Episode 294 - Dan Harris: 10% Happier

0:18Welcome to Episode 294 in this week. Once again, we have a very special guest. Ben, Ben, You know, this whole project has been about helping people improve financial decision-making with the ultimate goal of improving each of our well-beings and happiness and hopefully helping listeners to accomplish that. And we've talked often about your paper, Finding a Good Life. And a lot of listeners have commented how we've been shifting the podcast towards that direction. Well, this week we dive into something a little bit different. However, it has the same objective of improving your happiness. And this is meditation.

0:55So this week we welcomed Dan Harris of 10 % Happier. Now you might recognize the name Dan Harris. He was an anchor at ABC News. And he tells a story in the interview, so we're not going to spill the story here. But he has an incredible story about how he came to discover the benefits of meditation. And it's an incredible story. Part of that story is that he wrote a book while he was at ABC News called 10 % Happier. how I tamed the voice in my head, reduced stress without losing my edge, and found self-help that actually works, a true story. So this book, you and I read it back in 2018 when we were introduced to it by a professional colleague, and I just reread it.

1:38And then our good friend Hal Hirschfield was on Dan's fabulous podcast, 10 % Happier. That's the bridge to actually give me a chance to request to see if Dan could join us. So anyways, what did you think of it? Just to your comment about us reading 10 % Happier, however many years ago that was, that book is what caused our professional colleague that you mentioned to go down this path of researching happiness. And he actually gave a talk to our team about his findings. And 10 % Happier was the first book that he mentioned having read himself that got him going down this path. Is that presentation, sorry to interrupt, that I learned about PERMA.

2:19Yeah. And PERMA model. Five-factor model, yeah. This book was the seed that started us thinking in this general direction. Then of course, Brian Portnoy also, the work that he did with us and our team and him being a guest in our podcast, that pushed it even harder. But this book that Dan Harris wrote is really what started it all, which is kind of cool. it's very cool i said this in the interview to dan i find how his book and he frames this whole notes and meditation to be brilliantly compelling 10 happier it's nothing weird he's not apostolizing it he's basically saying try it oh totally throughout this conversation he's very humble but all of it like you said this is something that you can do that he says 10 happy is a joke but it is pretty powerful it's just the idea that you can be a little bit happier by doing this exercise with your brain.

3:09Happiness is a skill, the idea that you can learn and get better at. 10 % Happier is a book available widely. He's just released, I believe, the 10th anniversary of the book. There's also a 10 % Happier app, which will help you with meditation. The podcast has over 600 episodes. I listened to many of them. It's excellent. And he was just telling us that there's an event in New York City. I had seen it mentioned. I didn't know if it was sold out or not, but he claims there's still space available. There's an event in New York City on March 28th with Joseph Goldstein, who's like his mentor in this space.

3:44So I think it'd be quite a treat if you're available and around to check out that. Tickets are available online March 28th in New York City. Anything to add, Ben? Nope. I think this is a great episode. Meditation is discussed a lot, but it's really like you mentioned at the very opening of the introduction, Cameron. It's an episode about living a good life and making better decisions. And Dan talks a lot about how meditation can play a role in that. But I think the episode's even more general than that about living a good life and what Dan has learned about that throughout his experience of the story that he tells in the book, but then everything that's happened to him since the book came out because his whole life shifted directions after that.

4:25So I think there's a lot that people can take away from this conversation. I agree. Okay, let's go to our conversation with 10 % happy years, Dan Harris.

4:38Dan Harris, it's great to welcome you to the Rational Reminder podcast. Thanks for having me on. It's great. I love your book. I read it first six years ago, then I just reread it. Immensely enjoyable book. So thank you for it. To kick it off, can you talk about your journey as a journalist through, as you described in the book, Self-Help, then to meditation? Yeah. So the abbreviated version is that I had a panic attack on live television on a show that I used to be involved with called Good Morning America. So it's a pretty big morning show, which I think can be seen in Canada in some spots at least.

