← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
How to Engage with Technology Without Losing Your Mind | Soren Gordhamer
01:14:49
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A
Few things feel better than knowing someone's looking out for you. That is the spirit behind the ATT guarantee. Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. That's the AT&T guarantee, because connection should be dependable, especially in the moments that matter most. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details. @ and T connecting changes everything. It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. How we doing? We are living in a time of mass distraction, a time when it's incredibly easy to get pulled away from all the things that actually matter and that actually make you happy. We're also living through dizzying change and disruption. The pace of technology, the pace of technological, political, social, cultural and climate change can feel deeply destabilizing. So how do you upgrade your mind to maintain some degree of sanity, equanimity and resilience? And in the face of all of this, might it actually be possible to turn this chaos into an opportunity? This is what my guest today has been thinking about for decades. Soren Gordhammer sits at the fascinating intersection of contemplative traditions and modern technology. He's the host of Wisdom 2.0, a conference about mindfulness and compassion in the modern age. He's also a co founder and general partner of Wisdom Ventures, which invests in companies creating a more just and compassionate world. He's got a new book called the Essential, in which he explores how we, both as individuals and as a species, can train our minds at a moment when our survival may actually depend on upgrading and training our minds. We talk about what Soren means by the Essential the current and future impact of AI on the economy, on our mental health, on society at large. What Soren thinks the world is going to look like 10, 15 years from now. Useful strategies for managing technology with an iota of balance and wisdom how to get familiar with the unseen stories that run your life so that they don't have so much power over you. The number one question for our time, according to Soren, whether or not humans are actually going to do this essential work before it's too late. Whether the people designing the AI systems that have so much control over our lives actually have the best interest of the species at heart and much more. Just to say before we dive in In a time of dizzying change, one of the most important skills you can cultivate is the ability not to be owned by your thoughts. This episode comes with a custom meditation in which our teacher of the month, Christiana Wolf, teaches you how not to believe everything you think. These guided meditations are only for paying subscribers over@danharris.com if you sign up, which I hope you do, you'll also get weekly live guided meditation and Q and A sessions. Our next one is today, Wednesday, November 12th at 4 Eastern. We usually do these on Tuesdays, but yesterday was a holiday in the US So we're doing it today. On a Wednesday. Christiano will be guiding you and taking your questions. Okay, we'll get started with Soren Gordhammer right after this. You meditate. You read every article you can find about mental health and mindfulness. You journal. And yet certain thoughts still feel impossible to let go of, like they're stuck in your mind. It might be a nagging worry that you've accidentally said something offensive and everybody secretly hates you or or a terrifying image of yourself suddenly losing control and doing something completely out of character. Or perhaps it's a sudden fear that a mild ache near your chest is actually a massive heart attack. Many people experience these types of intrusive thoughts, but if they are on a persistent loop and create intense distress and drive you to search endlessly for answers or a way to stop them, you might be dealing with ocd. OCD is nothing like the stereotypes that you may have come across. It can latch onto anything you care about, from relationships to health, mortality, identity and more. Because it's widely misunderstood, many people suffer in silence for years, unaware that they have a common and highly treatable condition. The thing is, OCD needs specialized therapy. Standard talk therapy actually isn't recommended for OCD and can actually make it worse. That's where NOCD comes in. NOCD is the world's leading provider of specialized OCD treatment. All of their licensed therapists are trained to treat OCD with Exposure and Response Prevention or ERP therapy, the most effective treatment available. They offer virtual sessions, they accept insurance for over 155 million Americans and they create a judgment free space where you can learn to manage OCD and start getting your life back. With nocd. You'll also have support between your therapy sessions so you're never alone. You can DM your therapist, connect with others in the NOCD community and and use self help tools to help you stay on track. All in the NOCD app. If this sounds like you or somebody you love, head on over to NOCD and book a free 15 minute call with their team. That's nocd.com to learn more and start getting help you Know those moments when someone just takes care of something for you. That's what AT&T is doing. With the ATT guarantee, staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. That's the AT&T guarantee. Because staying connected isn't optional, it's essential. And AT&T wants you to feel that somebody's got your back. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details. AT&T connecting changes everything. Soren Gordhammer, welcome to the show.
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B
It's really nice to be here.
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A
Dan, great to see you, my old friend.
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B
I was thinking we'd go back. I remember meeting you outside of ABC News. It must have been 20, 30 years ago. I don't remember the exact date, but it's been nice to be your friend for so long.
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A
My only beef with you is that you're way taller than I am, and I find that intimidating. But beyond that, it's been a great run.
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B
Yeah, it's been fun to see you go from newsman to podcaster to author to now. Writing a book on love? I think so. It's been wonderful to see your transformation.
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A
My first book was something about, like, how not to lose your edge. And the fact that I'm writing a book about love just proves that I was fucking wrong. I've definitely lost it.
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B
Well, we can talk about that. Maybe we'll go into that a little bit.
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A
Great. I have lots of thoughts. Let's start with your new book. Congratulations, by the way. It's called the Essential. And I'm just curious, as a starting point, what do you mean by the essential?
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B
I've written a number of books in my life, and sometimes it takes, like, a year to figure out the right title. And I was working on the draft of this and a friend was like, yeah, I'm happy to take a look. I was like, shit, I don't have a title for it. And so I was just like, oh, why do I do. I'll put the Essential. So it just came just like that. I literally spent five seconds, like, deciding on the title. But as soon as the title came, it just, like, got me. I think, you know, Dan, in this day and age, we're consumed more and more by all the cool gadgets and all the cool social media and all the pings and all the alerts and all this kind of stuff, which is super interesting, super entertaining. Netflix has this show and everything else that's going on, and it's easy to Forget actually what really, really, really matters, what's actually essential to our life. And so, for me, the inner life is essential. If you don't understand your inner life, are you actually living in the right conscious way? If you don't have friends and you're not spending time with friends, is that really a meaningful life? If you don't have a sense of purpose, how does that actually play out in your life? So there's all these things that I think we can easily forget and get lost in the algorithmic dopamine hit world, and we lose contact. And when we're on our deathbed and we're looking back, I don't know if it's really, really going to matter how many reels on Instagram we saw or whether we actually spent time with the people that we really cared about and if we actually understood the inner workings of our mind and heart. So we lived with a little bit more ease and a little bit more heartfulness. So, for me, that's what's essential. And I don't really tell people what should be essential to them. I just bring up the question, are we living with what actually matters to us, or are we lost in this algorithmic maze that just keeps us addicted to things that don't really serve us?
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A
As you were listing these technological enticements, inducements that we live with, that we swim among, you didn't mention AI. And my understanding is that AI and the changes it is already bringing and the almost certainly much more profound changes it will bring, was a major impetus for you in writing this. Am I wrong about that?
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B
Yeah. So we should go deeper into what AI is, at least from my perspective, and look at what's going to happen. And so my interest in this was I interviewed Sam Altman maybe three or four years ago, and. And we were backstage and we started talking about the world that he sees. And I had two responses to that, which is just like, oh, my God, this is gonna be so exciting. And the second response was like, holy shit, this is gonna change everything. And so I just took a deep dive into what this new world of AI might look like. And in some ways, it's really not that different from the past in terms of there will be things that stay the same. You know, humans will still walk, and we'll still eat and we'll still make love. We'll still do certain things, but the basic fundamental structure of society, I believe, is going to need to change. And I think one of the things that people don't understand is they think of AI as like, oh, it's just like a new chapter. Like the iPhone brought in a new chapter, or computers brought in a new chapter, or the Internet brought in a new chapter. And for me, we're not birthing a new technology, we're birthing a new intelligence. And that intelligence has a certain capacity that we're just beginning to understand. So when you're on any of the social media platforms and you see how did it come up with this as the next image for me to see or the next reel for me to see, that's AI. They're taking everything they know about you, and the whole computer system is going through its whole scenario of possibilities, and it's giving you this particular image or this particular reel because they know you so well, and they know just the thing that is going to keep you glued to the screen that they want to keep you glued to. So there's that aspect of AI which is just getting more and more sophisticated by the moment, but we're also going to have robots soon that are going to be have AI capacities and that will be able to do all kinds of things for us. And so there's a new chapter of superintelligence that we're going into very, very, very quickly. And I just don't know if we're ready for it. Dan. I think AI is ready for us. I just don't know if humans are ready for AI. So I wrote the book in part because for me, the biggest question we need to be asking is not whether AI will develop and grow and get better and cooler. It's whether humans will actually grow and get more compassionate and more wise and have the capacity to manage and harness this enormous power that's going to be landing in us very, very quickly.
