Professional Setbacks Happen to All of Us. Here Are Some Lessons From Resetting My Career. | Dan Harris & Toni Magyar

Practical learnings from Dan and his CEO on: focus, feedback, self-talk, and expecting adversity. 10% Media head honcho Toni Magyar joins Dan for a candid conversation about how to reset after a professional setback, navigating some tricky transitions, and how self-compassion and clear communication can make it all a bit easier. In this episode we talk about: Celebrating the one-year anniversary of our new business, independent of the app company that Dan co-founded How acknowledging that change is constant helps us live with uncertainty What it means to operate with self-compassion and why that's different from lowering your standards Some of our big plans for the next year, including more live meditation and Q&As with Dan and the Teachers of the Month Related Episodes: I Just Went Through A Career Earthquake. Here's What I Learned About Anger, Insomnia, and Bouncing Back | Dan Harris https://www.danharris.com/p/i-just-went-through-a-career-earthquake?utm_source=publication-search On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here https://www.nyimc.org/event/heavily-meditated/! Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025! Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, gang. Okay, I have a lot to say in the introduction to this episode. This is a personal episode today, but don't worry, it's also very practical. You're going to hear me talk about what I learned about issues such as focus, feedback, the disutility of shame or self-criticism, and the value of expecting adversity, even though we all want life to be an unbroken upward trajectory of seamless progress. These are all things that I learned, or perhaps more accurately, re-learned, when I was forced to reset, or restart, or resuscitate my career last year. Just let me step back for a second and give you some context. Last year, at around this time, I went public and announced that I was separating

• 1:01Dan Harris?

  from the meditation app that I co-founded. That separation process was among the most difficult things that I have experienced as a grown-up. It lasted three years. It brought up all sorts of issues for me, including anger, and anxiety, and more. And yes, I will fully acknowledge the fact that having a business divorce was one of the most difficult things in my life, is proof that my life has been charmed and privileged, and I own that, and yet it was really hard. The end result was that I left the app that I had long considered to be my baby, and restarted a new subscription service over on Substack called DanHarris.com. A huge thank you to all of you who signed up for that thing. In the last year, we've accumulated more than 200,000 followers, many, many thousands

• 1:46Dan Harris?

  of whom are actually paying, which allows me to pay my staff, and pay all the meditation teachers who contribute content. So I'm immensely grateful, and I should add that I'm grateful not only to all of you, but also to the incredible people who work on my team, one of whom you're going to hear from today. This episode is a conversation between me and Tony Magyar, who is the CEO of my little company. I don't think she's ever been on the podcast before, so this should be a treat. She is an incredibly smart, very, very thoughtful person who not only leads our team, but with a lot of care, but also has the very big and sometimes very annoying job of keeping me in line, which she does beautifully. Tony has a rich background in the media space. She started in traditional book publishing and then moved over to podcasts and now

• 2:31Dan Harris?

  works with me. So this is going to be a behind the scenes conversation where we talk in a very, very candid way about the hard lessons that we have both learned in the year since we launched. It's going to have plenty of behind the scenes content if you're into that kind of thing, but we also made damn sure to center it around the practical things that both Tony and I learned over the past year or so. And of course, practical, operational, actionable wisdom is at the spirit of our entire endeavor. So that just kind of makes sense. I should also say, this is the kickoff episode for a whole month of programming we're doing during the month of September. September is a back to school month. It's a time when people reset often. Sometimes in my business, we call it like a mini New

• 3:14Dan Harris?

  Year's. So we have a whole month of programming around the theme of reset. We're coming out of summer. We're getting back to our routines. So we're resetting here on the pod. Coming up this month, we've got episodes on how to reset your nervous system, how to reset your career and more. I told you this intro was going to be long. I'm almost done, but I've got a couple of other announcements before we dive into the conversation. First, we're doing some resetting, to be a little cute, over at danharris.com. Over the last year, we've, we've learned a lot about what our customers want. So we are now offering bespoke guided meditations that come with all of our Monday and Wednesday episodes. Every month, we hire a teacher of the month who produces these custom guided meditations.

• 3:57Dan Harris?

  The idea is that, you know, we can help you take all the cool stuff you learn in the episode and pound it into your neurons through guided meditations. This month, our teacher of the month is Vinnie Ferraro, a fan favorite and a personal favorite of mine. Second thing to say. This is related, starting September 2nd, we're going to start doing live guided meditation and Q and A sessions every week. This is only for paid subscribers. By the way, the guided meditations are also only for paid subscribers. For the last year, we've done these live video meditation and Q and A sessions once or twice a month. They're super popular and I also really enjoy doing them. So now we're going to do it every week, every Tuesday, in fact. So you can put it on your calendar and you can count on it. Our first one is September 2nd, 4 o'clock Eastern.

• 4:42Dan Harris?

