Latest / INSPIRE STORY / The Science of Self-Growth_ Why You Can_t Hate Yourself into Change

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The Science of Self-Growth_ Why You Can_t Hate Yourself into Change · INSPIRE STORY

0:00
Speaker 1: Stress is the difference between the things on your to
0:03
do list and your capacity to handle that to do list.
0:06
Anxiety is fretfully projecting and fearing that bad things are
0:09
going to happen. Both things are probably at the worst
0:12
point they've ever been since we started keeping those records
0:15
on our ABC.
0:16
Speaker 2: News anchor author of ten Percent Happier.
0:19
Speaker 1: Mister Dan Harris, people who live the longest, have strong relationships.
0:23
Dose yourself with some discomfort, go to that party, accept
0:27
the invitation.
0:30
Speaker 2: The number one health and Well in the podcast Jay
0:33
Setty Jay Sheetty Sty.
0:39
Speaker 3: At this point in time, it feels like we've talked
0:42
about this topic for a long time, but it still
0:44
feels like we have a slightly unhealthy relationship with it
0:48
and somewhat a subconscious relationship with it.
0:51
Speaker 2: And I'm talking about.
0:52
Speaker 3: Stress, and it seems that year upon your people's stress increases,
0:58
people's variety of causes of stress increase. Even after the pandemic,
1:05
we saw a different type of stress that we experienced.
1:08
I wanted to get your thesis on how you feel
1:11
about the state of stress at the moment.
1:14
Speaker 1: It's not good. I recently learned this is embarrassing that
1:19
I recently learned this the difference, the specific difference between
1:23
stress and anxiety. Hopefully I don't mangle this, but it's
1:26
something like stress is the difference between the things on
1:30
your to do list and your capacity to handle that
1:32
to do list, the difference between the demands on you
1:36
and your ability to meet those demands. And anxiety is
1:39
a little bit more fretfully projecting forward into the future
1:43
and fearing that bad things are going to happen. And
1:46
so I think actually both things are probably at the
1:51
worst point they've ever been since we started keeping those records.
1:54
So from what I can tell, anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction,
1:58
and loneliness, according to the numbers I've seen, at unprecedented levels. Now,
2:04
we haven't been keeping these statistics for that long, so
2:07
I suspect when we were on the edge of World
2:10
War two, things were worse. But in the modern era
2:15
things have not been worse from what we can tell.
2:18
And I think a huge contributor to that is the
2:23
pandemic that we just lived through. I sometimes describe it
2:26
as a global, unregulated experiment into what would happen when
2:29
you deny people social connection and put people in a
2:34
state of deep uncertainty. About the future and add into
2:38
that political polarization, the noxious impacts of social media, which
2:43
we were just talking about, war, climate change, and you
2:47
have a very tough situation for individual minds.
2:51
Speaker 3: Which one's been the one that you feel you've heard
2:54
about the most from the people that follow your podcasts,
2:57
that have read your books, Like, what's distress that you
2:59
think is weighing them down the most.
3:02
Speaker 1: I'm projecting a little bit here and guessing, but I
3:05
sometimes think there's a difference between what people perceive to
3:08
be the source of their stress or anxiety and what
3:12
actually is driving it. So we might fasten on to
3:15
things that are real for sure. I mean like work
3:18
stress economics, so there can be stress about the state
3:21
of your job, and then economic stress about the larger
3:24
state of the economy. There's increasing stress around inequality and bigotry,
3:30
increasing awareness of it. So the question is are those
3:35
the approximate causes for your stress or could there be
3:40
subterranean contributors that you might not be aware of. So
3:43
I think today's media environment, particularly social media, and I'm
3:47
not anti social media. We just talked about the fact
3:49
that I recently went on it, but I think there
3:51
are aspects of social media we need to be aware
3:54
of and too much comparing yourself to other people is
3:59
as you've talked talked about, the source. It's a really
4:02
good source of unhappiness and stress. I think also, if
4:05
you're spending too much time staring at a screen, two
4:08
things can happen. One, you can get a distorted view
4:11
of the state of the world because the algorithms feed
4:14
off of conflict and anger and outrage. They feed our anxiety.
4:20
And then the other thing is the more you're staring
4:22
at the screen, the less time you're spending connecting to
4:24
actual human beings. So I think this is the deepest
4:27
contributor we are, and this is to state the obvious
4:30
social animals. You hear this in every TED talk. I
4:33
think I said it in my own Ted talk. So
4:34
I'm like, deeply unoriginal. Here. We are social animals. We're
4:38
designed to interact with other human beings, and yet everything
4:41
about modern life militates against this basic obvious fact. Everything
4:46
drives us into our own information silos, into curating our
4:49
own resumes and working on our own little homes and
4:54
all that can be beautiful, but when you overlook what
4:58
we need is going to create stress and anxiety, and
5:02
you might think it is observable things out in the world,
5:05
and it probably is those things too, but I just
5:07
wonder from many people whether it's this deeper contributor that
5:10
they're not looking at.
5:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so glad you've just made some two really
5:13
good distinctions there. I love the way you are sharing
5:15
the research around the difference between anxiety and stress, and
5:21
going back to that for a second, that example you
5:23
gave of having your to do list and feeling like
5:27
you don't have the capacity. It sounds like what you're
5:30
sharing is that there's a capacity challenge and then also
5:33
a control challenge, and when you're naming all those things
5:36
external to us, there's a feeling of I can't control
5:39
any of those things. All of those things are uncertain
5:43
and therefore dealing with constant states of change, and that
5:47
in effect creates a sense of stress and to some degree,
5:52
if I'm forward projecting, then anxiety as well when I think.
5:55
Speaker 2: About all of that.
5:56
Speaker 3: And I love what you just said about actually getting
5:58
to the root of it, because I think you're spot
6:01
on that we often discover a new symptom, and there
6:04
will always be a new thing we'll discover every day
6:06
that causes or triggers stress because there'll be a new change,
6:11
a new uncertainty, and new thing we can't control. But
6:14
at the core of it, you've highlighted this need for
6:18
connection and this need for belonging, and this need for
6:23
human touch, both physical and mental and emotional, that we
6:28
seem to be feeling further and further away from. I
6:32
was talking about this with my best friend today, who
6:35
I speak to probably like three or four times a week,
6:38
and it's the person I probably speak to the most
6:40
in the entire world. And he was my best man
6:42
at my wedding. He introduced me to spirituality. So we
6:45
have a long history of eighteen years of a friendship,
6:48
so he knows me very well and we still talk
6:50
three or four times a week. He lives in London,
6:51
I live in la and we still find the time
6:53
to connect, and that's mainly because he always makes time
6:57
and he's very kind. And I often think about it
7:01
in that I don't know how I would.
7:02
Speaker 2: Navigate life without that friendship.
7:04
Speaker 3: Because of having someone who understands me deeply, someone who
7:06
allows me to be seen, someone who allows me to
7:09
be flawed and imperfect, yet allows me to process. All
7:14
of that is so profoundly needed, but it required certain
7:20
deposits that had to happen eighteen years ago in order
7:23
to get there. Do you find human connection is easier
7:25
with people you've known for a long time, or have
7:29
you found it to be building new relationships and new friendships?
7:33
What have been the pros and cons of the ways
7:35
you've navigated both of those.
7:37
Speaker 1: One of the things that I really try to do
7:39
in my work is move away from abstractions or cliches
7:45
or big ideas and get really practical about how you
7:49
can actually act on these things. Because it's easy to
7:52
scroll on Instagram or read a book or hear a
7:54
Ted talk and you hear these inspirational notions like we're
7:58
built for connection and we need belonging and you need
8:01
to invest in relationships, and then what do you do
8:04
about it? And so I think about that a lot,
8:07
and I think you just gave us an example. You
8:11
made a deep friendship eighteen years ago. But it's not
8:15
enough to just have a connection with somebody. You need
8:18
to invest in it over and over and over again.
8:22
That's true for any level of deep relationship. It's true.
8:25
I would imagine with your wife's I mean, you've written
8:28
a whole book about this, so I'm not talking to
8:30
you like you don't know what you're talking about. But
8:32
I just think you're giving a great concrete example of
8:36
one little thing you can do, which is figure out
8:40
who you like and then make an investment in that
8:43
person and hopefully a few other people consistently over time,
8:47
because the rewards are huge and this isn't just like
8:51
a nice to have. I know you're familiar with this research,
8:54
but the study that comes up for me all the
8:56
time is this study that was done that's still ongoing
8:59
at Heart University. It's overseen now by Robert Waldinger, and
9:03
the idea is that they've been following several generations of
9:07
people who live in the Boston area to see what
9:10
contributes to a long life of longevity, health, happiness. And
9:16
what comes screaming out of eighty ninety years of data
9:19
is that the people who live the longest have strong
9:23
relationships and what's the mechanism for that. Stress is what
9:27
kills us. You started this whole conversation with the idea
9:29
of stress. Stress is what kills us most of the time,
9:33
and the best way to reduce stress is to have
9:36
positive relationships. Waldinger has this great expression, never worry alone,
9:41
And that's what you were doing three times a week
9:43
with your buddy. And there are obviously things you can
9:45
talk to your wife about, of course, but the whole
9:47
And again again, you know all of this, but you can't.
