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#21_ The Power of_Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: All right, Rich, Well here you're from the Neighborhood podcast.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Host today on the show, I have a great Dan Harris.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: What'll we talk about? What do we talk about so much?
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: We went on for a long time.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: We talk about meditation, We.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Talked about relationships, we talked about balancing ambition with mindfulness,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: we talked about ten verosity, a lot of stuff.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: All kinds of stuff. So if you're not familiar with Dan,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: he is a host on Nightline. He's also one of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the weekend anchors on Good Morning America. He is the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: man behind the book ten Percent Half Year as well
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: as the podcast ten Percent Half Years. He's got a
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: new book, Alcohol Meditation for fidgety skeptics.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: They should all check out.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And here's our conversation.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Please enjoy it.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: If you like it, you can comment below last notch
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: you think ready to do it?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: All right, thanks Dan, thanks for making the time today.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Thank you was the revolver ottle chap. Where did you travel.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: From to Well, here's here's the thing. I had a
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: little experience confronting my the limitations of my mindfulness today.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Because this I'd live in the hills above Malibu, the Nies.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I live pretty far away from here and started driving
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: here like I don't know, twelve thirty or something like that.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: My plan was to get here, meet Michael here at
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: about one point thirty, help him set up, get everything organized.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And I pulled into the parking lot here at about
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: one point fifteen, looked in the back seat of my
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: truck and realized that I left all of my podcast
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: here at home.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, how do I solve this problem?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: So I called my wife. I'm like, I can't believe
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I did this. I'm such a knucklehead, Like I live
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: like an hour away, right, There's no way I'm going
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: to be able to get home, get this stuff, and
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: be back here in time to meet you. I'm immediately
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: reflecting on our email exchange yesterday about where to do
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: this and making sure that, like I'm all set up
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: when you arrive. And so I called you. I was like,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you got to meet you, got to get my stuff
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: and meet me like on halfway or whatever. So I
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: got my steps on to do it. Yeah, she did.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: She did it. And it was interesting because this is
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the exactly the kind of thing that would have just
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: put me into an absolute mannic tail span a couple
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: of years ago. And I'm not saying that I handled
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: it with complete grace today, but I actually kept my
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: shit together pretty well. I was like, Okay, this is
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: what it is. Dan's probably gonna be there when I
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: get here. I'm not going to be ready to go
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: at two thirty. I'll get there when I get there.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, traffic started stacking up as I
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: got closer and closer to here. With that, you know,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the anxiety notches up incrementally with each red light. It's like, Okay,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: it is what it is. So I wouldn't say my
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: blood pressure was a complete baseline, but I give myself
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: like a B plus and when normally I would probably
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: get i'd probably get a D. Yes.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I think that that delta between the D and the
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: B plus actually adds up to an A in terms
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: of the quality and quantity of your improvement. I mean,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: this is a case study for why you meditate. It's
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: not that perfection will arise, because perfection is not on offer.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: It's just being marginally but meaningfully less of an idiot.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: And this story crystallizes the benefits crystal. I mean, it's
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: perfect that this thing happens. It's your fault right.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Completely, my fault right, which pushes all my buttons like
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you're an idiot, you don't know what you're doing.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yeah, it plays into I see I
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: see it, I see it, I get it. And yet
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: so you didn't handle it like you know, you didn't
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: dance through it like fred Astaire. But you handled it
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: much better than you would have before. That's an a
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: And by the way, it will continue to get better,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: not every day, and it won't be like it's not
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: a linear it's not a hotney stick, but it'll gradually
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: just kind of go in that direction.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it will. It will always like regress
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: to the mean, which is probably at that ten percent
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: happier kind of kind of like trajectory. That little spike
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: was was definitely above the ten percent, and it'll go
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: back down. It'll rubber band a little bit. And it's
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: not a direct reflection of what I did this morning either.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: It's just a compounded effect of what I've been doing
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: over the last couple of years.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: That's right, you mean it's not a direct Just to
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: clarify what you said, it's not a direct result of
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: the meditation you did this morning. It's just having meditated
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: for a while. There's actually a bunch of important things
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: about that you just said. First of all, the ten
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: percent itself compounds, Now I don't. I mean, I don't
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: have any mathematical evidence to back this up. And in
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: my experience, the ten percent happier goes up over time
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: because it just compounds, like any good investment. The other
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: thing I'd say is that it is so important that
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: you point out that it's not a result of the
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: meditation you did this morning. And a lot of people say,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: you know, they end at meditation and they think, well,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: that was a good or a bad one. Doesn't matter, right,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter. The only question to ask yourself at the
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: end of a meditation you could have been squirming and
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: miserable the whole time, was were you aware of it?
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Were you mindful of it? Because you are not training
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: yourself to be better at putting yourself into a mental
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: bubble bath. You were training yourself to learn how to
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: see clearly your own inner chaos so that it doesn't
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: own you.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I think that's a really important observation and distinction, and
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I kind of analogize it to you know, what it's
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: like to train for a race, you know, like one
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: of the races that I do, or to write a
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: book like you just you have to show up for
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: it every day. And sometimes you show up and you
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: feel amazing and you hit it out of the park
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: or the words are just flowing. In other days it's
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a shit show. Yeah, you know, it's not working at all,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: But you show up and you show up the next day,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and the cumulative impact of that consist an application of
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: intention is really the most important factor.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: That's why they call it a practice. I mean, these
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: are all practices. In order to practice anything, the first step,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: as you said, is to show up right. Nothing else
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: can happen. It's funny because you know, when you walked
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: in here today, I thought you seem slightly less bolliant
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: than the real.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I was agitated. And then when I went to the bathroom,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I was like, he knows I'm agitated, Like I'm running,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I'm looping this thing right in my mind. He's like
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: he can tell I'm off kilter.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: No, No, I took it to maybe like I pissed
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: him off by asking him to come all the way
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: out here. I personalized it, you know, like at all.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Oh No, But it just this is also useful to
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: unpack because this is the way the mind works. We
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: can personalize it and say it's the way our minds work,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: but it's really just the way the mind works. Every
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: you know, we're all in our own movie, and we're
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: all the stars of our own movie, and whatever's happening
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: in other people's movies or is only interesting to us
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: a for maybe some mild fleeting tinilation or b as
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: interesting or important because it says something about our own movie. Right, So,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: you walk in here, you're in a bad mood. Of course.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: I I By the way, it was totally minor vibration.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: It wasn't It.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Wasn't a bad mood. I was just agitated because of
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: what I had just undergone.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't have known you were agitated. I just thought
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: slightly less bubbly than normal. But I immediately just went to, oh, yeah,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: it's probably a little annoyed that I had them, you know,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: come all the way out here.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: To do this. Anyway, I was just hoping I would
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: get here before you so I could get this thing
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: set up before you walk.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I got to talk to Michael.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: You're video awesome, all right, Well, let's let's like, uh,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: you know, canvas your current situation here. I mean, from
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: my perspective, you have like the world's greatest side hustle
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: going on here. I mean, this is unbelievable. Like you,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: so you were on the podcast before we shared your story,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: and perhaps we can kind of revisit that in a
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: nutshell to so we can contextualize what we're going to
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: talk about. But while you're you know, managing this incredible
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the word would be high pressure
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: career that you're in of hosting Good Morning America on
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the weekends and doing Nightline at the same time, you
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: have this thing going on that for anybody else would
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: be an entire career. You've written multiple books on meditation,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: You've got the ten percent Happier app You've went on
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: this crazy bus tour, and you've become this like the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: public face of mainstream meditation for America or the world
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: in this kind of public health advocacy context. Like, that's
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a lot you have going on right now.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for saying that it is a lot.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I would say the biggest problem in my life right
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: now is time management. I just don't have enough time
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: because I also have a family, three year old son
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: and a wife who actually came with me to La
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: so we could have We live in New York City,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: so she came with me just so A we could
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: escape the three year old and B we can have
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: some time together. Yeah, she's I think it like us
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: right now or something.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: That's good. I enjoyed your podcast with her.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, I put her on my podcast.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: You had like some weird trepidation about doing that, but
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I thought it was amazing.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I had weird trepidation about it because she knows me,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: like she really knows me. There's no she actually knows
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: the the the when the mask is off. I don't
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: actually I don't wear too much of a mask, but
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: she knows what I'm like at home.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for real, You're you're very self effacing. Yeah, and
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: you're in your writing and in your presentation on the podcast,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: so you know, and that's part of you know, that's
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: part of your accessibility and relatability and charm. So it
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: was interesting to me that that seemed to, you know,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: sort of alarm you on some low level. Yeah.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I mean I couldn't. I can't control my wife, right,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: So it's like, nor would I want to. But but
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: you know, when I make self effacing facing jokes on
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: a podcast or in a book, it's I'm controlling it.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: My wife there she can say whatever the hell she wants,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: and she knows everything. So that was just.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: A little anxiety to get away with anything.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: But it was hilarious, and she definitely gave me all
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: the shit that I deserve to have been given right.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And she's a very important and interesting case study in
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the context of this new book, you know, meditation for
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: fidgety skeptics, because she herself, despite being your partner, was
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: not sold, or at least not on board on a
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: practice level, with this whole thing that you're all about
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: these days.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Now. She I asked in the book whether maybe maybe
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: I hurt myself by frequently asking her what it's like
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: to be married to your spiritual leader?
