven o'clock that morning or seven oh five or something like that, and I was supposed to read six short stories off of the teleprompter and then I would be done for until eight eight o'clock. And a couple

of seconds into my stick, I just lost it. My heart started raising, my palms were sweating, my mouth dried up, my lungs seized up. I just couldn't breathe, and I had to quit right in the middle. And so it was really embarrassing, really destabilizing, and the more embarrassing story is actually what produced the panic attack, which relates back to the quote that you gave me from Simon and my friend Simon, I didn't use his last name in the book, but it's Simon Hammerstein. He's actually a direct

descendant of the Rogers and Hammerstein. He said, he's quite a prominent nightclub impresario here in Manhattan. And I used to hang out with him back when I was a bad boy, and can he get me on the list? Yeah, he can get you on the list, you know. The frustrating part for me is that he didn't become when I was hanging out with him. He didn't have the yet. And by the time he started the club which became it's called the Box, and it's a famous club here

in New York City. And that club opened after I quit doing drugs, and so I had no desire to go to the Well, I had a lot of desire to go to the club, but I knew anyway go and meditate in the club. Well, Simon's now meditator, interestingly enough,

so we could probably do that. So anyway, the backstory is behind the panic attack was that I had spent a lot of time hunting for dopamine in war zones as a young, idealistic and ambitious news reporter after nine to eleven, and I kind of developed an addiction to the thrill of being in a war zone. And when I came home, I got depressed and didn't know I was depressed and did this incredibly stupid thing of self

medicating with recreational drugs, which made me feel better. And even though I wasn't doing drugs all the time and not when I was on the air, I learned after I had the panic attack and I went to a doctor, a shrink who was an expert in panic. He pointed out that drug use was enough to artificially raise the level of adrenaline in my brain, exacerbate my baseline anxiety, and produce this panic attack. So, yeah, that's the story. Yeah, so you knew something had to change. I mean you

were searching for something anyway at that point. Yeah. I mean we're always you know, I think those of us who are into dopamine are always kind of searching, right, We're always on the hunt. I wish I could say so. When the doctor pointed out that I had given myself a panic attack through stupidly snorting cocaine. I was smart enough to quit doing drugs, and I was smart enough to go see this doctor once or twice a week. Four years I still see him. But I didn't find

meditation until many years later. And I'm not of the view that meditation is a panacea. Obviously. I call the book ten percent Happier, But I don't take a cure panic disorder. I think it is one arrow in the quiver for boosting overall well being and can reduce the likelihood of panic attack. But I think so I don't want to present this as something that is like a for depression, a cure for anxiety. I think it's a good tool, No, absolutely, And I have a lot of

empathy for the panic attacks. I used to have a lot of anxiety. Used to walk around with the beta blocker pills in case I would, yeah, in case that would happen. I mean, there's a safeguard there. You just immediately pop the pill and then you go down a sixty five heart rate. So I've been there, and so I really all joking aside, I really my heart goes out to you. And in that moment when I watched that video, like my heart really goes out to you. I was like, I know that feeling. Oh can I

say something about that? Sure? Sure? So, first of all, thank you for saying that. But it's so interesting to hear you say what you just said. That when you watch the video because it's on YouTube page, because there's such a bright line there, if you have a history of panic or anxiety, then when you watch that video, you like either can't watch it or you feel really badly.

If you don't, you think I'm over doing it, that I'm that I'm making a mountain out of a mohill, That it looks like I just had trouble speaking, but you can't tell it's a panic attack. I want to elaborate on that second because I get it so much, and what I have found is that when I have been in that state, people really can't tell. What's fascinating to me is the mismatch between the interior feeling of what's going on and what it actually looks like on

the outside. To me, that is so fascinating. I've given talks before where right when I started, I just knew that, like, I'm like, how am I going to get through this? Like my internal state is one of intense drama. But yet I've talked to people and they're like, oh, you look so calm, And in fact, not only that, but I would say there's almost a correlation between the extent to which people say I look calm and how crazy I'm going on inside. I'm so curious what that's all about.

