← The Rich Roll Podcast
The Rich Roll Podcast
Beyond 10% Happier: Dan Harris On Meditation As A Superpower, Transforming Anxiety, & Finding Peace In Uncertain Times
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- [00:01]
Rich Roll
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- [03:21]
Dan Harris
Go clearing your mind is impossible unless you're enlightened or you're dead. We live in a universe that is characterized by non negotiable and ceaseless change. And if you can relieve your stress through meditation, and there are plenty of other modalities for doing so, go for it.
- [03:46]
Rich Roll
We're experiencing a wild moment in which the world feels increasingly chaotic, irreparably divided, and for many, downright antagonistic. How we respond or react to all of this, that's a choice, the healthy version of which requires both discipline and skill. And yet most of us are just trying to survive it, doing so without a core set of essential inner tools to manage our minds, to not only maintain our sanity, but to actually thrive amidst the turbulence. Here to elaborate on these tools is Dan Harris, a former war correspondent and anchor for ABC News, where he hosted Nightline and the weekend edition of Good Morning America and reported from conflict zones like Afghanistan and a rock.
- [04:34]
Dan Harris
Many of us labor under this delusion that we are somehow uniquely dysfunctional because we're having trouble starting a meditation habit or any other habit. But actually, just to know that it's hard for everybody is really useful. Get familiar with how wild the mind is so that it doesn't own you as much.
- [04:51]
Rich Roll
After a panic attack on live television, Dan discovered the transformative power of meditation. He wrote a best selling book about it called 10% happier. He launched a podcast of the same name and along the way has helped countless skeptics realize that meditation isn't about clearing your mind, it's about developing a practical relationship with your thoughts so they don't run your life. Today we explore the essential insights Dan has gleaned from his journeys into the deep waters of meditation and the many practical benefits even a brief, consistent practice will reliably produce.
- [05:26]
Dan Harris
There's so much more to this being alive thing that we tend to overlook. How do we go from rock to singing opera? How did we become conscious and like what is consciousness. You know, we can all get 10% happier and then the interest will compound annually. And that's really fucking good news.
- [05:49]
Rich Roll
Today is about you, my friend. It's good to see you. We were just joking. Like how we're both losing our grip on, like, how time works and reflecting on the fact that, like, the first time you did the podcast was 2014, then 2018, so it's been 11 years ago. And then seven years ago was the last time we did this. It's crazy. You're the 10% happier guy. You're the meditation guy. You're sort of the happiness guy too. But I'm curious because it has been so long since we've done this formally. There is an evolution that has taken place. You have matured as a human being. You've weathered some obstacles and some difficulties. You've deepened your. Not only your practice of meditation, but like, your confidence as a teacher, as a public facing teacher. And so I guess the first question is, are you more than 10% happier? Does the 10% compound as interest or is it a static. Where are you at with this? And kind of walk me through, maybe even I'm Russian dolling this right now. But like, maybe even like, you know, for people who don't know who you are, like, you know, give us a thumbnail kind of sketch of how you arrived at this place.
- [07:07]
Dan Harris
The. I just want to appreciate that. So many aspects of that question because, like, it is pretty insightful when you talk about the evolution. And I. And I'll say a little bit more about that, but the fact that you even notice it, I really appreciate. Yeah, sure. So just to step back and un. Nest these dolls. The. The first thing is that I had a panic attack on television in 2004. That's the probably the thing I'm best known for, which is so suboptimal in many ways. But if you Google panic attack, I just tested this the other day. If you Google panic attack on TV, I am the first result. And it's got like 20 million views. And you can see melting down on Good Morning America. That panic attack led me to meditation. And I wrote a book about meditation 10 years after the panic attack called 10 Happier.
- [08:06]
Rich Roll
Which is now 11 years ago, right?
- [08:08]
Dan Harris
Yes, 10 plus years. 11 years ago. And after the book came out, you know, I was, I wasn't. I was a network news anchor and, and I didn't have any plans to stop doing that. And I actually didn't think the book would amount to anything. I. I mean, Barbara Walters literally Told me, don't quit your day job. So I was like, I was thinking this would be an interesting little risk. It would probably go away quickly, and I go back to anchoring Nightline and Good Morning America or whatever. Anyway, the book came out. It was way more successful than I thought it was going to be. I kind of caught meditation, like, at the right point in the hype cycle, you know, it just. In the mid 2010s started to really take off. And so my book came out at, like, just the right time. And so I started a podcast and a meditation app and all this other stuff. And to the extent that anybody knows. Knows who I am now, it's probably like, I'm the meditation guy. But as you pointed out, and I really appreciate you noticing this, I really have evolved as. After I followed you into this weird space of podcasting, and I've done not as many episodes as you, but over eight years, 700 interviews, and I. I really. I'm still a really dedicated practitioner of meditation and of Buddhism, but I. I've moved into. And. And this is similar to what you've done, like, into fitness and the benefits of nature and the many, many aspects of the skill of relationships, including your relationship to yourself and our relationship to food. And so I really now think of myself as in. In very similar vein to what you do, as investigating, like, every aspect of.