9:50
You can't. Your wife can't be the alpha and Omega,
9:53
your wife can't be everything to you. And again there's
9:55
data to support this contention too, that the strongest marriage
9:58
is a romantic relation ships In those relationships, the participants
10:04
have other relationships that support it. Know that you're getting
10:08
certain needs filled through your best friend. And yeah, so
10:13
I just go back to what you said that that
10:15
seems to be a direction that people can move in
10:18
when they're trying to think about how to operationalize this
10:20
stuff in their own life.
10:22
Speaker 3: Yeah no, and I'm glad that you brought it to
10:24
this and I genuinely couldn't agree with you more. And
10:27
that's why I've always wanted to talk to you, is
10:29
this idea of, well, how do we actually do that?
10:32
Because these big ideas and big concepts often, as you said,
10:37
I give you that short term inspiration, but then it
10:40
doesn't translate into any discipline or habit or creation of
10:44
a routine or rhythm that allows us to repeat it
10:48
and make it real. And so let's kind of sown
10:51
in on that for some of the points you made.
10:53
One of the things you talked about, of course, is
10:55
social media. And the truth is that all of us are,
11:00
in some way, shape or form addicted to this. It's
11:04
designed to make us addicted. It's not that we're addicted
11:07
because we have some flaw or some weakness, or because
11:10
we're not, you know, because we're alone. I think a
11:14
lot of us share this. I've found myself doomed scrolling.
11:17
I've found myself wasting hours and hours on social media,
11:22
feeling like I didn't achieve anything or gain anything from it.
11:25
So no one's immune to this. I don't think there's
11:28
a select few people who've beaten it. I think it's
11:31
consumed all of us. What have been the practical steps
11:34
that you maybe have put in place for yourself, people
11:36
that you known in your life, that you think have
11:38
actually helped people develop a healthy relationship, Because I think
11:41
it's also not just like saying, well, just don't be
11:44
on your phone, which is often again one of these
11:46
big ideas that's portrayed, which is like, well just turn
11:49
it off or you know, don't be on it, and
11:51
we know that that's not sustainable either, Like we're both
11:53
carrying our phones today.
11:54
Speaker 1: Yes, first of all, you said this thing about how
11:57
you have struggled with social media. I just want to
12:00
ad that I have too. I mean, I just started,
12:03
as we've discussed, and I can't tell you many times
12:05
I've gotten sucked into either scrolling and looking at things
12:09
that I mean, you know, I could be like talking
12:12
to my child during that time, or and this is
12:15
even more embarrassing, you know, compulsively checking back to see
12:18
how a specific video is performing, and and so yeah,
12:21
I don't come to this conversation with any superiority. I
12:27
also think and I will get to some things that
12:29
have been useful for me, But I also want to
12:31
say that I'm not against social media. I think there
12:34
are beautiful aspects to it. I think there are also
12:37
very difficult aspects, and we can talk about that if
12:39
you want. But it is popular not only for the
12:43
negative aspects for it. And I think it's you know,
12:46
you can get some degree of pleasure through social media,
12:49
for sure, and I think it's true just for any
12:52
dopamine hit in our life. You can get addicted to
12:55
anything that is the source of fleeting pleasure, from food
12:59
to cocaine, to alcohol, to gambling to shopping. And there's
13:04
healthy use, healthy involvement in all of these activities, and
13:08
then unhealthy And it really just depends on the circumstances
13:11
of your own brain, your own life, and it's a
13:14
thing everybody has to work on for themselves. As it
13:17
pertains to like practical things that work for me with
13:21
technology addiction. One is just being pretty disciplined about putting
13:25
it away at a you know, usually at the end
13:29
of the day, I try to put it away and
13:33
have a proper evening with my family. Don't always succeed
13:36
at that, but I notice when I do it, I
13:39
feel better. And that leads to the second piece of advice,
13:42
which is, as you know, I'm a big advocate of meditation,
13:45
as are you, and I think the self awareness that
13:48
can be generated through contemplative exercises like meditation can help
13:52
wake you up to the fact that you will feel
13:55
better if you don't get sucked into your phone for
13:58
you know, prolonged periods of time, and that can the
14:03
brain is always looking for pleasure and if you can
14:06
show the brain that there's what my friend Jedd Brewer
14:08
calls a bigger, better offer, which is that it will
14:12
feel better to connect to your family most of the time,
14:14
because sometimes our families are annoying. But it will feel
14:17
better to connect to other people, to read a book,
14:21
to take a walk in nature than it will to
14:27
you know, attach your arm to the iv drip of
14:31
fomo that that social media can be. And so I
14:35
think meditation is a great way to do that. The
14:38
final thing is see if you can ask yourself this question.
14:42
And I get this from a woman named Catherine Price,
14:44
who wrote a book that I recommend called How to
14:46
Break Up with Your Phone. She encourages people to ask
14:49
themselves to try to get into the habit of asking
14:51
themselves a very simple question when they're when they find
14:54
their zombie arm reaching for the phone, what do you
14:57
need right now?
14:58
Speaker 2: Like?
14:58
Speaker 1: What need are you trying to fulfill when you pick
15:02
up that phone? For me, it's often because I'm bored,
15:05
or I'm in an uncomfortable situation, or I'm tired and
15:08
I don't have the wherewithal to do something, or I'm
15:10
lonely or I'm hungry, And actually, if you run that program,
15:15
you run that algorithm internally for yourself. You're only going
15:20
to remember this ten percent of the time. But if
15:21
you can remember to do it some percentage of the
15:23
time and ask yourself, what is it that I'm actually
15:26
going for here, you might realize, actually the phone is
15:29
not what I need right now. And for me, I
15:31
found that really helpful. It doesn't work all the time,
15:33
but it helps. I sometimes joke that if anybody said
15:36
to me the types of shit that I say to myself,
15:38
I would be punching that person in the face. So
15:42
what can we do about it? What I've learned is
15:43
that you can get into the habit of talking to
15:46
yourself the way you would talk to a friend. And
15:48
there are some hacks that make this easier. One of
15:51
them is to actually, what need are you trying to
15:55
fulfill when you pick up that phone? For me, it's
15:57
often because I'm bored, or I'm in uncomfortable situation, or
16:01
I'm tired and I don't have the wherewithal to do something,
16:04
or I'm lonely, or I'm hungry. Ask yourself, what is
16:07
it that I'm actually going for here? You might realize, actually,
16:10
the phone is not what I need right now.
16:12
Speaker 3: The way that that worked for me was having to
16:17
remind myself after I made the right decision. So what
16:21
I mean by that is, if I'm going to reach
16:25
for my phone right now, and I have the courage
16:29
enough to not reach for it, but I end up
16:33
spending time with my family as the bigger better offer. Now,
16:37
after I've spent time with my family and I've enjoyed
16:39
it this time, they're not annoying. Then after I do that,
16:42
I need to deeply code that into my memory, like
16:46
I need to make a deal out of it, like
16:48
I need to tell my friend about it. I need
16:50
to journal about it. I need to record it, I
16:52
need to take a picture of whatever it is. Because
16:55
what I found is that the mind needs to be
16:59
reminded again when I reach for the phone that the bigger,
17:01
better offer will win, but that memory doesn't get stored
17:05
deep enough for us to be able to rediscover it
17:08
when we most need it. Yes, and so that's definitely helped.
17:11
And I loved what you said a couple of seconds
17:13
ago about being able to switch it off. I I
17:17
fail at this all the time, but I've at least
17:19
set the rules, and I think that's what we have
17:22
to do with this, because it's it is hard. But
17:25
a few years ago I set no technology times and
17:28
no technology zones in my home. So I almost envisioned
17:33
a no phone sign in the bedroom and at the
17:37
dining table. And at one point I used to envision
17:39
like lasers around the room. And second, if I walked
17:42
past it with my phone, then you know whatever the
17:45
floor is laughter, Yeah, like mission impossible. I just to
17:47
give that feeling. And yes, of course, have I walked
17:51
through a laser with my phone.
17:52
Speaker 2: Of course I have.
17:54
Speaker 3: But I like the idea of knowing that, Look, there
17:56
are certain rooms in my home where technology is not
17:59
the space. So actually I want to use my phone,
18:01
I have to leave that room to use it. And
18:03
like you're saying about leaving your phone in another room
18:06
or whatever it may be, I think is really powerful.
18:09
One thing you brought up, which I actually think is
18:12
that the crux of so much of this, And you
18:15
mentioned the word you've been embarrassed sometimes in your social
18:18
media usage, and I find that to actually be one
18:24
of the deepest routes of the challenges we have with
18:28
change and habit or even with meditation, like I think,
18:32
as you know, you've been teaching meditation for years, as
18:34
if I and when I first started meditating, and even
18:38
now when my attention is not as present as it
18:43
can be, or I'm not as focused or I'm distracted,
18:45
which still happens today after all these years of meditating,
18:49
it's so easy to feel embarrassed or ashamed or guilty,
18:53
and we can often start to develop it in a
18:56
critic that can say some of the most hurtful things,
19:00
like I'll often say to myself like come on, man,
19:02
you've been meditating for eighteen years. Now, how are you
19:04
still distracted? Or you know you've been you know by
19:08
now you should have been an expert because you're surrounded
19:10
by so many experts, or what's wrong with you? Like, oh,
19:14
how can you teach meditation if you can't meditate deeply
19:17
like you know, whatever it may be. And it's so
19:19
easy to get into that space. And one thing that
19:22
I came across recently for myself was recognizing that you
19:25
can't hate yourself into change, like you can't guilt yourself
19:29
into growth. You can't make yourself feel so guilty that
19:33
you'll suddenly achieve your goal. There almost needs to be grace,
19:36
There needs to be kindness, There needs to be a
19:39
safe space for you to have imperfections. So I wanted
19:43
to ask you, like, what have you done with that
19:44
emotion of feeling embarrassed, because I actually think meditation is
19:48
powerful for helping us overcome embarrassment. But I'd love to
19:51
approach that with you.
