The Voice in Your Head Doesn't Have to Ruin Everything | Rachel Martin and Dan Harris

Practical advice for handling anxiety, envy, and that feeling that you're a bad person. What happens when a deck of cards controls the conversation? On Wild Card https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510379/wild-card-with-rachel-martin, hosted by Rachel Martin, that's the whole idea — and when Dan sat down as a guest, the cards led somewhere genuinely interesting. In this episode: why Dan keeps going on silent meditation retreats even though loneliness is the hardest part; what finally made him delete Instagram; the "good-ish" concept that unlocked a new relationship with self-criticism; and a deep dive into the Buddhist take on the soul — which turns out to be a lot more useful than it sounds. Wild Card is produced by NPR. 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 Join Dan and Emmy Award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert at 92NY on May 17th for a live conversation about how mindfulness can deepen connection and combat loneliness, available in person and via streaming. Register here. https://www.92ny.org/event/dan-harris-with-allison-gilbertJoin Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here https://www.eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party, or sign up to livestream here https://www.eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-livestream! 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?

  It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hey, it's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today, we have a conversation about envy, Instagram, defensiveness, and why the Buddhists do not believe you have a soul. This is a conversation between me and my old friend, Rachel Martin, from NPR. She has her own show called Wildcard, which she refers to as a metaphysical game show. So what you're about to hear is me playing the game with her. And the goal is for you to enjoy our conversation, but also to go check out her show, which, again, is called Wildcard. Real quick, before we dive in, I want to remind you to check out my new-ish meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris. If you sign up, you'll get guided meditations and

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  courses from many of the greatest living meditation teachers. You'll also get ad-free versions of this podcast and weekly live video sessions where we do some meditation and take questions. Join the party. You can get the app at danharris.com. Also, if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got a few events coming up. On May 17th, I'll be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. And then, coming up on October 16th through 18th, I'll be doing my annual meditation party weekend retreat with my friends, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren. We do this at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. I will drop links to both of these events in the show notes. All right, we'll

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  get started with Rachel Martin and Wildcard right after this. If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a- Node of sanity and an insane world. There are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow.

• 2:27Dan Harris?

  And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening

• 3:12Dan Harris?

  or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Just a heads up, this episode does have some strong language. What do you enjoy complaining about?

• 3:48Dan Harris?

  My own mind. My favorite thing I ever wrote was the first line to my first book, which was, "The voice in my head is an asshole." And I think that is true. I think it's true for many people.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  I'm Rachel Martin and this is Wild Card, the game where cards control the conversation.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Dan Harris.

• 4:21Dan Harris?

  The next time you're in a spiral of anxiety, ask yourself this question: Is this useful? We often, and very quickly, cross the line between constructive anguish and useless rumination.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Dan Harris and I have been on parallel tracks for much of our career. We both cover faith and spirituality as reporters. We were colleagues for a while at ABC, and then several years later, we both ended up leaving our news jobs. I started this very show, and Dan created the incredibly successful podcast 10% Happier, based on his book of the same name. He's generous and wise, and the only Buddhist I know who can drop the F-word into a mantra, and somehow it works. I'm so happy to welcome Dan Harris to Wildcard. Hi.

• 5:04Dan Harris?

  I love that. That's my innovation in the world of the Dharma.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  That's your value add to the Dharma.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  We're just going to start with memories. First three cards. I hold three up, and you pick randomly: one, two, or three.

• 5:26Dan Harris?

  Two.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Two. Feeling two.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  At what point in your life did you spend the most time alone?

• 5:35Dan Harris?

  Well, there was a strange twist in my life

• 5:40Dan Harris?

  that you made a reference to, which is after decades of being a hard-charging news anchor, I got interested in meditation. As a result of that, I now, every year, do a 10-day silent meditation retreat. And in fact, this year, I'm going to do, on the urging of my teacher, I'm going to do 14 days. So that is a lot of alone time in silence. And it's challenging. I... A lot of people focus on the silent aspect of silent retreats. Not talking isn't a huge problem for me. It's loneliness.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:19Dan Harris?

  And there's a way in which it kind of brings up this primordial sadness, like a homesickness. And even though I am homesick for my actual home, it's kind of... I don't know, it's deeper than that. It's, it's, um, I think one of the psychological trends for me in looking back at my life is, is a fear of feeling unmoored, alone, adrift. And the, some of the earliest traumas, and this may be a small T trauma.

• 7:01Dan Harris?

  For me, I had, I've had a very charmed life. But going to summer camp as a kid was incredibly hard for me. And I used to have these really intense gnarly bouts of homesickness. I have a very clear memory of sitting in the back of my, my dad's shit brown Plymouth Valiant and weeping in his lap on visiting day. And I would just, I would be bereft every summer for a period of time, and then I would recover.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  So loneliness is a root of sadness for you? Yeah.

• 7:33Dan Harris?