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Ye go over.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Well, she didn't like that joke. So the irony is
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: she's the one who actually got me started on meditation.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: She gave me a book by doctor Mark Epstein called
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, And I read that
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: book and realized that I, up until the time, I've
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: been reading a lot of sort of echar Toley self
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: help stuff, and I thought was very interesting because it
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: talked a lot about totally. I think quite brilliantly describes
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: our ego, the voice in our head, the sort of
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: background static of perpetual discontent, as he describes it. But
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I've also heard Ekar Toley and my view accurately described
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: as correct but not useful. So he describes our situation
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: well but doesn't actually give you much to do about it.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: And when I read Epstein's book given to me by
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: my wife, I realized, oh, yeah, there is something to
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: do about It's called meditation, and so I started meditating
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: as a consequence of that, and then wrote I've read
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: a couple of books about it. And Beca has lived
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: with me through this period of time. She likes the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: meditation in that it's made me less of an asshole
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: than I used to be. And I definitely had. I
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: retained the capacity to be a schmuck, no question about it,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: but I was much worse way back when, at a
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: time when she knew me. But she never adopted it
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: herself for a whole complex bullyabayse of reasons, including you know,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: her schedule and her sort of somewhat she had a
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: resistance to self care, which she viewed as a bit
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: of self indulgent, and then living with me, I'm like
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: a wagging finger personified. Even though I never I don't
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: lecture her about it. I did a little bit at
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: the beginning, but I learned not to. She just had
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: a real resistance to it, and over the course of.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: This still differentiate herself like she's just not going to
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: get on board.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: I just didn't want to do something that she knew
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: I wanted her to do.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Marriage.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I do the same type of thing. I
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: get it. I no judgment, I don't actually have any.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: The only reason I wanted her to meditate was she
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: has an incredibly stressful job. She's a physician. Oh right
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: now she's taking some time off, but she's a highly trained,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: highly specialized physician, and we have a young child. And
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: before that we had a fertility crisis, and she had
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: breast cancer last year, so it's been she's had a
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: tough run, and I thought this would be very useful her.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: But I knew that if I said anything, she wasn't
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: going to do it. So Jeff Warren, my co author
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: on the book, was this brilliant meditation teacher. He sat
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: down with her and he was really able to unlock
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: it for her and in a way that she now
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: does meditate.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And what was it specifically that he did that unlocked
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: it for her.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: A couple of things. First, was he identified something that
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: she identified and something that I had not seen in myself,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: which is that my practice, my meditation practice. As it
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: turns out, I learned in the writing of this book
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: that I'm a huge hypocrite. I'm always telling people you
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: take it easy, don't worry about it. When you get
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: distracted when you're meditating, it doesn't mean you've failed. It's
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: actually the opposite, you've succeeded. But in my own practice,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I was actually very mean to myself when I would
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: get distracted, and I have a real sort of grit
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: and determination to sit a certain amount every day. And
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Bianca saw this. She saw that there was a sort
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: of eat your vegetables vibe to my practice, and it
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: was not attractive to her. And so Jeff was like,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: I see what you see about Dan's practice, get rid
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: of that. Well, what I think you ought to do
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: is have a gloriously self indulgent practice that at the
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: end of the day, when you've put your son to
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: sleep and you come out, I want you to put
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: on some reality TV, turn the volume down low, sprawl
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: out on the ground, and just notice how good it
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: feels to lie down. Tune into the physical sensations, and
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: when you get distracted, start again, and again and again.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: He called the meditation he created for her taking back lazy,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: which is a brilliant, brilliant reframing. The other thing he
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: pointed out is that she had She often is the one.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: She pretty much always the one who has to put
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: the kid to bed because I work nights and early morning,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: so I'm almost never awake or available, and he's really
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: hard to get down, so she can often spend ninety
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: minutes to one hundred and twenty minutes in there feeling rage.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: He was like, just when you're lying next to the
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: kid and he's you're just waiting for him to fall asleep,
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: just meditate right there.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: It's you're already doing. You're already there.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: So she probably meditates more than anybody I know because
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: she's marooned in this little monster's bed with him, and
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: she has co opted that time and turned it into meditation.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: It's interesting that the people that go out of their
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: way to make their life about caretaking are the ones
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: that struggle the most with taking care of themselves. A wife,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: being a doctor and a mother. That idea that you know,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: you got to put the oxygen mask on yourself before
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: before you put it on the kid is so nonintuitive
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and challenging for people like that too, literally because it
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: feels indulgent. I suppose.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a whole chapter in the book about this,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: and Bianca being a primary case study, but we also
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: spend some times some social workers who help kids with
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: developmental delays in New Mexico and their problem as because
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: was this is self indulgent. You know, if the five
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: minutes I spend on meditation, I'm thinking, well, I could
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: be with my husband, I could be with my son,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: I should be cleaning, I should be doing any number
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: of things. And it's just what you said. If you
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: if you care truly about taking care of other people,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: you can't do so effectively if you don't take care
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: of yourself.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Right, But that there's that guilt, well even shame absolutely
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: some people that crops up that prevents people from from
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: doing that.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: You know, I think you're not the key for somebody
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: like me who's in the position of trying to help
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: these folks is to acknowledge and validate those feelings. I
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: get it. I see the logic behind your rationale, but
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: it's useful in a sort of non judgmental way to
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: help help folks see that actually, under close examination, the
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: logic doesn't hold up, right.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I see you as like this perfect cipher for the
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: average human being who kind of knows what meditation is,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, tiptoeing around the outer edges of it,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: but is intimidated or you know, not so keen on
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: all of the lingo. You know, language. We can talk
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: about the importance of language if you want. And here
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: you are this person who is, like I said earlier,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: like you know, very relatable, who speaks the same language
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: as the very human being speaks, and is able to
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: translate these principles through storytelling and through science to make
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: these kind of very esoteric ideas meaningful in a very
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: practical way for people. And that's like kind of like
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: where you're like this wedge in between east and west
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: where you could take what you know, the Buddha said,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: or Joseph Goldstein says, and translate it so the bond
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: trader on Wall Street or the soccer mom in Topeka
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: gets it.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate you saying that. I mean, I I
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: kind of think of myself as a gateway drug. You know,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not a meditation teacher, and there
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: are great meditation books that already existed. My only innovation
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: was to add the word fuck a lot, you know,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: and and to and to tell very embarrassing stories, and
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: to tell stories at all, to really turn this, to
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: use the skills that I had been that I had
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: acquired in the course of being a TV journalist, to
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: turn it on this on this practice and this tradition
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: of Buddhism. I sometimes feel like I had this image.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I was on a meditation retreat with Joseph Goldseein and
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: my teacher a couple of weeks ago, and I had
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: this image like I'm standing in this vast treasury of
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: unbelievable material, you know, unbelievable journalistic and authorial material content,
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: and I'm like just taking it, taking stuff from Buddhism,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: taking stuff from meditation teachers. And I'm like, is somebody
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: gonna arrest me? I get to just take all this stuff.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: But I'm just the right person at the right time.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I think maybe that I had all this training as
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: a storyteller, I ended up stumbling upon meditation, and now
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: I can just write about it as much as I want.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: There's an endless supply of things to talk about. I
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: have in my head five more books that I want
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: to write. I just don't have the time to do
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: them all right now, but I would love to.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Right well, I want to dig into this a little
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: bit more deeply. But maybe you can give us, like
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the twenty second recap of how you got to this place.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: So I had a panic attack on the national television
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: viewable by anybody who wants on YouTube?
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: How many views does that video aliens and millions of views? Yes,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I actually don't think it's that bad. I can see,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: like now that I know this story, when I watch it,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I can feel your pain. But if I just stumbled,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: if I just happened to have been watching it at
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the time, I don't know that I would have keyed
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: in on what exactly was happening.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: That's right, That's why my career didn't end that morning.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: So I get one of two responses to the video
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: most people see it and they say, just what you
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: just said.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: You know, not.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Awesome, but not that bad. Anybody, however, who has had
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: even a taste of panic, it looks at that video
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: there palms starts a trigger. Absolutely, So I happened to
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: have handled it quite well, I think, either because I'm
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: a sociopath or because I had the luxury of being
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: able to toss it back to my co anchors. I
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: was on the air. It was at seven o'clock in
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: the morning in two thousand and four, and I was
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: supposed to read six stories off of the teleprompter, six
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: quick stories. My job was that day, I'm good Morning America.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: My job was to be the news reader, which they
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: actually don't really do anymore on morning television, but they
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: used to have people who came on at the top
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: of the hour and just quickly read the headlines. And
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: as soon as I started speaking, I was overtaken by
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: this big bolt of fear. I couldn't My heart was raising,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: my mind was raising, my palms were sweating, my mouth
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: dried up, and most importantly, my lungs seized up. I
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: just couldn't talk, So I had to quit in the
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: middle and I could toss it back to the main anchors,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: which if I couldn't have done that, panic attack would
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: have looked much more for me. I would have ripped
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: the mic off and run away. More embarrassing than the
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: panic attack was the backstory. So I had spent a
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: lot of time as a young, ambitious, idealistic reporter in
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: war zones Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, West Bank, etcetera, etcetera. And
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I came home from a lot of these experience after
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: having had a lot of these experiences, and I got depressed,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: and I very unwisely self medicated with cocaine and ecstasy.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: And even though I wasn't doing drugs all the time,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: and definitely not when I was working, it was enough,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: according to the doctor I consulted after the panic attack,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: was enough to artificially raise the level of adrenaline in
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: my brain and make me more likely to have a
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: panic attack. And so that kind of sent me off
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: on a long, windy, weird journey that ultimate lea several
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the years later landed me on meditation and the rest
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: is and the.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Rest is history. And now you're traveling around the and buses, Yes, yes,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: talking to people about this, but importantly, not in a
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: proselytizing way, but in a way of just trying to.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: I mean evangelizing is the wrong word, but the wrong
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: word being a living example of the benefits of you know,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: this ancient way of approaching.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Life, the Gospel. I think the gospel literally means the
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: good news, and that is basically when I'm this is
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: good news. The good news, if whittled down to its essence,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: is that the mind is trainable. That all the things
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: we care the most about that we want the most
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: inner peace. To use a cliche term, but let's just
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: say happiness, calm, compassion, focus, gratitude. These are skill These
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: are not factory settings that you can't change. These are
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: skills that you can practice, that you can generate, you
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: can take responsibility for, just the way you can work
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: on your body in the gym as you do. And
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: that is good news. And so my whole mission on
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: life in life, aside from I guess I have three
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: main missions. One is to be a journalist, the second
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: is to be a daddy and husband, and the third
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: is to tell people this. And I'm just trying to
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: come up with creative ways to tell people, Hey, you
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: can if there are things about yourself that you don't like.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: You can't magically make them go away, like I'm still
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: shorter than I want to be, etcetera, etcetera. But you
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: can train equanimity, you can train kindness, generosity, these are
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: these are incredible. This is an incredible thing to know,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: and so to me, yeah, that's a kind of evangelism.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: But importantly, to amplify the point you were trying to
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: make before that I probably cut you off. And in
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: the middle of is that, I don't wag my finger
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: for real, Like, if you're not interested in meditation, I'm