19:52
Speaker 1: Well, I've had the same thoughts of you know, I
19:54
don't know if you've experienced this, but you know, once
19:56
you step out into the world as like something approaching
19:59
a self help person, as soon as you're an asshole,
20:03
you tell yourself a story about how like you're a
20:05
total fraud, Like the first day you screw up, you know,
20:08
you're you're like, all right, well I got to close
20:10
this whole business.
20:12
Speaker 2: I can relate to that.
20:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure. I mean I I and I think
20:17
it goes to something really important, which is personal growth,
20:20
spiritual development, whatever you want to call it. Is hard
20:23
and messy and perfection is not on offer. And I
20:27
think just knowing that and even hearing Jay Shetty talk
20:31
about making mistakes and getting his shins cut off by
20:34
a laser as he walks into the bedroom with his
20:37
phone is useful because people need to know it's not
20:41
a straight, unbroken upward trajectory. That's that's not what this is.
20:47
That's not what this is about. There's a great tweet
20:50
or I guess we call him x's now or whatever whatever.
20:54
There was a great X the other day from a
20:57
zen rochie Roachie Joan Halifax. She's this incredible human being,
21:02
and she posted a picture that was basically a bunch
21:05
of squiggly lines just going nowhere, and then she the
21:09
caption was the path. That's the thing we are. This
21:14
is messy. We are messy animals and that's okay. And
21:18
what I think is important to know is that growth
21:20
is possible, but it is impossible without making a bunch
21:23
of mistakes. And if you can get that into your head,
21:27
you're better off. So how do you get that into
21:29
your head? There's a bunch of research that I've become
21:32
increasingly interested in about the possibility of reprogramming your inner dialogue.
21:39
We most of us have really nasty inner weather.
21:44
Speaker 2: You know.
21:44
Speaker 1: I sometimes joke that if anybody said to me the
21:47
types of shit that I say to myself, I would
21:49
be punching that person in the face, and yet I
21:52
talk to myself in a quite a scathing, venomous way,
21:56
and I know this is not unusual, So what can
21:59
we do about it? Well, you can get into the
22:02
habit you can develop. And again this is the data
22:05
and evidence backed assertion. I'm not making just making this up,
22:08
nor is it an original observation. But what I've learned
22:10
is that you can get into the habit of talking
22:13
to yourself the way you would talk to a friend.
22:15
And there are some little hacks that make this easier.
22:19
One of them is to actually refer to yourself by
22:23
your name. So, Jay, I know you just got distracted
22:28
in meditation, but dude, as you know, getting distracted is
22:32
a part of meditation. If it was possible to clear
22:35
your mind, then we'd have lots of people walking around
22:40
with no thoughts. But that isn't possible. What is possible
22:42
is to focus your mind for a few nine a
22:44
seconds out of time and then start again and again
22:47
and again. And we are very good at taking advice,
22:50
at giving advice to other people, but not taking our
22:52
own advice. And so this technique, which is called distance
22:55
self talk, where you use your own name to create
22:59
some distance, can allow you Jay or me Dan to
23:04
give ourselves the advice that we're so willing to give
23:06
other people and then actually to hear it. And does
23:09
that make sense as.
23:11
Speaker 3: Absolutely no, that resonates, That resonates so deeply, and I
23:15
actually feel that makes complete sense because even the negative
23:19
of that is true. And so I was reading just
23:22
a couple of weeks ago, maybe around how the two
23:25
ways we talk to ourselves negatively are either I am
23:29
so we say things like I am lazy, or I'm
23:31
so I'm not good enough for I'm the worst, or
23:36
you know, I'm the least intelligent out of all my friends,
23:38
or whatever is right, I am statements. And the other
23:42
one they were saying, which was even worse, was we
23:45
have a voice in our head that sounds like an
23:47
authority figure that says you're the worst or and you
23:50
aren't good enough, or you're behind, or whatever it may be.
23:54
And that almost sounds like there's an external authority, whether
23:57
it could have been a teacher or a parent, family
24:00
member who may have said that to us, and now
24:02
it's internalized as a negative authority in our minds. And
24:06
so what you're actually saying is the positive authority also
24:08
works that if someone says your name Jay Dan and
24:11
then coaches you and guides you through that, would you
24:14
say that that's a skill that you have harnessed and
24:17
nourished through meditation or do you see that as separate
24:20
to meditation.
24:21
Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely complementary. You know, as you know
24:24
in meditation you are. One of the benefits is that
24:26
you're more self aware. You're more aware of all of
24:29
these wild thoughts careening through your head, and so it's
24:33
easier to wake up now. I mean, I get lost
24:36
in you know, homicidal fantasies and you know, on speakable fantasy,
24:42
other kinds of fantasies. That's just the mind. But I'm
24:46
more likely now to have some self awareness. I mean
24:49
another word for that is mindfulness, to be able to
24:51
see what's happening between my ears, behind my eyes without
24:54
necessarily being caught up in it. And so the sooner
24:58
I can wake up to the fact that I'm in
24:59
the middle of a jag of self judgment, then I
25:03
can bring in these other tools. Oh yeah, you know
25:06
what I need to do right now is have a
25:08
talk between the sane part of myself and the insane
25:12
part of myself. And as you said before, the inner
25:16
critic comes to the ball masquerading is wisdom. But it's
25:20
not wisdom's it is your ancient fears, and it is
25:28
the dysfunction of the larger culture. So you might be
25:32
telling yourself you need to look better. Well, that's not
25:35
your voice. That is as to invoke another amazing person,
25:40
Sonya Renee or one of my Sonya Renee Taylor, I
25:43
believe is her name. I'm embarrassing I'm forgetting her last name,
25:46
but she's a great writer. And she said something to
25:50
the effect of, when I see self criticism, I realize
25:53
it's not my voice. It's the voice of the system.
25:55
And so you're telling yourself you don't look good. Well,
25:59
who's whose standards? It's the culture standards. And I have
26:03
two modes that I'm least proud of. One is greedy
26:07
and the other is angry. Angry, And as over time
26:12
I've learned to actually have some affection for these modes
26:15
because it's just the organism trying to protect itself. It's
26:18
just my ancient fear based patterns doing their best. Usually,
26:24
you know, like it's a five year old's version of
26:27
doing their best to protect this body. But I don't
26:31
need to listen to them. And in fact, the radical
26:33
disarmament is to actually make friends with them, to kind
26:35
of high five those demons instead of trying to slay them.
26:38
And for me, that's been really useful. And just to
26:41
get it back to your question, combining these, I would
26:44
say modern psychological tools with ancient contemplative tools has really
26:49
been helpful.
26:50
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
26:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love you just reminded me of making that
26:53
point about the system that you quoted. The reminds me
26:56
of yes, yes, and yes, and years ago. I was
26:59
just when I was student in London and I remember
27:01
walking through, you know, like a department store and there
27:05
was a big advert that said get the natural look,
27:08
and then it was like all these things that products
27:11
that can help you get the natural look. And just
27:13
that idea of purchasing a natural look is fascinating.
27:17
Speaker 1: Because as if you weren't born with them.
27:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And but it is that voice right saying okay, well,
27:22
even to get a natural look. And again, you know,
27:25
I think there are pros and consom in you. I'm
27:28
a big fan of so many products, so many services,
27:30
so many things, and so it's not to say it's
27:32
all bad, But there is a need in mindfulness to
27:36
I think what you're saying is to differentiate and have
27:40
the ability of discernment between is this voice me or
27:46
is this something outside of me, whether it's a system
27:48
or a person or whatever it may be. And I
27:50
think that's the quality that we need, because it isn't
27:53
necessarily saying I'm just going to shut everything off and
27:55
nothing matters. It's this idea of can I tell? Can
27:59
I tell that when I'm listening to the voice in
28:01
my head as to whether it's truly mine or whether
28:05
it's being picked up or nurtured by some other external force.
28:10
Speaker 1: Another fascinating question is what is me? Close your eyes
28:15
and look inside. Can you find some core nuggative j
28:18
and spend some time with that question that'll pop you
28:22
out of ruminating about lots of other unhealthy things.
28:25
Speaker 2: Where is that question taking you?