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A
Okay, so there are at least two things to discuss there. There's the trajectory of AI, which I want to spend a little bit of time on. We will ultimately get to the trajectory of the human mind and whether there's evolution that can happen there and how to do it, how to effectuate those potential changes in our own minds. Now, that. That will be the bulk of the conversation, but let me just stay with AI for a second. I have tried to stay up to speed to a certain extent on AI, and one of the things I think I know is that it's not necessarily a fait accompli or predestined that we will reach super intelligence, or what's sometimes called artificial general intelligence, where the machines develop the ability to think and reason in ways that approximate or even supersede the human mind.
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B
In my world, that's pretty well known that, yeah, that is going to happen. And it's already happened to some degree. And it's getting faster and faster has already happened. Yeah. So, I mean, how AI developed for the last number of years was you had a bunch of computer programmers in a building, and they're coding kind of how AI might want to take shape and take form. Right. So OpenAI, I think, was pretty much seven years in private working on the algorithm and this new model that then they've been improving on. But increasingly, they don't need human coders building the next AI. The AI. The AI is so smart that it can replace a lot of the engineers that we used to need to build the next generation of AI. So AI is already starting to build the next AI. And so if you listen to interviews with Zuckerberg or Nadella or Sam or any of these people, they'll tell you that 30, 40, 50% now of a lot of the coding is actually done by AI. And AI works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It accelerates at a much faster pace than a bunch of humans working on it. There's still humans involved, but every year there's less humans involved because the AI is getting that smart and that good.
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A
I don't dispute any of that. The questions I've heard raised in the listening and reading I've done on the subject, which is vastly less than you've done, is more this question about. So we may get faster processing times and smarter decision making, more agency on the part of AIs, but will we ever reach a point where we can genuinely call it a super intelligence in that would pass what would call the Turing Test back in the day? You know, like, it's got its own ability to think and reason in ways that really start to. Look, I grant you that there are aspects of ChatGPT that supersede the human mind now in that. Especially on the level of speed.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But I can usually tell something that's coming from an AI because it's got a kind of soullessness to it. And I don't know. I'm not an expert in all of this, but will we ever see something that meets the level of the. It can pass the Turing Test. Or we could call it AGI, artificial General intelligence, that it maybe even has its own consciousness.
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B
Whether it has its own consciousness, I think put aside that for now, that's something that we'll see if that actually develops. I don't know. If that leap will happen or not. I think we're all a little bit in mystery with that. But in terms of the capacity of the models at present, and some of this comes down from me just having conversations with the AI leaders. So I'm in my own little bias bubble here where I live in California and talking to the people who work at OpenAI and Anthropic and all these different places. So just so you know, my viewpoint is probably tainted a little bit by them telling me the world that we're going into and me then using that information. But the world that we think, the people in San Francisco think that we're moving to definitely includes a smarter and smarter AI that's beyond any capacity that we thought. And because it can improve on itself, it's learning by itself all the time, right? So it's connected through these computer systems. So if I learn something, Dan, it doesn't automatically go to you, right? Like I don't like, learn something. All of a sudden you lear learn the same thing with the AI systems as soon as one, the whole system learns it, right? And so if there's a mistake, it improves that mistake. It's constantly iterating, it's constantly improving itself. Now where is there a top glass where it can no longer get that intelligent? Right? Like, it can get to this sophistication, but it can't get to this other level of sophistication. We don't know what that top is, but everybody I talk to says we're just getting started. I mean, if you think ChatGPT is intelligent now, you have no idea what's going to be coming in the next two years and that's their goal and that's what they're moving to. So if what you then say, oh, this is AGI and now this is this, I don't know, we can talk about that. But to me, the level of development and the speed at which AI is teaching itself and developing by itself is both mesmerizing and terrifying. And it's not slowing down. If you just look at the announcements for how many video chips and hundreds of billions of dollars are going into these companies, and I should say through our fund, we've invested in OpenAI and Anthropic and a lot of different companies, but everything that I see, we're just getting started. The intelligence is going to be mind blowing.
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A
What do you think the world looks like in 5, 10, 15 years from now?
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B
It depends on whether we take the red pill or the blue pill or which direction the Society takes. What I like to say is in a world that's driven by wisdom, mindfulness and compassion, this could be the greatest world ever. And in a world driven and motivated by greed, hatred and delusion, this could be the worst world ever. Because you'll have all of this power and you'll be able to decide how that power is used. But most likely there'll be. What I like to say is there's a lot of things that work in an age without superintelligence that probably will not work in an age with superintelligence. And we have all these companies, and I have nothing against Salesforce for or against it, but just as one example. So, for example, a company like Salesforce was created, kind of human centered, human first company, right? And they have all these employees, and if they made 1 billion the next one year and they make 10 billion the next year, they need to hire more employees to make the 10 billion. Like the company grows in humans as they grow in profit. That's all changed now. So you're going to have competitors to every one of these companies that are AI first. So it's not based on humans. It's actually just based on using this intelligence in more and more kind of like thoughtful ways that allows a business to grow. And if they go from 1 billion to 10 billion, they. They don't need more humans. More and more Nvidia chips are being hired and humans are being fired. And that's just a new world for us to grow into. And we'll have to rethink how this society works and how the economy works and probably figure out some kind of tax on the AI so that people can have jobs that just didn't exist before. And when people tell me, well, iPhone created all these jobs you never had, app developers, like, this is a whole different game in my world. This is again, it's an intelligence. And no matter what your job is, there'll be an AI competing with you for that job. Almost all jobs. This could be a really, really good thing though, Dan. It sounds really bad, but it could be a really, really good thing because we're actually all freed up to live the life that we want to live. But how do you recreate an economic system that actually works for people and where there's not just a bunch of trillionaires benefiting from this new chapter.
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A
So one possible outcome is that there's massive job loss and a reimagined economic system that means that even with the jobs gone, there's actually a lot of wealth to Go around and a lot of free time for people to follow their interests.
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B
Yeah, the robots are building the houses. The cab drivers who hate driving cabs through New York City aren't driving cabs. You know, here we have Waymo, where there's no driver in the cab. It's just it drives itself. So there'll be lots of jobs that nobody wants to do in factories and other things. But people still want a sense of purpose and meaning. They still want to feel like they're contributing, and they still need economics. So we just need to figure out how do we give people purpose and meaning. Meaning and economics knowing that pretty soon they'll be just be not needed because the system can do it so much faster. People ask me questions like, well, what about spiritual teachers? Or what about rabbis? And so what does it take to be any profession these days? You usually have to go to school and you get a degree. Maybe you read, I don't know, 50 books or 100 books in the course of your four years. Now you have an AI that can read a thousand books and memorize it perfectly. And so how do you, as this person who works so hard to gain this knowledge, spent seven years gaining this knowledge, and now there's an AI that has 10x the knowledge that you have, and how do you compete? And so where do we rethink society so that that intelligence actually serves us and doesn't, you know, kind of like take us over? But I think that's the world that we're moving into. Or at least knowledge just becomes accessible in a way that it never used to be. Now we can talk about whether wisdom and compassion is also accessible. But I do think that certain skills that needed a certain level of knowledge and like, we can use talk about rabbis. Like, I don't know how many books a rabbi had to read or the knowledge it had to gain to become a rabbi. The AI has so much more than that. But where will we still want human connection? Where will we still want that human, like, bond? And then how do we keep that strong in a world where technology has a chance of just controlling us all or controlling us all or benefiting us all? So we'll see how it develops. Am I freaking you out too much? I don't want to freak you out too much. I live in a certain world, so I don't want to overwhelm everybody. I'm just telling you the world from where I see it. But I could be wrong too.
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A
No, I come into this conversation already freaked out.
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B
Okay?
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A
I definitely would not call myself an expert. And probably my utterances to date in this conversation would prove that. But I definitely have been thinking about.
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B
It and I don't consider myself an expert either. Okay, I don't consider myself an expert either. But I think about it a lot and I meet with and talk with a lot of people in the business a lot.