  It'll be me and Vinnie together. And then after September 2nd, indefinitely, every Tuesday, 4 o'clock Eastern, we'll do some meditation together. And if you miss it, you can always do it asynchronously on your own time. We'll send out the video. Long way of saying we've got a lot of cool shit going on over at DanHarris.com. Please sign up as a paying subscriber. As you will hear in this conversation with Tony, these new features, you know, the bespoke guided meditations and the weekly live video meditations, they're really just the beginning. We have some pretty ambitious plans. We'd love to have you in on the ground floor as we build this thing together. Okay, one last thing, I promise this is the last thing. This one last announcement that we'll take a break and get to the actual episode.

• 5:22Dan Harris?

  If you want to meditate with me in person, I am doing a live IRL event at the Omega Institute, which is an hour or two north of New York City at the end of October, the weekend of the 24th. It's a weekend-long event with my friends, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren. We call it meditation party because it's a mixture of meditation and also hanging out, socializing, community, et cetera. You can sign up at EOmega.org, EOmega.org. I'll also put a link in the show notes. Okay, quick break, and then we'll be right back with my conversation with the estimable Tony Maguire.

• 5:58Speaker 01

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• 6:29Speaker 02

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• 6:31Speaker 03

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• 7:00Dan Harris?

  You good to go?

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so.

• 7:01Dan Harris?

  Okay, so I'll just start, I'll just kick it off.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:04Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 7:06Dan Harris?

  Tony Maguire, welcome to the show.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Thanks, Dan.

• 7:08Dan Harris?

  First time appearance.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  First time, maybe the last, we'll see.

• 7:15Dan Harris?

  What should we talk about?

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Well, we're going to talk about what we've been up to for the last year and where that has led us and where we think we're going.

• 7:28Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  So, September 10th last year, we published an episode on the show. It was just you, no guest. And you told the audience about a career earthquake that you'd just been through and a bunch of things that you learned.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  But that earthquake was you were leaving the meditation app that you had co-founded. And you were going out on your own, starting a new business, a little team.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  And that was a year ago. We have done a lot and we have learned a lot. So, we're going to share what's been going on behind the scenes a little bit. And then we're going to talk about what have we learned about starting a business? What have we learned about what we should be offering to our listeners and our subscribers at danharris.com?

• 8:29Speaker 03

  And then what have we learned about change? You've been through a lot.

• 8:35Dan Harris?

  I mean, you, it's not just me.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  It's not just you.

• 8:39Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, me too. You know, because this whole month on the podcast, we're talking about resets, nervous system, career, relationships. So we want to kick off and acknowledge that like change is happening all of the time. But for human beings, that can be really hard.

• 9:01Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  So we're going to use some very big changes that we've been through to kind of help tease out some lessons to foreground for this whole month of programming.

• 9:14Dan Harris?

  So just to put a fine point on it for the listeners, so that we'll, we'll start by talking about practical takeaways from a year plus of tumult in our professional and personal lives with the goal of giving people something they can do in their own lives. And then toward the end, we'll pull back the curtain a little bit, do some behind the scenes stuff on what we're thinking about and building towards as a company. Is that, am I summing that up correctly?

• 9:44Speaker 03

  I think that's pretty much right.

• 9:45Dan Harris?

  Okay. Pretty much right.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Pretty much right. I was thinking we would actually start by giving the audience a little more background and context. We're not here to spill tea or talk about the breakup. But I think, you know, when you are in the midst of this very long, painful separation process, your career and livelihood was like really up in the air.

• 10:13Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  One of the potential titles we've talked about for this episode is how to reset after you blow up your life. And we're not suggesting the audience should blow up their life, but I think it is helpful context, perhaps, just to understand where we were and what we were doing to understand, you know, where we are now and how to deal with just the uncertainty of change.

• 10:39Dan Harris?

  So the order of operations then is?

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Little background.

• 10:42Dan Harris?

  Little background, practical takeaways.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  What are we offering?

• 10:46Dan Harris?

  And then the behind the scenes, what are we offering? Yes.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, and maybe we'll let you run free a little bit and talk about some future ideas that we have. We'll see how that goes.

• 10:57Dan Harris?

  Just to frame that for the audience, when she talks about maybe letting me run free, one of the hardest parts of Tony's job, which we'll get into this, is she's working with somebody who chases a lot of squirrels. Some of you may have heard me talk about this before, but in that movie Up, which I've watched with my son many, many times, it's a Pixar movie, the bad guy has a pack of dogs who chase the good guys. And every once in a while, the dogs get distracted and yell the word squirrel and go off chasing a squirrel. And I do that a lot. I've got a million ideas, some of them good, some of them very, very stupid, and they're all squirrels. And we have to decide, and Tony often has to play traffic cop on this, which squirrels are we going to chase?

• 11:41Dan Harris?