  Yes, loneliness, yes. It's, but it's loneliness, but it's also this kind of yearning for some, some connection or stability. Like it was, homesickness feels like a better word for it, but like a, a much, much bigger than wanting my actual home, whatever, wherever that happens to be in the moment.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  But why, what, what do you get out of putting yourself intentionally in that position? I mean, 10 days is a long time. Now you're going to do 14 days, silent retreat, no people, hardly. What, I mean, I guess it's exposure therapy? I don't know.

• 8:12Dan Harris?

  Well, a couple, a couple of things to say about this. The perfect question. I'm laughing because it's perfect. One of the immense sources of power in mindfulness meditation is that you see that some poet said this, maybe Realco, I can't believe I'm the kind of guy who quotes poetry now, but anyway. That no feeling is final. Everything changes all the time. And so when you get really quiet and your mind is tuned up because you're doing this exercise of... Trying to focus on one thing at a time, usually the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again.

• 8:57Dan Harris?

  What it helps you see is how quickly the mind is working all the time. We're moving, we're like, as my meditation teacher says, throughout the day, we're kind of like a bee in a jar, moving up through excitement or interest and then down through loneliness or anger or fear or whatever. We're just cycling through these thoughts and emotions and urges so quickly all the time. And what happens on retreat is you start to, and this can happen in a daily practice too. You just start to see how wild and chaotic the mind is. And as a result, you're not so owned by it. And so I do go through a period of loneliness or homesickness, usually in the first couple of days of retreat.

• 9:40Dan Harris?

  But the power is seeing, oh yeah, I can be with this.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:45Dan Harris?

  And it's gonna change.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  And you can be with you, right? This is also like, I'm just gonna sit with myself and all that myself contains, not all of it's awesome.

• 9:55Dan Harris?

  Yes, and this is a little out there, so you may, you may want to cut it. But then you start to see like, what is this thing I'm calling a self? How solid is that? And that's a, that's a very interesting, sometimes a little scary, but ultimately liberating thing. Because then you don't take your emotions, your anxiety, your anger, whatever, so personally. And you're able to work with them in a more fluid and sophisticated way. And so it's a long way of answering your question, which is why do I put myself through this retreat? Well, why would you put yourself through a vigorous workout? That sucks too, but it has many, many benefits.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Okay, there's so much in there I want to get back to. So maybe one of these cards will afford us the opportunity. Okay, next set of three. One, two, or three?

• 10:44Dan Harris?

  Three.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Three. What's a moment with a stranger that made you feel loved?

• 10:53Dan Harris?

  Okay, you answer that first.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Oh, flipping that one. Um, so I, I have talked about this before. I, I sort of live for, for those moments, like stranger moments. I love stranger kindness from the tiniest little things. I like, I, I get weepy when someone waves to me when I've let them in on a lane of traffic or they have done the same for me. It like makes me so, because there are so many jerks who drive. And when someone just acknowledges, I'm like, oh, yes, thank you. Um, the more, uh, the more profound story is that I, um, my eldest kid,

• 11:37Speaker 01

  during the pandemic, we went on a trip up to New Hampshire and we were at these waterfalls that come cascade down all these rocks. And, um, he fell down this waterfall. He, uh, he slipped and he fell about 10 feet and landed on his back on a rock. It was incredibly harrowing. It was very scary. We had to wait a long time for people to hike up the mountain with a stretcher on tires. It was wild. And, um, and there was just a woman there who was a nurse and she was with her own kids and own family. And she, she was everything you want that person to be in that moment, you know? And it's COVID, we're outside, but everyone's still wearing masks. So I couldn't even see her face, just her eyes.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And she had the kindest eyes. And as a mother, she knew exactly what I was feeling. And, um, and she just, she gave me all her love and kindness. And I just felt it so profoundly. It was such a gift to me in that moment. And we exchanged holiday cards for a few years. And, um, I just, I, I love the opportunity to repeat that story because we all have the capacity to touch people in moments of crisis like that. But in the most banal moments, when you think a thing doesn't matter, like to reach out to a person from a place of compassion creates a story that that person might tell for decades, you know? So that's my story.

• 13:02Dan Harris?

  That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. Just to put some, a sheen of.

• 13:10Dan Harris?

  Psychological research on top of this, you know, there's been a quite a bit of research into what the scientist Barbara Fredrickson calls microinteractions. And so we tend to move, I'll speak for myself as somebody who kind of wired as a frosty New Englander, I for much of my life, in fact, you know, I kind of wince a little bit with embarrassment to recall that you met me and that we met each other in 2006 because I was very much in this mode at that time of just hurtling through the world in a sort of self-centered, ambitious way and often really frankly rude to people, not because

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I just thought you were super serious, very focused, a little tightly wound, and just like very serious person.

• 14:03Dan Harris?