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A
We talked about how this would impact, you know, the economy. But what about just daily life? At the beginning of this conversation, you referenced that we're already living in an era of just mass distraction, constant bleeps and blips on our phone and our other devices taking us away from what probably matters most to us. Does an era of superintelligence, like all pervasive superintelligence, make that better or worse, you think?
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B
Great question. So, you know, previously, technology has not done a good job. It's done an incredible job on sharing information, on developing new economic models, on providing, like, groups where people can connect in some ways, right? Like, if you think about the Internet really, really helped in many ways. You think about the iPhone, it really, really helped in many ways. But what, what is one area that every technological invention has not helped at all and probably has hurt? And that would be our mental health and, well being. Every technology, I don't think you can say, well, wow, once the Internet came, everybody was happier. Once we got the iPhone, mental health statistics just went like satisfaction and connection and loneliness, they were all just like, all going in the right direction. I would say that if you look at statistics, it usually hasn't been the case. Now, whether will AI change that trajectory or will the deeper we get into technology and the deeper we get into AI, we'll see our loneliness go even higher, we'll see our depression go even higher, we'll see our addiction go even higher. Or will it be one of the first technologies that actually bring us back to ourselves and allow us to remember what's essential and have the quality of life that I think we all desire. We don't know, Dan. That's what I want to try to help us move forward to, because I think in this new chapter, the possibility of becoming just massively addicted. I notice it myself. My partner's gone. So it's like I was home all by myself last night and was like, bored. So I was like, get on Instagram. And like an hour goes by. I'm like, what the hell just happened? Like, I just spent an hour. And the algorithm knows me so well and it just feeds me just the right thing, like, ah. And I know the people who create it. I know how it works. You know, I know all these things. And it's not bad or wrong for them to do that, but the ability to convince somebody of a certain perspective. And I got lost in this whole rabbit hole. I don't have to give you the details. This whole rabbit hole, the interesting thing about the algorithm is like, if you want dharma, it gives you dharma. If you want conspiracy theories, it doesn't care. It'll just feed you conspiracy theories as long as you stay glued to the screen. And so now that AI is more and more integrated in the algorithms, it presents some real challenges for our culture. And we wonder why the average teenager who spends like four hours on social media, it's because the AI has gotten better and better and the algorithms have gotten better, better. It's not because social media has gotten better and better. It's because they know us so well that they can kind of guide where we put our attention. And again, I don't blame them. I'm just saying that this is a challenge for our time.
- [24:37]
A
Coming up, we dive into Soren's new book, the Essential. We talk about what that actually means. We talk about whether it's possible to bring individual agency to your interactions with technology. And we talked some useful strategies for managing your relationship to tech with some degree of balance and wisdom. Few things feel better than knowing someone's looking out for you. That is the spirit behind the AT&T guarantee. Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on or they will proactively make it right. That's the AT T guarantee. Because connection should be dependable, especially in the moments that matter most. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details. AT&T connecting changes everything. Cold mornings, holiday plans. This is when I just want my wardrobe to be simple. Stuff that looks sharp, feel feels good, and stuff I'll actually wear. For me, that is Quint's. Quint's pieces make great gifts too. This season's lineup is simple but smart and Easy with Quint's $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury. I've got, I think four of those sweaters, by the way. Also wool coats that are equal parts stylish and durable. Denim nails, the fit and everyday comfort all at a fraction of what you you'd expect to pay. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quint's cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality at half the cost of other high end brands. So you can give luxury quality pieces as gifts without the luxury price tag. Just to say, Quint's has offerings that extend well beyond clothing. They also have home goods, stuff for your bathroom and kitchen, stuff for travel. It's an expanding and exciting brand. Give and get, timeless holiday staples that last this season. With Quince, go to quints.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That is quince.com happier free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com happier okay, so just to reset, you're in San Francisco at the nexus, as you have been for many decades of contemplative traditions and high technology, and you have your eyes and nose over the ramparts in ways that many of us may not and have a sense of what's already happening and what is likely to come. And you've written this book to help us as individuals and as a collective, get our shit together. I want to spend most of our remaining time on what we can do as individuals because I think it's just the focus of my work. But I also want to save some time toward the end to talk about what we can do as a collective. So in the book, essentially you're arguing that we, in order to navigate this period of time, we need to create what you call a spiritual compass. And there are like five areas of focus or five kind of different tool sets that you recommend for building this compass. And the first is, and we'll walk through each of the five, but the first is to become aware of the game. What do you mean by that?
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B
Well, there's lots of different games that are being played and there's the game of how to keep our attention consumed, always looking outside of ourselves. And so if you notice the one thing about technology that particularly the ad based technology, it needs fuel. And the fuel is your attention. So, for example, if you don't post for a week or two on any of the platforms, they punish you. They don't uplift your content as much as you can. So they give you positive algorithmic support when you continue to kind of feed that and they don't when you stop. So there's just a system at play. And we just need to understand that's the game. And the game is that there's some of the smartest people on the planet, the best marketers, the best social psychologists, the best engineers who have one goal. And that goal is just to keep you on the screen and keep you clicking and scrolling. And it doesn't mean that that's bad or wrong. It just means that we need to understand that there is an effort that doesn't necessarily look out for our well being and we have to then be resistant to that at times. Right? We have to actually carve out that time for meditation, that time for going to walk, that time for going with a friend. Because otherwise it's so, so easy to get kind of lost in this game. And the game doesn't serve us, it just serves the other entities. And I'm not saying social media can't be fun and cool and playful. And I use it, it's just like to go from when it's actually useful to when it's actually addictive. We just need to be very, very aware of when that moment happens because maybe 20, 30 minutes, it's useful, it's fun, and after two or three hours there's at some point where the dopamine starts to run us. Not, you know, curiosity or interest or learning.
- [29:36]
A
I'm just, I want to push you a little bit on whether that's sufficient. I mean, I think it's necessary, but I'm questioning whether it's sufficient. The, I think most of us understand that social media is created by and for the benefit of the people who built the thing. And yet even you, as somebody who has many years of meditation practice under his belt, got sucked into an Instagram spiral last night. So given that we are doing battle with the smartest supercomputers known to man, every time we open our phone and engage with one of these platforms, is it enough to simply know they're trying to hook us?
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B
Well, what other options do we have, Dan?
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A
I don't know. You tell me, boss.
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B
Well, I think we need, I think we need new social media companies. I think there needs to be more variety. Right now we don't have a lot of choice, you know. So for me, I would really enjoy a social media company that allowed me to share, had a subscription price to it. You know, I can pay A$10 something a month and had a, just different way that it prioritized. I would love a social media company that said, all right Dan, you know, we all get one post a week, that's it. And so every time I go and I see something from you, I'm like, oh my goodness, Dan must have spent time on this because he only has one little token each week to spend and I want to see what he spent that token on. I want to see the content that he developed from that. Now it's a little bit just like, everybody just throws the kitchen sink into the algorithm, and the more the merrier. And so it's the quality for the user, I don't think is very strong. I think one of the solutions, and we're trying to do that, our Wisdom Ventures Fund, is can we find some new models for social media so people can still share and engage, but the algorithmic desires and the motivations are a little different.
- [31:25]
A
Yeah. I think it makes sense that if you move away from the ad model and toward a subscription model, then the incentives start to potentially align between the.
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B
And I think substack is moving in that direction.
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A
Yes, a little bit.
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B
We also invest in substack. Yeah. It's trying to find that balance. It's navigating that terrain and trying to do it in its own way. And I would love to see more efforts like that.
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A
But it does seem like you think that it's possible to bring some, notwithstanding your Instagram misadventures last night, that it is possible to bring some level of individual agency to our interactions with technology. I think you do believe that. And if that's true, what are the tools you would recommend?