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: not going to talk to you about it. I only
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: talk to people about meditation who like you gave me
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: a microphone so I'll talk. But like for years I
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: didn't talk to my wife about it because I knew
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: she didn't want to hear it.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Right, what's interesting about what you just said is this
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: idea of news good or otherwise, that it's news in
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the Western world. This idea that we can train the mind,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: that we can there are things that we can do
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: that we can practice that can amplify our equanimity, that
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: can make us more focus, that can you know, reduce
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the stress in our lives and set us on a
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: trajectory towards achieving all those things that we spend so
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: much time and effort on in other areas of our
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: life to achieve, which is happiness, fulfillment, contentment, you know,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: living purposefully, all of these things right. And we do
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: spend an unbelievable amount of time in the gym or
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: you know, at our job, or doing whatever we're doing,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: without any regard whatsoever for how this thing you know
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that's sitting on top of our shoulders actually functions.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: We spend so much time our stock portfolios, our cars,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: our bodies, our interior design, our resumes, all of what
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: you are important. I spend time on those things. But
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: it's important to spend time as well on the one
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: filter through which you experience everything, and that's your mind.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: And I think this is news. People don't know this.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I didn't know this. I mean I did not know
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: that any of this was possible. I didn't even know
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: the I was not even truly aware of the thunderously
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: obvious fact that we have minds and our thinking, you know,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, yes, if you had asked me on the street,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: do you have a mind, and are you thinking yeah,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I would have said yes, but I was unaware of
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: the intensity of the NonStop conversation we are having with
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: ourselves all the time. This just chaotic stew of urges
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: and impulses and desires. That is your inner life. And
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: when you don't see it clearly, it owns you. And
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: that's all that meditation is. It's a systematic waking up
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to this reality so that you can surf it rather
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: than be drowned by it.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: And as much as it is news here, I mean
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: this goes back, you know, hundreds thousands of years.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: In the east, like millennia.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Not news. No, you know, a large part of the world.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: We're late to the party. Yes, And what's interesting is
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: that science has now sort of caught up to this
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: trend to verify it in a way that legitimizes it
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to the rational, you know, logical way that we as
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Westerners kind of perceive the world.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what allowed me to get over the hump,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: because I was I mean, to the extent that I
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: had ever even thought about meditation. I thought it was ridiculous.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I often joke it. I thought
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: it was for people who live in a Rope and
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: are really into Enya and Cat Stevens and you know,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: live in a spend time on a Himalayan mountaintop in loincloth.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, just you know, the all the cliches, but
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: it was the science that changed my mind. My wife's
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: and scientists. Both my parents are scientists. I was not
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: good enough at math to do science, but it carries
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: a lot of weight with me. When I saw science
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: that suggests that it can lawer your blood pressure, boost
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: your immune system, literally rewire key parts of your brain,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: then I thought, okay, this makes sense, and importantly for
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: me as somebody who's struggled with anxiety and depression as
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: well as panic and substance abuse, the science around anxiety
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: and depression is actually the strongest, and I just you know,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: in testing it in the laboratory of my own mind,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: it became very obvious that when you can have some
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: distance from your repetitive, grim thought patterns, your neurotic programs,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: your inner neurotic programs, then they don't control you as much.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: And that's what depression and anxiety consists of.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe we can go in a little bit more deeply
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: on what the science actually does say and doesn't say so.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: One thing to say about the science first is that
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: it has been it continues to be regrettably hyped. So
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: I think people overstate what meditation can do, and they
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: latch onto every hot new study, and then there's some
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: breathless headline about how meditation can, you know, make you
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: dunk on a regulation hoop or whatever. It's just that
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: is not the case. I think it's important to point
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: out that the studies, that the research is in its
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: early stages, and that while we can't say much definitively,
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: what we can say is it strongly suggests. The research
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: strongly suggests that meditation can confer a number of really
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: attractive benefits from, as I said before, lowering your blood pressure,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: boosting your immune system. It's been shown to help with
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: grades in school, behavior in school. It's been shown to
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: help with anxiety depression, age related cognitive decline ADHD. And
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the neuroscience is really the most exciting stuff that I'll
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: just give you one study that was done at Harvard
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: in twenty ten or eleven. They took people who had
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: never meditated before, just civilians, and they scanned their brains
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: to get a baseline reading of what their brains look like,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: and then for eight weeks they had them do a
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: little bit of meditation every day. At the end they
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: scan their brains again and what they found is in
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the area of the brain associated with stress, the gray
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: matter literally shrink, and in the area of the brain
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: associated with self awareness and also compassion, the gray matter group.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: That is just really compelling, and it's also shown to
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: have a salutary effect on the areas of the brain
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: associated with a tension regulation. And another last thing I'll
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: say about this is there's a connected There are a
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: series of regions of the brain known as the default
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: mode network. These are the areas of the brain that
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: fire when we're in our default mode, which is thinking
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: about ourselves, thinking about the past, think about the future,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: just kind of ruminating. That's our resting state as humans. Meditators,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: while meditating that area of the brain, the activity goes
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: way down, and importantly for long term meditators, it goes
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: way down even when you're not meditating.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: That's that's pretty compelling and amazing. Yeah, yes, I feel
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: like we're in a very tenuous interesting time. I mean,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: there's a lot going on right now. You know, we're
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: in unchartered waters politically, and particularly with respect to emerging technology.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: There is a war for our time and attention afoot
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and maybe there always has been, but with the advent
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: of all of these devices that are vying for you know,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: vying for our eyeballs, I feel like, you know, we
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: we have to be we almost have to be practicing
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: some form of meditation to avoid the compulsion that we
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: all are faced with with just pulling the phone out
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: of our pocket every day and looking at it. Like,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I can go down
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the rabbit like I'll be scrolling through Instagram and I'll
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: be like, I can't stop scrolling? What is wrong? What
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: is wrong with me? And I realized, like, well, you know,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of time and attention and millions of dollars
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: were put into this app to achieve precisely this result
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: that they're achieving with me, and I have to go
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: above and beyond and exercise like, you know, a lot
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: of mindfulness and restraint to like create rules around these
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: things and avoid them so that I can actually move
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: forward in my life. In other words, we're in a
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: period where boredom need not exist ever again. We are
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: so overstimulated, and there's a lot of amazing things about that,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: but you know, we're in many respects we're prisoners, right,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and so if you start to think of it in
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: that context, what are the tools to unlock us from
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: this prison that we've that we've all volunteered for.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: I interviewed recently a very interesting person named Manuj Zemrodi
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: who she's a podcast called Note to Self and it's
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: all about sort of our relationship to technology. And she said,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: and I'm probably gonna mangle the quote, but that we're
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: in a essence, conducting a huge science experiment, global science
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: experiment about our attention and our relationship to these devices,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: because we're just we don't know what it does to us.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: We know some things, but we just don't really know
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: what the long term effects are of having this supercomputer
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: in your pocket and just being glued to it all
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: the time. My view, and I'm open to change my
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: view right now, is that you know, these are incredible tools,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: and they're so useful and so delightful on so many
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: different levels, but it's very important to try to create
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: a healthy relationship to them. So I'm not I mean,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I before we started rolling here I was talking about
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: how I went out and splurged on the iPhone ten.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, I I'm not anti tech, but I am
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: anti unhappiness. And I find that having a mindfulness practice,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: which essentially just boosts your self awareness right through having
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: increased self awareness because of meditation, I noticed more quickly
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: when like I'm just I'm doing this because I'm bored.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I'm doing this because I'm lonely. I'm doing this I'm
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: drowning in Twitter, and my stomach is roiling in my
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: head is pounding because I'm upset about some political development.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Step away, man, And that has really helped me. So
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: it's not to say that I never use technology. It's
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: just that my relationship to it has become more healthy.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing I'd say is that I
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: love that there's this proliferation of meditation apps out there,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: because it's like co opting the engine of our distraction
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: and turning your phone into something that teaches you how
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: to be mindful. I think there's a reason why these
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: companies are doing so well.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It's super interesting, and I can kind
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: of contextualize it or analogize it to to you know,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: recovery from substance abuse, because I see my own denial
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: mechanism creep up, like, oh, well, yeah, I'm on Twitter
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: while I'm waiting in this line, because you know, my
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: career is tied to social media and I need to
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: know what's going on. And it's like, it's bullshit. You know,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I don't need to be doing that, like, but to
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: be able to catch myself in that argument and have
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: enough self awareness to say, that's just a lie that
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I'm telling myself to validate this behavior that I know,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: you know deep down is not in my best interest.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: It's just seeing it is a huge victory.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: But I can always go on the ten percent Happier
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: app instead, right.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Which I'm on board with it.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: It's really cool, Like I think it's you did a
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: really great job, thank you. And you know, I was
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: on Headspace for quite some time and I know Andy,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and I think they've done an amazing.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Job there, Pioneers.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, incredible, incredible, and what you've done. I was always
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: curious before you launched your app, like, oh, well, what's
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: he going to do that they're not doing or how
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: do you differentiate? And I think you've done an amazing job.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Of creating something unique and different that also serves the
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: same ultimate goal with the video and the various different teachers,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, it's really and it's fun. You know,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: it's not it goes to that thing that you said earlier,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: like this transition that you went through from that period
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of time when you wrote ten percent happier when you
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: were looking at meditation, like your vegetables, or just something
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: that you have to like you got to do it,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: you got to get through it, or whatever, just something
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: that you look forward to that's enjoyable.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: It's funny because well, first of all, thank you for
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: saying all that, because the app has become really just
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: you madeor focus for me isaid just my baby, and
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I had no prior experience in business, but luckily was
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: able to, through a long series of events that you
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: probably don't care about, find this amazing team and we
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: just are having so much fun doing this thing. But
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: you know, in terms of making it fun, I come
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: from morning television and I often think, you know, weekend
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Good Morning America, which is one of the shows I
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: do at ABC. Our success in the ratings is because yes,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: we give you the news, we do all the things
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: that we check all the boxes. But the five of
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: us who are on the show, we love each other.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: We're having a great time and it feels like a
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: party that you want to be at, and I want
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: the app to feel that way. That it's not just
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: dry meditation instructions when you watch the short little video
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: clips that we serve up all the time right before
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: you sit to meditate. Although you can just meditate if
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: you want, but if you watch the video clips, it's fun.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: It's super practical. It's me sitting with some brilliant teacher
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: or scientist and you learn something that can actually change
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: the way you live, but also have fun doing it.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: To me, that is just such a I don't know,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: it's just an amazing experience.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cool. How Jeff ends the sessions by saying,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: you know, welcome to our meditation cult.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: As opposed to what yes, so we you know, our
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: little slogan is no panphlutes. You know, we just the
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: way meditation has been delivered is either dry or twee
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: or super like addressing you as if you're grasshopper. You
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: know that we're trying to avoid all of those tropes
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: and just stick with what this is. Which is secular,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: simple exercise for your brain. But also as soon as
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: you start, just like you were talking about when you're
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: online at the supermarket and you see you're checking Twitter
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: and then you're engaging in all of these sort of