  Well, that's all true and I, you know, I fear that it's a little generous, honestly. And, you know, I, what I was doing was denying myself of a massive opportunity for well-being. You know, we, life is a target-rich opportunity for these little moments of happiness that Dr. Fredrickson calls microinteractions. You know, we're just constantly moving through the world and meeting other people, baristas, the people you give your clothes to, the dry cleaner. Coming into NPR today, I met Summer, who's one of your producers, and these

• 14:47Dan Harris?

  don't have to be long exchanges, it's just like a little chit-chat. Summer grew up in Las Vegas and I was telling her about how I took my son to Vegas and he loved it and, you know, neither of us may ever ultimately remember this interaction, but it's a little hit of dopamine that is available to all of us as we move through the world. So let me answer your actual question about a stranger interaction that made me feel loved. Just to set this up a little bit, I, notwithstanding the fact that I'm allegedly some sort of happiness expert, you know, continue to be-

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Only 10% happier.

• 15:24Dan Harris?

  Yeah, exactly. I thank God I called the book 10% Happier. I have lots of challenges, you know, and one of them is that I have really intense claustrophobia.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I know this.

• 15:39Dan Harris?

  It's gotten worse over the years.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Really?

• 15:41Dan Harris?

  And so I struggle on elevators and airplanes. It's a, it's a, it's a real challenge for me. And there's a studio in New York City where I often record podcasts when I'm not recording from my home studio. And one day I showed up at the studio and I was in the middle of this, I was in a particularly bad place with my claustrophobia. And it was the first time I'd been there. And I saw, I looked at the elevators and they looked really small and scary to me. And I, I kind of was panicking and I had a suitcase and all this stuff with me.

• 16:23Dan Harris?

  And the security guard looked at me and I said, "Hey, can I just, can I walk up?" And he was like, "It's 16 flights, dude, you've got all this stuff." And he said, he got up from his desk, put his blazer on and said, "I'm gonna ride with you." He somehow knew what was going on with me. His name is Barry, B-A-R-I. And I see him all the time because I go to the studio. And he rode, he said, "I'll hold your hand if you want." And I didn't need him to hold my hand, but he just talked to me about where he's from and where his family lives. And we made it to the 16th floor. And even though I'm slightly more stable in my claustrophobia, having done a lot of

• 17:05Dan Harris?

  what's called exposure therapy, every time I go to the studio, Barry rides the elevator with me.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Oh, come on, this is a beautiful story.

• 17:14Dan Harris?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  That's a beautiful story. I love that he just saw that and didn't make a big deal out of it. He was just like, "This is what we're doing. I'm just gonna ride up with you."

• 17:23Dan Harris?

  I got you, buddy. I got you.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Last one in this round. One, two, or three? One, you knew, one. You're feeling one.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  When did you first find a group of peers who really understood you?

• 17:36Dan Harris?

  Oh, I remember the exact moment.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Really?

• 17:40Dan Harris?

  Yes. So I had a really good group of friends in high school and also some good friends in college. But I was always jealous of my little brother, who loved his college so much. And really had this crew that it just, he felt, they were so smart and he felt so embedded in it. And I never had that. All through my twenties, I was kind of moving around in television news from small market to small market. And I had friends, but I just didn't, I didn't, I never felt like I had my crew.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:15Dan Harris?

  And then when I turned 30, or actually in my late twenties, I moved to New York City and started working at ABC News. And for the first couple of years, I was traveling so much. It was post nine 11. I was in war zones and I was just, you know, away for long periods of time. And I came home in 2003, after I think six months in Iraq. And I didn't have, I really just, the few friends I had in New York City had moved away. And really didn't have, I felt very lonely here, we're coming back to this. And a guy from work, a guy I didn't even really like that much, invited me to a party.

• 18:56Dan Harris?

  And at that party, I met a bunch of people I really liked. And one of them, who's still one of my best friends to this day, her name is Kayama. Kayama came over to me and said, "We're having a party tonight, tomorrow night."

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Double party?

• 19:13Dan Harris?

  "You should come. Don't bring that guy." She said, "I like you. I don't like your friends, but you should come to this party tomorrow night." And at that party, I met another guy named Willie. And Kayama and Willie, and now our massive, like cinematic universe of friends.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:31Dan Harris?

  Are, that's, those are my people.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 19:34Dan Harris?

  And it was, my life is like a before and after that weekend.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  So I have to ask you, what was it about those people in particular that made you feel understood in a way that you hadn't before? Why did those become your friends?

• 19:48Dan Harris?

  I really like smart weirdos.

• 19:52Dan Harris?

  I guess I come off as, you know, I was a former anchorman. I kind of still talk like an anchorman.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  You don't present as weird, Dan. You don't present as weird.

• 19:59Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I am weird. I mean, you know, I'm the guy who like needs help getting on an elevator and, you know, goes on silent meditation retreats. I'm definitely a weirdo. And part of why I'm so happy not to be in the news industry is, you know, I have a much more creative output these days. And there are, in our extended friend group, there are writers and artists and people who do all sorts of things. And that just makes life... And I'm married to a doctor, and so it's very diverse in every possible way. And that just makes life more interesting.