- [32:07]
B
So the biggest tool that I recommend is just creating some barriers for your day. So the first hour of the morning, how do we spend that? The last hour of the evening, how do we spend that? Like, let's just start from there. Like, let's forget about the other kind of hours for now. But how do we spend that first hour? And can we make that first hour nourishing, supportive, healthy, regenerative for us? And that last hour of the day, how do we spend that? So there's, like, these bookends to your day. So one of the ways that I try and spend my day is the first thing I do before I do anything else when I wake up is I do my practice, which usually is about 30 minutes of sitting, sometimes longer. There'll be occasionally where I'll miss it for some reason, but generally that. And then I just try to get my ass outside as quick as I possibly can. So this morning I ran for about 30 minutes. Otherwise, I'll walk, I'll just, like, get outside. I'll get fresh air. I'll just feel like I'm more alive. And I try to do something similar to that in the evening where I get outside, I try to lower the lights in the house. I kind of, like, prepare for sleep, so there's this place to regenerate. And I think part of the challenge we have in our culture, Dan, is just because there's so many freaking amazing videos to watch in the world. And there's so many freaking amazing content There is that we just consume, consume, consume, consume, consume. Our nervous system never gets to relax. Our nervous system never gets attention. It never gets to just like stop consuming for a moment. And so my biggest thing is just like, carve out that first hour, carve out that last hour. I'm not telling you you need to meditate, do something that just nourishes you. And it's not about consuming, it's about connecting.
- [33:43]
A
So I just want to use one of my favorite douchey tech terms. I want to double click on what you just said. I do exactly that. I'm not the most disciplined person in the world, but I've really instituted a system where the first thing I do is I get up and I go outside, even if the weather's shitty. I stand in the garage and just get the natural light coming in and I bundle up and I usually work, I write, as do you. And so I'll usually just do my best thinking standing outside in natural sunlight for a while. And I won't really let myself engage with technology for the first hour or two of the day. My situation, I kind of reverse what you do. I'll usually start by working a little bit in the sunlight and then come inside and meditate for a little bit and then allow myself to see technology. Similarly, at dinner or after dinner, I will generally put my phone away and I might watch TV with my son. Sometimes we'll watch sports and play catch while we're watching. And then eventually the TV gets turned off and I do a bunch of walking, meditation and reading before I go to bed. So that's the system I've developed. I find that much easier than trying to insert breaks. I also insert breaks during the day, but a clean break is easier than kind of half assing it, if you know what I mean. Because they're so good at the by day. I mean people designing the technology that suffuses our lives. They're so good at hooking us. Really, I need a pretty firm barrier.
- [35:14]
B
Yeah, I'm the same way and I'm the same way. And so I do think you can look at your day and look at like. So to what extent am I aware of my inner state or to what extent am I just consuming, like hits of information? And I love the information. Like, I hope millions of people would listen to this podcast, for example. But I also realized that there's certain content that guides us inward and there's super content that it's just dopamine's hits and it keeps us focused outward. And I think the real life message is, how do we connect inward? And when I ask people sometimes, like, tell me the greatest experience you had on social media. Like, tell me the most amazing experience you had on social media. You spend four hours a day on this. Like, tell me what they're. Like, they just can't name anything. Like, oh, maybe there's this cat video. Like, we're just kind of in a zone. We're not really here. But if I say, all right, Dan, tell me the most amazing experience you had in the analog world. Like, I was with my kid the other day and I saw him smile, or there was this moment with his friend. I was walking. I said, like, there were so many experiences you have probably that your system felt nurtured by. And again, the other world of technology. It's not bad or wrong, and I love some of it. But if we really think about it, I think the juice, the, like, vibrancy is actually from the analog world.
- [36:31]
A
Oh, a million percent.
- [36:33]
B
And I would love to see new companies emerge that do that. I actually think when people ask me, what's the future of AI and stuff, I'm like, the future of AI in one way is all this AI, but in another way, like, imagine companies that just get people outdoors and just get people connecting and just like, address this sense of loneliness that so many of us feel and the sense of hollowness that so many of us feel and gets us out in nature, gets us connecting like you do in the morning. So I do think there'll be lots of efforts to support that in the world.
- [37:00]
A
We should talk offline because I do have a business idea along those lines.
- [37:03]
B
All right, all right.
- [37:04]
A
But just staying on the subject of how we can sanely engage with technology, I have a few ideas that I want to mention, but there's something in your book that I want to let you talk about, which is. And my friend, and you may know her, Catherine Price, who wrote a book called how to break up with your phone. She recommends this too. And I think, think it's really powerful, which is just doing our best sometimes when we have the wherewithal to pause, when our zombie arm is reaching for the phone and ask ourselves, what do we want right now? What do we need right now? Why are we doing this? Can you say a little bit more?
- [37:42]
B
Yeah. I think it's all, again, about motivation and intention. And one of the interesting things is, and I've been guilty of this myself, but, like, walk into any subway or a line at a store, and there's a moment where we're bored for a moment, right? There's a moment where there's no nothing to consume and we're just there and we're bored. 99.9% of people have a really hard time just being bored for a moment. We pick up our phones and we try to get something. It's like, give me something to feed this hollowness inside me, because I can't just sit here with this hollowness. What do you want me to do? Just be. And so I think we're running on this treadmill, but where's the treadmill taking us? And I don't think it's taking us to any place good. So I think it's a beautiful practice. When you're walking, just to walk. When you're standing, just to stand. When you go to buy something at the store, do you actually see the person you're buying the item from? Are you so busy you just, like, miss them completely? And you don't even make eye contact? So I think there's all these little practices. And then when we do use our phone, are we intentional about using our phone deeper down, Dan, There's a deeper issue here, which is just like, you know, what the fuck matters in our lives? And there's no shoulds. You wanna look at your fucking phone, look at your phone all day. I don't really give a shit. I really don't. Or if I want, like, just like, do whatever the hell you wanna do. But I do think it's really good to ask, like, what is my life about? We know two things. We know we have limited heartbeats, and we never know when those heartbeats are gonna end. Everybody, limited heartbeats. We never know when those heartbeats are gonna end. Maybe the heartbeats are gonna end in an hour, two hours, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. But we know that there's an end to this journey. And so what is it that you want to spend those heartbeats doing? And I think asking ourselves about that and reflecting on death and impermanence, that's the best motivation. And then living our life accordingly. When we get off, know that we're going to probably get off of that and lose the moment 10,000 million times. And then we just come back like, am I here now? Am I with this moment right now? And then something else happens, and I'm with this moment now. But I think that kind of reflection is so much more powerful than trying to create too many shoulds in our life and just really knowing, like, what's your karmic assignment here on the planet? And how do you live with love and heartfulness? Because I think that the more that we have love and heartfulness in our life, everything else is kind of imbalanced. And the more we don't have love and we don't have heartfulness, the more we're looking for something to kind of feed us or satiate us or complete us.
- [40:12]
A
When you say heartfulness, I'll admit that for me, that term provokes a little bit of a gag reflex. But what do you mean by heartfulness?
- [40:22]
B
Well, I guess Jon Kabat Zinn, our friend, says, when you hear me say the word mindfulness, if you don't also hear heartfulness, you're not hearing me correctly. And so I think there's a way of talking about mindfulness or presence or openness that is a little bit like, I'm moving my foot. The pressure, the feeling, which is all great, which is just very kind of like, narrow on a particular sensation. And then there's also just this kind of like, general bodhichitta or openness. And so when I use heartfulness, I think I'm talking kind of more of that kind of, like, openness and awareness, less as a very narrow direction and more as just kind of an openness to life direction, if that makes sense.
- [41:01]
A
Got it. Just to round out this section of the conversation I'm hearing, I have noted during our conversation six useful strategies for managing technology with an iota of balance and wisdom. Four of them we've discussed, and two I want to add. The first is to carve out the first and last hour of the day. Second is to pause and ask, like, what do you really need right now when you're about to pick up your phone? The third is to, you know, in moments where you would otherwise reach for the phone, like when you're standing online or something like that, to practice some mindfulness. And even if it's mindfulness of boredom, the bottom line, fourth thing, probably the most important recommendation is to really ask yourself what matters to you? How do you want to be spending the limited time we have here? And if the answer aligns with 5 hours a day on Instagram, then great, go for it. But it probably won't. So then you have some more thinking to do. I would just add two other things which are a little bit more superficial than the last thing. One is, I find that having a background of mindfulness, I'm not perfectly mindful I lose it all the time, but I've done enough meditation so that. And I like TikTok, you know, not Instagram. I'm much more on TikTok as a consumer. I create a lot for both platforms, but as a consumer, I like TikTok, but. But after 15, 20 minutes, I'm pretty much done. Some level of mindfulness kicks in where I'm like, this doesn't happen all the time. You know, I sometimes can go down a. Especially if I'm on a plane and super bored, I can go longer, but generally speaking, I just wake up and I'm like, yeah, this does not feel great. I'd rather meditate or go outside or talk to my son or talk to my wife. And then the final thing I would recommend is. And this is really quite superficial, but which is just to teach the algorithm to give you stuff that's actually more meaningful. I have taught the TikTok algorithm to feed me animal videos, comedy clips, and reunions between children and their parents or best friends who haven't seen each other in years. So I'm actually feeling pretty good. Most of the time I'm on the platform. Instead of looking for shit posters and conspiracy theories, I'm gonna add a few.