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: crazy rational rationalizations. That's hilarious when you look at your mind,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: it's fucking hilarious because it's crazy. It's totally crazy. If
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: you can have a sense of humor about this, you
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: are in deep trouble. And I think that's what we're
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: trying to bring to this thing, is it's not that
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: you're going to conquer your neuroses. It's it's that, as
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: as one great meditation teacher has said, you'll become a
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: connoisseur of your neuroses. So that said that there don't
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: have so much power over you.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to break it down and make it
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: super accessible and simple so that anybody can follow it,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: and to use language that people understand. I mean, we
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: kind of danced around this earlier, but you know the
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: importance of the importance of language with ideas like this,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: and you've sort of famously said, like, you know, meditation
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: is you know, is in the greatest need of like
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: rebranding or like a new marketing strategy, because the idea
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: that like, like, I'm just envisioning two guys watching Monday
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: night football sitting next to each other and one leaning
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: over to the other one and saying, you know, how's
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: your loving kindness practice happening? It's like, it's not going
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: to happen, right, And yet these are profound practices that
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: we can all benefit from if we And I think guys,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: you know, have a harder time with the language than
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: women do.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: For sure, But you know, two guys watching Monday night
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: football might say, you know, how is your CrossFit class? Sure,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: but this is exercise for the mind and the brain.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: And there's a reason why the Chicago Cubs meditates. This
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: is the reason why Novak Djokovic meditates. The US Army
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: and the US Marines. We're spending tens of millions of
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: dollars on meditation for the troops for a reason. This
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: is us up. These are bicep curls for your brain,
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: and there are lots of different practices that can work
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: on lots of different mental qualities that you care about.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: We just need to start talking about it this way
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: so that it's not embarrassing to talk about it at
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Monday night football, because those guys deserve this practice just
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: as much as the traditional Yogis who've been doing it
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: forever deserve it. Everybody deserves it. This is our birthright.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Mindfulness is our birthright. Having a mind is our birthright.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: And so this should be done by foster care children.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: This should be done by inmates and prisons. This should
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: be done by patients and hospitals. Nobody is outside the scope.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: You've been doing this for a while now, and your
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: initiation into this was you know very much about like
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: trying to reframe it and redefine it for yourself. But
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: as somebody who's now been around the block and has
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: gotten to know all these amazing teachers and is very
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: steeped in the various traditions, et cetera, do you find
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: yourself at times like nothing static? So I would imagine
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: your relationship with this is it's certainly more profound and
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: different than it was when you began. But do you
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: find yourself kind of gravitating a little bit towards the
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Pachuli crowd in a way that you weren't initially? Because
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I'm just thinking, like I analogize this to when I
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: adopted a vegan diet, Like I was like, I'm never
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: going to be vegan because those guys kick hacky sacks
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: and have the dreadlocks and talk about things that I'm
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: not interested in it, you know, like it. And now
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: ten years later, like I kind of have become one
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of those guys a little bit, you know, in a
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: way that I never would have thought, not by conscious design,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: but by evolution. I think it's.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Such a great question. The short answer is not really,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Like I'm not as offended by it as I used
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: to be, and so I can be in the room
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: when people are, you know, talking the talk, but I
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: still am pretty offended by it. I don't like, you know,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: like when Jeff and I were writing this book, and
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: we did some so we did straight up mindfulness practices
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: in the book, but we also did some, as you
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: said before, loving kindness practice, which I have a whole
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: rap about. We can get into it. But so we
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: did some practices that are designed to boost your compassion.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: And I told them don't use the word heart because
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: that's just what does that even mean? It's just kind
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: of sappy. So I still have some linguistic peccadillos and
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: little rules that I like to stick to because I
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: think there's a way to talk about this that makes
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: it less annoying. But I am now way in the
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: tank for meditation, and I regularly go on meditation retreats
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: and have a deep relationship with this amazing meditation teacher
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Joseph Goldstein, who's my view, perhaps the greatest living meditation teacher.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: And uh so, it's it's I'm in a funny place
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: catering to skeptics while I meditate two hours a day
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: personally and go on these long meditation retreats. And it
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: is that is you put your finger on a tricky
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: balance for me, But I haven't really given an inch
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: on my firm convictions about the right and wrong way
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: to talk about the practices.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. As a translator, yes, yes, And and that that's
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: certainly you know, that's your that's your place, that's your talent,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: that's your that's your role at least as you as
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: you see it clearly like everything you do is a
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: way of translating these ideas to to the average person.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: That's my goal. That is definitely my goal.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Is it really two hours you're doing two hours a day.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so a couple of years ago, maybe two and
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: a half years ago, I got it in my head.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: So not long after ten percent Happier came out, I
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: got it in my head that I really wanted to
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: go deeper. The logic being not that I you know,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: I guess the way to describe the logic is it's
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: demonstrably true in my experience and based on the science,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: that you can train yourself to be kinder and more
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: mindful and more focused and all this things. So if
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: you can be ten percent happier, what's the ceiling? And
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I've become very interested in what's available at the sort
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: of deeper end of the pool, not only sort of
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: as a journalist because I planned to write about this
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: at some point, but also as a human. You know,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: I saw so many benefits. So, for example, one way
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: to think about this is like with exercise, so I
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: kind of, you know, I like being fit. I got
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: to look at my stupid face on television, so I
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: try not to be overweight, and I I'll go my
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: wife and I went to soul cycle this morning. And
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: I work six six or seven days a week. I
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: work out. You run these crazy like iron Man things,
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: and so I would never do that. But I don't
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: think you're crazy because you do. It's just that you
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: personally got so interested in it that you wanted to
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: take it further. That's kind of what I'm going for
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: on the meditation side, although any serious meditation, like really
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: serious meditation person knows that I personally am not yet
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: a meditative triathlete, but I am making my best attempts
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: to move in that direction. So about two and a
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: half years ago, I had it in my head that
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: two hours a day was the right number. I don't know,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: it's kind of it's kind of out there that two
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: hours is a number that a lot of dedicated practitioners do.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: And I heard from my friend Sharon Salzburg an amazing thing.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: She had a friend who, Sharon is a great meditation
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: teacher and she's on the podcast Oh okay, so your
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: listeners know her that, which is amazing. She is amazing.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: She had a friend wh who wanted to do two
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: hours but was very busy, and he came up with
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: this rule of I can do whenever I want, wherever
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I want, and whatever increments I want throughout the day.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: And so now that's my rule. I just I wake
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: up in the morning. I don't know when or where
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I'm going to meditateor for how long, and I just
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: fit it in where I can, and that by the
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: end of the day I get to two hours and
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: a great day, I'll bank a little bit for the
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: next day. On a shitty day, I'll come up short
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: and have to make that up the next day. So today,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: for example, I've taken a lot of cars around LA
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: and you know, lift them in the backseat of lift cars.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: And I've got a lot of time to meditate, and
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: so I'll probably I owe forty five minutes from a
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago. I'll make it up today.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting, And how long have you been doing the
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: two hour experiments?
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: Almost three years?
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, three years?
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Almost three years, but two and a half three years?
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: And what is the qualitative difference in your life between
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: that and the more typical you know, twenty minutes a
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: day or twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: at night.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: I just think it's it's taking the benefits you get
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: as a beginner and ramping them up. It's not that
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: I'm you know, in some bubble of bliss, you know,
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: with like bulletproof, imperturbability or anything like that. It's just that. So,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: what are the three benefits you get as a beginning meditator.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Increase calm, increase focus, and less emotional reactivity. I just
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: turned up the volume on all three of those. The
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: other thing I've noticed is that my actual practice is better.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: This is a skill. You know, people sit down to
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: meditate and they find immediately that they're super distractable, which
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: often people assume that's a failure, but it's not. I've
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: just found that actually my ability to focus has gone
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: up over time, and sort of more and more interesting
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: and pleasurable things happen in meditation, and when unpleasant things happen,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: I'm actually able to be a quantomous in the face
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: of the minute, not all the time, but at a
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: much higher level than I used to be.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Well, certainly, you know, the proof is in the putting
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: in terms of like your productive output. I mean the
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: fact that you're you're a host on two different television shows,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: you're writing books, presumably you're traveling all the time to speak,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: and you're doing things like podcasts. You have your own podcast.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: At the same time, you've got this app like you're
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: doing your dad and your I mean that would just
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: blow the mind of the average human being or create
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: so much anxiety that it would become an unsustainable situation.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a suspicion that that has to do
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: with the meditation. It's funny. I've only recently started to
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: think that because there was a long time where I
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: was doing the two hours and it was a bit
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: of a stunt. I was thinking because I want to
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: write a book about enlightenment at some point, so I
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: was kind of at my initial instinct was a little crass.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: It was like, Okay, let's see, let's see what happens.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Like kind of in an aj Jacobs kind of absolutely.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually thought of that, maybe there's a book
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: called a Year of living dharmically, you know, like because
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: he wrote a book called The Year of Living Biblically.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: But I realized that, first of all, I don't want
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: to do it just for a year. I want to
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: this is the way I want to live, and so
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: my interest isn't this isn't actually just stunt journalism. After
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: a while I started to realize that this is I
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: actually want to be doing this level of practice. If
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: not more. And and I actually have come to believe,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: and I don't have any evidence to support this, but
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: I have come to believe what you just described, that
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: this kind of crazy workload has become I is enabled
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: by the fact that I do have this practice that
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: gives me the ability to stay focused when I need
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: to stay focused, and also to not suffer as much,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: you know, like suffering in the Buddhist sense. You know,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: the buddhas described suffering as just clinging to things you
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: want and pushing things away that you don't want, lacking
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: any equanimity in the face of life's in next you know,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: inevitable vicissitudes. And I think I've gotten a little bit
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: better at just kind of being more supple in my
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: dealings with reaction. That isn't to say I'm perfect, because
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I am definitely not. But I have this suspicion that
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: this practice, which started as a bit of a lark,
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: is really helping me do all the things I want
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: to do. It's multi factorial, though, because I think another
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: part of it is just flat out greed, not necessarily
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: greed for money, because you know, like I don't make
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: any money off of the I don't get paid by
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: the app. You know, we're a startup. But greed for
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: like lust for I am. I am doing all the
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: things I love, you know. I mean, I love being
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: a journalist at ABC News. I'm so I've been there
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: for nearly eighteen years. I love ABC News and such
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: deep relationships. There so much gratitude for the amount of experience,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: the experiences they've given me, and just I love the
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: people at Nightline I work with and Weekend GM. I
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: just absolutely love it all. And then writing these books
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: and having this company and a podcast I get to
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: hang out with people like you. This is incredible opportunity.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: And then having a fan. You know, we had a huge,
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: as I mentioned before, infertility struggle, and so I just
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: do not take for granted my three year old, even
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: when he's pooping on me. So all of this is
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: just there's just a little of greed, just trying to
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: ring out of life everything I can.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: And also navigating your wife's breast cancer.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: That was brutal. Man.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: She's she's okay, now.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: She's cured, she's great, and but look, I mean to
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: state the blazingly obvious, she was a thousand times words
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: for her than it was for me with a lot
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: of very painful surgeries and a lot of fear. And
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: but I will say that that practice, particularly the aforementioned
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: loving kindness practices, that we haven't yet fully excavated, but