It's almost like when I get in that state, somehow on the outside I become so like just frozen that I appear really calm. Yes, or you're compensating, Yeah, maybe I'm compsaying so much. But yeah, it's just so interesting. People I'm like, did you know that I was freaking out? They're like, what, you look so calm out there? It's like, what you know? So that mismatch between interior exter is just really interesting. I agree. I agree. Well, okay, so

let's move beyond two thousand and four. You know, when you went searching all this, why didn't you do the natural thing? Which is fine Jesus. You know, like I say that because you write about your experience with Ted Haggard and stuff like, why didn't Ted Haggard commit to you that that was the thing instead of meditation? Okay, so what happened after there was a kind of an

interesting confluence of events. I quit doing drugs and started seeing the shrink, and around that time I was also getting really into covering faith and spirituality for ABC News. I'm just stilling in the blank for those who haven't

read the book. I had been given this assignment and I didn't want it, frankly by my boss at the time, Peter Jennings, and so then ended up spending a lot of time with pastors like Ted Haggard and Emams, and disciples of the Mormon Temple, lots of different religious folks. I was raised by scientists. I'm now married to a scientist. I have a Constitutionally, I'm kind of not able to belie even things you can't prove, so I actually don't have now having spent a lot of time with people

of faith. I am not anti faith. I don't like divisive wings of organized religion, but I personally am not really capable of it, or have not yet been capable of faith in the way we traditionally talk about it. What I've developed a certain amount of around meditation is confidence that there's perhaps more to be done, and that maybe things like enlightenment are interesting things to investigate, but I can't speak with any authority about things that I

can't prove fair enough. Are you blood related to Sam Harris? Not blood related? We sometimes refer to each other as brothers from another mother. Sam is a very good friend and somebody I really admire. He's also quite quite controversial, so some people don't like when I talk about my admiration for him. But we are good friends, and he's a really serious meditation practitioner. And I know, yeah, so I really I I've gotten a lot out of my relationship. Yeah,

the whole waking up idea, Well, that's interesting. You know that phrase waking up? It actually makes me think of your experience with e cart totally and how you know in his books that he kind of like that's how he sets the stage in a lot of his books, right, is like, this book will wake you up in a lot of ways. You were skeptical of it going into it. Tell me what your experience with with the I don't even know how to pronounce it, e Kart. I don't

want to get in trouble by this. He won't care, right, he won't He won't care. I mean he's so calm. This guy's this guy's Did you try to flap him at all? Like I did? I did. I actually don't think that is an act. I mean, I don't really know, but I mean my spidey sense tells me that, like, he actually really is calm. It's Art Eckert. Thank you. I apologize thatch Art. I know you're listening to this podcast.

I know you love the psychology podcast. Apologize for debt. Okay, So tell me what your experience with him was, Like, It's funny when I read your book, I've been thinking the same like your thought patterns. I'm like, oh my gosh, I had the same thought patterns with these people, Like, but you've had a great experience of actually meeting them. So tell me what on the inside, what's it like? Yeah? I mean Akar totally Just for those uninitiated, he's a

huge self help guru. I didn't know anything about him. I'd never even heard of him. Yeah. My initial response

to him was a deep skepticism bordering on disgust. He writes books with kind of lofty titles like a New Earth and the Power of Now, and he makes all these gradiose claims about how he's going to give you a spiritual awakening, and he talks about how after his own spiritual awakening, he lived on park benches in the city of London for two years in a state of bliss, and he uses lots of pseudoscientific language and all this stuff.