  And how do we stay focused? That the correct context to your dry comment earlier? Okay.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. Okay, so your whole career, your livelihood was pretty up in the air. And there were a few reasons for that. You had left ABC News after 20 some on your career. And you did that to focus really on 10% happier and the work that you do around meditation and mental health.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  But I think it was not long after you had made that decision that there started to be some conflict at the old app company. Started heading down the path of, you know, having to separate. The same time, the podcast industry was sort of like going through like convulsions of several kinds. Great shows were being canceled left and right. People were losing their jobs. We had a couple contracts that were making it just difficult for us to know what our future was going to look like. Were we going to be able to afford to make this show? What was that going to look like?

• 13:01Speaker 03

  And we knew it was going to take us some time to figure that out. Given the agreements we had in place and just the timing. The word we often used was existential.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Things felt really challenging. And for reasons we're not going to go into, we ended up needing to announce your departure from the meditation app a bit sooner than we had anticipated.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  And we wanted to give the audience a place where they could follow you going forward. And we wanted to offer things that we hadn't offered in the past. More connection to you, more help remembering lessons to the show. But we also had to do it really quickly. And I'm curious just to hear from you when we got to launch day and there was a queue of things that needed to happen. A press release needed to go out from the company and then we could publish our episode. We could launch danharris.com. Do you remember how you were feeling that day?

• 14:16Speaker 03

  You seemed super chill. I was like a mess.

• 14:22Dan Harris?

  You had seen me in the previous three years be anything but chill. It's not like I was perpetually relaxed. And there were plenty of times that you witnessed firsthand where I really, I don't think handled it well. It was like the manifestation of my deepest fears, as I've often talked about with you and on this show. You know, I have a great grandfather who took his own life in the family kitchen after losing the family fortune and getting indicted. And I just have that kind of primordial, for me, primordial fear in my bones. And so this kind of had echoes of that. And so I was really, really anxious for a long time. Plus, there was, you know, it was a long process of separating from the company.

• 15:06Dan Harris?

  That was a long negotiation and you were right there for every step of it. And of course, we were negotiating to figure out how much money we're going to make on the podcast. And so it, as you said, it felt existential. And I think for a lot of that period, I was just on tilt. By the time we got to September 10th of last year, when we announced that I was leaving the app and that you and I and the rest of this team had decided to strike out on our own, I actually felt reasonably good. One of the things I learned is how to live with uncertainty. There's this story that I was just thinking about this morning that my executive coach, who you know well, Jerry Colonna, who the audience may remember, he's been on the show a bunch of times.

• 15:51Dan Harris?

  He has a story of talking to his shrink several decades ago and just being really worried about money and feeling unsafe. And the shrink asked him, how much money would make you feel safe? And Jerry heard himself say, Bill Gates money, which, you know, is of course totally ridiculous. I mean, very few people other than Bill Gates ever get Bill Gates money, but.

• 16:19Dan Harris?

  It speaks to me of how we're never gonna feel solid. We're never gonna feel, we can't get there, that we're chasing something that's a mirage, an illusion. And I have to learn this lesson over and over again because I, you know, you and I talk about my desire to turn the volume down on a sense of precarity in my life. But actually, I think in my saner moments, I recognize that you can't get rid of groundlessness. That is the fundamental truth. And those moments of feeling secure, that's actually really more of the illusion. And I hate this fact about reality, but it does seem kind of non-negotiable.

• 17:01Dan Harris?

  And so I think over time, I've just gotten better at learning how to live with it. I heard an expression recently, expect nothing, be prepared for anything. And I kind of like that. Like you and I talk a lot about something we, a guest on the show once said is like, life is not an escalator. So I will not expect a smooth upward trajectory for our company, for anything in my life. And I will simultaneously be prepared for anything. This is not like a recipe, I don't think properly understood as being hyper vigilant and constantly anxious. It's just, the only ground that is available is the confidence that I've trained my mind

• 17:43Dan Harris?

  enough and have a good enough team around me personally and professionally to handle whatever shit show might emerge.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  And it will.

• 17:51Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Shit shows will happen.

• 17:53Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  On the regular.

• 17:55Dan Harris?

  How do you handle? I mean, I talked a little bit about just kind of how I handle it. One is just recognizing the truth of it. And two is self-soothing by just talking to myself and talking with you. So as I'm talking, I'm realizing there are a bunch of things that were said there. One is, Seeing clearly, and Buddhist speak sampajana, I believe it's called, just seeing clearly that groundlessness is the truth. That's one kind of healing modality because you're not arguing with reality. The second is recognizing that, talking to yourself, talking to myself about the fact that I can handle whatever comes up, like I'm scared of it, but I can deal with it.

• 18:37Dan Harris?