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: maybe we will, really made a difference. You know, I'm squeamish,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: I'm selfish. I am not by nature nurturing and having
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: a baby around the house and a wife who was
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: as sick as she was a big challenge for me.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: And you know, I found it actually, in the end,
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: it really was. I heard Beanca say recently that it
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: was the best thing that ever happened to her getting
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: sick that way, and I would say it was also
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: the best thing that happened to our relationship. It just
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: I really had to. She's always been the caretaker, she's
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: a doctor. She's actually naturally very very compassionate. We're bit
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: and yang in that way. I'm a little more sort
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: of aloof and I had to, you know, really step up.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: And I found that, I don't want to say enjoyed it,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: but I found a lot of meaning in engaging in
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: that way.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: And her gratitude stems from being able to reprioritize her life.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as she says she was just kind of hurtling
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: along in this high powered medical career and parenting and
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: a husband who's just NonStop, and the breast cancer really
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: made her stop and take stock. And she's in the
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: middle of this process of taking stock, but she is
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: for the first time, really taking care of herself. She's
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: gotten really into soul cycle. I mentioned we went to
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: solicycle this more. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: on your candid thoughts on SoulCycle, but no, it's great.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Look anything that gets anybody excited about being active. Yeah. Good.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: So I was actually very down on soul cycle because
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: I used to do other forms of spin and that
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: I thought were much harder. Then I realized, actually I
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: was doing so cycle wrong. Was that I wasn't actually
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: rhythm riding. That other forms of soul cycle are actually
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: other's forms of spin are like go this fast at
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: this time for this many seconds. Soul cycle is actually
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: just about riding to the rhythm with enough resistance so
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: that you kill yourself that way. And so it took
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: me a while to figure it out, and so we
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: do that together. We have a It's so great to
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: watch her take care of herself after years of not
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: really taking care of herself meditating and exercising these ways.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: So I think it's been really good for her and
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: good for us.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. I want to get back to, you know,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: this sort of contentment that you were expressing. You know
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: that you get to do all these things and you
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: have this very big life. You know, it's it's almost
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: intimidating to like talk about all these different things because
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: it is it is like for the average person that
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: would be anxiety producing. How are you going to manage
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: all this stuff? And right, so you don't okay, like, yeah,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: you're okay, you're a human being. Glad to hear that.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: But I think it begs the question of happiness itself.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Like you know, the first book memoir sort of you know,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: an argument in favor of meditation dressed up as a
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: memoir through storytelling. You know, you make this compelling argument
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: about the benefits of meditation. The title is ten percent Happier,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Like what is happiness? And how do you think about
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: happiness in terms of, you know, a way of living
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: or how does that kind of line up against other
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: ideas comparable ideas like contentment, fulfillment, living, purposefully, living, mindful.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: I have a whole rap on this, so those other
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: words are more specific and truly more meaningful. Happiness is
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: the reason why I chose happiness or happier is because
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: that's the word we use more frequently, but it actually
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean much. And in fact, if you look, I
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: think I might have said this in my first book,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: that the very roots of the word linguistically etymologically reflect
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: our cultural ambivalence about the subject. Hap hap is the same.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: It's like haphazard happiness. It means luck, So happiness is
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: like something you luck into, and in fact, as discussed before,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: it's really interesting so when in fact happiness is a skill.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time asking happiness experts, like
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: meditation gurus, you know, how do you define happiness? And
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: nobody ever gave me a satisfying answer until doctor Mark Epstein,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: who I talked about before, who wrote who wrote the
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: book that really got me interested in meditation. Yeah, Mark
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: and I were having dinner and I asked him how
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: do you define happiness? And he said something to me
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: that was not meaningful at the time, but I've come
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: to believe that it is the smartest thing I have
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: heard about happiness. He said, more of the good stuff
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: and less of the bad. Okay, what does that mean.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: I've come to think about it in kind of geometric terms.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: I'm terrible at math, But if you think about psychologists
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: have this theory called the set point theory. So if
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: you think about a graph, it as an x axis
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: and a y axis. The x axis runs horizontally, so
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: the set point theory is the x axis is kind
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: of like we all have a happiness set point. So
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: good things can happen, and we know our happiness level
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: goes up, and then we tend to revert back to
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: our set point the x axis this sort of straight line,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: and then bad things happened to us, and then our
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: happiness goes below the set point, but eventually we were
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: kind of revert to it. That a theory about the
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: way we are as humans, that we have this kind
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: of happiness set point. In my experience, that sounds right,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: but that what happens with meditation is that the top
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: end of that graph, the way you are when good
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: things happen, gets taller and more sustained. Because you are
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: more you are enjoying in a more fulsome manner. For
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: lack of a less cheesy word, blessings in your life,
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: and you're not so busy running rushing off to see
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: what the next hit of dopamine might be. So that's
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: the top of the graph, and then the bottom of
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: the graph is when bad things happen to you. I
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: think through the meditation, it's like the bottom half becomes shallower,
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: that you're spending less time in useless rumination and you're
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: kind of recovering more quickly. And then meanwhile, I think
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: the set point itself moves up, And to me, that's
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: how I think about happiness is how are you navigating
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: life's ups and downs? And are you getting the most
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: out of the ups, and are you maximally resilient in
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: the face of the downs.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard Sam Harris, your friend, talk about the
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: kind of half life of negative emotions. Yes, brilliant, Right,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: So you know whether you're going to have this, Yeah,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: of course, I got that for you. Whether you're you're angry,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: or you're resentful, or you're you're looping in your mind
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: some you know, insanity that the half life is much shorter.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: It will dissipate and go away.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: It's among Sam is a valued friend of mine, and
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: he has said many brilliant things that I steal. That
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: is one of them. He talks about one of the
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: benefits of meditation having to do with the half life
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: of anger, that you know, we still are going to
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: experience difficult emotions unless you're enlightened. If you even believe
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: in that, and I don't know if I believe in it,
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: You've got to write this other book. I am going
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: to write this enlightened. Yes, we are still going to
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: experience negative emotions. The mystery of consciousness is we don't
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: know where our thoughts and feelings come from. They come
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: out of avoid you can't, which is liberating to know,
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: because there's no point holding yourself responsible. You did this today.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: You got angry at being angry for forgetting your audio
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: equipment at home and started telling yourself a whole story,
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: which you caught yourself doing. But you did do it anyway,
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: And we all do this. We have a feeling, you know,
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: in patience with our child, in patience with our spouse, whatever,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: and we tend to get into these knots of self
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: laceration around. I'm this kind of person as a consequence
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: of having just had this feeling. We didn't invite the feeling.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: It just came out of avoid We don't know where
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: it came from. You can't hold yourself responsible for what
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: you feel, but you can hold yourself responsible for how
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: you deal with it. And so when anger ambushes you
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: from me, I deal with a lot of anger if
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: I can see it. If I have an inner meteorologist
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: that can tell me when the storm is brilliant, is
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: about to hit landfall, make landfall, then I may either
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: let it pass and not be taken over by it,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: or I may get a few miles down the road
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: with it, you know, a couple minutes of doing something stupid,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: but then I catch myself. The amount of damage, as
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: Sam says, that you can do in two minutes of
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: anger as opposed to an hour of anger, is incalculable.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: And that is the fruit of meditation. Which is why
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: I was so jazzed about the story you told at
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: the top of this podcast, because it epitomizes what the
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: value of this practice is.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: The beginning part of that for me is understanding that
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: there is a distinction between the thinking mind and you
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: know your I don't know what you would want to
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: call it, your higher consciousness, your awareness, having awareness of
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: the thinking mind, being the observer of the thinking mind,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: and that kind of like duality. Right, these are two
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: different things, yes, which is kind of a mind blow.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: I mean you can go down the rabbit hole on
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: that forever. It's kind of a mind blowing thing. And
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: it takes the question of you know, what is consciousness
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: and what is our minds? And you know what is
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: actually going on here? Like how do you think about
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, you just put your finger on perhaps the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: most interesting question facing mankind. You know, this is the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: fundamental mystery what is consciousness? We know that we know stuff.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: You know what it feels like if you're driving right now,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: you know that you're the feeling of your hands on
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: the wheel, You know that you're thinking. But what knows it?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: Try to find the little rich role in your head,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: you rich or whoever's listening. Fin try to close your eyes,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: but don't close your eyes if you're driving, and try
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: to find you that you won't. We don't know. What
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: knows does not mean it does and exist. I think
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: the argument that gets made and this is where it
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: gets into the deep end. And I in some ways
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: sort of insufficiently qualified to talk about it. So anybody
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: who is qualified and hear's me talking about it, I
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: apologize in advance. But I think what the Buddhists would
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: say is that this gets into the illusion of the self,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: that which is the primordial lie we are telling ourselves.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: We think there is some core rich in us, some
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: core dan in us, and all of our negative emotions.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: That is the wellspring of all of our negative emotions,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: because we have greed to gratify the inner rich, we
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: have hatred to defend are whatever we have we have,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: you know, and then confusion about reality as a consequence
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: of embracing this lie. But the simplest way I think
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: about this is there is a difference between your thoughts
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: and your awareness of your thoughts. So the thoughts or
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: emotions or anything you're aware of are like actors walking
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: onto the stage right they pass through, or clouds going
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: through the sky. Your awareness, your consciousness just is the stage,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: or it is the sky, if you want, whatever analogy
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: you wanted to use. So we don't know what the
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: sky is in this analogy, or we don't know exactly
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: what the stage is. And you can get into lots
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: of discussions about what it is, but for just your
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: rank and file meditator, that doesn't really matter. The only
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: interesting thing to the most practical thing to be aware
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: of is that there is a difference between your raw,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: bare awareness of things like when you're just feeling the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: sensations of your butt on the chair, that is just
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: plain old awareness. Then there's thinking about the feelings of
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: your butt in the chair, man, I got to do
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: more exercise in my butt is too big. Those are
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: just thoughts. That's a different thing. And well, none of
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: these are things actually, which is an interesting idea.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: But the more that you self identify your awareness with
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: the actors on that stage, the more that you will
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: suffer absolutely, And the more that you can to the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: extent that you can transcend that self identification and kind
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: of step into a more expansive understanding of oneness, the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: more you can free yourself from the chains of that
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: cycle of suffering.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's just like to me, it's like
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: interrogating the mystery a little bit. If you can do
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: this little exercise, which is a Buddhist exercise, that's that
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: an exercise, you know, close your eyes and hear whatever
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: sounds are there. You know, there's all sorts of sounds,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: my voice, maybe a little tape hiss, whatever, and then
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: ask yourself what is hearing this? And you won't find it.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: But in the not finding, as the Buddhists say, there
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: is this kind of liberation because you're not you're seeing how,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: you're seeing the mystery, the fundamental mystery of your own
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: identity and of our exist and that can disidentify, disentangle
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: you from all of the suffering that we're creating, of
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: just being so entangled with our thoughts and our stories
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: and all that stuff. It's not magic, and it's not
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: permanent unless again, you're enlightened, but it can in just
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: moment after moment. There's this theory and meditation circles of
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: short moments many times that if you just kind of
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: are touching this mystery over and over and over again,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: it has the net effect of making you lighter and
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: pushing you closer toward enlightenment, whether you believe that's a
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: thing or not.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: As beautiful as that sentiment is, the prospect of really
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: confronting that in yourself is terrifying because we're sort of
