Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris "What's the Point?" – A Simple Answer to Life's Biggest Question | Lili Taylor About this episode Escaping the productivity trap, silencing the inner nihilist, and finding awe in the most ordinary places.
Lili Taylor is an award-winning movie, television, and theater actor. In the birding world, Lili is a board member of the National Audubon Society, the American Birding Association, and the New York City Bird Alliance.
In this episode we talk about:
Why humans are hardwired to connect with nature What it means to "pay attention" The role of listening and investigation Antidotes to hopelessness How to overcome obstacles in your meditation practice Practical nature tips for city dwellers The liberating concept of "autotelic" activities Related Episodes:
This Scientist Says One Emotion Might Be the Key to Happiness. Can You Guess What It Is? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-scientist-says-one-emotion-might-be-the-key-to/id1087147821?i=1000590657863 The Science Of How Nature Changes Your Brain—From Sleep To Cognition To Your Nervous System https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-science-of-how-nature-changes-your-brain-from/id1087147821?i=1000676848223 The Science Of Walking https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-science-of-walking-the-benefits-of/id1087147821?i=1000677128486 Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership
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Additional Resources:
Turning to Birds https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743576/turning-to-birds-by-lili-taylor/ Turning to Birds on Substack https://substack.com/@turningtobirds?r=2oqk0d&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching https://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Guide-Pigeon-Watching-Misunderstood/dp/1523511346 The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32558705/ 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-gilbert
Join 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!
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:18 Dan Harris? Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing today? One of the biggest ongoing issues in my life is that sometimes I feel like I'm just trudging through my to-do list. There's this great quote from a former mayor of New York City, I forgot which mayor, but many decades ago, this mayor coined a nice phrase, "The squalid succession of days." And if you're just in a constant state of toppling forward, looking at everything through the lens of productivity, life really can feel like a squalid succession of days. So today, we're going to talk about doing stuff just for the pleasure of doing it. No ulterior motive, nothing to gain. The only purpose is the experience itself. Although actually, and this is interesting, these types of activities, which again, you
1:02 Dan Harris? just do for the fun and pleasure of the activity itself, can also put you in touch with awe, which is an incredibly powerful human emotion that is genuinely transformative. My guest today is Lili Taylor, who you've probably seen in innumerable movies and plays and TV shows. She was in Mystic Pizza and Say Anything back in the 80s. Then she was in I Shot Andy Warhol and Ransom. She was also in High Fidelity, Public Enemies, the TV show American Crime, also The X-Files, Six Feet Under. I could go on. The reason why I wanted to have Lily on the show, however, is not because of her illustrious career, although we'll talk a little bit about that. But really, it's because she wrote a book
1:44 Dan Harris? about birds. It's called Turning to Birds, and it's just come out in paperback. I hasten to say right here that you should not worry if, like me, you're not super interested in birds. The point of this interview isn't the birds per se, although birds are awesome and definitely worth paying a lot of attention to. The point is that paying attention to birds, or anything really, can pull you out of yourself and can put duct tape over the mouth of your inner nihilist who's always asking like, what is the point of it all? So I'm very excited to talk to Lilly. Before we dive in, I just want to say that it is very hard not to feel like you're trudging through life if you haven't had any sleep, which is why over on the 10% app, we're now going big on sleep.
2:27 Dan Harris? In my experience, sleep is one of the most popular use cases for meditation apps. So next week, we are adding 10 new sleep meditations on the app. And we're going to do a live video session with our teacher of the month, Cara Lai, who's going to talk about how to deploy meditation for your sleep. If you want to sign up, which I think you should, the place to do so is danharris.com. Join the party. Oh, and I should say very quickly here that if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got an IRL event coming up at the 92nd Street Y on May 17th. There's a link in the show notes if you want to buy tickets. All right, we'll get started with Lilly Taylor right after this.
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4:02 Dan Harris? Lilly Taylor, welcome to the show.
4:04 Speaker 03 Hey, glad to be here.
4:06 Dan Harris? Glad to have you here. I know you've told this story before, but can you briefly recount how you first got interested in slash obsessed with birds?
4:16 Speaker 03 I always knew they were there, but I hadn't noticed them. And that happened when I kind of took a break from work about 15 years ago and I went upstate. It was very quiet. I started to become aware of things that were going on out there. It's a lot like what happened to people during COVID. I just had it 15 years earlier when things got kind of quiet. And that's when I realized that these things with wings actually had real life things happening and they were real. And that's when I start to notice birds.
4:50 Dan Harris? And I mean, I notice birds to a certain extent. I live in the, my wife doesn't like when I call it the suburbs. She says we're in the country, but it's the suburbs. There are a lot of birds. I notice them ambiently, but I haven't been sucked in the way you have. So I'm just curious, like, what drew you in so powerfully once you started to notice them?