  And I just look back at my history and realize I've dealt with lots of stuff. The third is have good people around you. Another expression you and I use all the time, never worry alone. Those are three practical, actionable tools for the audience. What would you add to that? Like, what do you use to get through all of this topsy-turvy stuff?

• 19:01Speaker 03

  I would sort of add something we were talking about right before we started recording. And I alluded to it a second ago, is just that change is constant. This thing that you're worried about right now, this feeling that you're having right now, it's about to change. It's not always going to change for the better, but it is going to change. And then I think the other piece of this that you know is

• 19:27Speaker 03

  something that I've been working on very gradually is just the self-compassion piece. Because for me, and I know I'm not alone here, I tend to over-index on shame and self-blame anytime it seems like something isn't going well.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  And so sometimes it's a reminder of

• 19:58Speaker 03

  being imperfect, being human, needing to make mistakes to learn. And other times, and we've talked about this in terms of decisions and choices we've made together, it's about knowing we did the best we could with the information we had at the time.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  The circumstances, the media landscape, whatever, may have changed and we may regret our decision.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  But we did the best we could with the information we had at the time. And there were a lot of factors that weren't necessarily in our control.

• 20:41Dan Harris?

  It's really helpful, actually, because the shame and the guilt and the self blame and the self laceration does not help your business.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely not. The more I fixate on what I think my failings have been,

• 21:02Speaker 03

  the harder I might try to push myself to deny them, overcome them, change immediately, which isn't going to happen. Even if it's unintentional, then the harder I'm going to push on other people. Right? That thing of the thing we don't want to see in ourselves that we haven't accepted, haven't integrated, it bleeds out into our relationships with other people. So needing to slow down, have more compassion, be a little bit gentler and not be

• 21:41Speaker 03

  a neurotic drill sergeant

• 21:45Speaker 03

  is so critical because if I'm doing it to myself, it will have repercussions, not just for me, but for the rest of the team and our whole business.

• 21:56Dan Harris?

  But I think what you're talking about here is kind of the punchline for my next book, which I was just writing a chat. I was writing the key chapter where I realized this this morning, which is, I believe, what you were just talking about, which is that we have two spirals available to us at all times. One is what you were just describing, which my friend Evelyn Tribole describes as the toilet vortex, where you're hard on yourself and then you take that on other people and then you feel like shit. And then you're even worse to other people and then you feel even worse and then down you go. And the other, which I think can often kick off with self compassion, is as you

• 22:42Dan Harris?

  learn how to take care of your own mind. Well, then your relationships improve because you're easier on other people. And because relationships are the most important variable in human flourishing, then your inner weather gets even bombier, then the relationships improve even more, and then up you go. I call that the cheesy upward spiral. And people think of business, I think, often as a,

• 23:08Dan Harris?

  I don't know, purely commercial, outside the realm of the spiritual, for lack of a better word, but actually it's a great crucible for practicing all the stuff we talk about on the show.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Absolutely. But

• 23:23Speaker 03

  over the last couple of years, when I've taken on too much or felt like I made a mistake that was somehow unforgivable and wanted to quit or fire myself. It is true that actually your book in progress and manuscript, as funky as it is right now, as you toil away on your rewrite, has been hugely helpful. And it's one of the things that really motivates me to keep going, keep building this business, because I know the work that you're doing and that we're all doing

• 24:09Speaker 03

  really can change people's lives.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  And that's a big deal.

• 24:13Dan Harris?

  I would like to finish this book. It has been a tough slog. But just to put a little meat on the bone of what you're saying there, that when you say you're excited about it, one of your areas of expertise really is the business of creating content that will help people. You came up through publishing and then you went to podcasts. Then you worked in a company that mixed podcasts with a meditation app. And now you're the CEO of a company that's really, really focused on that. And your vision, which I really share, is the book comes out, it hopefully inspires a bunch of people to do the things that I did in the book. And then we then create an infrastructure of courses.

• 24:53Dan Harris?

  Where people can learn how to do the things that you can watch me fuck up in the book. So it's kind of like you go to a movie and then you go to the theme park afterwards. And we are building the theme park. We're building both at the same time. And that's what you're from a professional standpoint. That's where you really feel most energized.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, super excited. And I think we can use that as a segue to like, what is this theme park?

• 25:20Dan Harris?

  I do want to just go back to something you said that I I think is a key learning that we should dwell on. Are you okay with that? So we before I was listing at least three things I learned in in the aftermath and also in the prodrome of blowing up my whole life. One is, you know, the value of mindfulness, like seeing clearly what reality is so that I'm not at war with it. And after a while, you start to surrender into it, relax like, yeah, I can see we're in a world of ceaseless change. That doesn't mean I don't have any agency, doesn't mean I'm going to be resigned, but it means I can learn how to respond wisely to things instead of reacting blindly. Mindfulness can be trained through mindfulness meditation.

• 26:02Dan Harris?