28:28
Speaker 1: I think you think. I think you come more out
28:30
of the Hindu tradition, and I come a little bit
28:32
more out of the Buddhist tradition, even though I don't
28:35
look like it, But you know that's That's where I've
28:38
spent the last fifteen years of my life really doing
28:40
a lot of study And one of the things I
28:44
say in Tibetan Buddhism is that the not finding is
28:50
the finding, because there's nothing to find there. I yes,
28:54
I mean on the convention, on the level of consensual,
28:57
conventional reality, I'm Dan and that camera's taking a picture
29:01
of me, And yes, that is true. But on the
29:03
deepest possible level, if I look for some core nugget
29:07
of Dan, there's nothing to find, and that not finding
29:12
is the answer. And if can you stay with that ambiguity,
29:16
there is something healing about that. So how how do
29:19
you take that out of the esoteric clouds into your
29:21
actual life? One little linguistic trick. You kind of teed
29:25
me up for this before because you use the phrase
29:27
I am like, I am so, and so what if
29:30
you just and this is I want to give credit
29:33
to the person who came up with this. It's Joseph
29:35
Goldstein is a great meditation teacher, but he often advises
29:38
his students to say, instead of I am fill in
29:42
the blank, there is fill in the blank. There is
29:45
hunger right now, there is anger in my mind right now,
29:49
there is sadness in my mind right now. There's no
29:52
you to find the adding of the you on top
29:56
of it is just adding insult to injury, right, you
30:00
don't that's extra, but that it's true that hunger or
30:04
anger or sadness can be here right now. But if
30:06
you can take the I am out of it and
30:08
to that there is well that it's workable. Right, you
30:11
can do something with it. You can let it pass,
30:13
you can observe it, you can try to work with it.
30:15
But if you add in a whole story about how
30:17
ij or I dan I mean curably fill in the blank, well,
30:21
that that's much. That's a much bigger problem. Nothing can
30:24
happen until you identify the problem. If I am dismissing
30:28
something out of hand, it's usually something I should listen to.
30:32
And if I'm getting defensive, it's because there's something I
30:35
know I should hear that I'm unwilling to hear at
30:37
that moment. Meditation is a great way to like pound
30:40
this stuff into your neurons.
30:42
Speaker 3: It's interesting, though, isn't it, Because it feels like we're
30:44
all so obsessed with identity in our stories and almost
30:49
what you're proposing is this idea of recognizing that there's
30:53
somewhat of a distance between us and our identity and story.
30:58
Yet every think we've been discussing today, whether it's social media,
31:02
whether it's the system, whether it's the story your parents
31:05
laid out for you, all of that, there's stories to
31:09
be lived, crafted told, and almost we're all living our
31:12
own stories in our own mind. And so, yeah, how
31:14
are you able to operate as Dan Harris, the teacher,
31:18
the guide, the you know, podcast, et cetera, and then
31:22
also have the the balance of this recognition that actually
31:26
there is and there's no I am.
31:28
Speaker 1: Well, can I turn it around? Of course? Like my
31:31
last retreat was six to nine months ago, I've got
31:34
one coming up, so I'm like further and further away
31:37
from sanity, but you are much fresher, like you've just
31:40
come out of a retreat.
31:41
Speaker 3: How do you balance that there's an understanding of the
31:45
needs and interests of the different vehicles in which I live.
31:53
So the body being one vehicle, and the body has
31:57
needs in order to operate and in order to function,
32:01
and then the mind has certain needs and awareness that
32:08
it will easily be a support or as the Geeta says,
32:12
the best friend of the worst enemy. So recognizing again
32:16
as you said earlier, the befriending of the mind requires
32:19
an awareness and then at a deeper level, looking at
32:24
our emotions, looking at our spiritual or consciousness connection. And
32:29
so to me, it's the outlining and awareness of the
32:34
needs for that specific vehicle, but not falling into the
32:39
trap of believing the vehicle is me. And the balance
32:43
comes from recognizing using there is is beautiful actually, but
32:48
recognizing that there are needs for each aspect that need
32:52
to be taken care of, but that one should not
32:55
accept each of them to be oneself. And I think
33:00
for me that comes in the form of having to
33:02
remind myself of that which is beyond the physical self,
33:07
because it's easier to get connected and identify with the
33:11
physical self than it is with the non physical self.
33:15
Because the non physical self is intangible, it's unseen. When
33:18
unaware of it, we don't live in a society that
33:20
reminds us of it. I was thinking about this while
33:22
I was actually at the monastery. So the monastery doesn't
33:25
have mirrors, and that was something I've talked about before,
33:27
where you lose your sense of your physical self, Like
33:30
while I lived there, I didn't really I forgot deeply
33:33
what I look like. And so if I was out
33:35
on the streets. When I was traveling, I would always
33:37
try and look at my reflection in a you know,
33:40
in a shop window, whatever it may be. And when
33:43
I was back this time as well, I was having
33:44
that realization that the number one thing I do in
33:47
the morning when I wake up back at my home
33:49
is I look in the mirror. And so I'm already
33:52
from the moment I wake up living in my physical self.
33:55
I'm now living believing that I am this body and
33:57
this is all there is. And so that automatically sets
34:00
me up on the opposite end of what I'm trying
34:03
to practice spiritually. And so I found that the balance
34:06
is kept by making that reminder, that first thought of
34:09
the day, of recognizing, whether it's in your language, you
34:13
know that which is not or that which is unseen.
34:16
And in the Hindu tradition, the accepting of us being pure, eternal,
34:23
full of knowledge, and full of bliss as consciousness, identifying
34:27
with that before I identify with anything else, and that,
34:30
to me is what helps the balance is not falling
34:32
into the easy identification.
34:34
Speaker 2: I don't know if any of that made any sense, but.
34:36
Speaker 1: Well I does. I think, Well, you're aware through your
34:39
own practice that there's more than just the Jay you
34:42
see in the mirror. And yet you live in a
34:47
busy world and you're actually like me, you're kind of
34:50
building a business around the small version of yourself, like
34:54
the physical, corporeal version of yourself that presents here and now,
34:58
smaller than these of vast, infinite, mysterious We don't know
35:03
what that is. Somehow it lives in your mind. And
35:06
the way that you balance it, I heard, is just
35:11
engage in the messy business of trying to remember to
35:13
the best of your ability.
35:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't need to remind myself that I'm Jay,
35:18
this physical version, because I'm reminded of that every day.
35:22
But I have to remind myself of that which is
35:24
beyond this, because otherwise it's so easy to lose touch
35:27
with it. Because we are living with the bodily needs
35:30
is the prime focus, and I think that's why retreats
35:34
and experiences are so supportive, where the bodily needs somewhat
35:39
become a background priority and the needs of the deeper
35:42
self rise and the connection with that self is more prominent.
35:47
And I find that starting my year of that way helps.
35:49
I was actually just I was talking to someone who
35:51
was mentioning they came to one of your retreats at
35:54
Omega and they were saying, what a beautiful experience that
35:56
was there. They said it was the only retreat they've
35:58
ever been on, but they plan on coming on more,
36:00
and it was for that same reason, to be reminded.
36:03
And I think that's why we do anything right. I
36:05
think we most of what we do is to remind
36:07
ourselves of something that we care about and something that's
36:11
meaningful to us, like whether it's spending time with our family,
36:13
or why we celebrate the holidays, like so much of
36:17
I think the most beautiful things in our world are
36:19
reminding us of what truly matters. And I think spiritual
36:22
and meditation. To me, meditation is my daily practice of
36:25
remind myself of what truly matters exactly.
36:27
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the biggest problem in my experience,
36:31
the biggest problem in whatever, again, like I don't know
36:34
what to call this personal growth, spiritual development, whatever it is,
36:36
the biggest challenge is forgetting. Because you hear a great podcast,
36:41
you see a great Instagram post, you read a great book,
36:44
you go to a great retreat, but then everything about
36:46
modern life pulls you back into the I'm going to
36:51
get satisfaction from the next thing. Oh no, no, the
36:53
next thing. I'm going to keep scrolling. I'm gonna get
36:56
that next sip of a latte. I'm going to get
36:57
the next promotion. And again I'm not saying these are
36:59
bad things, but they won't do it for you. Right,
37:02
There's a reason why you keep wanting more because the
37:06
way the human animals designed is it natural selection. Didn't
37:10
want us to be satisfied because then we stop, you know,
37:13
having babies, and that wouldn't be good for the species.
37:17
So you need to wake you need this is an
37:21
urgent mission. You need to find as many ways as
37:24
possible to wake back up. And you just describe, you know,
37:27
meditation is a great way to like pound this stuff
37:30
into your neurons. It's probably too aggressive of an analogy,
37:33
but it gets it into your molecules in a way.
37:36
And another thing you also described earlier is having good friends.
37:41
You know, if you can surround yourself with people who
37:44
are also taking this thing seriously, that is a great
37:47
way to wake yourself back up. And it also, by
37:49
the way, is a great way to get you out
37:52
of your attachment to this sort of I don't know
37:56
if this is the appropriate term to use, but the
37:57
sort of smallest, most superficial version of yourself, the brand
38:01
of Dan, the brand of Jay. Well, if you're focus,
38:04
if you're talking to your best friend, he's got a
38:05
problem and you're helping him with it. Another word for
38:08
that would be generosity. Right, if you're being generous in
38:11
some way that's going to get you out of your head.
38:13
That is a form of letting go.
38:15
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, I like that.
38:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, that that really that that struck a corde of
38:20
like how again, going back to that being when when
38:24
we're being a I guess in that case you said generous,
38:29
there's an element of us not living in the system,
38:35
is what you say?
38:36
Speaker 2: That feels right? Why why is that? Why? Why do
38:39
you think that breaks the system?
38:41
Speaker 1: It's a little line that I have which is impolite,
38:44
but the view is so much better when you pull
38:47
your head out of your ass, and you know, if
38:50
you're being generous, your head's out of your ass. Even
38:52
if you have ulterior motives, which I think we unfairly demonize,
38:57
like it's okay to give because you know you have
39:00
some there's something in it for you. By the way,
39:02
there is something in it for you. The brain is
39:05
wired to experience intense reward in the act of generosity.
39:10
That's cool, but you're still more of your bandwidth focused
39:14
on the benefit to somebody else than there would be
39:16
if you were like mindlessly scrolling or binging or eating
39:20
or whatever it is. And it is just fundamentally getting
39:24
your head out of your ass in whatever form you choose.
39:26
And it doesn't have to be giving money. It can
39:28
be holding the door open for somebody. I sometimes ask
39:32
people to do this little mental, very easy mental game
39:36
of like, pay attention. The next time you hold the
39:38
door open for somebody, what does that feel like? It
39:40
feels good if you're paying attention. That feeling is infinitely
39:43
scalable in a way that the pleasure of Instagram or
39:46
ice cream is not. And I just you can ride
39:50
that insight. Not that I do it perfectly, if at all,
39:55
but you can, if you're so inclined, ride that insight
39:58
all the way to a sing effinitely greater levels of happiness.
40:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.
40:02
Speaker 2: Wow, I love that. I love that.
40:04
Speaker 3: That's so interesting that after all these years you can
40:07
still open the door for someone and it still feels great,
40:11
And and you know, whether whether the other person responds
40:13
or not, that the endless scrolling on social media is
40:18
kind of yeah, loses its taste very very quickly.
40:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't mean you should ever do it. I
40:23
just it's just the endless part that you should lose.
40:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean, I guess that's one of
40:28
the things I loved about in this book when I
40:30
first came across it. Your book Ten Percent Happier, which is,
40:34
you know, a huge best seller, huge success, led to
40:37
the podcast. Also, one of the things I loved was
40:40
this whole idea about without losing your edge. And I
40:45
really appreciated that because I think it's what we've both
40:48
been talking about here. Like I enjoy operating and building
40:52
and creating like I do, and I've always been. I
40:55
feel like I'm at a point in my life where
40:57
I've given myself permission to be all aspects of myself.
41:01
And up until this stage in my life, I was
41:04
just collecting different parts of myself, and so I felt
41:07
like I collected I mean, zero to ten probably didn't
41:10
do anything, but ten to twenty I collected things. Twenty
41:13
to thirty I collected things. And now I'm in my
41:15
thirties I feel like I'm connecting things, and that collection
41:19
to connection has been primarily through the uncomfortable process of
41:25
accepting and giving myself permission for the paradoxical and contradictory
41:29
things that live in within me. So as much as
41:32
I love being fully present and mindful and deeply purifying myself,
41:38
I also really enjoy building and creating and learning and
41:42
being curious and outward. And those two things coexist, and
41:46
I actually find that one feeds the other. So I
41:50
find that the further I go outwards, the more I
41:51
want to go inwards, and the more I go inwards,
41:53
the more I want to go outwards in a positive sense.
41:56
And that cycle continues. And it's a cycle, it's not
41:59
a and I think both of us having studied Eastern traditions,
42:03
the East is fully cyclical and not linear in all
42:06
of its practices. So the growth journey looks like this,
42:10
and the Western growth journey generally is portrayed is that,
42:13
though even though it may not.
42:14
Speaker 1: Be, there's a way in which you can assume that
42:17
sitting and meditating or even going to a can you
42:20
believe this dude went to a monastery for ten days.
42:22
A couple of days ago, like that's not going to
42:24
help him with his edge, but actually it does help you.
42:26
It does help you. Do you want to be less
42:29
emotionally reactive? Do you want to be more focused? Do
42:31
you want to have better relationships with your collaborators? Okay,
42:34
do you think going to a monastery is going to
42:36
help or hurt with those things? It's going to help
42:38
with all of those things. And those are the things
42:40
we need to be successful. We've been sold through hustle
42:44
culture this idea that you know, thank God, it's Monday,
42:48
I've got to rise and grind and all of that stuff.
42:50
But that is, in my experience, a great way to
42:54
burn out, when in fact, that the cycle that you
42:57
just talked about of retreat to advance kind of you know,
43:00
you take something, you don't have to do it. It doesn't
43:02
even have to be a retreat. It can be just
43:04
five minutes of meditation every day. That that is filling
43:07
your tank in a way that allows you to engage
43:10
in the world more effectively. And so these two things
43:13
are not in opposition in my experience, and you're a
43:16
walking example of that, Like you spent time being a
43:19
monk and that has helped you build a business that
43:22
helps other people, that helps you do more inner work.
43:26
Speaker 3: Boom, Yeah no, And of course, and I love what
43:29
you said there, because yeah, we've talked a bit about retreats,
43:31
and I don't want everyone to think they need to
43:33
disappear for a week or a year or whatever it
43:35
may be. All of this can be done in the
43:37
microcosm of five minutes. I want to Dan walk us
43:39
through your daily meditation practice. And I'm sure you've done
43:42
this a million times, but I'd love for people to
43:44
hear it because I'd love for people to hear how
43:46
accessible some of these ideas are on a daily basis
43:48
that we're talking about, and of course in a way
43:52
that they can start practicing as well.
43:53
Speaker 2: So what is your data practice.
43:55
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm excited where you're interviewing me right now.
44:00
In like two minutes, we're gonna turn this around and
44:03
I'm gonna interview you and I because we come from
44:05
different traditions, so I actually come into my discussion with
44:08
you with a lot of curiosity about what your meditation
44:10
is like. But so from a Buddhist standpoint, it's for
44:14
beginners really not complex, and a lot of people worry
44:20
that it's going to be, you know, esoteric or impossible,
44:23
but it really isn't. There's really three steps for beginning
44:26
mindfulness meditation. And by the way, I did use I
44:29
keep talking about Buddhism, but this meditation that I'm talking
44:33
about now is secular. There's no religious lingo or metaphysical claims.
44:37
It's just a it's a very simple, secular kind of
44:40
exercise for the brain. And the first step is just
44:43
to sit or lie down comfortably, close your eyes. And
44:47
the second step is to bring your full attention to
44:49
the feeling of your breath coming in and going out.
44:52
For some people, the breath is can make you a
44:55
little anxious if you're focusing on that, and if that's you,
44:58
then you just pick something else, like the feeling of
45:00
your body sitting or lying down. So that's step number two. First,
45:04
get into a comfortable position sitting or lying down. Second,
45:07
pick something to focus on, like your breath or the
45:10
feeling of your body. And then the third step is
45:12
the most important because as soon as you try to
45:14
do this, your mind is likely to go into mutiny mode.
45:18
You're having in all these random thoughts and urges and emotions,
45:21
and at this moment. The voice in people's heads often
45:25
swoops in and tells them and this whole story about
45:27
how they're failed meditators. I mean, you were talking about
45:29
this earlier, but that voice is wrong. The whole goal
45:33
in meditation is just to notice that you've become distracted
45:35
and to start again and again and again. And the
45:39
waking up from distraction is not proof of failure. It's
45:42
actually a proof of success, because the whole goal here
45:45
is to get more familiar with this inner conversation that
45:48
we're all having, this inner narrator that is chasing us
45:51
out of bed in the morning and is yammering at
45:53
us all day long. You just want to get more
45:56
familiar with this cacophony so that it doesn't own you
45:59
as much. So it's really that simple. Pick one thing
46:02
to focus on, usually the breath. Then in a few
46:05
seconds in you'll start having random thoughts about like what
46:08
kind of bird was big bird? Or you know where
46:09
to gerbils run wild, whatever, all these random thoughts. As
46:13
soon as you wake up from those thoughts, blow them
46:15
a kiss and go back to the breath. Back to
46:17
the breath, over and over and over again. And that's
46:20
like a bicep curl for your brain. And that's what
46:22
we see on the brain scans of people who meditate
46:24
that the area of the brain associated with attention or
46:27
focus changes in a positive way. Meanwhile, the area of
46:30
the brain associated with stress shrinks. And this is an
46:36
exercise that anybody can do. I will say, small asterisk
46:40
if you have significant mental health challenges or trauma, it
46:43
might be good to do it under the supervision of
46:45
a mental health professional, but other than that, it really
46:48
is universally accessible. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are,
46:51
or if like me, you're an agnostic. This is simple
46:55
secular exercise for your brain.
46:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I love what you said is that we're
46:58
really just trying to get it to tune to that
47:01
in a voice that is basically telling us what to
47:05
do all day and pushing around in every direction. I
47:09
find that that voice has often led us to achieve
47:15
incredible things. That voice often leads us to achieve things
47:20
and still feel unfulfilled. That voice has almost becomes such
47:24
a friend in so many ways, and sometimes a toxic friend.