5:08 Speaker 03 Hmm, that's a good point. Yeah, it's like, what is that difference with noticing? What are the levels of noticing? Why did I go a little bit further in? I think, well, probably because I have had trouble meditating. And I have found that by listening, birds help me listen. Birds help me focus on something outside of myself. And it's worked for me. I've been able to find moments of peace and connect with something bigger through observing the bird. And that's, I think, why I went a little further, out of desperation, probably.
5:51 Dan Harris? You were having trouble finding a contemplative or spiritual practice and the birds turned out to be it.
5:57 Speaker 03 They were like a gateway into that. Yeah, a gateway. And I think they're a great gateway in general because I think that maybe not in your case, but a lot of times they can be a gateway in that if you start to notice them, they can bring you into something that you might like, like clouds, like insects, trees, because they're involved with everything. So they'll bring you into most things in the natural world. So if they're not your jam, just try it out and they may bring you somewhere else. And if you don't get anything, you don't have to look.
6:32 Dan Harris? No, I want to be clear. I probably wasn't clear. I'm not saying birds aren't my jam. I think this conversation may end up turning them into my jam. It's more that I've noticed them, but never really gone deep.
6:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:43 Dan Harris? You've raised a lot of like, big questions about getting out of yourself and I want to get into that quickly and soon. But I want to stay with the specifics of birds for a little while at least. There's this term, a spark bird, the bird that like, does it for you and gets you sucked into birding. Did you have one of those?
7:03 Speaker 03 No, I didn't. I opened the book saying, you know, there's a term in the birding world called a spark bird and I don't have one. And I wish I did, because obviously right now would be a perfect example of how that's just an easy little thing to go to. And I don't have one. And that's kind of a lot of my story is like, I'll stay with birds. Sorry, I keep going off into deeper things, but.
7:25 Dan Harris? No, that's fine.
7:26 Speaker 03 I'm sorry.
7:27 Dan Harris? No, no apologies.
7:28 Speaker 03 I have to stay simple.
7:30 Dan Harris? Don't stay simple. Do whatever, do you.
7:31 Speaker 03 Okay. My path, I don't use that word much, but has not a lot of white light experiences. It's more like of the, I guess, the kind of garden variety, as they say, or the, um, non-exciting or gradual. Very gradual. And so the bird thing happened for me. I mean, I think there was a moment where I heard a bird in a specific way. It was a blue jay. It was really loud and so it caught my attention. I finally was like, what is going on? Oh, I see. There's this, okay, what's happening? And that's when it's sort of something happened where I was like, wait, you're, you're not just like generally squawking. There's actually something behind that noise. There's like meaning there.
8:16 Speaker 03 Wow, you're a bird. And so I had a little. I guess.
8:24 Speaker 03 So that was kind of a moment, not a spark moment, but it was a maybe consciousness moment.
8:30 Dan Harris? So when you started to look at birds, what did you see or hear that got you interested? Was it deciphering the various calls? Was it distinguishing among the various types of birds? Like, what sent you down the rabbit hole?
8:44 Speaker 03 I started to decipher the sounds and they became specific. And from there, I started to stay longer than I wanted to stay, past that uncomfortable moment. I found that when I stayed, I saw the story. There was always a story if I stayed. For instance, I discovered the house sparrow, that little brown bird that we see all over the place, like pigeons and house sparrows. I found that when it was atop this fence post and chirping, that chirp was actually its call for an attack.
9:26 Speaker 03 And that's when I realized that sweet chirping, oh, those birds are so sweet. Oh, my gosh, they're tweedling and no, actually, that chirp was actually, I think it's called the chirp of death, actually.
9:40 Speaker 03 That's an example, for instance, or a blue jay making a lot of sound. In fact, just the other day, the blue jays were making a lot of sound. They have a bad reputation, blue jays. They take a lot of bird seed or they bully. But they're also known as the alarm call in the bird world. Sure enough, in Brooklyn, I heard in my backyard, the blue jays, I went, stayed longer than I wanted to, and then I found the Cooper's hawk. And it was very quiet out there, besides the blue jays, very quiet. When I looked outside this morning, it was like as if it was a ghost town out there, tumbleweeds and stuff. It's because the Cooper hawk's around. I couldn't find him, but he's around.
10:20 Dan Harris? So it's like you've tuned into this whole soap opera that's surrounding us all the time that most of us are just missing. There's all this good plot happening.
10:27 Speaker 03 Exactly.
10:28 Dan Harris? And we're ignoring it.
10:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I guess ignoring almost feels a little too, I don't want to say like ignoring, but I guess in a way it is, but it could also be just not realizing. The hope is that once we start kind of going into that world, that parallel universe, that it's always there. And that's what I realized when my little sabbatical was over, that I realized that I could tap into that power of basically survival, not even a desire to live, but it's the will to live, which I need sometimes. Not that I'm always wanting to die or something like that. It's not like that, but sometimes I just need a little oomph, a little bit of a, yeah, that's why I'm here, you know, that kind of thing.