  The second part, I described it as like developing a sense of confidence that you can handle whatever is going to come your way. But I actually think the bigger framing for the second thing would be self compassion. Just learning how to talk to yourself in a way that reduces your own anxiety and makes you more effective. And takes out of the equation to the best of your ability, the self criticism, the guilt, the shame, all of that stuff. And I would add back to our discussion around my comportment during this very tumultuous period of time. I think one area of shame reduction for me is being okay with the fact that I'm some sort of quasi guru who fucks up all the time, you know?

• 26:47Dan Harris?

  And like, that's, that's okay. Like, and that, I think, I hope, maybe this is self, what's the word I'm looking for? Letting myself off the hook in some way, but. I hope that's good modeling for people listening and watching, which is that, you know, you can do this for a living and still screw up. And I know a lot of meditation teachers who make mistakes in their lives. And then why this self compassion matters, I think really, and this is what I wanted to double click on is I said the third lesson earlier was never worry alone. But I think actually the third lesson is like stress, and we know this from the data is reduced by having people you trust in your orbit, who you could talk to about the shit that's going on. But as I often say, other people

• 27:32Dan Harris?

  are, you know, a necessity. And this is the head fuck. They're a Titanic thing in the ass. And so you need to learn a bunch of skills to handle other people. And so one of the skills that I think is an ongoing work in progress for me is learning how to be a leader. I was an anchorman at ABC News for 21 years and before that in local news. And I never had a direct report. Nobody actually worked for me. I was a leader in a some sense, but really I was just kind of doing my own thing. And to the extent that I was a leader and people were looking up to me, I whiffed on that a lot. I was self focused. So I never really learned how to be a manager. And then now I have my own company and only really have one direct report, you.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  So I'm the guinea pig.

• 28:17Dan Harris?

  You're the guinea pig.

• 28:21Dan Harris?

  Yeah, people should not feel envy. But you just to go back to something you said earlier that I made a note of that might have been confusing for people, which is that you have had at moments, the desire to fire yourself. And that is a real thing. And we had a little moment a couple of months ago, where you really wanted not to fire yourself, but to demote yourself. And that kind of led to a whole cascade of events that I my story is were positive in the end. But I want to hear you tell the story. And then we can talk about what we both learned in that process.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. You know, and I'll just be a little vulnerable here and let the listeners in, though I think I alluded to this already. My sort of default mode is not good enough. And so there have been periods over particularly the last year of feeling like, yeah, somebody would be much better at this than me. I can think of all these different skills or experiences or backgrounds and they just, they wouldn't make these mistakes and they would know these things and they would be better than me. And adios, I should get out of here. But of course, I, as we were just talking about, I'm really excited about what we're building. So my brain would start to work on trying to figure out, because

• 29:40Speaker 03

  I also love a puzzle, where can I fit? Where can I still be useful, but not out over my skis? So that had been playing out in the background for probably a year. So we started to work more and more closely together.

• 30:02Dan Harris?

  But you didn't tell me this, really.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I didn't really tell you. I mean, I signaled. One time I came over to your house and was like, so Dan, I think maybe, you know, you said you were gonna like interview for who the person was who was gonna like run this company with you. You didn't really do that. I think maybe you should. Maybe you want like a different kind of person, like very like, I don't know, maybe.

• 30:27Dan Harris?

  Because I think one of the things that I've learned is where we can get into trouble is when your historical reluctance to just kind of say the hard thing meets my self-centeredness. Because you're dropping breadcrumbs, but you never actually really came out and said it. And I was not attuned to the breadcrumbs because I'm just worried about my own shit.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:50Dan Harris?

  And I think, I think the story you'll tell in a minute where it really came to a head, I think was a huge wake up, I think for both of us, I'm reluctant to speak for you, but I've seen you really lean into being more direct in the aftermath of that. And I've seen in myself, at least an effort to be more vigilant, not hypervigilant for,

• 31:13Dan Harris?

  as Jerry Colonna likes to say, like, what's not being said? You know, what's the undercurrent here that people are too afraid to say to me because I have the power?

• 31:25Speaker 03

  I agree with all of that. What happened in January, not to get too far in the weeds, this is when we were having that conversation, sort of mid to late January, we had finally some clarity on the podcast and the revenue for the podcast. It was the first time in over a year that we had confidence that like, we had jobs and you were going to be able to pay your bills. And we'd been looking forward to this conversation because things had been so foggy and our team was waiting for us to be able to give them some news.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  They were all dealing with a lot of uncertainty, too. So we had just enough information to sit down and talk about, what are we building towards, what are people's roles? And I went into that feeling unprepared. I'd been really sick for two weeks, but I put together a memo. I was also advocating for where we needed to resource to start building the ecosystem that we would want to have. 16 months, 18 months, however long, from where we were. And so we were having all these conversations about what we were going to make and what

• 32:48Speaker 03

  roles people should have. And I didn't even like consciously tell myself not to raise a hand and say, I don't think I'm in the right role. I just literally forgot about myself. And I didn't remember myself for like, three or four days. What I had actually done in this memo and proposal is create my own fantasy job, a new role.