47:27
It's almost a toxic relationship we have with the voice
47:29
inside of our head where we listen to it, but
47:32
we don't always like it. But sometimes it helps us
47:34
win and sometimes it you know, sometimes it helps us
47:36
get one up on someone and then other times.
47:38
Speaker 2: It lets us down.
47:39
Speaker 3: And it's doing all of this. It's almost like, I think,
47:42
like a toxic relationship. We're scared of letting go of
47:45
that voice because it's almost like, what do I replace
47:47
it with?
47:47
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm just going to be alone.
47:49
Speaker 1: Well, A couple things to say about that. One is
47:51
there are many voices. I mean, one of the theories
47:55
of modern psychological theories is called the modular model of mind.
47:59
That we have these modes. I kind of think about
48:01
it like you remember magic eight balls you shake up
48:07
and and the tiles compete for the top space that
48:11
you that and then it'll send you a message or whatever.
48:14
So we have a bunch of tiles in our head
48:16
and they're all competing for that little for the steering wheel, right,
48:20
And so I've got a jealous mode, an angry mode,
48:22
a fearful mode, a self critical mode, and I think
48:26
often the self critical mode is the one with a
48:28
steering wheel. But you have a wise mode, a generous mode,
48:31
a compassionate mode, and they're often just not getting that
48:36
much airtime, and there are ways through meditation, through therapy,
48:43
being in nature, exercise that can bring the healthier tiles
48:48
to the surface. And so that's just one thing to say.
48:53
And then the other thing to say is that, yeah,
48:56
it's true that the self criticism, it's it's we're scared
48:59
that if we let it go, that will be on
49:01
the couch eating ice cream until the end of time.
49:04
And that's just not what's going to happen. Back to
49:08
Tibetan Buddhism, and I'm not an expert in it, but
49:10
they have this expression that I have a couple of
49:14
colleagues who are sitting on a couch over here who
49:16
have heard me say this a million times, but I
49:18
really love this. This there's the Tibetan word for enlightenment.
49:23
As far as I understand it roughly translates into a
49:26
clearing away and a bringing forth. You clear away the
49:30
noise of our All of our demons are unhelpful demons.
49:37
What can come out is what is already there in
49:41
all of us, which is the good stuff. You know.
49:45
You might use the word the loaded word love, and
49:48
I think of love as like sort of an overarching
49:50
term that encompasses things like generosity, compassion, kindness, patience, ethics,
49:57
and that is in us. Of course, it's in us
50:00
because back to evolution as a social species, we needed
50:03
all that stuff in order to cooperate and collaborate and
50:06
become the apex predator on the planet. And when you
50:10
turn the volume down on the you know, shittier aspects
50:13
of our nature, the good stuff will come out. And
50:16
it's it's it has an edge. It has the edge
50:20
that you want. It does want to create beautiful and
50:23
important things in the world. It does want to take
50:25
care of you too, as well as it wants to
50:27
take care of everybody it it does. It does want
50:31
to stand up to injustice. It does want to be tough,
50:35
but not motivated by hatred instead by the good stuff,
50:39
which is like giving a shit caring anyway. That's that's
50:42
all my experience about this stuff.
50:44
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you're not.
50:45
Speaker 1: I'm not perfect at it by any stretch. I mean
50:48
I've been. I made a reference to the Liz Antonio
50:51
were sitting in the room with us, like give them
50:53
the mic. They'll tell you, you know ninety still a moron, Absolutely.
50:57
Speaker 3: No, no, no, But but I love the idea of
50:59
how we're simply reconnecting with and reawakening something we've forgotten.
51:04
So it's almost like we're associating with that angry mode,
51:08
that envy mode, that jealousy mode, that ego mode every day,
51:11
and so we've started to accept that it's our reality
51:14
and normality. Whereas you said, we do also have a
51:17
wise mode. It's just that we haven't experienced it, either
51:21
outside of us or inside of us for so long
51:23
that we've forgotten it's there. But it is there, it
51:26
is accessible, and I think that is not only true
51:30
based on the wisdom traditions we've studied, but it's also
51:32
empowering to recognize that this isn't something new you're having
51:36
to figure out or develop. It's an ability that almost
51:39
exists within you already that has just been buried and
51:43
covered over by all these other layers of identification and impurities.
51:48
You've been so vulnerable a couple of times to mention
51:50
this thing inside of you as an anger mode. You
51:53
were saying earlier, you have two modes, and one of
51:55
them was anger. And I wanted, if it's okay, to
51:59
kind of hone in on that, because I think that's
52:02
something we've actually never really discussed on the podcast in
52:06
all the guests we've had, and I think it's something
52:09
that often is something people are scared of talking about.
52:13
It's a taboo topic because of the connotations that anger
52:17
is associated with. And I was wondering, how, as meditation
52:23
and mindfulness, what have they shown you or helped you
52:26
understand about anger, because I think I think our mind
52:30
often goes to what I want to stop being angry
52:32
rather than I want to understand anger. And I think
52:34
this is so true for so many things in society,
52:37
where like I wish that would just stop, and it's
52:41
almost like, well, before it stops, we may need to
52:43
get to know it a bit better and understand it
52:45
and befriend it. Going back to the high five point
52:47
you made earlier, And so I thought, let's start with
52:50
anger for that.
52:51
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, there's this great I know you know
52:54
who he is, but there's this great Vietnamese zen master
52:56
Tikna Han, and I love keeping he has this this
53:00
expression about like holding your anger like a like a baby.
53:05
I don't love that because I'm such an anti sentimentalist,
53:09
and I you know, I find it like somewhat annoying,
53:13
even though he's completely right. He's a genius, or was
53:17
a genius he passed recently. There's something to that. First
53:20
of all, the anger is trying to tell you something.
53:24
In my case, it's like some infantile usually desire to
53:31
protect myself, and often it's Sometimes anger has been described
53:38
as a secondary emotion, so it's an emotion that's covering
53:42
up for another emotion, and in my case it's usually fear.
53:46
So I'm a guy and we don't like to admit fear.
53:51
And often if I look closely, if I hold the
53:54
anger like a like a crying child, if I get
53:59
over myself and do the thing that the wise person
54:01
has mentioned that we should probably do, I actually see,
54:04
oh yeah, I'm scared of something here. And that's really
54:08
helpful because then I can I can respond wisely to
54:13
the thing that's making me angry slash scared, rather than
54:16
reacting blindly. There's a difference between healthy anger and destructive anger. Again,
54:23
this is not my insight. This is the way in
54:24
psychological circles they talk about. A healthy anger is that
54:28
can get you off the couch to do something about
54:30
a problem, and it's clarifying it. It can help Healthy
54:34
anger can help us see clearly where somebody's full of shit.
54:39
Although there's a reason why we talk about anger as
54:41
seeing read because it can also be you know, blind
54:44
with blind rage. And so that's the destructive anger, which
54:49
where that's an anger fueled by hatred, fueled by bias, bigotry,
54:55
and it can get us into endless conflict. And that's
55:01
what you want to avoid. That's what I've failed to
55:03
avoid for too many times in my own life and
55:08
still screw that up, you know, regularly. But it's nothing
55:13
can happen until you identify the problem. You talked about
55:18
this earlier, you know, Like one of the things that
55:19
meditation does for you is it helps you be aware
55:21
of stuff so that you can work with it. And
55:25
so yeah, this is one of my big things that
55:27
I have to work with.
55:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. No, I.
55:31
Speaker 3: Really value that understanding of the difference in the two
55:34
angers that you just mentioned there. But also, yeah, just
55:41
being able to recognize the fear that sits beneath it.
55:44
And I can when I get agitated or irritated, it's
55:49
always because there's something I'm fearful of, and often it's
55:52
even the fear of messing up.
55:55
Speaker 2: You know, it's for me.
55:57
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of when I'm asked a question and I
56:00
feel like I don't have any enough time to solve it,
56:02
and then I'm like, oh no, just you know whatever,
56:04
like that kind of agitation, that irritation comes out, and
56:07
really it's a fear of I'm like, I wish we
56:09
had more time, I would be able to solve this,
56:11
like I don't want to mess up. I don't want
56:12
to give it and and so. And it's so interesting
56:14
that what is actually well intentioned of a desire to
56:18
want to get things right turns out to be experienced
56:21
as that. And like you said, and like you mentioned,
56:26
Tikna Hunt said of being able to hold it as
56:27
a baby or being able to Yeah, it's almost like
56:33
it's so interesting though what you said about the not
56:35
the skepticism that you have, but the you know, you
56:38
were saying, the overly sentimental version of holding a baby.
56:41
And I think often that is the perspective people have
56:44
of these ideas, right with mindfulness, with meditation, that oh
56:47
it's sentimental, it's a bit fluffy, it's a bit woo
56:49
and we know there's science behind it now and those
56:52
those days should be gone, but they're not because there's
56:54
still a skepticism and cynicism around the idea of like,
56:58
oh yeah, my fear is like whatever, there's no fear
57:00
right because that in and of itself is trying to
57:03
protect us from or trying to protect us from our fear.
57:07
And so, how have you seen in others and how
57:09
have you in yourself been able to catch yourself double
57:13
bluffing yourself or when you're almost you know, you're finding
57:17
that way around doing the actual work.