11:15 Dan Harris? Wait, unpack that a little bit. So paying attention to the drama of the birds, this kind of like secret society that's all around us that we were missing out on, somehow reinforced what at times can for you be a sort of nascent will to live, but dormant?
11:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, like for instance, one of the things that I do is I go up to the top of the Empire State Building at nighttime in the spring, when the winds are from the south, because birds from in the spring are traveling from the south to the north. And they're traveling to make life, basically, to breed. They face many obstacles as they come death. A lot of them die, they don't make it. Anyway, when I'm on the top of that Empire State Building and the birds are very close to me, almost like I could maybe touch them if I was taller with my hand, you know, seeing that energy to looking straight ahead,
12:14 Speaker 03 going to make life. If I recognize that, I must have that inside of me too. Or I wouldn't know it. I wouldn't know it and I wouldn't be so moved by it.
12:27 Speaker 03 There's a saying that I say a lot in the book that I say almost every day is no contempt prior to investigation. And I think that's the thing is that what birds helped me with is for some reason, I have contempt prior to investigation and I don't know why. I don't know why I say no a lot. I probably out of fear. I don't know why. Why do I say no? What am I so afraid of? What do I think's gonna happen if I jump into this experience? Or and birds sort of just have helped me say yes.
12:56 Dan Harris? Well, okay, you see two things there that I want to follow up on. The first about this kind of will to live thing, and then about contempt prior to investigation. So on the will to live thing, this is me attempting to make an empathic leap into your mind, but it's mostly just going to be projection on my part. Many of us kind of trudge through life at times where we're just like checking shit off of our to do list. And it can feel a little rote, a little lifeless. Something for you about tuning into the life of birds can jar you out of that rut. Am I close?
13:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're close. It even unfortunately goes a level deeper into what's the point? Sometimes I wrestle with that. I was just wrestling it with the other day. There's a voice that could come in and say, like, who cares? When I say, oh, guests, I'm curious about, this is in my mind, like, I want to figure out this thing. Why? Okay, it's like having a friend that's not very nice or something inside. That's just kind of like, so? And that's just something I've wrestled with for years. I guess that's the contempt. I don't understand why I have that, but I've been able to find ways to not let that get
14:17 Speaker 03 in the way of me having a nice life.
14:22 Dan Harris? Right. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what it is about the birds that counterprogram so powerfully against your inner nihilist. It's just like their will to live. They're not having any existential crises beyond, am I going to get fucking food? Am I gonna be able to mate and get my DNA into the next species? And there's something about the simplicity and power and urgency of that that puts some duct tape over the mouth of your inner nihilist?
14:50 Speaker 03 Yes, but also I think what it does is when I'm out there and I am in that parallel universe, I'm seeing all the things that are happening out, even in my yard in Brooklyn. I'm seeing the bird that ate the seed from the flower that I planted that then pooped out that seed next door. And I'm seeing another flower grow and I'm seeing the babies of that bird, that mourning dove that, in fact, on my windowsill, one of the juveniles is on my windowsill about to take off. Maybe he'll or she will take off today. But what
15:29 Speaker 03 that does for me is it makes me feel a part of something bigger. And so I don't feel as alone. I feel a part of something. And I think that's where that nihilism or that who cares, that's where that aspect is almost like as if it's not a part of anything. Birds help me feel a part of the whole thing.
15:53 Dan Harris? You quote E. Cummings, the writer who has smooshed a bunch of words, three words into one word, and he makes it this neo- logism or whatever, more than me.
16:05 Speaker 03 Correct. More than me. Yeah. It's more than me. Yeah. I mean, look, I love that I named my corporation. I mean, you know, we have to have these corporation things. I don't even know what I was like, well, I guess I'll name it more than me, you know? And I think that's one of my things is just maybe I've got a deficit of not feeling a connection to something. And so I have to kind of practice it every day. You know what I mean? To feel a part of.
16:33 Dan Harris? Somebody asked me yesterday, and I didn't, I get these lists of questions that people submit to me before I do live streams.
16:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:40 Dan Harris? One of the questions was something about hopelessness. I was rushing, so I didn't have time to really think it through, but this is, you're answering the question. More than me is the answer to hopelessness, or at least an answer to hopelessness.
16:53 Speaker 03 I think so. I think that when we can connect to something bigger, even through people or just something that's bigger than us, I think you've got a pretty good chance of feeling a little better.
17:10 Dan Harris? Coming up, more with Lily Taylor.
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18:19 Dan Harris? If you're up for it, a little bit more education from me personally about the basics of birds. You said something that I've heard said before. You say this in the book and in the introduction, and I had heard this said before, but I still don't really understand it, that birds are basically flying dinosaurs?
18:36 Speaker 03 Yes, right. You want some clarification there, or what the hell's going on? Like, what?
18:40 Dan Harris? Yes, please. Please.