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• 21:49Speaker 01

  Before we start round two, I'm gonna step back from the game and talk about your podcast and where you're at in your professional life, which I think is a good place, from the outside, it seems to be. And tell me if my math is right, is this 10 years of doing your podcast? It is, right? 10% happier? Congratulations.

• 22:07Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I mean, you're a former news person, you know that we ascribe this meaning to these times, these anniversaries. But 10 years is a thing, for better, for worse. It's a place where culturally, we set a marker and we kind of look back. And so, as you look back on the last 10 years, how's this show changed? What are you, what are you still trying to figure out in terms of how you, how you learn and teach simultaneously? Which is what 10% happier feels like to me.

• 22:38Dan Harris?

  I would say the biggest change is that when it started, it was very meditation-focused. And while I'm still a huge believer and proponent in the practice, the show over time has really evolved into every aspect of doing life better. You know, we really think about it as drawing from modern psychology and ancient wisdom to, you know, all evidence-based stuff to help you upgrade your life. And, and I'm just following my own interests here. You know, so I'm interested in how to sleep better, how to exercise without, you know, being driven by self-hatred, how to, you know, improve your, your work life, how to improve your

• 23:22Dan Harris?

  home life. I want to talk about all of these things because, as discussed, I'm a bit of a mess myself. And so I'm just kind of using this, the way many of the psychology researchers I interview talk about their own work is, research is me-search. And that's what's happening on the podcast.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's-

• 23:40Dan Harris?

  I think that's what's happening in your work.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yes, 100%. No, I started this because I have my own questions. And it's helpful to hear from other people if they're still in, if they're in the muck of those same questions and how they've managed their way out, or conclusions, or if they're just still swimming in the existential goo of it all. I mean, you talk about how the podcast has evolved to be, you know, let's just look at all of our life and different facets of it and how we can improve. But I do feel like this optimization culture can sometimes feel oppressive. Like, everything can always be better, and so how do we make it better? My sleep, and I got the rings, and I got the apps that tell me the stuff. And sometimes, do you just want to throw it all up and be like, on today's episode,

• 24:22Speaker 01

  how to just be cool with having things not be better than they are?

• 24:28Dan Harris?

  It's a huge theme on our show, and it's a huge topic of discussion on my team. I have a really mixed relationship with this idea of optimization. I am naturally somebody who wants to, you know, track my sleep and count my steps and all that stuff. But I think it's, I think it's a really tricky

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:59Dan Harris?

  thing to do without driving yourself crazy. There's a great expression, the subtle aggression of self-improvement. I think, however, if you can switch the motivation to, and I'm going to use a loaded word, but if you switch the motivation to love, it just becomes simpler. So one of the things that I've gotten into the habit of saying throughout the day before I meditate, or before I exercise, or before I go to bed, is, and this is a little kind of off-brand in its earnestness, but I'm doing this, fill in the blank, exercise, whatever, so that I can be stronger and happier, so that I can make other people stronger and happier. That tweak to my motivation

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:44Dan Harris?

  in my

• 25:45Speaker 01

  It's not just about you, yeah.

• 25:46Dan Harris?

  Yes, it is about me. Let's, it's cool, like, I think it's totally fine to, self-love is really important. In fact, I think it's the unlock for a whole spiral of benefits. Because how we are with ourselves

• 26:00Dan Harris?

  Inextricably redounds to how we are with other people. And so if you can take care of yourself, that's not self indulgence and it's not weakness.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Dan Harris?

  So yeah, that's, that's kind of how I think about it and I, I, on the show, the, the spirit very much is, look, this is a menu, not a to do list. We're going to explore all these things, but you should take what you want. Like, uh, whatever works for you is, is cool. Like, uh, there's, I, there are some of my brothers and sisters in the wellness space who are super prescriptive and that's just not my style.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  So if there's a person listening or watching who has not had the opportunity to check your show out, I know this can be an annoying question, but tell me an episode that you would point someone to. Where do you send them?

• 26:47Dan Harris?

  Probably the, probably the most influential person for me in, in this whole space of whatever you want to call it, wellness, human flourishing, whatever, is a guy who's not famous. His name is Joseph Goldstein.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Oh, this is your teacher?

• 27:01Dan Harris?

  And he's a, yeah, he's my meditation teacher, has been for a, a long time and he's a very close friend. And he's 82 years old, does not, you know, wear robes or anything like that. He's a Jewish guy from the Catskills who wears khakis and button downs. He doesn't have, he doesn't present as a, as a guru. But he is a walking example of what can happen with sustained practice. He is funny and smart and other oriented and helpful and teaches using these very pithy phrases.

• 27:43Dan Harris?

  Just little like one liners that are kind of like Buddhist earworms. They just, you know, wriggle their way into your mind stream and then surface when you need them the most. So I'll give you an example. The next time you're in a spiral of anxiety. Maybe if you can catch yourself in one of these overthinking periods, ask yourself this question, and again, this comes from Joseph. Is this useful? Like, some amount of worrying makes sense, but we often and very quickly cross the line between constructive anguish and useless rumination. And that little question of, ah, is this useful? Or should I, you know, think about something else?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:27Dan Harris?