57:20
Speaker 1: One of the biggest and most reliable sources of feedback
57:23
for me is defensiveness or dismissiveness. If I am dismissing
57:32
something out of hand, it's usually something I should listen to.
57:36
And if I'm getting defensive, it's because it's something I
57:38
know I should hear that I'm unwilling to hear at
57:40
that moment, And I almost never catch I almost never
57:46
catch it in the moment. I almost never catch it
57:48
in the moment, But it's usually when I feel embarrassed
57:51
the next day. You know, it's like it's just I
57:54
keep coming back to this, you know, I'm so pissed
57:57
that this person said this thing. It's like, ah shit,
57:59
they're probably right. And so I actually got an email
58:02
the other day from I won't say her name because
58:05
she didn't give me permission, but from a great meditation
58:07
teacher who was talking to me about something, and she
58:10
I didn't recall her getting defensive, but she recalled herself
58:12
getting defensive about something that I was pushing her on something,
58:15
and she wrote me an email the next station she
58:17
is like, I woke up thinking about how I was defensive,
58:20
and that means eitherre's something I really need to listen
58:23
to there, So I'm going to go in the direction
58:24
you need to push me. And that's that's usually how
58:27
I get past the double bluff.
58:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think for me, it comes out in if
58:33
I'm judging someone. So I find that if I'm judging someone,
58:36
that there's a sense of truth that that exists within
58:40
me somewhere, and so I need to explore that that
58:43
which I'm judging in someone else. And I've been working
58:47
on that one, and that's the hardest one.
58:51
Speaker 1: It's the most embarrassing too, because it's like you it
58:55
feels good to point at the other person there's such
58:57
a schmuck or whatever, but like, of course you're seeing it.
59:01
So clearly. Yeah, and you're you hate it so much
59:03
because it's it's in you.
59:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's so funny because when you see in them,
59:08
you're like, how can they not be aware that they're
59:10
like that? And at the same time, you're talking about yourself,
59:13
and you know you've recognized you're not you're not even
59:16
aware when you're like that. And I think that's where
59:18
I notice where I'm where it's easy to double bluff
59:21
myself and I have to be conscious of That.
59:24
Speaker 2: Goes along your lines too.
59:25
Speaker 3: It's that you're building a story to support your view
59:29
without evidence and without research and without looking at all
59:33
of the facts, and you know you've you've created a
59:37
story that makes sense to you in order to fulfill
59:41
your your desire, whatever.
59:44
Speaker 2: That may be. And then you're not forced to actually
59:46
look at yourself.
59:47
Speaker 1: There's a great expression. If it's hysterical, it's historical. You know,
59:53
it's like you're getting hysterical about something. There's some it's
59:58
some deep program and yeah, I hate admitting that.
1:00:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we're both we're both going back and
1:00:06
forth admitting all of our admitting all of our flaws
1:00:09
and challenges and issues. But that's what meditation does, right,
1:00:13
just that this is actually what's transpired without without.
1:00:18
Speaker 2: Intention or maybe with intention.
1:00:20
Speaker 3: But actually this is the benefit of practicing mindfulness of
1:00:25
meditation is a really healthy relationship with all of your imperfections.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: I mean, you interview all sorts of people, but you
1:00:34
interview a lot of like great folks from the meditation world,
1:00:38
and so do why and so in my experience, the
1:00:41
common denominator among all of the great like spiritual masters, right,
1:00:46
if that's a term that you're okay with, the common
1:00:49
denominator is they all have a sense of humor. Yes,
1:00:52
how can you look at this mind? Yeah, without laughing?
1:00:56
After all, the word that my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein
1:01:00
is most frequently is ridiculous.
1:01:03
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, because we're ridiculous.
1:01:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were ridiculous, and it's just it's so healthy
1:01:08
to see that and laugh at it.
1:01:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
1:01:11
Speaker 3: Our teachers would obviously always talk about the monkey mind. Yes,
1:01:15
And although that's somewhat of a alien analogy to some degree,
1:01:20
at least when you've grown up in England or in
1:01:22
the US, because you're not seeing monkeys all the time.
1:01:25
But when I have gone to certain spiritual sites in
1:01:27
India that are you know, infiltrated with monkeys.
1:01:32
Speaker 2: It will only make you laugh.
1:01:33
Speaker 3: Like I've seen monkeys, uh, you know, rip bags to
1:01:37
steal fruit. I've seen monkeys steal people's sunglasses and then
1:01:41
trade it back for food I've seen I've seen monkeys
1:01:46
steal credit cards like and and know how to barter
1:01:49
for what they want, like I've seen seen monkeys put
1:01:52
in sunglasses like all you need to do. I mean,
1:01:54
me and my wife and a barley this year and
1:01:57
we went to the monkey forest there and the monkeys
1:01:58
are just hell and ridiculous is the word. And it's
1:02:02
almost that when you start seeing the habits of the
1:02:06
mind as a monkey, it's so easy to laugh at
1:02:08
it because you just realize how ridiculous it is, and
1:02:11
how how hilarious they are, and how uncontrollable they are,
1:02:15
as opposed to looking at it as this thing like
1:02:18
almost like a Rubik's cube, which we sometimes see as
1:02:21
and you get frustrated trying to figure it out. Especially
1:02:24
when you look at a monkey. You go, well, a
1:02:25
monkey's going to be a monkey. So I'm not surprised
1:02:27
when my mind is ridiculous. I'm not expecting my mind
1:02:31
to be this. You know, you're never looking at a
1:02:34
monkey expecting it to be sitting there meditating on top
1:02:36
of a rock. You're expecting to see a monkey jump
1:02:39
from branch to branch and swing and you know, whatever
1:02:42
else it may be. And all of a sudden when
1:02:44
you can and you have to have had the real
1:02:46
experience of that in order to even have that really
1:02:50
sit and like if I hadn't seen. And then a
1:02:52
couple of years ago, I went to Rwanda and we
1:02:53
treked with gorillas, and we saw the little baby gorillas
1:02:56
who were just playful and silly, and the sound of
1:02:58
their laugh and and just what they were like, and
1:03:01
you just start to recognize you need. This is why
1:03:04
what you just said earlier, you mentioned it passively, but
1:03:06
observing nature is such a beautiful way of understanding ourselves.
1:03:11
And again going back to your earliest point, our disconnection
1:03:15
from each other in nature means we're only seeing systems
1:03:19
and machines and the way systems and machines work, and
1:03:23
now our expectation of our mind to work the same way.
1:03:26
I want to turn my mind off, and I want
1:03:28
to turn my mind on, because we've seen the system
1:03:31
of on and off on a light switch, to a
1:03:32
phone to a tablet for so many years now that
1:03:36
we've lost the idea of wait a minute, the sun
1:03:38
sets and the sun rises, but it doesn't sun off
1:03:41
and sun on, and we've lost that concept of there
1:03:46
is no instant on and off, and there is no
1:03:49
instant switch. There is only nature doing its cycle and
1:03:53
its phases and its rituals.
1:03:56
Speaker 1: Almost to pick up on the instant part of it,
1:03:59
you know, it kind of takes me back to the
1:04:01
first question you asked around stress, and we talked about
1:04:04
some of the contributors. I think one of the contributors
1:04:06
is that we live in a world that doesn't have
1:04:09
enough friction. That we've created a world for young people.
1:04:13
And to me, you're a young person, but because I'm
1:04:16
in my fifties and you're in your thirties. But I
1:04:18
have a nine year old who's a much younger person.
1:04:20
And we know there's a way that older people can
1:04:23
blame younger people for their oh this generation or kids
1:04:28
today or whatever. But this is a world we've created
1:04:30
for them where there isn't a lot of friction. You
1:04:32
can get everything you want on demand, and as a consequence,
1:04:37
people are intolerant of discomfort, and that is creating a
1:04:41
lot of anxiety because life is uncomfortable and there are
1:04:45
going to be stressful and scary situations, and your ability
1:04:50
to thrive is going to be directly correlated to your
1:04:52
ability to handle this. And if we don't get comfortable
1:04:57
with discomfort, we're going to suffer. And there are ways
1:04:59
to work with this. One of them is this thing
1:05:02
that it's a psychological term opposite action, you know, when
1:05:06
you I'll give you an example. I have intense claustrophobia.
1:05:11
And when your colleague Jordan came to pick me up
1:05:15
in the lobby of the hotel in which we're doing
1:05:17
this interview and take me up the elevator, I said
1:05:21
I have to ride alone because I didn't want to
1:05:24
have a panic attack in front of her. But I
1:05:27
got on the elevator. I didn't want to. I thought
1:05:29
about walking thirty flights and I've done that before.
1:05:32
Speaker 2: Sorry, I feel terrible now. I wish we would again.
1:05:35
Speaker 1: I set up, dude, what are you doing?
1:05:38
Speaker 2: No?
1:05:39
Speaker 1: I But the lesson here is that I need to
1:05:42
get on elevators regularly. That's the way out of this.