18:44 Speaker 03 Yes, that's what's kind of cool is birds. They discovered that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs. They are living dinosaurs. Like, have you seen some of those pictures of dinosaurs with feathers?
18:58 Dan Harris? Maybe, but I forgot it.
19:00 Speaker 03 Okay, so yeah, they were able to figure out how to test or recreate. Oh, boy, this is where I wish I was a scientist. But basically, they were able to find that dinosaurs not only had a lot of color, but they had feathers.
19:14 Dan Harris? Hmm.
19:15 Speaker 03 Feathers. Boy, talk about feeling a part of something. Jesus, it's like, oh, boy, yeah, it's not just now. The earth has been here for a long time. Ebs and flows and it's, and boy, do I need this now at this particular moment. I just need to read a lot more history right now. That's helping me deal with this moment of this time is history.
19:38 Dan Harris? Yes, definitely history. In terms of hopelessness, history really helps me to view all of the noxious events in the news with some perspective and context. But back to the nihilism, because I have that too occasionally where, just to step back for a second, at New Year's 2025, I interviewed an amazing Dharma teacher named Vinnie Ferraro, who encouraged me to do something that I had heard about a million times but never actually done, which is that in the Buddhist tradition, there's something called the five daily remembrances. The Buddha recommended that you call these to mind first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed, I believe.
20:20 Dan Harris? And they are, my body is gonna get old, my body is gonna get sick, my body's gonna die, someday I'm gonna lose everything and everybody I hold dear. The only real possessions I have are my actions. So I've been doing this really consistently. The point is not for it to lead to some nihilism, and I know that. But there are moments of like, okay, well. Well, why the fuck would I do X? I'm gonna die anyway.
20:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:46 Dan Harris? So I'm just curious for you, like, as somebody for whom this nihilistic streak is quite prominent and salient, what is it exactly about realizing, oh, I'm part of this long flow of events, these little feathered creatures in front of me are the descendants of dinosaur who roamed the earth tens of thousands of years ago? How does that get you to do X?
21:11 Speaker 03 Yeah. Very good question. And this is great, too, because it really makes you distill, or makes me having to distill and articulate of belief. I think what it does is it brings me into today. You know, it's like that great, not Sanskrit, it's, what is it? Look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. And its brief course lies all the verities of existence, the pains of existence, the pains of something. So look to this day for it is life, the very life of life. And I think that what you just described, the connecting back and feeling a part of, helps me look to this day. And
21:54 Speaker 03 for its life and to just stay here today. And that's all I have to worry about. And not get overwhelmed with tomorrow. Because like, why am I here? Like, I'm not just here to trudge. I hope not. I mean, I would like to make it more than trudging. I would like to have more meaningful experiences. And I can do something about that. And it is up to me to make the meaning. Because the meaning isn't gonna make it for me. I have to do it. And that's up to me. And then why else am I here? And I think a lot about my deathbed. To help me think about how to be more now.
22:37 Speaker 03 What are some things I wanna feel like before I've died? And I do wanna feel like I gave it my all.
22:46 Dan Harris? I think that's exactly it. The five daily remembrances are just thinking about death. Generally nihilism would be a pitfall in that particular path, a wrong turn. It's really about introducing urgency and vividness into the right now to counterprogram against our deeply wired tendency to trudge.
23:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:06 Dan Harris? And I think about it for myself. It's like, I've got limited heartbeats. How do I want to spend this time? And I want to be doing things that are meaningful to me. And the meaning comes from the interconnection.
23:22 Speaker 03 That's right.
23:22 Dan Harris? I'm not like wearing a hair shirt and saying I should never meet my own needs, but my needs are like in this web of everybody else's needs. And like, there is the truth of enlightened self-interest. I meet my own needs by being useful to other people. And so, birds or whatever it is that floats your boat gets you into that space and out of what's the next thing on my to do list.
23:46 Speaker 03 That's right. Exactly. And there is beliefs that focusing on something outside yourself that's maybe bigger than you, I don't know what that means exactly, but that's got something more going on can create a feeling of something, sometimes awe, ideally.
24:08 Dan Harris? Yeah.
24:09 Speaker 03 You know?
24:10 Dan Harris? Well, let's talk about awe, because awe is really important and powerful. Just a note to the listeners, we've done not a few episodes on awe, and so I'll drop some links in the show notes. The kind of preeminent expert on awe is this guy, Dacher Keltner, with whom I've done a bunch of interviews, so I will drop some links to Dacher in the show notes. But anyway, back to you, Lily. There's a term that you talk about in the book, biophilia.
24:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:34 Dan Harris? Can you say more about that?
24:35 Speaker 03 Yeah. E. Wilson came up with that. It was a theory he came up with and the great entomologist, a lot of breakthroughs with ants. He believed that we are hardwired to respond to the natural world and that all that's needed is for it to get activated. All the wiring is there, ready to go. And that's his theory. And so that's the good news. I see that over and over. I find this thing I like to do, or I don't like to do, what am I talking? I, when I'm looking up at a bird, I do find that the human being walks past me, and then they start to look up.