• 33:20Dan Harris?

  For somebody else.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  And for somebody else. And it wasn't until several days later, I remember just being like, What have I done? I've just ruined all my future happiness. And I sent you a message and I was like, dude, out of it right now? Like, it's not urgent, but like, we should talk. It's funny, I felt very sheepish about reaching out to you in that way. And then when we actually talked, I think it was revealing you were concerned you had done something that upset me. You're like, oh, I didn't fuck up? I didn't do something? And I'm like, no, dude.

• 34:03Dan Harris?

  When you said, we need to talk, I, I could feel like, I felt like I had a flu. I was like, oh, I fucked up. And so I did something. I'm in trouble.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Sorry about that.

• 34:12Dan Harris?

  When the call, when we started the call, it was clear it was, that was not what was going on. And I was relieved.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then you did a very kind, compassionate, good leader thing, which I think I've tried to model recently. Is just say like, that's cool. Like, nothing's set in stone. We can set aside some time. We can talk this through. And we did, we sat down in a conference room for the better part of a day. And we talked through, what did I really want to be doing? What was I doing that was maybe getting in the way of that? And were we kind of aligned on what you needed? What the business needed and what I wanted?

• 35:04Speaker 03

  And we found out we were, I was just kind of poorly doing like four jobs at the time. And it was hard for me still in that moment to trust that the move wasn't put somebody in this role who can do all of these things. That I am failing at doing all of them.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  But you were very, I don't want to say forceful, but you were very assertive

• 35:41Speaker 03

  in a very kind and generous way of like, nope, you've got this and you need to pay yourself more. And I remember also feeling some shame about that. But I think a couple of days later, I was able to say like, thanks for advocating for me. I wish I could have done it for myself, but thanks for doing that because it's pretty rare.

• 36:13Dan Harris?

  I remember feeling embarrassed, actually. We had a whiteboard and we were listing everything was on your plate. And it was ridiculous. It was there's so much shit. It was on your plate and so much shouldn't have been on your plate. And I was, I was like, well, I'm this person's boss. I have one direct report and I didn't even know all of this. I should have known all of this. And so I've failed. I remember feeling that really acutely and then thinking, all right, well, okay, I failed. But what am I going to do now? And so then we, we just circled all the things on the whiteboard that you wanted to be doing. We took everything else and put that into a category. And there's actually a human being sitting right outside of the studio right now, whose first day it is.

• 36:58Dan Harris?

  And she's going to do all that stuff.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, welcome, Taylor.

• 37:01Dan Harris?

  Welcome, Taylor.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Shout out.

• 37:02Dan Harris?

  Yeah, so to me wasn't, that wasn't some like triumphant and look at Mr. Compassionate Dan thing. It was like, I learned that I need to be a better boss and being a boss is its own kind of psycho spiritual endeavor. Right?

• 37:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:16Dan Harris?

  The other thing I learned, and this is a thing we've talked about a lot, is that if you look at the nucleus, the sort of. Core leadership team in this company. Everybody tends toward both introversion and being a people pleaser. And I tend toward massive extroversion and somewhere, you know, not too deep, but somewhere on the narcissism spectrum, you know?

• 37:44Speaker 03

  You have to do what you do. You have to be.

• 37:46Dan Harris?

  You can't be an anchorman for 30 years without like wanting to be the center of attention, et cetera, et cetera. And so I, that moment was a huge wake up call of, okay, it's okay that this is the personality mix on the team, but I have a lot of responsibility not to let this go south.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  And so where we landed was like, no, you need to focus on the things you want to focus on, and you're actually really good at them and get some help for everything else.

• 38:15Dan Harris?

  Yeah, your mean boss was like, I'm not going to let you demote yourself. I'm going to force you to take a promotion and pay you more.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  I know. God, you're so, so tough.

• 38:25Dan Harris?

  But that was, I mean, it's also, this isn't about like what the Tibetans call idiot compassion, you know, catastrophic altruism. It was enlightened self-interest. I know you're really good at your job. It's in my best interest to unshackle you, to let you really run. So, I mean, yeah, so I don't want to portray myself here as some sort of Dalai Lama type figure, although the Dalai Lama himself talks about this idea of wise selfishness. That's what I think is kind of like the best of humanity. Like being useful to other people makes us feel good and so.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Yes, you told me many times, this is in my own self-interest. So like just.

• 39:00Dan Harris?