  Maybe even help somebody else. That's an incredibly helpful little earworm. And so at the beginning of this year, 2026, I dropped two episodes with Joseph where we went through a bunch of these phrases. And you just get to hear this truly brilliant human being, who, I don't love this word, inspiring, but it is inspiring in the true sense of that word, because it gives you a sense of, oh, yeah. Like, this is what's on offer.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:01Dan Harris?

  If I follow this path.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Thank you for that. I'm gonna go check it out. Everyone else should too.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  We're back in the game. Round two, insights. One, two, or three?

• 29:17Dan Harris?

  One.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  What do you enjoy complaining about?

• 29:24Dan Harris?

  My own mind. The first, the first line, this, maybe my favorite thi- I don't love my own writing, honestly. I have a, I think it's, my writing is fine, but I, you know, and I write, I do write books. But my favorite thing I ever wrote was the first line to my first book, which was, "The voice in my head is an asshole." And I think that is true. I think it's true for many people. Like, we have this, like, nattering, uh, inner voice that, you know, is chasing us out of bed in the morning, and we're just constantly wanting stuff, not wanting stuff, judging people, comparing ourselves to other people.

• 30:05Dan Harris?

  And when you're unaware of this, this inner conversation, it owns you. And this is like the- This is my MO. I think it's very useful to talk openly, especially I've been blessed with this public platform. It's very useful, I think, to talk openly about all of my craziness. One of the most common words that Joseph Goldstein uses is ridiculous. And he uses it to describe the mind. It's ridiculous. We're just, we're, we're always in the past or the future instead of right now. We're always comparing ourselves to other people. We're always judging other people, putting ourselves down. It's ridiculous.

• 30:48Dan Harris?

  One of the little things he gets people to do is if you're in one of these periods of time where you're just totally down on yourself, count the judgmental thoughts. Count the self judgmental thoughts. They're just, but by the time you hit 87, you just start laughing at it.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:03Dan Harris?

  You know, it's just, it saps it of its power.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Well, that's why I like the word ridiculous. Yeah.

• 31:06Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Because there's an element of just, it's silly. It's just, it's not worth it, right? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't give it so much power and agency. It's just ridiculous. Just let it go. And that, um, that feels, that feels powerful in and of itself, just the word. Okay.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Your own brain, that's what you like to complain about. Next three. One, two, or three?

• 31:30Dan Harris?

  Two.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Two.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  When has envy been a problem for you?

• 31:36Dan Harris?

  Oh, man, all the time. I just deleted Instagram because it was just like, I have an amazing life. I have such an incredible life. But somehow, every time I looked at Instagram, I felt like I had a terrible life.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Funny that.

• 31:50Dan Harris?

  And it's such a reliable source of unhappiness for me.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  It really is.

• 31:54Dan Harris?

  And, uh, you know, everybody's at a party I'm not invited to, or everybody's career is taking off in ways that mine is not. And so, deuces. Uh, I'm out.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  But like, isn't that part of your job? It's like embedded in your job, like the metrics, how many followers you have, how many subscribers you have, how many Instagram posts? Like, you do them. I see you walking down the street and you do them and they're really good and powerful, but that, it's all on that same platform that is the source of so much angst and envy and sadness.

• 32:25Dan Harris?

  Yes, and I have a lot of problems with social media. So why then am I creating content for it? It's where the eyeballs are. And if I can be a little node of sanity.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:34Dan Harris?

  As, by the way. As are you, because I see your stuff on social media. And in particular, you and I texted about this offline, the Melinda French Gates clip that I thought you handled so beautifully.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 32:48Dan Harris?

  So I think we can, I think it's possible to put little nuggets of goodness out there on, on social media, but it is largely a morass.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. One, two, or three?

• 33:02Dan Harris?

  Three.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  What's something you've thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?

• 33:10Dan Harris?

  Can I flip it again?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I mean, yes, fine. Yes, you can. Yeah, you can. Yeah. You can. This is a hard one. Okay, so my answer to this question.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Oh, it's kind of sad.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  It's not that sad. I thought that I was like a chill, relaxed person that was friendly all the time and like, just like a chill person. This was how I thought of myself in my mind. And after many years of working on this morning news show,

• 33:52Speaker 01

  I got enough data back, I got enough feedback from other people I worked with

• 33:59Speaker 01

  to prove otherwise. And it was a shock for me when I heard, not directly, but I'm a smart person. I can figure out what you're communicating between the lines. And the feedback I was getting was, oh, you are not chill. You are not a chill person. Like, you're actually a super intense person. And your vibes can be intense and it can kind of elevate everybody else. It's not chill. That was a hard thing. So I think at its core, the question tends to be about what's a thing, a negative thing you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn. But the thing that comes to my mind is like, I thought I was pretty great. And it turns out I was kind of a jerk.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  That was a revelation to me.

• 34:46Dan Harris?