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: raised and taught to, you know, identify with these stories
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: that we tell ourselves about who we are. I am this,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: per I am dan, I am journalist, I am rich,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: I am whatever, right, And we we craft these narratives
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: around identity that we dilute ourselves are real. And so
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: to kind of engage with what you were just talking
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: about is to kind of dismantle that. Yeah, but in
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: a certain way.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. But there are two ways. The Buddhists
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: talk about this in a way that actually is comforting,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: which is to there are kind of two levels to life,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: two levels to reality. There's the relative truth. You know,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: you still are rich, you know, on the day to
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: day basis. You know, even if rich doesn't exist on
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: some deep level, you still u s have to put
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: your pants on in the morning, and you still need
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: your podcast equipment if you want to do a podcast.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: And that is just the truth on a sort of
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: relative on one on the on the level in which
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: most of us operate, on which most of us operate
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: most of the time. But there is a deeper truth,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: which they often call ultimate truth, which is kind of
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: it can be roughly analogized to quantum physics. So like
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: this table that you and I are doing an interview
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: on is a table, but at the deepest level, it's
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: a bunch of spinning atoms and empty space. And so
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: the same is true with the self. And so you
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: don't need to get you know, need to get too
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: wrapped up in this. It's just it's just it's a
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: it's a useful thing to think of inso much as
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: it can help you not get so wrapped up in
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: your own stories.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I think this is a good kind of place
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: to launch into talking a little bit about the obstacles
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: that people have to embracing to embracing meditation to begin with,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: which is really the heart and soul of this new book,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Because as I understand it, like, uh,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I was going to ask you, like, you know,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: why why I write this book, but you already know
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: the answer to that, which is that you were under
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: the impression that writing the first book would state this
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: case for meditation, then overhweed would read it and then
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: adopt these practices and live happier lives. And you were
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: sort of surprised that that was not the immediate despite
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: this being this book was a huge success, right, Like
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: that was not the the action that you it was
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: not the reaction I got.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: I mean I I first of all, I didn't think
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: anybody was gonna read it. I was My view was,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: I'm like a B level network newsman writing about something
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: at the time that was pretty niche you know, meditation
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: was you know, it was had some cultural capital, but
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: it wasn't it wasn't super hot as hot as it
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: is now. So I just didn't think anybody's going to
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: read it. Yes, it ended up becoming pretty successful, which
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: was delightful and amazing, probably the most one of the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: most consequential professional developments of my life, and so ratifying.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: But it was humbling to see that it didn't have
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: the effect because you know, I actually on ten percent halfier.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: I didn't set out to write a memoir. I initially
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: was going to write a how two book, but then
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: the memoir parts of it were the only parts that
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: anybody that was reading it liked.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Well, that's not true. I mean, it's it's the story
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: that allows people to emotionally connect yeah with you, so
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: that they can hear the other part.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: Right, But I didn't.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: I mean I only put some like a few pages
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: of how two stuff way at the back of the book,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: and I got a very interesting phone call from a
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: friend of mine, Daniel Goleman, who he wrote a seminal
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: book called Emotional Intelligence, and he's a big meditator, and
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: he called me up and it was like, this is great.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: It's so cool that you're getting some people excited about meditation,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: but you do have some responsibility to actually teach them
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: how to do the thing. And that was a big
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: kind of that set me on my heels and I
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: had to really think about, Okay, what should I do.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: So the first thing I did was I ended up
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: co founding this company called ten Percent Happier. We have
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: this meditation app that we've discussed and it's been incredibly,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: incredibly fun to do this, and I've also learned a lot.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: And one of the things I learned as being part
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: of this company is while being part of this company,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: is that there's this rich pageant of neurosis that stop
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: people from meditating or embracing any healthy habit And so
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: that is why I wanted to write this book. But
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to write a dry meditation manual because
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: I didn't think anybody would read that. So I decided
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: to do it as a story. So I rented this
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: big orange tour bus previously occupied by parliament funkadelic, and
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: we went eighteen states and eleven days, me and Jeff Warren,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: who's this meditation teacher from Toronto, and we met all
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: of these different people, you know, all these different stops, cops, politicians, celebrities,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: social workers, and and you know, use them as a
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: case studies for each of the eight main obstacles we identified.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: So the book is trying to do three things at once.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: It's like a fun story of this gonzo road trip.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: It also is a systematic classification of all the obstacles
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: to medicate meditation and then answers about how to surmount them,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: and it's a how to book. Halfway through writing the book,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: when I was tearing my hair out, I was like,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, so there's a reason why nobody's written a book.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Like this before.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: This is really fucking hard.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: But what's great about it is that it is a
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: fun story because it's a it's a like a bromance
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: road trip, Like you and Jeff hit it off. You
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: guys developed this amazing relationship and and you embark on
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: this adventure together, and you know, hilarity ensues along the way.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: We learn lessons and we learn how to meditate, and
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: you kind of are able to quantify all of these
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: reasons or these barriers that people throw up that's preventing
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: them from AXI saying this tool that has been so
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: transformational in your own life, and it begins before you
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: even go on the road with your own coworkers and staff,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: which I always really like instructive and hilarious to see that,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: like these people that you work with and you've had
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: this you know, epiphany in your life, and yet they're
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: like they're on a totally different page with this stuff.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: My coacher's at Good Morning America on my weekend, so
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: we have this little, you know, tight knit group at
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: weekend GMA, because we're the sort of weekenders you know,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: not not the A team, and we really love each
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: other and we have you know, we're up early together
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: on the weekends, and we just got very lucky. The
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: bosses t put together a bunch of people who really
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: have close relationships, and they make fun of me for
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: being the meditation guy all the time, but they all
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: have interest in it but aren't doing it. So I
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: brought in Jeff, who I call the Meditation with Guiver
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: to see if he could help them get over the hump,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: and we had this hilarious session where these people who
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: just never shut up. Their jobs require them to never
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: shut up like dead air is the is the thing
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: we all fear, you know, trying to get them to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: sit quietly and meditate was a real challenge. And one
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: of them, Paula Faris, who is my work wife. She's
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: my co anchor on the show The co Hot we're
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: the two main hosts of the show. She literally she
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: did something I've never seen anybody do before. She turned
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: the meditation, the actual guided meditation, into a call in response.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: She was interrupting Jeff and asking him questions, like a
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: lot of questions. They were good questions, and Paula's I
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: very very smart, so it was they were useful questions.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: But I'd never seen anybody sort of break protocol in
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: this way. And it was interesting because, you know, as
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: partly as a consequence of this session, know Paula is
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: now a pretty regular meditator.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: That's really cool. And she had a different idea for
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the title of this book.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she wanted to call it ten percent less of
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: a douchebag, or ten percent happier but still a douchebag. Yeah, yes, yeah.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: She refers to herself as the little sister Dan never.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: Wanted but got anywhere.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she likes to talk.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: But how brilliant is it that, like you have you know,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: you have this whole other life in this meditation world,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: but you have this, You have this platform where you
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: can go on national TV and like talk about it.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: It's amazing. It's such is such. A friend of mine
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: wrote me a note the other day saying, you know,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: the book seems to be doing well. Congratulations. I was like, dude,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: I have a minor advantage, which is that the one
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: of the largest media companies on Earth is like this
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: full throated backer. You know, my bosses at ABC have
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: been just like irrationally supportive. They're just like, you want
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: to start a company, great, you want to do a podcast, Great?
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: Do you want to write more books? Awesome? Will help
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: you promote them. They're just incredible. I mean they're absolutely increased.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Because they could have just shut it down and say
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: we need your full attention on what we hired you
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, part of the deal is they know that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: I work seven days a week and I'm so super
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: committed to ABC, and so, I mean, I have to
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: pull up, I have to do my side of the bargain.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: But you know, they have been amazing and I think
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: I think there are a lot of reasons for it,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: you know, just the depths of the relationships that we
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: that I have at the company, the fact that my
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: bosses happened to be just very cool, and also that
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: this is a healthy message to be putting out there.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: And I think it's just good for everyone to be
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: promoting it. I mean it would be different if I
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: don't know, if I was writing like how to pick
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: up ladies or something. You know, you know something right,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: it's whole service.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it behooves ABC to recognize that and embrace it.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: I think so. I think so. And you know, like
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of people at ABC orre into
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: meditation of George Deefanopolis, Robin Roberts, Diane Sawyer. There are
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of people there who are on board, and
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: I think that has helped as well.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you have like secret behind the velvet rope,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: like top level ABC like executive washer and meditation.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: No, but I did do a private thing with the
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: staff of Nightline the other day because and it was
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: so interesting because we have very tight knit staff, very
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: heavily heavily female, and they're all like robocops in the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: sense that that, you know, like RoboCop was like a
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: cop and invented in a lab who would do everything
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: perfectly well. These people, these women, mostly women, although some
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: men too. They can shoot the stories, they can produce
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: the stories, they can write the stories, they can do
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: it all, and there's an enormous amount of stress in
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: what they do. And to sit and talk to them
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: about the stress and how they feel the stress. Actually,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: this is another thing we tackle in the book. They
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: feel like the stress is necessary to do the job,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: that if they don't have the stress, they'll lose their edge.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: And it was really interesting to talk to them about
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: how actually, you know, there are ways to manage the
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: stress so that you don't wear down your resiliency and energy.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: So that was a really useful private session with my team.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: Those nice Yeah, I think that is a really is
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: a big one with a lot of people. It's certainly
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: a big one with me. And the way you kind
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: of break the book down, it's divided into sections that
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: address each one of these objections, and we don't have
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: time to go through all of them, but I think
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: that's one of the ones that is one worthy of
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: exploring a little bit. Because as somebody who's ambitious, who's
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: you know, in certain respects, you know, has alpha tendencies,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: I have developed this idea that my self will and
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: my workaholism and my ability to kind of focus and
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: go the extra mile is in certain respects a secret weapon.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: And I've had to learn the hard way that is
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: a very unsustainable source of energy that leads to burnout,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: that you know, unduly fatigues me, and that ultimately makes
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: me a difficult person to be around and generally unhappy.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: And so although there's a dopamine charge that comes with
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: that that's very addictive, having to learn a new way
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: of approaching my work that's more balanced, that that involves
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: more equanimity to use your word, has been a challenge,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: but ultimately is leading me in the direction of of
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: creating a more sustainable, productive way of approaching what I do.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: So a number of things to say about that. I mean,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: you just articulated a psychology that I run into a
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: lot and one that I dealt with personally as I
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: was adopting this practice. You're not wrong. The will that
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: you describe, the grit that you describe, the motivation, creativity
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: has been a secret weapon for you. I mean, you
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: look at what you've achieved that that doesn't happen just
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: by being, you know, perfectly equantomous in the face of
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: everything that arises. You know, like you got to you
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: gotta have some get up and go, and you have it,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: and that has worked to your advantage. At some point
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: there is diminishing returns and the self awareness you generate
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: through meditation can help you see. Oh okay, so the
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: ninety seventh time I launch into a perseveration loop around
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: the audio quality on that last podcast? Does that Does
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: it make anything? My help?