- [43:18]
B
More, if that's okay.
- [43:19]
A
Great, please.
- [43:20]
B
One is, do an experiment. Learn to see for yourself. Today I'm going to spend all my day on my phone, and today I'm not going to have my phone for the day. And then see where your system seems to see what quality of your life is better on one of those days. The other piece is actually, I have one. Have you heard of the methaphone, Dan?
- [43:41]
A
No.
- [43:42]
B
You'll know this. My friend Eric Antonow, he was out and he realized he didn't have his phone, and he got really, really nervous because his phone wasn't on his body. And he was like, I'm kind of like an addict. So he created this. This is a pink version. There's also a clear version just for.
- [43:58]
A
People who are listening. It's a. It looks like an iPhone, but it's like translucent plastic.
- [44:05]
B
So you put this in your pocket. You leave your phone at home, and you put this in your pocket and you go walking around. And when you have that moment that you're, like, anxious, it's like, oh, shit, my phone isn't on me. You can go and you can feel this. And so it gives you a sense of comfort even though your phone is not there.
- [44:22]
A
It's like a teddy bear for a second child.
- [44:24]
B
What's also really Fun is with you, with a group of people. Other people will all be picking out their phones and I'll just go to the cafe or something and I'll just look at this. Creates this great conversation piece about like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, what are you doing? This is just like my teddy bear. Yeah. So I can have something to support me. I don't know if you can buy them, but he's got them more and more available. The other thing, though, I think, which is kind of super important for me, one of my teachers, Stephen Levine, he used to say, we're not trying to be perfect. We're trying to find that within us that is perfection. We're not trying to be perfect, we're trying to find that within us that is perfection. Inevitably, in this life, we're trying to make these habits, we're trying to change this thing or that thing. And are we discovering what's inherent within us? The perfection within us, the Buddha nature within us? And I do think that those somehow need to go together. I think. Well, Dan, because I know people who, you know, they have all the goals and they have all the things set up and they follow their little structures and all their rules and they meditate. But I think we can easily miss that. There's this other aspect of life that is kind of beyond rules and guidelines. And the question is, are we accessing that?
- [45:36]
A
That can be hard for people to understand. Yeah, but it's something. The way I hear it is the expression that's coming to mind, the phrases that are coming to mind that. I can't remember who said this, which teacher said this, but I sometimes find these phrases coming to mind while I'm meditating, which is, there's nothing to do. There's no one to be. It's already here.
- [45:56]
B
Yeah. And just to sit with that as a possibility, there's nothing missing from this moment. And this moment is the only moment that's real. You're like, no, no, no. There was this other moment today, this other moment tomorrow, all these moments, and it's just like, what if this is the only moment that really matters? And it doesn't mean we can't plan and do all this stuff. But in general, are we in this moment now? As who has ever listening to this? Are you in this moment with us now? Are you onto some future moment? And of course, the mind has a tendency to go in the past and go in the future and worry about this and worry about that. But. But generally, are we living most of our Life right here, right now, or are generally, it's all about the past and it's all about the future. And one of the most beautiful things I talk about this in the book is, you know, when you have this incredible experience, you go on this great vacation, this wonderful lovemaking, this beautiful dinner. What happens after every one of those events, no matter how great it is, the book becomes a New York Times bestseller. You know, whatever that is. Something happens 100% of the time after every one of those events.
- [47:01]
A
What's next?
- [47:02]
B
The next moment happens, right? The next fucking moment happens. After the greatest vacation, something happens and it's the next moment. And are we dissatisfied with that next moment because the stimuli that made us feel happy is now gone, right? We have to turn off TikTok. We have to. The meal is over. We can't get the meal back. So then we start planning for the next dinner or the next vacation or the next book or the next whatever that is that we feel is going to fill this emptiness inside of us. And we feel it when the next moment happens. Because after the party, it's just us again, right? Just me lying in bed, sitting down. Or it's just Dan. Just me. You know, like all the applause, all the book, whatever it is that we're using is gone. And we get to be with that sense of hollowness.
- [47:52]
A
And.
- [47:53]
B
And I think to the extent that we can come comfortable with that hollowness, which I think is a beautiful aspect of meditation, it's just us with ourselves. Nobody's adding anything in. And we get to discover for ourselves what's actually true and what's actually real. To me, that's like, if we don't know that no amount of success matters anything, and if we do know that, we're kind of living in a place of success and you've probably met the same people. I mean, I met people who have freaking everything. You know, a hundred billion dollars. I was at a dinner, person next to me, $100 billion net worth more than that. Was he peaceful? No. Was he at ease? I wouldn't say so. Brilliant. Absolutely. But there's nothing in the external world that satiates that lack in the inner world. And so by doing the work in the inner world, it touches that itch in a deeper way. I love money, I love vacations, I love good dinners, I love good love making. I love all those things. But the question is, are we using them to kind of get away from ourselves, or are they just part of life's beautiful expression?
- [48:59]
A
Coming up, Soren talks about what is, in his view, the number one question for our time. I ask him whether he thinks we have enough time as a species to do this essential work. And we talk about whether the people behind the tech systems, including, including AI, that seem to be having such a pervasive influence on our lives actually have the best interest of the species at heart. This time of year, it's sensory overload everywhere but one feeling that we're all chasing Cozy and Bombas has the socks, slippers, tees, and basically everything you need to get there. There are lots of ways to get 10% percent happier. I would say comfortable socks have to fall into that category. I got some Bombas socks recently and I love them. In fact, my wife and I have been competing to see who can wear them, so maybe that is reducing my happiness just a little bit because it's leading to marital stress. Anyway, the socks are great. Super comfortable, super cozy. And the sock Scientists at BOMBAS have found a way to channel that energy into everything from slippers with the sink in cushioning to satisfyingly weighty tees. And that feeling? It does not stop after one wear. It keeps going. I can attest to that. Also worth noting, BOMBAS makes gifting easy. They've got answers for all of your gifting questions like what do I get my son's new marathon training girlfriend? Bomba's running socks have sweat, wicking and impact cushioning. What about your neighbor's fussy newborn baby Bomba? Bombas fit like a hug, and they're designed to feel soft and stay snug on even the wiggliest toes. One of the best things about Bombas is that they're mission oriented. For every pair of Bombas you purchase, BOMBAS donates one to somebody facing homelessness on your behalf. So anytime you get something cozy, somebody else does too. Head over to bombas.com happier and use the code happier for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B-A-S.com happier code happier at checkout. I'm recording this from a hotel in Dana Point, California where I'm giving a speech and I'm spending a lot of time in the gym because I've got spare time here and I'm wearing my new Ultra sneakers during my workouts and these things feel great and look great. I think the other people in the gym are a little jealous. We all know that building new habits requires a strong foundation that starts from the brain and goes all the way down to our toes. And that's why I Love Altra Running because they actually have reliable, intentionally designed shoes that make every step feel supported. It's not just for hiking or crazy long distance runs, even though they work great for that. The Ultra Fit Fit is designed to let your toes spread out naturally, which provides comfort, balance and strength wherever you are. When you're not bothered by cramped feet, you can get back to what matters. Building new healthy routines free your mind and your feet with Ultra Running and the Ultra Fit experience. Check them out now by visiting ultrarunning.com that's a L T R a running dot com. And remember to stay out there. Foreign Let me reset again. We're going through the five aspects of the spiritual compass that Soren recommends we all need. And in order to, you know, upgrade ourselves in. In a time of massive, incalculable change, we started by talking about really powerful technology companies. I'm going to go out of order here because the most recent utterances from you brought us right to the third aspect of the spiritual compass, which is cultivating presence. You have this concept of the presence span. What does that mean?