  Have you ever heard the expression self-knowledge is always bad news?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  No, but that's so true.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:55Dan Harris?

  I had a story in my head that I didn't fully crystallize until a couple of years ago. And the story was that I'm a bad person.

• 35:09Dan Harris?

  I think it has its roots in

• 35:12Dan Harris?

  childhood and some of the kind of family dynamics and

• 35:18Dan Harris?

  yeah, I just got it in my head that like I was just

• 35:24Dan Harris?

  irretrievably selfish and mean. I had a bullying incident when I was a kid where I was the bad guy.

• 35:33Dan Harris?

  And I think that was a key moment where I just kind of internalized like, oh, yeah. I'm the bad guy. And

• 35:41Dan Harris?

  I thought that was just a big part of my operating system and it was why

• 35:47Dan Harris?

  I would get very defensive anytime I got tough feedback. I would, I would just overreact because it was triggering this thing that I didn't want to look at.

• 36:01Dan Harris?

  Taking it in after periods of defensiveness. A friend of mine, a really smart friend of mine, her name is Dolly Chug and she's a professor at NYU School of Business. And she has this expression, goodish. And that, that actually has been a key unlock for me. So many of us have a story that we're a good person or a bad person. But when we get feedback, we get defensive because it, it either reminds us that we think we're a bad person or it challenged, challenges our core belief that we're a good person. And so that's the wellspring of defensiveness. If however, you change your self-concept to goodish.

• 36:44Dan Harris?

  Which, by the way, it just makes complete sense. We're all a mix of good and bad. But if you change your self-concept to good-ish, well, then when you find out you screwed up and you're not as chill in the hallways of NPR as you thought you were, well, then, OK, well, that's fine. It's not fundamentally threatening because I'm good-ish. And so there's always room to grow. It's what the psychologists call a growth mindset. And so talking to Dolly about that was one of the things that really turned things around for me.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  I love the idea of good-ish.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  It's interesting to try to teach your kids that. That's where I'm at right now. It's like talking about the good-ish of human nature and that we're all good and bad.

• 37:29Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  And it's a complicated concept, actually, to wrap your head around because so much of parenting and so much of children's literature and storytelling is about the good and the bad, and they are separate and distinct characters. And it's like next level to think about, oh, it lives in all of us. And what do we choose to lean into and what is activated and what are our triggers for each of those components? But we all have that duality.

• 37:58Dan Harris?

  Well said. And I think it's a big problem in our news environment, too, especially in this algorithmically-driven news environment where you are being fed outrage porn all the time from your side, and it's giving you a cartoonish version of the other side. So we're good, they're bad. There's no nuance. And that's a good way to destroy a civilization.

• 38:52Speaker 03

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• 40:05Speaker 01

  Last round, beliefs. Three new cards, one, two, or three?

• 40:10Dan Harris?

  One.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  One. What's your best definition of the soul?

• 40:16Dan Harris?

  Well, in Buddhism, you know, the founding principle of Buddhism is that there is no soul. Buddha came out of a Vedic or Hindu context. But then, and in Hinduism, they talk about the soul. The Buddha's concept was actually, there is no soul. Actually, if you tune up the microscope of the mind, you see that everything's changing so rapidly that there can't be some solid, unchanging nugget of anything. And by the way, this goes back to my story about being a bad person. I can't be, how could I be permanently bad when nothing is permanent?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Dan Harris?

  There is no bedrock. And this is, and this is just intuitively true when you say it out loud. But hard then when you apply it to something like a soul. And so the key to understanding this, again, from a Buddhist context, which nobody has to believe if they don't want, is that two things are true at the same time. On the one hand, Rachel Martin is real. I'm looking at her, and if she looks at the mirror, she will see herself. And she's got a social media feed, and she's got a podcast, and a resume, and all that stuff. And yeah, Rachel's real. However, if you close your eyes and look for some core nugget of Rachel, you won't find it. You'll find physical sensations, thoughts, emotions, in a fluxing gumbo.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  So that is what our self is? Just fluxing gumbo?

• 41:48Dan Harris?

  There is no... It's like, this chair I'm sitting in right now, bring a high-powered microscope to it, I would find mostly empty space populated by spinning subatomic particles. That's true. At the same time as this chair, I trust it and I sit in it. And so Rachel's real, and she's not real at the same time. Rachel doesn't have a soul, though, from this, you know, sort of high-powered microscope perspective. Does that make sense?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it means we're all just living in this weird social contract, where we've just decided to agree that we all exist. And just by deciding, we make it thus.

• 42:27Dan Harris?

  Yes, and I think, actually, this is where this construct, that I'm proposing to you via the Buddha, starts to become practical. Because, yes, we do live in a consensual reality, or what the Buddhists call relative truth, as opposed to the ultimate truth, which is back to the spinning subatomic particles. And these two levels of reality speak to each other. So the next time you're stuck in some story about how Rachel's this way, she's not this way, life is going this way or that way, you can switch into the ultimate...

• 43:04Dan Harris?