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Is this useful? Is this useful?
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: Problem?
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: Not?
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: If you noticed, you know, to spend a little time
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: worrying about whatever issue you're worrying about makes sense, take action,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: do what you can to fix it, Let it go,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: move on to the next thing. That kind of rabbit
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: hole of useless rumination just wears down your energy, wears
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: down your resiliency, makes you unpleasant to be around, none
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: of which gets you further towards your goal. But meditation, again,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: the self awareness, the mindfulness that we generate in meditation,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: which can help you pull yourself out of the nosedive,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: is what allows you to have a more balanced, effective approach.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: But that is not to say that stress, you know,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: has no role. I think if you want to do
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: anything great, plotting and planning ringing of hands is part
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: of the deal. And you mentioned before the scope of
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: my personal responsibilities and my professional responsibilities. It does create
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: anxiety for me, and there are times in the writing
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: of this book I talked about it. In the writing
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: of this book, my wife had to do a little
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: intervention because I was just totally burnt out. I was
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: trying to write a book on top of everything else
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: I was doing, and I just took it too hard,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: too fast, too far. And she had to take me
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: aside and be like, dude, you can't like fall asleep
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: with the pages of the book you know in your
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: hand and then have macabs stress dreams as a consequence.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: And that made a big difference. But so it just
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: goes to the final point I wanted to make because
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: it pertains to you, which is that you talked about
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: how you're you know, you're sort of moving in the
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: direction of having a more balanced approach. I would just
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: give yourself credit because you can't snap your fingers and
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: just have the idyllic balanced approach that you have in
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: your mind. It's going to be about kind of vectoring
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: toward it and having failures along the way and then
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: learning from those failures. So you're doing the thing. It's
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: just it's always going to be a messy process.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely messy.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I'm sure if your wife was here,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: we would get a whole story about how messy it is.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: But that's cool. That is absolutely cool because there is
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: no other way to do it.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: The other objection that I really connected with is this idea.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: It's one of the ones Ladder in the book. Later
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: in the book, you know, blank is my meditation? Like
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody's like as an athlete, like I've I've
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: been that guy's like, trail running is my meditation. Or
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: when I'm out on my bike, that's my meditation. And
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: I would imagine there's other people who you know, oh Netflix,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: you know, when I get home at night, that's my meditation.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: And it took me a long time to understand, and
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about this when I was on
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: your podcast, the difference between there is a meditative aspect
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: to some of the training that I do, but that's
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: not meditation proper. That there is a qualitative distinction between
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: an active meditation or an activity that is meditative and
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: formal meditation practice.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: Can I just say that when you were on my
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: podcast that was one of the most popular podcasts we've
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: ever done.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Oh cool, Thanks, Matt, you're.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: The man, So yes, amen to what you just said.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: I hear all the time from people. You know, knitting
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: is my meditation or running is the big one. I
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: hear running is my meditation, Yoga is my meditation. My
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: answer to that is always maybe, you know. I mean,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: I can't rule it out. But mindfulness meditation is a
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: specific thing. Mindfulness meditation is paying attention to whatever you're doing.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: So let'll just step back for a second. Running, yoga, knitting,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: any of these things can be mindfulness meditation, but you
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: have to do it in a specific way, which is
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: to pay full attention to what's happening. So if you're nitting,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: you're feeling the weight of the whatever. I don't know
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: how to knit. But the little chapsticks that you hold
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: while you knit, you're feeling the weight of them, You're
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: feeling the movement. You're making conscious movements, and then when
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: you get distracted, which you will a million times, start
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: again and again and again. Mindful running would be and
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: I've done this, it's actually hurts much more than running
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: the normal way, where you're rehearsing some argument when you
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: want to hurl at your boss, or you're listening to
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: a podcast or music. But mindful running is headphones out.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: You're feeling the physical sensations of the movement, the pounding
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: of your feet, the wind on your face, and then
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: when you get distracted, you start again. Same thing with yoga.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: Most people don't do the aforementioned activities in the way
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: I just describe them. They do it. They're letting their
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: minds run hither and yon. By the way, that's not
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: a bad thing. I think running and knitting and yoga
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: all have really important health and psychological benefits just the
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: way you've always done them. But I wouldn't call them
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: mindfulness meditation unless you add on the tweak that I just.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you bring that level of intentionality to any
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: action activity that you're participating in, then I suppose, yeah,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: it could be. But if you're just going like I'm
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: running and my mind is doing whatever it's doing without
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: giving it any thought or putting any of that intention
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: into it, then that's that's not meditation.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: Doesn't mean it's not a good thing to do, right,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: it's just not meditating right.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: Right. So, Uh, we haven't divided times as somebody who
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: is in the news. Uh, and is you know, your
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: career is about kind of navigating the daily cycle of
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: insanity that we're all immersed in. I'm interested in your
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: thoughts of how to help how to how to kind
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: of navigate and deal with the day in, day out,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: you know, cycle of news that I think is making
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: people crazy. Yeah.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: So I think there are a number of ways in
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: which meditation can be useful. Now, one is use of
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: social media. So the self awareness that generated through meditation
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: can help you see when you're just like, oh, I've
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: been on Twitter for four hours and my stomach is
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: up said, and my you know, my chest is buzzing,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: and you know, I'm just vibrating with rage, that that
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: is a signal like if you're tuned into those signals
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: that time to step away.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: The other is I had that not to interrupt me,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: but I just I just have that experience. Yesterday, I
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: got all caught up in the Jake Tapper Steven Miller
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: interview saga I went down the rabbit hole and like
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: watched the video and read the articles, and then read
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: the articles about what happened off camera, all this stuff,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: and I got really agitated by the whole thing, and
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: I had to finally say, like, what why am I
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: even doing this to myself? Like what am I? What
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: value am I getting out of engaging and learning about this?
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: I think you got some because it's important to be
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: an engaged citizen. And then the mindfulness your training kicked
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: in and you saw that you had reached the point
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: of diminished returns, and you pulled yourself out textbook application
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: of mindfulness. So that's one example of how mindfulness can
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: help in the current atmosphere. The other is when we're
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: experiencing the kind of rage, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness that many
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: of us feel in the face of current events, we
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: can those emotions can drive us to do a lot
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: of you know, onhealthy things, stress eating, snapping at people,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: so the kind of again back to the self awareness,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: to know when you're super angry because it's something you
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: saw on the news this morning and you're carrying it
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: out through the rest of your day, and you know,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: in your case, maybe eating too many cacao nibs or
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: whatever it is you vegans eat.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: I was, by the way, I was planning on bringing
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: you a green smoothy, but I got all caught up
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: in my crisis and couldn't make.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: That age my life because we have your cookbook and
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: not infrequently we'll dive in in the plant power way, right.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: But also you told me one day, I mean after
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: you came to my office the first time we met you,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: I was hungry and you you would come to my
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: office to interview me for the podcast, and I didn't
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: even know who you were. Now I obviously know who
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: you are, and you said, go get a moooie with kale, spinach, banana, blueberry,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: and almond milk. And I went and it was like,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: this is delicious. It sounds disgusting, but it's actually totally delicious.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: It gives you a ton of energy. Sometimes I'll add
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: in an avocado. So yeah, So instead of binging on food
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: or snapping at your you know, venting your spleen at
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: your opinionated uncle. Meditation can help you sort of not
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: let not be so buffeted by the sort of noxious
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: nature of our political age. And then the third thing is,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: you know, let me.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Just ask you this, though, have you noticed a change
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: in your as somebody who's like you're in You're in
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: this as much as anybody in the world, right, have
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: you noticed a difference in how you process that information,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: or the kind of news diet that you put yourself on,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: or how you react to the vicissitudes of the cycle.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: So the truth is that I'm more tuned into the
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: news than I've ever been, and I find myself I'm
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: really following the story, and I'm very concerned, very concerned
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: about the polarization, and I'm very concerned about lots of things,
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: but mostly the biggest problem, the root of it for me,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: is how we're at each other's throats and we can't
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: even agree on a basic set of facts. That's a
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: frame the discussion, and that is so unhealthy.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: There's a total breakdown and our ability to communicate in
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: a healthy way.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, So I would say that leads me to The
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: third benefit, and actually there's one more so for the
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: third benefit is that I think mindfulness again, the self
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: awareness that you get through meditation, it can help you
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: see your own biases. And it's actually something satisfying about noticing,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, are you happy every time mother appears to
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: be making a moving closer to the White House? Or conversely,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: do you have a coffee mug emblazoned with the words
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: liberal tears on the side of it? You know, are you?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: Are you?
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: Are you a tribal and are you part of the problem?