- [52:58]
B
I brought this up actually to Mark Hyman a while ago and he was just like, what? Huh? So there's usually lifespan and health span. So lifespan is how long you live. So, so, you know, I want to live to a hundred, right? So that's lifespan. But then if you think about living to a hundred, you're like, well, are you sick and bedridden for the last 30 years? That doesn't sound really fun. So it's like, it's not just about lifespan, it's about health span, right? Are you up and you're able to walk and able to hang out and able to do things that actually matters just as much as how long you live is like, are you healthy? 100% agree. You know, if I lived at 90, you know, I want to be walking and talking and doing all the things, so it totally matters. But then I thought, there's something missing in this is health span, lifespan, but the present span, which is it's like, how many moments of the day are we actually here? So I could be the healthiest person alive and I'm out running and I'm out lifting weights, I'm doing all these things, but am I actually in those moments or am I constantly working on this fear of death? And so I'm lifting weights and I'm running. I'm doing all these things because I'm afraid of dying. And so I'm never actually present for any of the acts that I do. And I come home and do I see my child? Do I hug my child? No. I'm like doing push ups all the time. Or, you know, I'm like in this constant state of doing and we completely lose touch with being. And so for me, presence span is as many of the moments of the day as possible. Can we just come back to being and being aware of what's in our body, what's outside of us, the people around us? And I feel like that presence is really the secret of life. And so it's not just about having more moments, but it's actually being in the moments that we're in. It hasn't caught wind or steam. Dan, I think you and I are the only people talking about it at present. But I really like the idea of health span, lifespan and presence span.
- [54:48]
A
I like it too. It reminds me of something. Shinzen Young, the great Zen teacher, I once heard him say that meditation extends your life, not because it makes you live longer, because you're awake for more of it. You're not sleepwalking. So what do you recommend? Very practically, in order to extend our presence span, there's a couple things.
- [55:10]
B
One thing I've always liked from Eckhart Tolle is just like he says, every situation is problematic. Every life situation is problematic. There's no non problematic life situation. So he's like, no, no, no. If I had a billion dollars, I would solve all my problems. That's just another problem. Those are just different problems. You have people wanting to borrow money from you. You have people trying to steal your money. You're afraid of losing your money. You've got kids who probably don't deserve your money. You've got to figure out what to. There's so many problems, right, that comes from that. But there's also problems that comes from not having money, right? So whatever spectrum we're on is just different problems. So just realizing there is no perfect life situation. So use whatever life situation you have and make the best of that life situation. But the real question is, are we connecting to life? Are we connecting to presence? Are we connecting to mindfulness? Are we connecting to love? Are we connected to all these qualities that matters so much more than our particular life situation? That said, I want to have a wonderful life situation. I want to have a wonderful house, I want to have a wonderful car, I want to have travel and all these things, but it can't be kind of the priority. And so I think in terms of a presence span, one of the ways that I feel it the most is when I'm out in nature and I'm in the trees and I'm by the water and I'm by the springs. Like, for me, that's huge. When I'm around family and friends and loved ones, I feel that more directly. Right. Like, I feel alive. I feel like I'm being seen. I'm seeing some other people. There's a sense of community. And I think some inner practice or contemplative practice always really helps me. So I think those are the three for me. Nature, time with friends, and some inner work. And I would say every day. You know, it's funny. I was looking at my calendar the other day and had all these different things. I'm like, hold it. I don't have a friend on my calendar today. Today you count. I count this as friends. Like, where's my friend time on my calendar? My meditation usually happens in the morning, but where's my time in nature on my calendar? So one of the things I just encourage everyone, look at your freaking calendar. And do you put a place for a friend and for nature and for some interconnection on that calendar so that it happens? Or is that the secondary thing? And everything else fills that? And if you have time for a friend, wonderful. But it's not mandatory. And what if we switch that around? What if we made those three elements, nature, friend, and inner world, primary? Every day it could be five minutes. Call somebody. Right. It's not like an hour, but call somebody. Talk to a dear friend, something. And it's changed my orientation to my calendar, Dan. Cause now I look at my calendar, I'm like, hold it. Does this represent my real values? And often it doesn't. And so I'm getting a chance to play with my calendar.
- [57:45]
A
That's really interesting. Calendar is probably the app on my phone I use the most. And it is. My calendar is an ongoing issue.
- [57:56]
B
Yeah. As you sigh.
- [57:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's keep going with the five aspects of the spiritual compass, because then I have a bunch of questions I want to ask you at the end about.
- [58:06]
B
And also, this is great. I actually don't use the phrase five aspects of spiritual compass in my book. Daniel was able to break that out, which is awesome. So I love the phrase.
- [58:14]
A
Okay. Another thing you recommend is to investigate your stories.
- [58:18]
B
Yeah.
- [58:18]
A
Can you say more about that?
- [58:20]
B
Yeah. So this is probably one of the more delicate and deep of all the different pieces. And so I don't know how much to go into my life and my particular story, but I grew up In a family that was pretty cool. Like, we were in Texas, and everything seemed kind of normal. And then at one point, my parents told us they were getting a divorce and that my mom was leaving and that I would then live with my dad. And this really ignited, I think, my spiritual life. And also a lot of trauma, because all of a sudden, I was kind of without a mom. And she was kind of going through a nervous breakdown at the time and wasn't able to raise her five kids and realized she was with a man that she never really loved. And she woke up one day, and it's just like, I have to change this. So she did it very unskillfully. I think as we look back, it's understandable, but it wasn't the most easiest part. So I was just about to go through puberty in this time, and all of a sudden, this experience happened, and I didn't know what to deal with. That pain, Dan. I'd never felt rage. I never felt shame. I'd never felt all these emotions that all of a sudden were just, like, alive in me. And I stuffed them down, to be honest with you. I just suppressed them. I didn't know how to feel them. I didn't know what to do with them. And I developed a story in that time that my mom left because of me. I must have done something wrong. There must be something inherently wrong with me. Why would a mother leave her child? I couldn't be mad at my mom at that time, because this was like, she's my mom. Like, she's amazing, right? It took me years of exploring life to figure that out. And I was working with a therapist. I was going through a divorce, and I was just like, what the fuck is going on with these relationships with women, Right? Like, I can't figure them out. I have got great friends and great work, a lot of things that are great. But there was, like, this thing that was, like, stuck in this world. And a therapist helped me kind of go back into that story. What was actually happening in those moments? And what was the story that you developed about yourself at that moment? And it just, like, hit me. I never really thought of it, like, oh, that was a story that I, like, concretized in my being that there was something wrong with me. It wasn't like, everything just, like, unhooked instantly. But there was a big unhook in that moment. Like, wow. There was this narrative that I had that was really directing my life. And I think we all have these narratives. We all have these stories. Some of the stories were from our family. You have to work hard or you better not work hard, or you have to succeed, or you better not succeed. Our family's all smart, or our family's all clean, or our family's all liberal or whatever. We all be these narratives and these unconscious narratives run our lives. And then we look at the world through these lenses and we think we're seeing reality, but really we're just seeing our stories. And so I think part of the journey is to become aware of the myths and the stories that we've either taken on or we've had trauma. Through that trauma, we've developed our stories. And so for me, that was a really important piece of the book to talk about, which is just like my own reflection on my stories and not condemning the stories, but just becoming conscious of this story and then questioning the story. Is that actually true?
- [61:30]
A
Well, first of all, that sounds really hard. What happened with your mom, though. I'm sorry. That sucks.
- [61:35]
B
And it was my introduction to Buddhism.
- [61:37]
A
Yeah. I'm glad it had positive ramifications. And it seems like a primordial wound. So what do you recommend? Because I completely agree. I think it's really important for us to investigate our stories. These kind of. I think you probably know Jerry Colonna, the legendary executive coach. He talks about subroutines that we all have this kind of code, these ghosts in the machine that. These old stories that we may or may not know, that may not have visibility into, but they're just driving our actions. So what would you recommend as modalities for the investigation that you're calling for? You mentioned therapy. Are there other ways in?
- [62:15]
B
I think so. Do you notice, Dan, when you get triggered? What things trigger you?
- [62:19]
A
I heard a great expression. If it's hysterical, it's historical.
- [62:26]
B
That's pretty good. My guess is there's things that trigger that. Like, they're like, what's Dan doing? Like, Dan seems like this nice guy. He's, like, easygoing. But then there's, like, these things. And usually our partners, our kids, our close friends, they know what they are. And we go back to this, like, raw space when that moment happens. And so you don't have to get too personal. But I'm guessing you notice those moments, right?