  Perspective for a second, okay? No, no, no, on some level, this is all an illusion. This is all like in a movie, a play of light and sound on a, on a, projected on a screen. There isn't, there isn't solidity. It's just 24 frames per second.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:19Dan Harris?

  And then it, and then for people who tend to drift off into that kind of nihilistic space of, oh, and none of it matters.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:27Dan Harris?

  No, no, no, it does matter. Both things are true at the same time. Like, we are, we are human beings and our ethical conduct has consequences, or our lack of ethical conduct has consequences too. And so you, you wanna hold, it's a paradox. Much of life is understanding and utilizing paradox. And this is the big one, in my opinion, that these two things are true at the same time. And can you toggle back and forth between them with some skill?

• 43:56Speaker 01

  How does that affect your idea of, um, um, your feelings about, about being forgotten? About, about there being no remainder of you? I mean, I know you have a child. There's like a physical remainder of you. But how many generations before, nobody remembers who great-grandpa Dan was? Does that freak you out? Or is that just part of the deal?

• 44:22Dan Harris?

  It doesn't freak me out that much. You know, I, I, about a year and a half ago, I was interviewing somebody on my show. He was an amazing Buddhist teacher named Vinnie Ferraro, who has an incredible story, which I'll tell very quickly, which is that he grew up in a very low-income environment in Rhode Island and was an addict and a criminal and served several stints in jail and prison. And at one, during one of his terms, he was in there with his own father. Uh, and got out, got sober, found the Dharma, and has become this incredible teacher. He's the only teacher I've ever interviewed who, throughout the whole interview, will call me bro. Um, and he's very funny and very wise. And he got me interested in an aspect of Buddhism that a lot of people might be tempted

• 45:07Dan Harris?

  to reject, and that's totally fine, it's hardcore. But the Buddha himself recommended that twice a day, you recall five things. This body that I'm occupying is of the nature to grow old. It's of the nature to get sick. It will die. Here's the the grimmest one. Everything and everyone I cherish will someday be lost to me. And the fifth one, where he kind of pulls the knife out a little bit, as Vinnie says, "The only true possessions I have in this context are my actions." And so that's where the kind of hope resides, which is, okay, so yeah, we, if you want

• 45:47Dan Harris?

  to look at it, the truth of this reality that we inhabit is that it is relentlessly impermanent and chaotic and entropic, and very little is in your control. You are in control of your actions to a large degree, and the the karmic consequences of those actions will outlive you. And so if you take that seriously, it will impact how you behave.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And that, to me, feels like a soul. Like, I guess when I use that word, it's just some kind of what what difference do we make? Who are we? And if we are the we are the sum total of how we behave here, the choices we make and the actions we take, and the consequences of those actions. That makes sense to me.

• 46:39Dan Harris?

  Makes sense to me, too. I'm totally cool with calling that a soul. I don't, you know, I have no desire to, like, police people's language. So soul is, it's certainly inoffensive to me, but from a from a Buddhist perspective, you know, it's not a thing.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  It's not a thing. Three more. One, two, or three?

• 46:59Dan Harris?

  Two.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Is there a religious practice or ritual that you're envious of?

• 47:05Dan Harris?

  I have this odd interest in something that simultaneously repulses me, which is devotional practice. There are aspects of Buddhism where you really, and and other traditions as well, where you sort of you bow to.

• 47:28Dan Harris?

  A statue of the Buddha, or it could be Quan Ying, who's

• 47:34Dan Harris?

  this is where my Buddhist knowledge is gonna run out of road, but I think she is like the avatar of compassion in certain schools of Buddhism. And so I don't know a ton about this devotional practice. I just know that I have some friends who've done it. And I see that my initial response to it is revulsion.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Like prostrating yourself in front of some kind of-

• 47:58Dan Harris?

  Yes, prostrations, literally prostrations.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 48:00Dan Harris?

  And when I have that kind of response, I always try to investigate it, like, all right, what's going on there?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:07Dan Harris?

  Because my life has just been a succession of things that I dismissed and was totally wrong about and later came to embrace. And so I'm just curious, like, huh, what's going on with that?

• 48:20Speaker 01

  It is interesting, that that practice. And at the same time, I, like you, see a person who can do that, and it feels also like a beautiful surrender. It feels like a, like beauty and liberation in that kind of surrender.

• 48:34Dan Harris?

  In my first book, I wrote about how I was on my first retreat and everybody was bowing to the Buddha, and I thought it was like, I really hated it. And then I wrote about how I started doing it, but only for a hamstring stretch.

• 48:49Dan Harris?

  I, I think the way I've come to understand devotional practice, to the extent that I understand it at all, which is very limited, is that ultimately what you're bowing to is an aspect of the mind, of the human mind. So like compassion, that we, that is papered over and sometimes cemented over by the world, by the world we live in, where we're just armoring up and hardened. But we have this, it is quintessentially human capacity for compassion, for love. To, just to put it in plain English, to give a shit about ourselves and others, right? This is, you know, love is this panoramic

• 49:34Dan Harris?

  inner capacity that we have.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:38Dan Harris?