  Yes. Right. It reminds me of this thing I heard from some Buddhist monk somewhere that when you take care of your own mind, you're taking care of the world.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  I think that's enough lessons. We'll wrap up memory lane and some of the lessons learned. But I think, you know, if we could sum them up, it's like, anytime you're trying to grow or you're trying to change, when you're trying to reset anything, you need self compassion. You need to take it easy on yourself. You need a support network and you need to tap into your meditation practice.

• 39:44Dan Harris?

  Yeah, when you put it that way, it's pretty fucking simple.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  We'll be back here next year and be like, these are all the things that we fucked up, but we're learning.

• 39:55Dan Harris?

  Exactly. Right. And there's a lesson in that.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  There is. We just keep doing it.

• 39:59Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  Looking back can be so helpful. I was also reflecting, you know, it's not

• 40:08Speaker 03

  just working with you and all the work that you do and our relationship that is helping me grow. Also, I've had an amazing therapist for the last two years. I talk to my husband more. I have a really good friend right now who's always happy to talk to me about work. And so all of these things have helped me, but I can see that it's taking time, but I can see the progress. And so that is motivating.

• 40:31Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  That gives me hope. The technology works, as you say. Okay, so also, though, over the course of this year, we went from starting danharris.com to provide this audience a place to follow you after the separation. Wanted to help them remember what they're hearing on the podcast. So we started these regular emails with a takeaway from you related to the podcast episode, cheat sheet summaries, transcripts. In the early days, we were having some of our podcast guests in the chats. And you started doing some live meditation and Q and As.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Before we get into where are we now and where I think we're going, I'd be super curious to hear from you. What have you learned from some of the experiments we have done over the last year about what really helps people?

• 41:33Dan Harris?

  I mean, the first thing to say, and this is not what you're asking me, but I do want to make a case for experimentation generally. Being willing to fail, it is the opposite of perfectionism. We tried a bunch of stuff. You listed a bunch of them and some of them worked and some of them didn't. And that's okay. It's super important. In terms of the question you did ask me, which is, you know, what have we learned on the level of what's working with the customer and what we think is onward leading as it pertains to what we'll build in the future? To me, what seems obvious, hopefully I'll be right about this, and I think you and I agree on this, is the most energy we feel as a team and I feel as a person and customers

• 42:13Dan Harris?

  seem to feel in their response is around these live sessions where I'm guiding a meditation and then taking people's questions. I have the energetic sense, and we have some data to back this up, that's where people are most engaged and are feeling the most impact, and I really enjoy doing it. And so I think what we're going to build toward is what you and I often refer to as like a next generation meditation app. You need to have a large body of guided meditations. You need a timer. You need some courses. And we know how to do that. We've done that before and we'll do it again. But what no app has done, to my knowledge, really is build in the community aspect. And community can come off as kind

• 42:57Dan Harris?

  of like a vague, anodyne term, but there's so much evidence from millennia of contemplative history and from modern science that turning self-improvement into the carpool lane is a much more effective way to do it. Like the Buddha, as you've heard me yammer on about many times, talked about the three jewels in what he was building. One was the Buddha, meaning, you know, just like an example of awakening as part of human potential. The second was the Dharma, the teaching of the Buddha about how to do that. And the third was the Sangha. And it wasn't like two plus an asterisk. It was three equal jewels. The Sangha is the community of meditators. And honestly, I don't even think, as I look

• 43:42Dan Harris?

  at the Buddhist world writ large in America, I don't see a lot of it happening at meditation centers. There's no real structure for people to get to know each other and to do this thing together. And so I think that's a lot of what makes me excited about building going forward. I don't want to spew too many words, and I might have said some shit that has gotten me in trouble with you already, but how is what I'm saying landing thus far?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Great. You're not in trouble.

• 44:09Dan Harris?

  Okay, good.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  Yet.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  I'll just add specifically, you know, some of the things that we're thinking about is when we do future courses or little mini series, how do we create sort of discussion groups or cohort based things where people can really interact with one another? Further down the line, future state, we have a lot of excitement and energy around actual in-person work as well. In this process of wanting to build something that incorporates a lot of live digital, maybe

• 44:53Speaker 03

  eventually IRL, ways for people to interact with each other. And critically, a lot of really great teachers as well, so not just you. We have started dipping our toes into the water of incorporating more teachers. So, starting in June during our Get Fit Sanely series, we added guided meditations for every full episode from the great Carlai, who also went live with you that week, which was awesome. July, August, we've continued to have guided meditations for every episode. And we kind of call it Teacher of the Month.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  So every month on the podcast, you sort of get the backstory of a meditation teacher. And if you're a paid subscriber at danharris.com, you get guided meditations every Monday and Wednesday from that same teacher. So you kind of get to practice with them. And what we're adding now to really further build up sort of the Sangha component is each month, the Teacher of the Month will also be hosting live meditations and Q and As for subscribers.

• 46:13Dan Harris?