25:19 Speaker 03 And I don't exactly understand where this thing comes from, because it's deep sort of hardwired thing. I thought maybe, because things jumped on us from maybe when we were like on the savanna, maybe the leopards and stuff were in the trees, or I don't know what we needed to look up to as an instinct. But anyway, I find people do it. But I think it's also because there might be something living up there. And not only do people look up, but sometimes they'll even stop. They'll ask, what am I looking at?
25:51 Speaker 03 And I say, I'm looking at these four blue jays. And we stop and we both try to figure out what's going on.
25:58 Dan Harris? How often do those conversations turn into, I loved you and Mystic Pizza?
26:01 Speaker 03 Oh, a lot. Oh, a lot, a lot, a lot. What it is usually is, wait, do you walk? Do you live in, nope, movies and TV. I go right to it. Movies, TV, that's what it is. And then they're like, wait, do you know, I'm like, I can't name them all. It's in the Rolodex of the vault. You'll go in there, but for now, let's keep looking at this bird.
26:24 Speaker 03 Here's another example. For instance, I took these kids, when my kid was in grammar school, I would take her class out for a walks, bird walks. And it's 10 minutes to the park, 10 minutes in the park and 10 minutes back. That's the whole thing. It looks like the kids aren't even taking anything in, you know? But midway through the year, one of the moms comes up to me, it's like, oh, my God, DJ, he's obsessed with birds now. He wants me to always keep feeding the birds outside. What happened? And then another time a mom called me, she said, I'm calling you because my son said, call Maeve's mom. She knows about birds, because a bird just flew under our window.
27:06 Speaker 03 So you could see how that little opening, that little 10-minute walk, or 30-minute walk, something happened to two of the kids. Something kind of got in there. And I've seen that happen a lot.
27:19 Dan Harris? The aforementioned Dacher Keltner is an author and scientist at UC Berkeley. I believe he once told me, with apologies to you, Dacher, if you're listening, if I'm mangling this, but I believe he once told me that evolutionary psychologists think that the societal function of awe, or at least one of the societal functions, aside from the fact that it feels really good to feel like more than me, one of the societal functions is that it induces moral behavior.
27:45 Speaker 03 Oh.
27:46 Dan Harris? That once you start to feel more than me, you become a better citizen.
27:51 Speaker 03 Huh, which makes total sense.
27:54 Dan Harris? Yeah, so all of a sudden, these kids are worried about the birds flying into the windows.
27:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:58 Dan Harris? Because they've gotten a taste of more than me.
28:00 Speaker 03 Wow, so that, oh, that's fantastic. I've got to read more about that. It's not like a chemistry thing. It's more just like a societal thing that we all kind of share.
28:13 Dan Harris? I think it's all of the above.
28:15 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
28:16 Dan Harris? And again, I apologize to you if you go do your research and realize I'm full of shit.
28:20 Speaker 03 Oh, please, are you kidding? Look at all the things we've got going. It's a miracle we can even talk at all about any of this and make some kind of sense. But you know what's so interesting about awe? The root of it is, I think it's thundering. I even think it means painful.
28:39 Speaker 03 Because you know something? Sometimes when I feel awe, I do start to tear up. And it hurts sometimes because sometimes that unbearable-ness of being alive is sometimes harder, at least for me, to handle than anxiety or fear or whatever. It's like, I don't say the word awesomeness because I, I really like to reserve it for special moments. I don't like to, but I feel that awesomeness of being here. It's like, I can even feel it right now. It's overwhelming.
29:08 Dan Harris? Maybe our anxiety and fear is just trying to prevent us from looking at the awesomeness.
29:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. It's hard. It's hard to love. Why are there so many intimacy problems? What's so scary about love? Why are we afraid of going deeper with another human being? Why? What do we think's gonna happen? Some little, small part of us is very scared of something.
29:32 Dan Harris? Yeah, and this kind of goes back to you. And we haven't used this word yet, but in my research on you, you've used it to describe yourself. But like your introversion, your occasional shrinking back from life.
29:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:44 Dan Harris? I don't think it's a coincidence that it was this doorway to awesomeness, to awe, that turned out to be a kind of lifeline.
29:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, right, exactly. I need that lifeline. Some people just have either more of that chemical in their brain, or they have more of something that they may not have to work as hard as I do with trying to stay somewhat spiritually fit.
30:10 Dan Harris? Speaking of spiritual fitness, one of the practices you talk about in the book, for which there are lots of scientific studies and evidence, and much of it actually done by Dacher, who keeps coming up. You talk about something called awe walks. Can you say more about like how those are done and what the evidence is for them?
30:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, I can't remember the name of the scientist who conducted the study, but they went out for like five minutes. And the participants basically just were kind of instructed to focus on something outside of themselves. And over the course of time, the participants started to feel better. It's in the introduction. I don't want to fuss around with getting the name and all that, but it's all there if you wanted to put it into notes because it's some interesting scientist who came up with this study, who was able to prove some stuff. And I tied that into paying attention, which is,
31:11 Speaker 03 you know, attention is interesting because when I learned what attention meant, the root of it, which is stretching, tension. It's not our normal state. It shouldn't feel good. It shouldn't feel comfortable. In fact, in the dictionary, it even says paying attention, especially with the mind, reaching for something, especially with the mind.
31:34 Dan Harris? Even in the phraseology, paying attention.
31:37 Speaker 03 Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I hadn't even thought of the paying. Of course. Thank you. I had kind of skimmed over that word and just went straight to the attention. Right. Why did they come up with paying attention? Right. So it takes work. It's hard. It's not meant to sustain forever, or it wouldn't be a stretch. Because a stretch means you're extending. So it's okay when I can't, like onstage, why aren't I in the moment for the whole play? What's wrong with me? Why am I completely out of the moment? Why am I thinking about dinner after the play? Why am I thinking about how well I cried in the last moment, or how well I didn't cry? And almost kind of getting down on myself
32:17 Speaker 03 when I, especially when I was younger. Or even, why can't I stay with the bird more? Why am I always going to something else? It's like, because it's hard. Because paying attention and listening isn't meant to sustain indefinitely. So go easy on yourself. And all you need to do is get back up again, or get back into listening. And that's why I love listening. Because it's very actable, and it's something I can keep doing even if I stop listening. And as an actor, listening is the most important thing. And that's one reason I keyed into birds a lot, is because I found I was using the same skills as with acting, which was mostly listening and investigation.
32:59 Dan Harris? Quick interjection, and I want to follow up on that listening and investigation thing. Interjection is that the lead author of the study was a neurologist named Virginia Sterm, and that's in your book. Can you say more about why listening and investigation are such key parts of both birding and acting? I imagine some people listening to this would be surprised, because we think of acting as talking.
33:21 Speaker 03 Oh, right. Well, that's a problem. Exactly. And I find when I'm with an actor who's just talking, and not listening, there's not much going on. There's nothing very, it's not very interesting. Because the listening, God, boy, I'm having to really articulate some deeper beliefs and words here. Like, wait, what does listening even mean? I have to think about that. But I just know that, again, listening is focusing on something that's not me. And it's, oh, oh, oh, I know. Right. Yes, yes, yes. Here's a great definition. A neuroscientist said, "Hearing is the sense, listening is the skill, and the difference between the two is paying attention."
34:04 Dan Harris? Huh. I like that.
34:06 Speaker 03 I do, too. So it's more than just the sense. So when one is listening, one is using other things, you know, that you can't put words to or whatever, but it's like, you're having to focus on something that's not you. The other actor is what's giving me the food. That's where all the energy is. It's not from my backstory or my memory or this is for me. Some actors are great at summoning memories and doing stuff. That has not worked for me. But for me, I need to focus on the other actor.
34:40 Dan Harris? Hmm.
34:41 Speaker 03 I need to listen and get that food and that's gonna inform me. That stimuli is gonna inform my next thing. Listening, I go in and out. And that's okay. It's very difficult to listen perfectly. And for long periods of time.
35:01 Speaker 03 So you just get back, you start to listen again. I'm like, oh shit, I'm not listening again. Fuck, I had known, I didn't hear anything they just said. Oh, Jesus. Okay, that's okay. Just listen again. And then I zone in again. And it's the same with the bird. I love investigation because I feel like with acting, I feel like an emotional detective. And I feel like what I'm doing is I'm very neutrally following clues within the script. And what I love about the word investigation is that the root is vestige.
35:36 Dan Harris? Hmm.
35:37 Speaker 03 And it's the outline of the thing. The outline of the thing is what you're following, not the actual thing itself. So you don't ever really get, yeah, hopefully if you're a tracker, and I have tracked and it's very difficult, you get to the actual thing you wanna find. But really what you're observing is that outline of the thing. The vestige and you're observing it deeply for any clues. And then you go to the next clue and the next clue. And then you have this whole story from that investigation.
36:10 Dan Harris? Just a quick note that came to mind when you were describing listening. And this harkens back to your earlier statement that you're no good at meditating. The core rule in meditation, which is my central job on the planet right now, is just to remind people that when you get distracted, that is not a failure. Waking up from distraction and starting again is the whole point.
36:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:32 Dan Harris? And that that's proof of success. And so it's the same with birding. It's the same with acting. It's hard to pay attention, so we're just building the muscle by doing the reps.
36:42 Speaker 03 I have a question. So when you started meditating, did you ever feel worse after meditating? Did you ever go into like difficult areas of your mind that were actually kind of very, very, very difficult?