1:05:46
It's opposite action. I need to do the thing I'm
1:05:48
scared of carefully. I don't want to give myself a
1:05:51
panic attack. Although there are some people who argue that
1:05:54
that is a way through this, But for me, I
1:05:56
just kind of gently expose myself to the stuff I'm
1:05:59
afraid of, and so I actually look, I relish the
1:06:01
opportunity to get on an elevator or to take a subway, right,
1:06:04
I just have to do it in the right circumstances.
1:06:06
So I didn't inflict it upon Jordan. I just took
1:06:09
a different elevator. And I actually think this is one
1:06:12
of the This is one of the ways out, one
1:06:14
of the ways out of the epidemic of stress and
1:06:17
anxiety that we began this conversation with, which is to
1:06:20
whatever way in your own life, to just dose yourself
1:06:24
carefully and gently with some discomfort, to take the opposite action,
1:06:29
do the opposite of what you want to do, which
1:06:33
may be to you know, hide from the discomfort, Go
1:06:36
to that party, accept the invitation, ask that person out
1:06:40
for a cup of coffee. Press like on that Instagram post.
1:06:44
You know, little steps like that will will equip you
1:06:47
and arm you to move through a world that is
1:06:50
largely out of your control done.
1:06:52
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
1:06:53
Speaker 3: It's been such a joy talking to you today, and
1:06:56
I've really I've really enjoyed how you know. This conversation
1:07:00
turned into the benefits of meditation, without listing the benefits
1:07:04
of meditation, but the but the acceptance of the benefits
1:07:09
being a deeper awareness of who we are, what we
1:07:12
need to improve, and doing that with love, with kindness,
1:07:15
with gentleness, as opposed to hate, pressure and stress that
1:07:21
we often place on ourselves. But we end every episode
1:07:25
with a final five, and these final five have to
1:07:27
be answered in one word to one sentence maximum each
1:07:31
and so Dan, these are your final five. The first
1:07:33
question is what is the best advice about mindfulness that
1:07:37
you've ever heard or received?
1:07:39
Speaker 1: Just start again?
1:07:40
Speaker 2: I like that? Yeah, beautiful?
1:07:42
Speaker 3: What is The second question is what is the worst
1:07:45
advice about mindfulness or meditation that you've.
1:07:47
Speaker 2: Ever heard or received?
1:07:48
Speaker 1: Clear your mind.
1:07:49
Speaker 2: It's so bad. It's so bad.
1:07:54
Speaker 3: It's so bad, and it was almost marketed like that
1:07:58
for a long time.
1:07:59
Speaker 2: Yes, for a long Question Number three, how would you
1:08:03
define your current purpose?
1:08:05
Speaker 1: Make awesome shit that helps people do their lives better?
1:08:09
Speaker 2: I love that?
1:08:11
Speaker 3: Question Number four, a thought that you'd like to repeat
1:08:16
more often.
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Well, I got a tattoo recently. It's an acronym ftboa B.
1:08:23
It's way off brand for me in terms of like
1:08:26
it's cheesier than I like to be, but it stands.
1:08:29
It's a Buddhist phrase for the benefit of all beings.
1:08:32
And we talked about my anger habit, but one of
1:08:35
my other habits that I also mentioned that I don't
1:08:37
like is a kind of selfishness or greed, and so
1:08:40
I really try to remind myself as much as possible, like, no,
1:08:44
I'm answering this in more than a word.
1:08:46
Speaker 2: It's brilliant, it's great.
1:08:49
Speaker 1: But I try to remind myself, Yeah, this is for
1:08:51
the benefit of all beings and the a the all
1:08:55
I'm included in that. So it's not like I can't
1:08:57
make a living or whatever. But having it right here
1:09:00
next to my watch, I'm trying to put that thought
1:09:03
in my head more frequently.
1:09:05
Speaker 2: I love that.
1:09:06
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful answer. Fifth and final question, which we
1:09:09
asked every guest has ever been on the show. If
1:09:11
you could create one law that everyone in the world
1:09:13
had to follow, what would it be?
1:09:20
Speaker 1: How long do most people pause? Because I'm thinking.
1:09:22
Speaker 2: People take forever, and.
1:09:24
Speaker 1: That's when you picked up the book you read a check.
1:09:29
Speaker 3: We either we either allow we either allow people to
1:09:32
edit it out or they can have their thinking time
1:09:34
in the edit whatever they prefer. Okay, law, take your time.
1:09:38
It's a fun question, so I prefer it when people
1:09:41
think about it.
1:09:42
Speaker 1: And I don't think this is something that you can legislate,
1:09:48
so I wouldn't want to force it, but it would
1:09:50
be like a strong suggestion, which is around kindness, which
1:09:57
is that maybe I'll use this phrase from the Dala
1:10:02
Lama that I like better than kindness because kindness can
1:10:03
sound very planned, whise selfishness that if you want to
1:10:11
do selfishness correctly, you will be thinking about the benefit
1:10:16
of all beings to the best of your ability, because
1:10:18
that is how you will get happier. And if we
1:10:23
lived our lives, all of us with that as a
1:10:25
north star, which again I don't know if I could
1:10:27
make it a law, but I could make it a
1:10:31
strongly held policy. I think that would change a lot.
1:10:35
I think that would change I'm not a utopian. I
1:10:36
don't believe that we can create a perfect world, but
1:10:39
I think that we can create a much better world
1:10:42
if we play to people's self interest in a way
1:10:46
that really is in their self interest instead of the
1:10:48
fleeting dopamine hits that we're selling people on. Now that
1:10:52
actually your abiding happiness is going to be found in kindness.
1:10:56
And I wish there was a less cheesy way to
1:10:58
say that.
1:10:59
Speaker 2: That's a great answer.
1:11:00
Speaker 1: I love it everyone more than more than a sentence.
1:11:02
Speaker 2: It's perfect. It was perfect.
1:11:04
Speaker 3: The tenth anniversary edition of Dan's book Ten Percent Happier,
1:11:09
How I tend the voice in my head, reduce stressed
1:11:11
without losing my edge, and found self help that actually
1:11:13
works a true story is available right now, of course
1:11:16
with the tenth anniversary edition.
1:11:18
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
1:11:18
Speaker 3: Congratulations, that's pretty much for Ray now when the book
1:11:22
came out, and of course subscribe to Dan's podcast Ten
1:11:25
Percent Happier as well. Dan, thank you so much for
1:11:28
coming on too on purpose. This was such a refreshing
1:11:31
and really really beautiful organic conversation. And I appreciate you
1:11:35
going there with me because that's kind of the space
1:11:37
I've been in on the show recently of wanting to
1:11:40
get lost with someone right.
1:11:41
Speaker 1: Just to go into a flow. Yeah, it's so interesting
1:11:43
to meet you because I mean this is a long
1:11:45
way of saying thank you. It's just so interesting to
1:11:48
meet you because I've seen you from Afar for a
1:11:50
million years and then just to like walk into this
1:11:53
hotel room. You're like this dude who just shows up. Hey,
1:11:55
how you doing? Like you're way more casual and down
1:11:59
to earth and I might have expected, and so it's
1:12:02
really fun to like put an actual person.
1:12:04
Speaker 2: To That's very sweet. I really appreciate that. Thank you
1:12:07
so much.
1:12:07
Speaker 3: And maybe we're doing a terrible, terrible job at the
1:12:10
brand new That's not how I come across.
1:12:12
Speaker 1: No, it's my own paranoia.
1:12:16
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm like, God, the guys are going to
1:12:18
get it together. No, I really appreciate that, thank you
1:12:21
so much.
1:12:21
Speaker 1: That's usually when you when I I you, I meet
1:12:24
a I've met a lot of well known people in
1:12:26
my job as a journalist because I have my job
1:12:29
to interview them, and it's rare that I like people
1:12:33
more after meeting them based on their public persona. And
1:12:37
so that's what I was trying.
1:12:38
Speaker 3: To thank you. That's very kind of that's very kind.
1:12:40
It's that's I really appreciate that thank you. I received
1:12:44
that deeply, and I think it's really hard. I've I've
1:12:47
definitely struggled with this. We just I can only be
1:12:52
fully myself with someone i'm in person with. It's it's
1:12:55
impossible to I find it impossible to be your whole
1:12:59
self on a thirty second video or you know, if
1:13:03
someone listens to the podcast, I feel they know me
1:13:05
because they're hearing, you know, full conversations of an hour
1:13:08
each week, so or every day. Some people listen to it,
1:13:11
like I feel, if someone listens to the podcast, they
1:13:13
have a deep, deep understanding of Meal if they've read
1:13:15
the books. But if someone's just seeing something on social media,
1:13:19
they have such a limited view. It's so hard to
1:13:22
portray yourself in that way, or in your true self.
1:13:25
So I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Thank you.
1:13:27
Speaker 1: Dan, Thanks for having me.
1:13:27
Speaker 2: It's been a real treat. Thank you so much.
1:13:29
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. If
1:13:32
you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat with Adam Grant
1:13:36
on why discomfort is the key to growth and the
1:13:39
strategies for unlocking your hidden potential. If you know you
1:13:43
want to be more and achieve more this year, go
1:13:46
check it out right now.
1:13:48
Speaker 1: You set a goal today you achieve it in six months,
1:13:51
and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief.
1:13:54
There's no sense of meaning and purpose. You sort of
1:13:56
expected it, and you would have been disappointed if it
1:13:58
didn't happen.