I remain critical of all that. But what he did that I have to give him eternal credit and gratitude for is point out something that nobody else had ever pointed out to me, which is that we all have a voice in our heads, by which he was not referring to, and I'm not referring to schizophrenia or hearing voices or mental illness, although I guess you could describe

it as account metalness on some levels. But the inner narrator, your ego, the voice that is kind of gammering at you all day long, this NonStop conversation you're having with yourself. Then most of us are unaware that we're even having

and therefore are controlled by it. You know, It's like we're eating when we're not hungry, or we're losing our temper when we don't need to, or in my case, you know, going off the war zones without thinking about the psychological consequences coming home, getting depressed and not knowing

it and then using drugs blindly. So it's kind of this inner conversation is responsible for most of the things that about which we are most embarrassed, and at Cartoli was the first person to wake me up to that fact, and it had profound implication exactly, so it could be that even if his language doesn't technically make sense, it still theoretically makes sense. So what I mean by that is like, become aware of the inner energy field of your being. Now, my initial gut reaction is to roll

my eyes of that. However, that is meaningful when you don't look at it from a scientific perspective. But do you know you know what I mean? Yes, yeah, so it's absolutely true. I found that there are certain things that he says that don't really hold up. You picked an example that does hold up, you know, being aware of the energy field of your being. I mean you can put that in English, like if you sit down, close your eyes and feel what it's like to have

a body. You're an animal with a body, you can feel it. It's hard to describe it, but like you can just feel it and actually there's value to feeling that because that is what it feels like to be a lot, and tuning into that can tune out a lot of the mishi gos that is yanking you around. And so again, I don't want to turn this into some sort of blind pro et car toolely orgies. No, no, no, no, I know you're coming from. Though. Tell me what it

was like. What does his own energy feeld like when you're sitting across from him, Because I'm very good at feeling people's energy, Like I could feel your energy right now. You have a great energy, by the way, and I'm not just saying that, like you've really good egg. I can feel people's energy. You have a like if I were to describe your energy, it's really I'm trying to

be very careful of by words here. You have a very smart but there's a bit of cheekiness which I really like, you know, a bit of like nonconformist and like a tinge of insecurity as well as confidence, like all in one interesting package. So I feel your energy, this guy's energy, like, I mean, what is it? Yeah?

What was it like? Could you describe? Well? I would just say that your diagnosis is actually really, I mean that sort of mixture of insecurity and confidence and like being a wise ass is definitely all the things that I would describe about myself, maybe not as combination, like I think you're a fascinating combination of those things. Yeah, I'm less fascinated by it, but I would certainly say

that's app But Eckar totally is. I gotta say I use this term before, but spidey sense about him is that he's not full of shit because I went into it assuming he is like a madman, and I've spent time with a lot of help gurus, and I didn't get a real mercenary vibe off of him. I didn't get a sense that he was faking it if I was going to say what his problem is, because he has this kind of I think I used the phrase other worldly diffidence about him, you know, like, is that

like he's speaking to us from a different mindset. It is possible to me that he did have some sort of psychological spiritual breakthrough and that has trouble talking about

it in comprehensible terms. He would say, and I think he actually does say this, that actually he knows that some of the language he uses in his books is hard to grow, but that actually he's trying to circumvent your conscious mind and speak to your SubCom Okay, so I appreciate what you just said, and I've been trying to think about that you said to him, you know, you're like, okay, look, have you ever been upset? Have you ever been angry? He's like no, never, you know,

He's like, that's not my state. And he'll just like say these things like we are the universe field and I I guarantee you if you said to him, actually, this study says that's not true, he would not say, Oh, that's interesting, I'm going to delete that Facebook or I'm going to update my Facebook post. Now there's a great quote from him. I'm not going to nail it, but

it's something along the line of them. He's so confident in his spiritual enlightenment that if he met the Buddha and the Buddha told him he was not enlightened, he would say, Oh, that's so interesting. The Buddha can be wrong. I believe he is so confident that he has seen

some truth. Now that is interesting because throughout the course of human history, we've had people like this we've had Jesus, We've had so many people who had the revelatory experience, and I put the on capitals and to their own reality. They are fundamentally changed and there is something genuine about it. So again, I don't think we need to question whether or not it's genuine or authentic. But still there is this it's almost funny. It's like I would say, he's

not very open. So let's bring the same straight talk to your experience with Tupac show. No, I'm sorry, deepoxas to Deepox bro Okay, what's his energy like? And I actually do believe that he's a fundamental different energy. I believe they're two different beasts. I believe both the him and Eckart are two different They're two different beasts, but both fastening in their own right. So tell me about him.