36:57 Dan Harris? Yes, still happens. This may not be the case for you, but for many people, the primary misconception is that meditation is a thing you do to feel a certain way. But desire, and that's what it is, you want to feel a different way. Meditation is like a fucked up video game where if you want to move forward, you can't move forward. The point is not to try to achieve a special state. It's to feel whatever you're feeling clearly, so that over time, your feelings don't own you as much. And that's the key thing to understand. And so it's totally fine if you walk out of meditation with more clarity into your sadness.
37:39 Dan Harris? In fact, early in meditation, many people are like, why am I more anxious now? And the answer is not that you're objectively, measurably more anxious than you were before. It's just that you're seeing it more clearly. And then over time, what you learn is, oh, I can handle these feelings. I don't have to feed them and neurotically re-up them all the time because I can sit with them.
38:01 Speaker 03 Has your practice changed through the years?
38:04 Dan Harris? Yes.
38:05 Speaker 03 And where is it at right now? What is it today?
38:08 Dan Harris? I think it's really important to have it be changing all the time. So for me, I do about an hour a day, but I don't do it at one go. And I'm really flexible about, first of all, if I don't hit an hour, I don't freak out. It doesn't matter. And I'm really flexible about. Depending on the shape of my day, when I'm gonna fit it in and what's it gonna look like? Is it gonna be walking meditation? Is it gonna be seated meditation? Today, for example, I haven't meditated yet, but I've gotta get in a taxi to go to the airport. I'll probably do a little bit in there. And then, um, right before I go to bed, when I land in LA, I'll do a bunch of walking meditation. And so it'll add up to something like an hour. And the flavors of meditation, like, there are lots of different types of practice.
38:52 Dan Harris? Mindfulness, or loving kindness, or, like I said, walking. It really depends on, you know, I usually don't know what kind I'm gonna do until I sit down and figure out, like, what do I need right now?
39:02 Speaker 03 But you have like a little, um, toolbox of?
39:05 Dan Harris? Definitely.
39:06 Speaker 03 Fifteen, for instance, or ten types of?
39:09 Dan Harris? Yeah, yeah, ten, maybe. Am I gonna do a body scan today? Am I gonna do loving kindness practice? Am I gonna do focus on the breath? Am I gonna do open awareness? What style of open awareness? Because there are lots of phrases there. Am I gonna be lying down? Am I gonna be standing up? Am I gonna be walking? It's just good to know. There are lots of options and you can tailor it to what works for you.
39:30 Speaker 03 See, one of the problems for me is I seem to come across more strict meditation kinds of practices. What I love about what you do is it's so much is allowed.
39:43 Dan Harris? Yeah, yeah.
39:44 Speaker 03 You know, you don't have to sit a certain way. You don't have to friggin', and it sounds like you do a lot of walking meditations.
39:51 Dan Harris? Yes, yes.
39:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
39:53 Dan Harris? Just to be clear, when I say walking meditation, it's not, as my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, once said, it's not recess, it's not like, just go take a walk. And nor is it an awe walk, although I think you could mix them i-if you're doing it the right way.
40:07 Speaker 03 Sure.
40:08 Dan Harris? But you are really trying to pay attention in a certain way.
40:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:13 Dan Harris? To the physical sensations of the movement, any other sensory packages that are being delivered, like seeing and hearing. Then every time you get distracted, start again and again and again. And there are different phrases you can use to keep you in the game. There's a different techniques you can use, like little mental noting. There are different paces. You can go at a quick clip, or you can go really, really, really, really exaggeratedly slowly. So, just to get back to your main point, it's really about optionality and figuring out what works for you.
40:45 Speaker 03 Now, are they all Buddhist?
40:47 Dan Harris? Uh, yeah.
40:47 Speaker 03 Okay.
40:48 Dan Harris? For me.
40:49 Speaker 03 I don't have to be a Buddhist and I could take one of those techniques and it doesn't matter if I'm a Buddhist.
40:55 Dan Harris? Yeah, the Buddha didn't even talk about Buddhists. That's a later term. Do you? Cafeteria style is totally fine. Just take what works for you. Don't worry about the labels. It doesn't matter.
41:05 Speaker 03 Great.
41:09 Dan Harris? Coming up, more with Lili Taylor.
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42:22 Dan Harris? So there are a couple of points I want to hit on before I let you go. One is, we've been dancing around this point, but I just want to hang a lantern on it. The idea that so much of what we do is, as we keep saying, trudging through our to do list. We view our daily activities, many of us, through the lens of productivity.
42:41 Speaker 03 Right.
42:41 Dan Harris? And yet, there's this whole class of activity, and you use this phrase in the book, autotelic activity, where the whole purpose of the experience is the experience itself. You're not trying to get somewhere. Can you talk about why that's so compelling to you?
42:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, it's sort of like that thing that happened, you know, when I was curious about something yesterday and a voice said, so what? Well, the thing is, is so what? Because so I can just have this experience just for the experience? That's what? I am under no pressure to take this experience into any sort of result. And maybe I've got that over my head, a little bit of like, well, what are you gonna do with it? Where's it gonna go? Like, for instance, when I started writing the book, I didn't know it was gonna be a book. I kinda used that autotelic, that sort of, well, I'm just gonna write for the sake of it. And see what happens. Instead of, please don't pressure me into, you know, this must be a book and it must be a,
43:42 Speaker 03 I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. I just love that because it helps me follow my curiosities more. When I just can say, I don't know where this is gonna go. I don't know, but I'm doing it just because it's for the experience.
43:58 Dan Harris? There was another guest on this show recently who was talking about, I think he used the word atelic, I don't know if it's synonymous, but he was talking about doing things just for the sake of doing things. And I got a text from a former colleague of mine, literally last night, who was just listening to that episode while cooking dinner and heard this guy talk about autotelic or atelic or whatever, you know, just doing shit for the sake of doing the thing.
44:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
44:24 Dan Harris? And she had to sit down, rewind it and listen again and reexamine her whole life, she said, because it was just like she's on this autopilot and I really resonate with it, like this productivity narrative we're in of like, gotta get shit done because it's gonna lead to the next thing.
44:42 Speaker 03 Oh, honey, I'm a GTD.
44:43 Dan Harris? Okay, what's that?
44:44 Speaker 03 Get things done.
44:45 Dan Harris? Okay.
44:46 Speaker 03 Oh, no, I'm, I'm friggin', I've got all those systems and I've, I love them. And I'm hardcore, get things done, which is probably why I also really need to have this other thing, because I need structure and I need to have like heuristics, I'd like to do this this week and I wouldn't have finished the book if I hadn't used the GTD stuff.
45:08 Dan Harris? Yeah.
45:08 Speaker 03 Anyway.
45:10 Dan Harris? Okay, so the last question, I, well, it's not entirely honest to say it's the last question because I have two questions I always ask at the end of every interview. But this is the last question on my little list here in front of me that I want to make sure I get to. This is going to be a little random and this may feel like a little bit of a non sequitur. But I did make a note specifically for our city listeners that even pigeons can be observed and listened to. And there's a lot to see there because most of us tend to ignore the pigeons. So can you just hold forth a little bit about how we can use pigeons to our advantage psychologically?
45:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'll text you guys a great little book I have about pigeons by Rosemary Moscow. It's a simple, sweet little book with pictures and stuff for grownups. And it's all about pigeons. And I needed to read it because I'm judge pigeons. I, I, I didn't think much of them. And they're actually great because they're always around. They are a great way to focus on something outside of yourself. They're very different, so they're easy to identify, like they look different from each other. So you can follow like X with the black spot on the head from Y who has completely white. And you can kind of follow them and I can see them in my yard and see their stories
46:27 Speaker 03 play out and like, oh, I know that guy. I know that one from that one. They've got some complex stuff happening. I mean, they're interesting. So just give them a shot and follow them around and why not? If you're like waiting for a bus, why not? Better than looking at your phone.
46:45 Dan Harris? A million percent. Okay, so here are the two questions I always ask. One is, were there anything, any areas that you were hoping we would cover that we haven't gotten to?
46:56 Speaker 03 I don't think so. I hope not. I feel like we've gone to a lot of places.
47:04 Dan Harris? And finally, can you just remind everybody of the name of the book? And also anything, you know, you're doing either on stage or on the small screen or the big screen that we should be checking out?
47:14 Speaker 03 Sure. The book is called Turning to Birds, The Power and Beauty of Noticing. And I'm about to start The Hunger Games, which is great.
47:24 Dan Harris? Oh, yeah. I didn't, there are more movies to be made in The Hunger Games?
47:28 Speaker 03 Yes, there are, baby. There's a prequel. That book you see out now that's everywhere. I'm gonna butcher the name because I just keep saying Hunger Games, but it's really like The Sunrise on the Reaping. It's that.
47:41 Speaker 03 It's that purple gold one. It's the one we're seeing everywhere.
47:45 Dan Harris? Okay.
47:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's the prequel. It's the origin story. It's great, man. I'm very excited.
47:51 Dan Harris? Well, this was a huge pleasure. Thank you for making time for it.
47:54 Speaker 03 This was great. Thank you.
47:56 Dan Harris? Great to meet you.
47:56 Speaker 03 Thank you. You too. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try this meditating and I'm not gonna get mad at myself if I can.
48:02 Dan Harris? Bingo.
48:03 Speaker 03 But I'm gonna try again, man.
48:05 Dan Harris? Good.
48:09 Dan Harris? Big thanks to Lili Taylor. Awesome to meet her. She's great. Don't forget to check out my new app. Dan Harris dot com is the place to sign up. Next week, we're calling it Sleep Week because we're dropping a bunch of new sleep meditations and we're doing the session that I mentioned at the top of the show with Cara Lie, where we're gonna talk about how to boost your sleep with meditation. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. 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.
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