5:14And this was back in 2004. I was reading some stories off of the teleprompter, anchoring the news as it were, and just lost it and had to quit in the middle of my shtick and send it back to the main hosts. You can actually see it if you Google panic attack on TV. I think it's the first result, which makes me very proud. And so the backstory to the panic attack is that I had spent a lot of time in war zones as a very ambitious young network correspondent. And I had gotten depressed during this period of time and did this incredibly dumb thing, which is I started to self-medicate with recreational drugs, including cocaine.

5:53After I had the panic attack, I went to a psychiatrist and he pointed out that it was my cocaine use that was probably responsible for the panic attack. I wasn't high on the air. So in the moment, I did not connect those dots, but it was pretty clear to him. So that was the first big change for me in my life. I stopped doing drugs. I started seeing the shrink. And then through my relationship with the psychiatrist and actually through some odd work assignments that put me in the faith and spirituality realm, I ended up stumbling across meditation. So this was back in like 2008, 2009, before it got cool in its latest hype cycle.

6:33I ended up seeing some of the research that showed it was really good for you. And I tried it. And yeah, here we are. The story is incredible. Can you talk a little bit about what meditation is for listeners who maybe don't fully understand it? Yeah, I love this question because I thought meditation was rank bullshit, just like absolutely hippie nonsense. And there are forms of meditation that I still probably wouldn't cotton to, but the kind of meditation that I got interested in is called mindfulness meditation. It is derived from Buddhism, but secularized and stripped of any metaphysical claims or anything like that.

7:11This form of meditation had and continues to be studied extensively in the labs, and it's been shown to reduce your blood pressure, boost your immune system, rewire key parts of your brain, and we can literally see changes on the brain scans. So that's what really got me over the hump. What is it? The beginner's instructions for mindfulness meditation are super simple. The first three steps really, sit comfortably, close your eyes. That's the first step. The second is Try to bring your full attention to something neutral. Usually it's the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. Some people don't like that.

7:45So they pick just the feeling of their body sitting in a chair or lying on the ground or sounds in the environment. Just picking something that is, and I don't mean this word in a naughty way, but sensual based in your senses instead of your thinking. And you try to commit to it for a few nanoseconds at a time. And then the third step is the most important, which is most people by now have tried meditation or heard of it, or even an any eight-year-old tries to stop thinking and realizes that you can't stop the thinking. And so a lot of people try meditation. They notice I'm trying to feel my breath and getting distracted over and over again.

8:22And they tell themselves a whole story about how they're failed meditators and they quit. But actually, this is the third step of the three. The whole game is just to notice when you've gotten distracted and to start again and again and again. And this is like a bicep curl for your brain. And it's the mechanism or at least one of them by which the brain changes as a result of meditation. And it's a key moment, really, noticing the distraction. That is not failure. That is proof that you're doing it correctly. The whole game is to see how wild your mind is so that you're not owned by all of the mayhem.

8:59And in that way, it's a very elegant practice. I find that very compelling, Dan. You mentioned a word there like you to clarify the meaning of what is mindfulness. I'm glad you asked that question. Mindfulness is one of the skills that gets developed through mindfulness meditation. When you notice you're distracted, which again is the moment when most people get discouraged. The reason why that's a success is you get more familiar with what your life is all about. You might think your life is about service or parenting or hard work or whatever. But actually, most of your life is about what's for lunch?

9:40Where do gerbils run wild? How do I get that blouse that I saw in the Real Housewives? Whatever. Most of your life is random urges, thoughts, and emotions that are, if we broadcast aloud, you would be locked up. Mindfulness is the self-awareness that allows you to see all of the caroming, careening thoughts without being owned by them. A synonym would be self-awareness. You alluded earlier to evidence backing up the claims, I guess, of mindfulness meditation. Can you talk more about what kind of science is backing this up? It's really interesting. And I want to be clear, it's still in its early stages.

10:19Science is basically an argument taking place in public. And I'm not a scientist. So I don't want to overstate the results, but it seems to strongly suggest, the research does, that short daily doses of meditation can confer a long list of tantalizing health benefits. I listed some of them earlier, reducing your blood pressure, boosting your immune system. The neuroscience is really interesting that shows that areas of the brain associated with attention regulation or focus change in positive ways. The area of the brain associated with stress has been shown to shrink. The area of the brain associated with self-awareness and also with compassion, those areas have been shown to get stronger, to change in beneficial ways.