  So there'll be some sense of continuity. We'll be exposing our customers to our world of close friends of mine and ours who are meditation teachers who are really, really vetted, really, really qualified, and really excited to be working with us. That's really cool.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. And in the future, I hope there's even more of this. But this is the next step, and it is a big step for us. You've talked in the past about

• 46:45Speaker 03

  having wanted to for so long, really combine the teachings in the podcast with the practice, really make it actionable. So that's what pairing the guided meditation does.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  But I think giving the consistency of one teacher per month gives people a better sense of some of the different flavors, different styles, helps them find maybe teachers that resonate with them more than others. But then the opportunity to practice live with that teacher and ask questions, I think will really help deepen a lot of people's practice. And I think it's a big step for us to get to this point and is just the beginning, I think.

• 47:37Dan Harris?

  Yes. Just I made a few notes of things that I wanted to emphasize from your excellent statement of like where things are and where we probably will go. One of the things I look forward to is changing the name and having it be something that speaks to the big tent where I can be MC or ringleader, but we're really emphasizing hooking people up with these great teachers. The final thing to say is that I think you said it really well, that right now, our current state is we've done a ton of work over the last year, and we think we have a lot of very

• 48:17Dan Harris?

  interesting signals. And so we, as of this month, September 2025, we will be doing guided meditations for all of the Monday, Wednesday episodes so that you can take the lessons in the show and pound them into your neurons, as I often say. And in the name of community, we're going to do once a week, live guided meditations.

• 48:40Dan Harris?

  But we, I think the, we're

• 48:43Dan Harris?

  I've been told experimenting is not a good word.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  At some point, you have to stop experimenting and commit to something.

• 48:47Dan Harris?

  Commit to something, right. But we're, we are trying stuff now based on real feedback and real intuitions on our, our side. And we're going to continue to test and grow with the audience. We, you know, we're going to be getting real time feedback from the audience, from the teachers and from our team and figuring this out as we go with a grand vision, I think. And I don't know exactly how this is going to look. And you made a really nice nod at this, which is that I and the rest of the team are really excited about the fact that there are these tools tested, as I said before, through millennia of contemplative history and now modern science that help you do your life better. And it includes meditation, but also communication skills and self compassion and time management

• 49:32Dan Harris?

  and sleep and exercise and the whole panoply, the whole pantheon of no brainers out there that we can teach people how to do through a bunch of modalities, like an app or some sort of technological solution that provides both teaching and community. And then over time, hopefully, I don't know what any of this looks like. I just, I can't draw you an exact picture of where we're going, but I have a really strong sense of what the impact will be, which is just taking these tested solutions and finding the best way to knit them into people's lives.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Use your megaphone, so to speak, to help draw people in, provide these amazing teachers and keep building on, I think, not just sort of the resources, the content library, but experiences for people.

• 50:27Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's really exciting. And as you said, we don't exactly have a clear roadmap yet, but we'll keep coming to you here on the podcast over at danharris.com to be renamed when legally and otherwise an option. And in the meantime, really just want to appreciate our whole team.

• 50:51Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  And everybody who listens and everybody who subscribes and their patience with us as we learn and develop. And, you know, we talk about launching something new.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  And maybe that being an app of our own.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  And that's going to mean some change, too.

• 51:21Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 51:22Speaker 03

  And so just to state, like, we do not want to put our team or this audience through change unnecessarily. Now that we can have a little bit more control of our own destiny, we'll be very good and clear communicators and not surprise anyone and treat this audience really, really, really well as we build. We're going to take you on this ride with us.

• 51:50Dan Harris?

  As one of your many strong suits is, I said before that sometimes direct communication interpersonally has an edge for you, but like, you're really good at communicating to the team and to the customers about where we're going. And that's, I've learned a lot from that. And then the other thing that I've learned by watching you is, and by screwing it up, frankly, is how important it is to express gratitude to the team, which you did a couple of minutes ago. I felt the gratitude and I saw, I think, much if not all of what was being done, but over time, really learning how important it is to say out loud that I appreciate X, Y, and Z. Yeah. So, thank you, Tony. Great job.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Thanks, Dan.

• 52:39Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Tony. I think you can hear in that conversation why she is the exact right person to be leading this team. She's amazing. Thank you, Tony. Don't forget to sign up over at danharris.com to become a paid subscriber to reap all of the exclusive benefits that will be raining down upon paid subscribers starting in September. And don't forget, we'll be doing a live guided meditation and Q and A with Vinnie on September 2nd at 4:00 Eastern and then henceforth, live meditation sessions every Tuesday. And also don't forget to join me for another installment, a live, in-person installment of meditation party workshop we do at the Omega Institute. The registration link is ready for you to click right there in the show notes. I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show.

• 53:24Dan Harris?

  Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 53:54Speaker 04

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• 54:14Speaker 05

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