- [62:50]
A
Yeah. If I get the sense that somebody's accusing me of being a bad person, even if they're not, I've gotten feedback. I remember just freaking out when somebody, a colleague of mine, gave me some feedback that he'd heard from a female on the team who said something to the effect of. She noticed that I was, like, a little bit condescending with female guests. This was like, in 2016 or 15 or so. It was a while ago, early days of this show, and I just lost it. Yeah, it was hysterical because it was historical and I had some ancient conditioning around being a young kid and getting the message that I was somehow a bad boy.
- [63:30]
B
Yeah. And there might be then a story that developed on that pain that says I have to be a good person.
- [63:35]
A
Yes.
- [63:36]
B
And so whenever some feedback comes, you're like, no, no, no, I'm a good person. No, no, I'm a good person.
- [63:40]
A
Exactly.
- [63:40]
B
And it's just like. It's just like it doesn't allow that feedback because that person could be really sincerely just trying to give you feedback. And one of the things I noticed when. So when I was a kid, kids would tell me that we're going to hell because we weren't Christian in the neighborhood we were living in. And my original response, at least inwardly, was like, fuck you. I'm going to show you. Right. And so years later, my partners was like, every time I give you feedback, you would, like, respond like, fuck you. I'm like, oh, that was my survival mechanism all those years. Right. Like, I had to do this, that I had to prove my worthiness. So I think that's a great example. Dan is just like, when we get triggered, can we inquire what is the story? What is the pain that's getting ignited right now? And can I be lovingly curious about it? One of the ways I noticed when my son wanted a new computer at one point, and I said, no, and he's like, but, dad, you've always been so kind. You've always been such a generous dad. You've always been such a good dad. I'm like, you little shit, you're manipulating me. But the really great insight, Dan, was how he was manipulating me. He was manipulating me by telling me I was a good dad. Why was he doing that? Because he knew that that was my soft spot. Right. He knew that I had identity around being a good dad. And what do we fight for the most of anything? Our identity often. Right. Like, it's our sense of self. I'm a good dad. And so I think that's also really cool if somebody's trying to manipulate us or get angry at us. Like, what are they getting angry at us for? What do they manipulate us for? What is it that, like, charges us rather than blaming that person? How dare you say that to me? How dare you do that. To me, it's just like, what if we looked inward and just become curious and be like, huh, Maybe there's a narrative there.
- [65:24]
A
So the takeaway here is next time you find yourself triggered to use the psychotherapy speak or losing it, overreacting, it's an opportunity to check it out.
- [65:42]
B
Yeah, it's an opportunity to be lovingly curious. Now be like, what am I doing? I was so stupid. How could I have done that? It's just like, oh, there's something that got ignited. And it's great information. You know, I think our current president ignites a lot in me, and it's super interesting to explore. Like, what is that? How do I relate to somebody I might perceive as a bully? And what is my response to that? And it doesn't mean not to act or not to do this or not to do that, but it's just to become more conscious in how we engage. And I think, you know, Buddhists have a particularly hard time with this because Buddhists are like, no, no, no, I'm not angry. I'm not rageful. I'm not envious. Like, come on, dude, you are. You are. And I think to the extent we can, like, particularly people in the meditation world, like, realize, like, that's all good for us to hear. Of course we're all arrogant at times. Of course we're all envious at times. Of course we're all rageful at times. Of course this exists in all of us. It doesn't mean it's our who we are. But if we don't see it and acknowledge it, it just becomes our shadow. When it comes out in all these weird ways and you see these great teachers having sexual relationships with their students or stealing money or something, you're like, how in the hell did that happen? And it happened because those qualities weren't allowed in them because it didn't fit the identity. And so I try in my book to try to expand that and say, listen, we have to make space for all of this and see it clearly so that we can be more free.
- [67:07]
A
Okay, so as you said, when I talked about the five aspects of building the spiritual compass, that's kind of extra textual. That is not the way you talk about it in the book.
- [67:16]
B
But I love it. I love it, too.
- [67:17]
A
Okay, good. We've covered a lot of the aspects of building the spiritual compass. I'm going to pivot for a second because I think we spent a good amount of time on what we as individuals can do to upgrade ourselves, to evolve in an Era that is going to be quite tumultuous and involve a lot of rapid change. I want to broaden the discussion to the species. Given your unique perch, having written this book, having spent many years in contemplative spaces and many years in tech spaces, do you really think this evolution that you're calling for and trying to catalyze is going to happen?
- [68:00]
B
So I don't think anybody knows what's going to happen. None of us know before AI, none of us knew what one moment would be to the next moment. So I think we need to live in that mystery that none of us really know how things will gonna unfold. And the more love and curiosity we bring to it, that's probably the most important thing. At the same time, if you just wanna know kind of where I'm looking at this, where I'm looking at this is from. We've always wanted to see how far we can take technology. You know, when we create all these devices, we're just like, how far can we take this? And there's just something about humans that just wanna push it, right? Like, can we make a weapon that just destroys the entire world? Let's. We can, you know, I don't know. Humans just have that like interest and curiosity. We notice we can create an AI that does this, but can we create an AI that does that? Humans just love that shit. And I don't know why, but we just want to push things to the very, very edge. And I think we're in a time now where we're creating this intelligence where that's possible. My sense of our greatest hope is that there's an AI race and we need to create a humanity race. And a humanity race says that the AI will be nothing unless we grow as human beings. So then you're going to ask me then how do we grow as human beings? And I feel like that is the number one question of our time. That is the total number one question of our time. Can we go through a change that allows human beings to really care for one another and love one another again, versus this conflict and this separation around conservative and Republican and Democrat and liberal, like this world of identities and this world of, of friction in this world of me and you and otherness, or can we actually expand into something else? I don't know, Dan, if that's possible. It sounds kind of New Agey when I hear myself say it, but I think that would be the path that I would like us to walk on, which is just that inquiry becomes central to our lives. As a collective. And what we found over time, if you look at the studies, like, how many people would be happy if their daughter or son married somebody of an opposite political party? It used to be like, 80%. We're totally fine with it. Now it's like 20% would be totally fine with it. Because we've gotten so separated from anybody who thinks differently than us. They're the enemy. They're the other. And if there's some way that we as humans can break through of that, to me, that would allow us to enter this new chapter in a way that has a potential for life to continue without a lot of devastation.
- [70:31]
A
If I understand you correctly, the book was your attempt to, you know, to make a field guide for that.
- [70:37]
B
Not the field guide, but a Soren's Perspectives and Lessons and Learnings tour that direction. But not the, like. Not the thing. But just like, I want to contribute my insights to that path.
- [70:49]
A
Right. So I have some degree of confidence that if people follow the directions you laid out, which are all things that, you know, I talk about on the show all the time and my guests talk about that an individual could see real change in their life. But. So I don't really question what you're recommending. My question is whether enough individuals are going to actually do this work before it's too late.
- [71:12]
B
That's a great question. It's kind of interesting. You look at psychedelic experiences, and I haven't had a ton of them.
- [71:18]
A
You have not had a ton?
- [71:19]
B
I've not had a ton, but I have had some.
- [71:20]
A
Okay.
- [71:21]
B
But there's a moment where it just gets really, really freaking intense sometimes, you know, like, the breakthrough happens at the intense moment. Often we don't surrender. You only wake up when it's a nightmare. You don't always wake up when it's a beautiful dream. You wake up when it's a nightmare and you release and you let go. When you're forced to let go. Right. Because the intensity of the holding becomes so strong that you just. You have to go into a different place and to surrender. And so I do think that humanity is moving into some experience like that. And so we'll have a choice of whether to hold on or surrender. And I do think that the way that we're moving would lead to that kind of apex, if you will, or that experience. And so is there a way that we can collectively surrender? I don't know. I think it'll be an interesting journey. And I think that humans have had amazing capacity to change and to adapt and to grow. We're incredibly inventive people. We're incredibly resilient species so far. So I'm hopeful that we can. But I do think that often things have to get worse before they get better.
- [72:29]
A
Here's a related question. You're in the belly of the beast in San Francisco. You're an investor. Do you really think the people designing these systems, these AI platforms and technologies, have the best interests of the species at heart? The preceding set of technologies, social media and mobile technologies. I think we know the answer. No, they did not.