11:02It's quite compelling. And I just want to be humble about, A, my lack of standing to speak about the science as an expert, and also humble about the nature of science. There's always some new study coming out that raises questions about the ones that came before it. Can you talk about the main thesis of Buddhism and its link to meditation? I said before that mindfulness meditation is derived from Buddhism, but it's secularized. I was attracted to that as an agnostic, somebody who didn't want to sign up for a religion per se. But over time, I've become quite deeply interested in Buddhism itself.

11:39I would call myself a Buddhist, which actually is more and less than it sounds like. it's less than it sounds like in that Buddhism isn't, it can be practiced as a religion. And it is by millions of people. And that's beautiful. And there are certainly metaphysical claims. There's no real God in Buddhism, but there are metaphysical claims about rebirth as an example, karma. But the Buddha was very specific, Buddha himself, and exhorted anybody within earshot to not take anything he said at face value. So this is a quote unquote religion that skeptics can line up behind. You can take or leave the metaphysics.

12:16What he essentially was talking about was a set of meditation practices and life principles that can drastically and meaningfully reduce your unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and suffering, and make you a more useful, helpful player in the world around you. It's truly enlightened self-interest in that way. And the main, I would say one of the main theses of Buddhism, a great Buddhist master was once asked, how do you sum up the Dharma, which is lingo for the teachings of the Buddha? How do you sum it up as briefly as possible? And he answered, everything changes. The foundational insight of the Buddha is thunderously obvious, but often overlooked, which is everything's changing all the time.

13:03We think we're walking around in a solid movie of reality, but every cell and atom in your body is changing all the time. Everything around you in nature is changing all the time. Your nature is changing all the time, depending on who you're in contact with, what your age is, what your employment status is, what your balance sheet might look like. Everything is changing with extraordinary rapidity. And if you are clinging too tightly to anything in a world where incessant change is the non-negotiable chief law of existence, then you're going to suffer. And the Dharma just goes from there. I don't want to overstate my expertise in Buddhism either, but that's my beginner's understanding as somebody who's practiced it a non-trivial amount.

13:53You've talked about a lot of the effects of meditation. If you were to define the benefit concisely, how would you define the benefits of meditation? of meditation specifically i would say there are three for me one is an increased sense of calm just the act of taking yourself out of the daily traffic for a few minutes at a time and we should talk about this how much do you need to do in order to get all of the advertised benefits because that's the question most people have but just taking yourself into a quiet place in your head for a couple of minutes a day injects a certain amount of calm into a lifestyle that, for me at least, has traditionally been quite frenzied.

14:34The second is, and I referenced this earlier, it's been shown to boost your capacity to focus. So that's very useful in an era that's been described as the info blitzkrieg. And the third, I think, is the most important, and it takes us back to this word mindfulness. It gives you this ability to see the contents of your consciousness, to see your thoughts, emotions, and urges with some non-judgmental remove so that you're not yanked around by them blindly. And it allows you to respond wisely to things instead of reacting reflexively. And I think that's the biggest benefit. I'll just say one last thing, which is there are other forms of meditation that traditionally have been taught right alongside mindfulness that often get overlooked in our culture that are actually designed to boost your capacity for warmth, friendliness, compassion, you might say love.

15:23I think those are very powerful modalities as well, and they've been studied extensively. Before we get to practical recommendations for meditating, I'd like you to talk a bit about how difficult it was for you to gain the appreciation for meditation. I'm referring to when you're at that retreat for 10 days and that you described how difficult it was for you to get that appreciation, then you hit that breakthrough. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I want to just be clear. The chapter in my book that most people ask me about, or that I get asked about the most, is a blow-by-blow account of my first silent meditation retreat.