What was Deebuck is totally different? You're right, he's got the energy of like a hustler, you know, not a hustler in that he's trying to pull one over in you. He's hustling, you know, he's working hard, he's got lots of ideas, he's writing lots of books, he's meeting people, he's you know, like that. I think that very shortly after I met him for the first time, he had his assistant send a bunch of books to my office, and you know, he would email and text me. You know,

he's he's always on Twitter. He's really like, he hustles, And you don't really get any of that off of Eckart totally. And Deepak really like is likable and wants to be liked. Actually he's the fun guy to hang around with. But I don't get off of him the same kind of he didn't to me. Just to me, this is my personal impression. I didn't get some sort of vast reservoir of imperturbability. I did get that sense with ECKR. Toli. Well what do I know. I'm just

one dude. I mean, like, I'm not. Don't underestimate the power of your intuition. Oh but actually, look look either of those characters would they laugh about themselves? And I think there's a great value in that skill, the ability to laugh at yourself. I don't think Echard ever says like I am the transformational void of the infinite and then say, yeah, I realized that does sound kind of weird. I couldn't imagine him saying that, you know, yeah, that's true.

They don't do a lot of poking fun at themselves. And you know, I mean there may be a number of reasons for that, but you know, traditionally there's been a pretty large audience for spiritual gurus who take themselves pretty seriously. And and I do really run the risk of not being able to reach that level of guruishness by being cheeky you and me both, man. I mean, I'm definitely positioning myself as somebody who will never reach

that position. Yeah. Cool. So I want to move away from your personal with the good self help guru world and then tell me a little bit about your experience with some of these modern day Buddha Jews Boo Jews. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that experience has been really positive. There's this cabal of and I use that in the most positive

sense as possible. But there's this group of fifty and sixty and seventy something men and women Jewish people from the New York City area who, through a variety of circumstances, got into meditation in the sixties and seventies and now are some of the most prominent teachers of meditation and they include people like Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and Mark Epstein and Jack Cornfield and John kvit Zen and Danny Goleman and Richie Davidson, and well there's also the

other female name that's coming to mind, although I'm not sure she's got as much history with these folks as Tara brock Rock. And then also Danny Goleman's wife's name is Tarah Goldman. So there are some women on the scene for sure. But these folks are really interesting because they all discovered a lot of them went to Ivy League schools MIT Harvard and were in Boston in the sixties and seventies and met each other and then went off to India and learned meditation and then got into science.

A lot of them got into science, and they have been responsible for validating the practice through science and also teaching it. This practice had mostly been done in Eastern context to Westerners, and they I believe have like for sure, they changed my life finding them, and I believe may really ultimately be judged of people who had a huge

impact on site. And because without these folks, we wouldn't have what we see now, which is a public health revolution around meditation, and so these people have become really close friends of mine and business partners because Sharon and Joseph are the two primary teachers on the ten Percent Happier app. And actually, I'm going to a rafter I'm done with you. I'm going to go to a book party for Sharon for her new book, which is called Real Love. So I love her new book. Yeah, it's

really good. And so these folks are just incredible and have really really just kind of I insinuated myself into their whole crew, and my life has been better for it. So that's great. You know, I love those people you mentioned are huge influencers on me as well, So that's great. Okay, I think this is a good place to do the three minute meditation you shared with us from your app