- [72:53]
B
Yeah.
- [72:54]
A
And there have been many, many deleterious impacts of that work. So why would we believe that this new generation of companies and technology and entrepreneurs would be any different?
- [73:06]
B
Two answers to that. The first answer is, let's say, Dan, you tell me that you're really concerned about something. Let's say you tell me. I'm really concerned about social emotional intelligence in schools. It's a big passion of mine and I'm deeply committed to that. And I'm like, okay, Dan, that sounds great. I'm going to ask you to run a hundred yard dash. And if you win this hundred yard dash, you beat everybody else. I'm going to give you a billion dollars. So you're like, great, Soren, I'm going to run this a hundred yard dash. You start running the 100 yard dash to win the billion dollars and halfway through your race, I say, hey, Dan, can we talk about social emotional intelligence in schools? I know it's really important to you. What's the likelihood you're going to stop in the middle of that race and talk to me about that issue?
- [73:46]
A
Well, since I'm fully enlightened, I have plenty of time for you.
- [73:49]
B
You're probably going to be like, dude, I'm racing. Shut up. That's a little bit of where we are with the AI world. There's deep sincerity and deep interest and they're in a race. I mean, I've never seen anything like this, like the hundreds of billions of dollars that are going into, like whoever's going to win this race is just a massive thing. And as you said, I'm a venture capitalist. Well, one of my, I don't like to call my, I'm a partner at a fund that's investing in this race. So I'm in the business, so to speak, but there is that race. And so getting people to stop and reflect in that race is very, very difficult. So that said, I do have to say that the people that I met who are in developing the next generation of AI are substantially different than the last generation of people who are building social media. And many of the people who are building the AI see themselves as the antidote to what social media and Google search has done. So their argument would be like, you know, when you search now and you're like, what's a great salmon recipe? You just go to one page after another of ads and you have to scroll through the ads and you have to find the salmon recipe and it's just really, really difficult. Our AI is just going to give it to you directly. You want a salmon recipe, we'll give it to you directly. You want to know this information, we'll give it to you directly. It doesn't do all that crazy world of ad clicks and advertisements that the old generation did. We're going to do a new generation of data that just gives it to you directly and we're going to be really, really help. And they see themselves as getting all this knowledge that's out there and making it accessible to you so that every kid who's now trying to study for algebra or advanced history, whatever, they have the same tutor that a rich kid has in the past. The rich kid has the tutor and gets more advanced knowledge and the poorer kid doesn't. And now their argument is we're going to even that playing field so everyone has access to the same knowledge and we're trying to build this better world. Now are they still wanting to win? Absolutely. Are they still motivated? Somewhat. Absolutely. What motivation will win out in the end? And does capitalism inevitably guide people towards actions that aren't in service to the humanity, but they're in service to the company and humanity? Second, we shall see. I do think at some point we'll have to reinvent capitalism, as daunting as that may look like. I don't know if that can exist in this new world that we're merging to or it's just a different form of capitalism. But I think this might be the thing that has us requestion the system and we have to somehow either adapt capitalism or create universal basic income. There's something that needs to be adapted here because I don't think the current structure in its form might work. Just because the people who get the power can kind of increase their power and the people who don't have access have less access. That's my way of answering that question, Dan. The people I know are very, very deep hearted and they're also a part of a system. I'm hopeful that they'll all make the right Decisions over time. But I don't know. And it's the same with us. Like, I don't make all of the right decisions over time. Sometimes I look out for myself. I'm like, this is better for my family and my child and my partner. And I think they're in that same way. And I think eventually we need guardrails from the government so that everyone's playing an evil playing field. And we need to figure out some kind of AI tax system so that we're not relying on the AI companies to all do the right thing. We're actually creating structures for them so that it's built in. The system is to do the right thing.
- [77:13]
A
Yeah, that makes sense. Because if so, if I'm hearing you correctly, you know, the book really is designed to help an individual weather the coming storms and take advantage of the coming opportunities. And sure, individual actions are important and available to all of us at the same time. We do need structural rethinks.
- [77:34]
B
I think so, yeah. I think asking people to just monitor themselves, as we saw with social media, doesn't work. It just. It hasn't worked. And if there's one mistake that we made, and I was at a dinner with a bunch of AI leaders a while back ago, and because it's kind of one of these great philosophers of our time, and everybody at the table agreed that we really made a mistake with social media, I don't think there's a lot of people who argue that we did that. Well, now can we not make that mistake with AI in the current administration? I don't think they're talking too much about the guardrails, but I'm hopeful that that becomes part of the conversation is how do we create the guardrails so that we don't let the worst part of capitalism take over.
- [78:19]
A
Two final questions for me. One is, is there something you were hoping that we would get to that we haven't gotten to?
- [78:28]
B
I was gonna ask you more questions. So we'll have to do another one where I get to ask you questions. Cause I was always. Whenever you'd ask me a question, I'd be like, I wanna hear what he thinks. But I also didn't wanna. I didn't feel like that was appropriate. So at some point, Dan, I wanna hear a lot of your thoughts on a lot of these subjects. But there was nothing else, though, that. No. That we. I thought we could talk about. I think we've talked about a lot of the pieces. I do hope that people realize I'm a big fan generally of AI and a big fan of the potential for humanity. I think whenever something like this happens, our first response is, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. And whether it's an administration we don't like or it's an AI we don't like, there's something we don't like. And like anything, the transformation happens sometimes in those. In that friction. Right. And something that awakens us. So I like to say that AI is an invitation, and this chapter is an invitation. If we can do it, well, something better can come forward.
- [79:24]
A
I love the optimism. Might get bumpy, but, oh, yeah, it's.
- [79:31]
B
Going to get very bumpy. I mean, if you read the news in our world today, at least in the United States, it's getting bumpier and bumpier for sure.
- [79:39]
A
Final question. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and then also other resources that they should check out from you? Sure.
- [79:47]
B
So the book is called the Essential Discovering what really Matters in an Age of Distraction. And it's kind of my sharing. I do want to write another book that's more directly on AI, but it's kind of my sharing on how we develop as humans and my own lessons and learnings from that. And kind of hosting this conference I've been doing for now almost 20 years, wisdom 2.0. And so I've gotten a chance to talk to a lot of the leaders of wisdom, if there's such a thing as leaders in wisdom, and a lot of the leading tech people. And so I kind of brought forth the kind of main insights I learned from that. I think if you're interested in kind of technology and kind of how we navigate it, the center for Humane Technology, started by Tristan Harris and some other friends from the Center Social Dilemma, they're a great resource for just looking at the kind of way technologies kind of emerge in society. Another Buddhist teacher and I, Jack Kornfield, Young Pueblo, who I think you also know. So we have two Buddhist teachers, if you call Young Pueblo and three other friends created Wisdom Ventures. And so we're. I'll say it, Dan, even though it's hard for me to say it. We're a venture capital company and we're investing in companies that we think are supporting greater mindfulness, wisdom and human connection in the world. And so that's one of our efforts as well, too, that we're seeing if we can put two words that usually don't go together at all, wisdom and venture together, and maybe make a difference and also show that you can make a profit and have a positive impact at the same time. Too early to tell whether you can do both, but we're trying. Oh, and I have a substack which I know I have A substack through wisdom 2.0 I write app.
- [81:24]
A
Great. We'll put links to all of that in the show notes Soren thank you very much.
- [81:28]
B
And I know you're on substack a lot too, right?
- [81:30]
A
Dan, I am a very active unsubstack. You did a great job. Thank you for doing it well.
- [81:36]
B
Thanks for the time and thanks for the friendship for many decades. Appreciated you as a human.
- [81:41]
A
Likewise, thank you again to Soren Gordhammer. Great to talk to him. Don't forget there's a guided meditation that comes with this episode. It's all about helping you identify the stories in your mind so that they don't own you so much. Also, don't forget we've got a live guided meditation and Q and A session coming up today. We usually do these on Tuesdays, but we're doing this one today because yesterday was a holiday. You can get both the meditations and the invite to the live sessions if you sign up over@danharris.com Also, don't forget the two events I've got coming up if you want to come meditate with me in person. New York City on the 18th with the great comedian Pete Holmes. And then on the 23rd a little event at Troutbeck, the hotel in the Hudson Valley. Links in the show notes finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. 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 Kashmir is our Executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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