15:59It was a 10-day, I think I refer to it as a Zen death march. And you don't need to do this if you're interested in meditation. I had a book that I wanted to write, and I needed some shit to write about, so I went on a meditation retreat. But you can exercise without doing an Ironman. And you can meditate without doing a 10-day meditation retreat. So I don't want anybody to get discouraged or intimidated here. So I went on this retreat. I was very reluctant to do it. The first couple of days of that affirmed all of my reluctance because it was extremely hard and I was surrounded by people who struck me as extremely weird.

16:36And it wasn't the silence that was hard. A lot of people key in on that detail that you're not supposed to talk. It was the meditating from 5.30 in the morning until 10 at night all day, every day. That was what was hard. No kidding. Yeah. So you're doing formal seated and then walking meditation. Walking meditation is this artificially slow walking back and forth where you try to tune into the sensations of your body. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again. It's a great practice. But at this dosage, it's a lot to take, especially for a beginner. So you're doing 30 minutes to 60 minutes of seated meditation, followed by 30 to 45 minutes of walking meditation.

17:16Then there's you get breakfast and then lunch and dinner, although you're not supposed to eat much for dinner. And you're just doing this all day long with a few breaks. And then there's an evening, what they call Dharma talk from the teacher. So it's really intense. And I hated it, was really miserable. And it was interesting because I was simultaneously rebelling against being there. and also trying to win and be the best meditator, whatever that means. And by day five, I think I was at wit's end and ready to go home. And I went and saw one of the teachers and she very quickly diagnosed the problem, which was I was trying too hard.

17:56Meditation is like this crazy video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward. The first hindrance in meditation is desire, if you're trying to make something happen, it definitionally won't happen. You just have to get into this relaxed, receptive mode. And that's not easy for type A people. After she gave me that advice, went and sat outside instead of sitting in the meditation hall and had this incredible experience where the volume of chatter in my mind went way down and I was much more open to and receptive to whatever was happening in the present moment. So it could be the raw data of physical sensations in my body, could be the bird song I was hearing in the trees, some leftover taste in my mouth from lunch.

18:50And I saw how rapidly the mind moves between thinking, physical sensations, different types of thoughts and emotions all coming up very quickly. And we don't really see that because most of the time we're in this autopilot, this dream, this movie of our discursive thinking. When you concentrate the mind enough, usually on your breath or something like that, and the thinking goes down, it's like you start to see into the gear works of how the human mind works. It was accompanied for me by just a huge blast of serotonin. I had 36 of the happiest hours of my life and ended up weeping on the floor of the meditation hall, all these aging hippies.

19:34And it was incredible. And then it went back to sucking uncontrollably, but it really gave me a lot of faith. That's a loaded word, but you might even just say confidence that there's something to this practice and I've never stopped doing it. I still go on retreats. Wow. What a story. You told the overarching story earlier, but you have the panic attack. At what point did you discover meditation and then go on that retreat? So I had the panic attack. I had two panic attacks. One was in 2004. That's the one you see on YouTube. I actually didn't stop doing drugs after that one. I had another panic attack in 2005.

20:09That's when I went to see the shrink. Stopped doing drugs. And then it was three years or so before I got turned on to meditation. And then I went on the retreat in 2010. And then I wrote the book, came out in 2014. I think I started meditating in 2009. It took me five years to get the book out because it's really hard to write a book and especially a memoir where you're trying to live it out and then learn the life lessons at the same time. And I'm writing a sequel right now and I'm, let's see, six years into that. So this is not easy. I can write reasonably fast, but when you're doing something like this, where you're trying to learn life-changing lessons in a real way and in an authentic way and then make sense of them, it just takes a long time.

20:56And then you want it to be a hyper palatable read in an afternoon type of experience. That takes a long time. How much of it was caused by, was it Peter Jennings that asked you to do some research or some stories on religion? Did that start your path? Peter Jennings, noted Canadian. For anybody who hasn't heard of him, he was the anchor of World News Tonight, which was the flagship broadcast on ABC News where I worked back in the day. And he was this just legendary figure and somebody I'd watched growing up and really admired. and he became my mentor right around the time of the panic attack. But totally coincidentally, he assigned me to start covering faith and spirituality for ABC News, which I didn't want to do because I was raised by atheists, scientists in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

21:41I had no interest in the subject, no interest, but he didn't care and forced me to do it and actually turned out to be great. It was through covering faith and spirituality that I ended up stumbling upon a self-help writer by the name of Eckhart Tolle, who also lives in Canada. And Eckhart Tolle, I ended up doing a story about him. Initially, I wasn't interested in him for any personal reasons, but he's very popular among celebrities and he'd been selling millions of books. So it was a sexy story. Although he's not the most telegenic person in the world. He's this elfin, elderly German man who speaks very, very slowly and softly, but he's fascinating.