ten Percent Happier Meditation for fidgety skeptics. This one is called bicep Curl for your Brain, building off a common philosophy that Dan shares, which is that meditation is like going to the gym for your mind. Taxes. More meditations from Dan and some of the world's best meditation teachers. Check out the ten Percent Happier app in the Apple store or at ten percent happier dot Com. Okay, here's the three minute meditation with Dan. Hey, it's Dan. I

am not a meditation teacher. So this is like flying on a plane with a pilot who slept at a holiday in last night. So buckle up, here we go. Really only three steps here. First is sit comfortably close your eyes. Second is to bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. You don't have to think about your breath, just feel the raw data of the physical sensations. Third step, this

is the biggie. As soon as you try to do this pay attention to one thing at a time, your mind will go nuts. Who invented this knee guard? What's the definition of if? Who was cast ber the friendly ghost before he died? Totally fine, You're not alone in this. This is the way everybody's mind works. The whole game is just to notice when your mind's going nuts and

go back to the breath. Start again. Pick a spot wherever it's most prominent, your chest, your belly, your nose, Feel your breath coming in and going out, feeling the rising of your belly, the cool sensations of the air going in your nostrils and then out. Did you get distracted again? Totally fine, happens to me all the time, happens to everybody. The whole game is just to notice when you've gotten lost and start over. As I like to say, it's a bicep curl for your brain. This

is what shows up on the brain scans. Back to the breath. It's happening without you doing anything about it. Isn't that interesting? Back to the breath. Okay, you're done, open your eyes, carry on with your day. Come back soon. So moving on from that to the app and then your own meditation practice. I mean, tell me about this retreat that you were engaged in, and then like, now,

how much do you meditate? Yeah? So I in the book, I talk about this ten day silent meditation retreat that I went on, and I'm often hesitant to bring it up because I feel like I sense a lot of people are just looking for excuses not to meditate, and when they hear that I went out a ten day silent meditation retreat, They're going to have the following what's the word contectinated series of thoughts, which is like, I

would never do that. I therefore, I am never going to meditate see you, And I just want to be clear. I decided, you don't have to go on a ten day meditation retreat if you're interested in meditation. I was writing a book and I needed some shit to write about, so I thought it would be a good idea to go in a retreat, and it ended up giving me a lot of good stuff to write about because it was miserable for the first three or four or five days,

totally totally miserable. But then it was amazing and I really got I kind of I had an experience of my own mind that was different than I'd ever had before, where I really got a sense of what it's like when our discursive thought patterns kind of slow down and we're really having a much more potent experience of being alive right now. And that was a company with a

huge blast of serotonin. I had about thirty six of the most of the happiest hours of my life, and then, like everything, it faded and I went back to being miserable and then happy again. And so that's the first part of your question. The second part of your question is what's my meditation like now? So I've continued to go on retreats. My teacher Joseph Goldstein would argue, I don't do it enough, but probably every other year and

get a lot about out of it. And my daily practice is now up to I'm doing about two hours a day, so I'm really gotten into it. And again I believe that five to ten minutes is enough really to derive benefits. In fact, I think one minute. We're in the process of redesigning big chunks of our app around the idea that one minute counts, and I really

believe that. But I personally have gotten enough out of it and continue to get that enough out of it and have enough curiosity that I have upped my daily dose of two hours. Okay, I have a very important question for you, Dan, Are you ready for this question? I'm brace Are you afraid that your career is washed up? Always? Seriously?