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: I think we are all part of the problem. And
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: if you can start to see that, then you can
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: do what I would recommend what I have come to do,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: which is to have a really varied media diet. And
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: so I consume the mainstream media, the so called mainstream media,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: including ABC New York Times, but also I listen to
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: liberal podcasts and I listen to conservative podcasts. And I
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: find that seeing the world. You know, you can go
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: from listening to Morning Joe to listening to Ben Shapiro,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: and it's like you're in a different universe. But I
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: think that's very healthy and seeing and seeing where your
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: own biases are can be just as interesting as catching
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: yourself that you described earlier, catching yourself online to the supermarket,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: justifying how you need to be using tweeter Twitter. This
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: can be a rich field for exploration. And then the
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: fourth area that I think meditation can help is the
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: loving kindness meditation, which we've just kind of discussed, which
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: is basically, there's this other form of meditation that's often
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: taught in conjunction with mindfulness, where you systematically cultivate good vibes.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: You sit close your eyes and envision people you know,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: somebody you're close with, somebody you don't like, some a
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: neutral person, et cetera, et cetera, and you send them
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: silently these phrases like may you be happy, may you
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: be live with ease, etcetera, etcetera. It sounds like Valentine's
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: Day with a gun to your head, and it is
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: super annoying at the beginning, but there is a lot
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: of science that suggests that not only does it have
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of health benefits, but that actually can change behavior.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: Kids preschoolers who are taught loving kindness meditation are more
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: likely to give their stickers away to kids they don't know.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: Having a preschooler at home. That is a big deal.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: And so I think at this point in time, in fact,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: I think my next book is going to be about
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: these practices. I think the title that I'm working on
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: is ten percent Nicer, and the subtitle is the self
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: interested case for not being a dick. And there is
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: a self interested case that when think about this, when
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: you hold the door open for somebody, what does I
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: feel like in your mind? If you're paying attention, it
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: feels good. That is scalable, compassion, generosity, kindness. These are
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: skills that you can work on and would make a
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: huge difference in the age in which we find ourselves
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, selflessness when perpetrated from for selfish reasons only still works.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, it does. It's a beautiful thing because somebody like
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: me who's not naturally altruistic, if you turn it into it,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: if you show me the science that suggests you could
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: live longer, you could be happier, you could be more
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: popular and more successful, which is what the science suggests
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: about kind people. If you show me that science and
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: then you give me some practices, even if they are
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: a little annoying, I will do them because my motivation
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: is I want the popular happier, healthier thing. I want
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: all of those things right.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: It's so counterintuitive and it goes against all the messaging
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: that we're constantly exposed to, which is that our happiness
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: has led to, you know, getting the tesla or the
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: new house, or being able to go on this vacation,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: when in truth, it's completely accessible by extending yourself selflessly
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: to another human being.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: And by the way, I got nothing against the tesla
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: like I would love to have a test.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I would love to too. That's why I always
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: use it as an example, because I'm thinking about it too.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: Much so that it isn't to engage in a whole
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: self flagellation cycle around that. It's just to see that actually,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: on a moment to moment basis, the happiness of being
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: kind to yourself and others is perennially available, and to
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: just try it out, you know, don't take my word
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: for it. That's the way the boot the Buddhas approach
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: was like, don't take my word for it. I'll teach
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: you a bunch of things, go and do it, test
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: it in the laboratory of your own experience. And so
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: I'm just telling you I've tried it it does work.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: Doesn't mean I'm never an asshole, because I'm definitely still
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: an asshole time at times. But when you're mindful enough,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: you can see what does it feel like when you're
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: an asshole? It feels like shit, and that powerfully disincentivizes you,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: you know, powerfully disincentivizes you.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well we got to wrap this up
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: in a second here, But but before we do that,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: what do you like? What are you working on now? Like?
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: What is emotionally like? What is what's your biggest stumbling
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: block or what is you know, what's what comes up
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: for you in your practice as a recurring issue that
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: you need to like, work through.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: The biggest change to my practice came from Jeff Warren,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: my co author, diagnosing in the course of spending eleven
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: days in this tin can traveling across the country together,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: he diagnosed that I have a lot of inner antagonism,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: that I have the potential that while I can be
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: an asshole externally, most of it is self directed, and
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: that my meditation practice had a real grim quality as
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: a consequence that as I discussed this earlier, that I'm
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: always telling people, you know, when you get distracted, it's
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: no big deal. But when I got distracted, like I,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: you know, somehow I was operating on this theory that
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: I'll win at meditation, I'll never get distracted, and then
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: I would engage in type what a schmuck. And so
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: I was engaged in all this self laceration internally, and
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: Jeff helped me inject a huge dose of sunshine into
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: my practice by he had an idea that I thought
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: was really cheesy, and I reject it like I do
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: with all good ideas. Initially, I'm like the anti blink,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: you know, the blink is about the wisdom of our
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: you know, rapid fire. My rapid fire intuition is always off.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: So Jeff's idea was, look, when anger arises for you internally,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: like name it after your asshole grandfather, Robert Johnson, who
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: you got it from. So when it arises, be like, hey,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: what's up Robert? And I thought that is dumb, that
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: is corny. But after a while I started to realize, actually,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: and this is because Jeff pointed out to me, there
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: are five or six kind of neurotic programs that are
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: are always running for all of us, that are running
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: that sort of compete for salience. In your mind at
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: any given time. So for me anger, logistical, planning, ambition, writing,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: like creativity. There are a few more, and I've forgotten
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: them right now, but I gave them names so like
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: goofy little names like so Robert Johnson for anger, Sammy
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: for my ambition after the book What Makes Sammy Run,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: which is about an ambitious Hollywood type, Julie the Cruise
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: Director for Julie after Julie the Cruise Director for the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: Love Book. For the logistician Arthur, which sounds like author
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: for every time I like do some writing in my
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: head and depersonalizing it in that way, making it lighter
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: and literally saying the words welcome to the party when
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: I see the arising of these neurotic patterns has just
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: lowered the temperature in such a constructive way, and it's
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: made me see that all of the sappy talk about
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: being kind to yourself, you have to be kind to yourself,
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah, which I also dismissed, is totally true,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: and that my whole meditation practice has just become a
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: much more congenial place. I want to close my eyes
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: to meditate, you know, and I see I actually sometimes
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: smile when I see my anger come up or when
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: I see, you know, my ambition overtaking me, and I'm
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: carried off on this train of you know, planning world
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: domination through meditation, Like, oh my god, I see there's
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: pleasure in seeing it. And so Jeff is a Jeff
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: is Jeff is a hedonist, and I lacked hedonism in
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: my practice, and now I have it. And it is
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: a massive gift that he's given to me. Even though,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: as I read about in the book, there were many
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: times when we wanted to murder each other.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: Right, well, I would imagine part of that derives from
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: the fact that now, you know, for better or worse,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: like you're the meditation guy. Like that that's how people
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: see you. And I'm sure people stop you on the
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: street and say, hey, it's the meditation dude, you know.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: And and and the pressure that that probably you know,
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: puts on you a little bit to you know, kind
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: of monitor your behavior and like, oh, well, if you
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: freak out and get angry at somebody, you know, how
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: do you how do you, like, you know, walk your
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: talk in the in the best way possible is can
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: be without you know, it could be like an unhealthy
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: relationship that you have with yourself.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be, although I think that frankly, for me,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: it wasn't really that. It was just it was just this,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: I have this conditioning then that veers me toward anger.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: You know, my grandfather, Robert Johnson, is a real person
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: and not a nice dude. Oh later in his life
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: he actually became very nice. But most of his life
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: I remember one time he in the eighties or something
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: like that, he got his first VCR and he took
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: me and my little brother and to see it and
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: he said, if you touch this, I'll.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: Break your arm.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: That was, you know, that was the kind of dude
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: he was. And like, I have Robert Johnson in my
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: veins and like and there have been many times in
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: my life and to this day where I am capable
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: of very cutting comments and most of it, though, is
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: self directed. And Jeff just saw that in me. You know,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: there's benefits being locked up on a bus with a
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: bri lead meditation teacher. Interesting shit that you may not
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: want to face will be dragged out of your subconscious
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: and presented to you. And that's what happened.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: I like that idea of giving all of these qualities
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: names though, and recognizing that they exist rather than trying
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: to deny their you know that they're they're even certain.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of Elizabeth Gilbert writing she wrote about
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: this in her book Big Magic. I've read that book.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: But like when you go on a creative endeavor, you know,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: your your whatever that voice is that talks you out
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: of your self worth not part like to not pretend
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: that it doesn't exist. Like, Okay, we're going on this
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: road trip. You can come, but you got to sit
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: in the backseat and you can't pick the music and
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: can't tell you can't give directions. Yeah, it's just a
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: similar idea.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: The the weapon may not be the right word. It's
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: like a NERF weapon, you know, the sort of non
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: violent weapon we are equipping you with here through meditation
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: is just seeing clearly when you see this stuff, it
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: can't own you. And so they are all these little
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: techniques that we use, you know, and and coming up
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: with goofy names for your inner dramatis persona is one
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: of these techniques. You don't have to do it, but
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: I found it to be very useful.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: And bringing it back to the book, you know, in
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: terms of techniques. I mean it's broken down in such
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: simplistic terms, like you know, anybody can do this. I
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: mean literally there is if you read this book, you
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: will learn how to meditate, and you will it will
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: be so accessible and so, you know, easy to incorporate
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: into your life. And I think that's one of the
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: great kind of like gifts of this message that you
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: put forth in the new book.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you man. I appreciate that.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: Because you have like these chapters, but then you break
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: it down at the end and like here's the here's
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: how we're doing it, and it's like, oh, that's very elementary,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Like I get it completely. It doesn't have to be
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: some major ordeal where you're giving me two hundred things
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: to think about and tasks to do. It's just very simple.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: That was the goal. I mean it was very hard
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: to get there, but that was the goal. Make it
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: as user friendly as possible. Simple, simple, simple, and also
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: tell you an engaging story in the process.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: Right, So for somebody who's now listened to us for
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: ninety minutes and is thinking, all right, I'm sold, I'm
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: on board. Other than getting your app and getting the
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: new book, what's a way to just launch into this
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: and again.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: Look the this is going to make me the worst
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: shittiest businessman of all time. I love selling books, I
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: love having people subscribe to the app. But the basic
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: constructions are really basic. You know, sit in a reasonably
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: quiet place, close your eyes. If you don't like have
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: your eyes closed, you can kind of keep the home
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: just a little bit and stare at a neutral spot
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: on the floor. Second step is just bring your full
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: going out. Pick a spot where it's most prominent, your nose,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: your chest, your belly. The third step is the most
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: important because as soon as you try to do this,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: your mind's going to go crazy. You're gonna have all
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: sorts of random thoughts. Where to gerbils run wild? Whatever?
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: Bah?
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: What kind of bird was big bird? Whatever? Blah blah blah.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: And then the whole game is just to notice when
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: you've become distracted, start again and again and again. Those
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: are the instructions. This is the way that they've been
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: doing it for millennia. You don't need a book, you
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: don't need an app. You just need your mind and
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: your breath in a reasonably quiet place. And if it's
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: not quiet. Just put some headphones on. You could do
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: that one minute a day, truly, one minute daily ish,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: so like most days, and I think you'd start deriving
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of the benefits that we've discussed from meditation.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: It helps to have support in the form of a
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: teacher if you like to go to a local class,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: or an app where you have a bunch of teachers
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: like ours, or there are lots of other good apps
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: as well. It also makes me shitty businessman, but it's true.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: Or reading a good book, these can all be very
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: helpful tools. But the basic constructions are just what I
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: just described. So just play that back to yourself and
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: go sit for a minute and do a set of
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: time or on your phone and go do it.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: Good talking to you, Dan, always.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: A pleasure, huge pleasure. Thank you man.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you for doing it. That was awesome. Uh,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: definitely pick up the new book Meditation for fidgety skeptics.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: Download the app the Happier App available wherever you get
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: your apps. Listen to the podcast The Temper. You've done
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: a good job with branding here said your podcast, and uh,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: you know, turn your television on and you're sure to
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: catch them on ABC, all right, and at Dan b
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: Harris on Twitter, right, and yes, website tier dot com.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, here we go.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: All right man, thanks talking to you like us. Peace.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: Peace now must stay. Peace and pleasures it pains you.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: Peace pleas day