22:18And in his book, he was the first person I ever heard point out that we have a voice in our heads, that we have a nonstop conversation that's happening all the time that we're mostly unaware of. And because we're unaware of it, it owns us. We're just acting our thoughts out like they're tiny little dictators. My beef with Tully was that I couldn't discern in his book or in my conversation with him that I wrote about in my own book and that I broadcast on television, I couldn't discern any practical advice for dealing with the inner torrent. But after I read Tolley and was whining about my frustration, my wife gave me a book by a guy named Dr.

22:58Mark Epstein, who's a psychiatrist who lives and works in New York. He had written, Mark had a whole series of books about the overlap between modern psychology and ancient Buddhism. And that's how I got turned on to Buddhism and meditation. Mark plays like Tuesdays with Maury role in the book where I'm just touching base with him throughout. And he and I are still very close friends. Okay. So you did this retreat where you had the breakthrough. How would you recommend someone who wants to start meditation get started? I definitely would recommend not starting with a 10 day silent meditation retreat.

23:31I mean, I actually know people who have started that way. Wow. It's a rough ride. You can do it that way, but I want to be clear that it's what we know about the science of habit formation is that it appears that the best route for a human to take, if you want to adopt a habit, is to start very small. So I often recommend that people shoot to start with a minute or two or three of meditation on a daily-ish basis. So to really create some room to mess it up, some elasticity, because it is so hard to create habits. There are some data showing that some gigantic percentage of people who make New Year's resolutions have bailed on them by February.

24:17So that's just indicative of how hard this is. And so given how hard it is, you want to have a sense of exploration and flexibility, maybe a sense of humor as you're doing this. My little slogans are one minute counts daily-ish. That's a great way to start. How long do you think it takes for that habit to stick? This is completely unscientific. My personal observation is generally about a month before people get a sense of, oh, I can see the value for me. This is not like physical exercise where the feedback is immediate. Well, you get some feedback in that it's uncomfortable to do, it feels hard.

24:53but the benefits or the proof that something's happening like sweating or hyperventilating you get from exercise is unlikely to happen immediately in meditation. And if that happens in meditation, something is probably awry. So it takes some faith to say, all right, I'm going to do this thing. The science pretty strongly indicates that it's going to be good for me. I'm going to do this thing. Let's do it for a month. I don't know anybody who's done it for a month and come back to me and said, no, this is bullshit. I think after a month, you'll get a sense of the benefit. The habit part of it is harder because habits, you can make them and then fall off the wagon.

25:31I think you just need to give yourself permission to be messy. And life happens and your practice might fade for a while, but nothing's been lost. You can start again. Do you think there's a best time of day to meditate? I don't. Some people will say you should do it in the morning. But if you're not a morning person, that's going to make it even harder. And given how hard it is to start a habit, I don't want you cutting against the grain. I think you should experiment, get a sense of what time of day works for you. One habit hack is, it's called piggybacking. And this comes out of the literature around human behavior change, is that if you've got an existing habit, brushing your teeth, for example, you can piggyback a new habit on top of it.

26:13Brushing your teeth can become a cue for, oh, I'm going to do two minutes of meditation before or after. Exercise, if you've got an exercise habit up and running, maybe you tack on two minutes of meditation at the end of that. So that's one little hack. So you recently interviewed on your podcast, our good friend, Hal Hirschfield. So that's the inspiration for this question, because you also wrote about how your brain is fixated on the past and the future to the detriment of the here and now, now we're financial advisors, in our world, many people spend much of their time and money in the today at the expense of the future.