I worry about that all the time. So I talk this a huge theme in my book and continues to be a huge theme of my life, which is this professional advancement and ambition and how much and the balance between having that kind of ambition and being happy and sane. And it's not one that I've mastered. I mean, I do my best, and I think I'm better at it than I used to be, and I'm less prone to letting my professional anxieties seep out into the rest of

my life, although I still do that. Somebody asked me recently if I could sum up what the benefits of meditation are for me, and I actually think it really does come down to being less of an asshole. And you know, I mean that sounds cheeky on some levels, but actually there's a lot there to unpack, and I think you progressively become less of an asshole to yourself and others. So yeah, I do worry about the state of my career and balancing that with the state of

my kind of meditation career. And you know, what is this thing? And you know, now I'm a small businessman and I'm writing more books about this, and but yet I'm also a newsman, and so yeah, there's a lot there for me to worry about. I think I'm better at drawing the line between useless rumination and what I call constructive anguish. Wow, man, thank you so much for like vulnerably and honestly answering. I mean, I asked that question probably as a joke because you asked Parasolt in

that question. Oh, I didn't even put that yet yet, and you didn't even make that connection, and you actually took it seriously. So wow, dude, like big ups, as they say, big thank you, thank you, that's exactly the same question you asked Rusel. Okay, So you know, I'm thinking about this field that you work in and how it can be compatible having that loving kindness and work in such a competitive field. I mean you need to scoop you know, NBC, you know or like yeah, I

mean it's by nature a very competitive field. And also these questions like do you give you know, regarding the Para Sultan thing like do you take an extra second now when you think about asking someone a question that might not be a compassionate question, like do you pause an extra second now? How have you changed in that regard? Yeah, I think that's definitely true. I do pause a little bit. I think a little bit more about how would I feel being in the receiving end of that, How would

I when I'm writing stories about how portraying people? And yeah, absolutely, the great chair in Salzburg who's been referenced in this podcast interview previously, but I'm going to invoke her name yet again. Has a great expression that you can compete without being cool. And I think that's true. That I am in competition with other news networks, even other correspondents and anchors within my own organization, and I think that

you can be competitive without wishing ill on others. And then if you do find yourself reflexively kind of rooting for the failure of others, just being aware that that's happening and then not feeding it through compulsive thought. So I think it's just all an interesting dance. I love that. So I want to ask a final question. It's something I've been thinking about. Why did you call the book ten percent Happier instead of ten percent more aware catchiness?

You know, I'm actually working on a follow up book that is more practical. It's like a companion book on some levels. It's called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, and it's really about helping people get over the hump and actually do this thing. And I have a co author who's a meditation teacher, who's this amazing guy named Jeff Warren. And you know, I use the term happiness quite a bit and He's kind of on my ass about it. He's like, you know, what does happen? Doesn't even mean?

Why can't you just use well being? And my answer is, you know, you're right that there are better words, but those aren't the words that actual human beings use, and they use happiness. And I'm a you know, I am a huge part of my way of being in the world, at least publicly has got a P. T. Barnum vibe to it. And I'm about getting people in the door, Like, get them in the door with a title like ten

percent halfier. That's not unethical. I wouldn't do something unethical to get them in the door, I don't think, but then really give them a full explanation once they're in. So for me, ten percent halfier just struck me as something like, oh, I guess I was hoping that people walking by the book and an airport would be like, oh, that's kind of interesting, I'll buy that book. That's what I was thinking. Awesome. And then when you get them in the door, then you explain to them that meditation

is a lot, so much more than just happiness. Yeah, then you can hit them with some dharma, you know, which is really my thing. You know, I'm a Buddhist, but not a Buddhist in the sense that I'm religious, but a Buddhist in the sense that I do Buddhist meditation.

And I think that it's, you know, really not something to believe in, it's something to do and that it can It was invented by a genius or a whole serious geniuses who you know, just came up with these little training exercises that make you less of an absol Dan. Thank you so much for this chat today. I'm gonna get tell everyone about your app. I'm going to all my students in my positive psychology class. I'm going to like make them as a requirement for my course sign up,

you know, so they can. I think students all across this country really need more mindfulness. Thanks so much for chatting with me today. Me. It's a great sport, great questions. Man. I really was purely enjoyable. Thank you so much, Thank you, Thank you so much for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this

episode just as thought provoking as I did. If something you heard today stimulated you in some way, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com.