  Bowing to the avatar of compassion is a way to, it's like a snake charming that you're doing on yourself to bring that, that aspect, that hidden aspect of the mind into greater salience.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Last one. One, two, or three?

• 49:58Dan Harris?

  Three.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  What's an experience you wish you could give every person?

• 50:04Dan Harris?

  I think most of us, consciously or subconsciously, kind of think we're stuck with how we are. We have X amount of patience, X amount of generosity.

• 50:17Dan Harris?

  But what we know from the science is that the brain, and by extension, the mind,

• 50:26Dan Harris?

  it's trainable. You know, doing what? The brain is the organ of experience. So how you arrange your life, the practices you do or don't do, that you're just constantly training your brain. You learn how to play violin, your brain's gonna change. You see it on the brain scans. You learn how to meditate, your brain will change. You get better at social fitness, your brain changes. We are not stuck with the aspects of our personality that we may be struggling with. Like, this change is possible. It's messy and marginal. And even people like me, who have been meditating, you know, for a while and write books about it, you know, I continue to be a schmuck in lots of ways.

• 51:11Dan Harris?

  But, you know, the trajectory is the right one for me. And it can be for anybody.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:16Dan Harris?

  And so you can be this little node of sanity in a chaotic world. And so that's the experience I want people to have. Like, you can improve your life, and it matters. Like, it is a political act. It's not self-indulgent. It doesn't make you a doormat. It, it...

• 51:34Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it really matters. And so that kind of hope, not gaslighting you and telling you everything's fine, because everything's not fine. But you do have more power than you think to improve your own mind and, by extension, the world.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Thank you for that.

• 51:50Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I'm on a fucking soapbox, sorry.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I love a soapbox! I love it.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Dan Harris, we end the show the same way every time, with a trip in our memory time machine. In the time machine, you revisit one moment from your past. It is not a moment you would change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little bit longer. What moment do you choose?

• 52:19Dan Harris?

  Oh, my God, there's so many to choose from.

• 52:24Dan Harris?

  The moment that's coming to mind is I had this completely random experience the summer after my junior year in high school, where I had been a total screw-up my whole high school career, had a thriving weed business. Just like, really, just not a good student. And I kind of was starting to get it together. And I ended up getting into the summer school at Harvard, which isn't like getting into Harvard. Not at all, because I was not, I didn't get into Harvard. I was never going to get into Harvard. But you could apply to the summer school and be a mediocre student and get in. And so I, but I was surrounded by all these smart kids, and I had a great summer. And I was sitting on a warm Cambridge night

• 53:06Dan Harris?

  on the front stoop of the dorm where I was living. And I just kind of entered into this calm elation. And it comes back for me once in a while on a meditation retreat of just like, I would say the underlying feeling is everything's OK. And for an anxious person, that is delicious.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  What a lovely thing.

• 53:34Dan Harris?

  Where would you go?

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Oh, in my memory time machine? I mean, I'm grateful that I'm the host of the show and that I don't have to answer the memory time machine question. Because it's hard to narrow it down.

• 53:50Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's hard to narrow. You want to say the birth of your children and all of that stuff.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Of course, but it's also like, you know, what comes up? It's like... Right now, okay, so part of what the memory time machine is, is you just let whatever come up, come up. And like, so right now, the thing that is coming up, I don't, I have no idea why, is driving with my mom. My mom's been, passed away a long time ago. But driving with my mom, like in high school, in Idaho Falls, my hometown in Idaho, through one of those coffee shacks. Like Idaho Falls didn't have proper coffee shops when I was growing up. So it would be like, in a strip mall, there'd be a coffee shack. And it was like a new thing. And she would have her little punch card. And we would just, she would look at me like with such glee,

• 54:38Speaker 01

  like, let's stop for a coffee. And we would pull up. Oh, I'm getting weepy. And I don't know what's significant about that. That's just what came up. And I would love to sit in the car with my mom and get a drive through coffee from the coffee shack in front of the Safeway in Idaho Falls. I did not expect to do that, Dan Harris.

• 55:04Dan Harris?

  Well, it's totally beautiful. And

• 55:09Dan Harris?

  yeah, you said something like, well, I don't know why this is coming up. Well, like, it's a moment of

• 55:19Dan Harris?

  love.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Dan Harris is the host of the wildly successful podcast, 10% Happier, the author of many books. And I'm so glad to talk to you. Thank you.

• 55:35Dan Harris?

  Huge pleasure, always. Thank you.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this conversation, I would suggest going back and checking out my episode with the actor Jesse Eisenberg. He's got this kind of anxious wisdom that feels very honest and hard earned. You can watch that episode and many more on our YouTube page. It is at NPR Wildcard. This episode was produced by Mitra Arthur and Lee Hale. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Josephine Neonai. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangwenny, and our theme music is by Ramtin Aroubou. You can reach out to us at [email protected]. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.

• 56:28Speaker 03

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