- [09:48]
Rich Roll
Doing life better in that there is this evolution. Like, I think you've always sort of seen yourself. You're talking about your relationship to yourself. Like, you've always seen yourself as this sort of skeptic. Right? Like, I'm sort of begrudgingly, like, going into this world, I'm going to tease out some things and I'm going to share the. Share these things with fellow skeptics. But you're not a skeptic anymore. You know what I mean? I think you still imagine your audience to be made up of many skeptics, and you're very skilled at translating challenging ideas in a digestible way. But the whole, like, kind of moniker of skepticism itself, that's. That's sort of evaporated. Like, you're. You're all in here.
- [10:29]
Dan Harris
I'm all in. You're absolutely correct about that. I'm all in and in. In many ways, and I do require evidence. So in that sense, I'm skeptical. And if somebody comes to me.
- [10:42]
Rich Roll
Healthy skepticism.
- [10:43]
Dan Harris
Yeah, I think I'm not cynical, and I think I was kind of. I had a corrosive cynicism that somehow I got over enough to Write this, to write the book I wrote and whatever. But I. I still have high journalistic standards for, like, rigor. If you're gonna make a claim to me, I need it to be backed up. You know, we can get into this at some point, but, like, I have a lot of problems with manifestation and these claims that through the power of positive thinking, you can get or do anything you want. I just, I think this. That seems demonstratively false and dangerous. And so, yeah, I'm a skeptic about things, about claims that lack evidence.
- [11:23]
Rich Roll
How would you characterize your evolution as a meditation practitioner from the early days of putting this book out to kind of your relationship to it now?
- [11:35]
Dan Harris
I think when the book came out, I was practicing, like, I don't know, maybe 30, 35 minutes a day. And then for a while, I actually boosted that to two hours a day. Wow.
- [11:47]
Rich Roll
Now I'm in one sitting or.
- [11:49]
Dan Harris
No, no. My rule was I can do it in whatever dose as many times over the course of the day. And there was, in a perverse way, it kind of fit into my life because there were many years where I was continuing to be a news anchor while also. And traveling and doing stories for the news, while also traveling around to give speeches and. And writing more books and hosting a podcast. So I had a day that was quite varied. Involved a lot of time on airplanes and car and Ubers. And so I would sneak the meditation into those sessions, into those little interstices of the day. Now I'm more like an hour a day, and I kind of try. I try to do like one big sit in the morning, maybe 30, 45 minutes, and then I do quite a bit of walking meditation. And we can talk about that if. If it's interesting to you before I go to bed. So I sometimes. Well, north of an hour, but roughly about an hour a day. And it's a little. It's much saner now because I've serially divested myself of all of my professional responsibilities. I quit abc and, yeah, so I have more time to do.
- [13:00]
Rich Roll
And if Instagram is any evidence, like, you don't live in Manhattan anymore, right? Like you live upstate somewhere or somewhere else. Yeah, yeah. So it looks like there's a lot of, you know, woods and things like that.
- [13:11]
Dan Harris
Yes, things have really changed. I mean, when we first met, I was full on in the news. I had written the book and I really believed in meditation, but I was, you know, I. I was anchoring Nightline and the weekend edition of Good Morning America, and I wanted to Keep climbing that ladder. I never saw myself stopping. I was also a very dedicated New Yorker. I married a woman who was raised in Manhattan. And I. That's. That's what I thought our lives were. Would be the 10% happier part of my life got so big, I couldn't do both things at the same time. The other thing that happens, the pandemic. And we had a young child, and he was not doing well in the city. And actually, remember the first day we rented. Temporarily rented a house in the suburbs, and I drove up a day after my wife and son drove up, because I was bringing our cats. And I arrived and I. I let the cats loose in the house, and I went out into the backyard, and our son was playing in the pool. And he got out of the pool to go get, like, a toy on the side of the pool. And I heard him say to himself under his breath, this is the best day of my life. I was like, shit, man, we're never going back.
- [14:26]
Rich Roll
Yeah.
- [14:26]
Dan Harris
And so now we live in the. All of the things I never thought I would be. A meditator and a suburban dad. Like, that's what I am.
- [14:34]
Rich Roll
Well, this gets at the heart of one of the myths of meditation. Like, for the skeptical person out there, like, if I start doing this, it's gonna kill my ambition. I'm gonna lose all my money. I'm gonna sit around and become, like, a couch. You know, it's like. And so you're just igniting all of those fears in people. Talk a little bit about truth versus fiction when it comes to kind of our relationship to the sort of expectations of modernity and kind of how we see ourselves in terms of, you know, success and failure.
- [15:11]
Dan Harris
I wish the technology worked well enough that it. It made you so happy that nothing mattered. Like, I wish that just made you so relaxed that it was, you know, an IV drip of Klonopin, you know, for the rest of your life. Like, this is not how it. It works. You know, yes, I live in the suburbs, and yes, I quit my job at ABC News, but I have a. A very robust professional life where I'm engaged in writing more books and hosting and giving speeches and launching a substack. I have my own little media company, and I am. And I work probably seven days a week, not. Not full days every day, but I'm incredibly ambitious and engaged. I think what has changed is, first, I'm dedicating my life to something that I feel is incredibly constructive. And two, I think. And I haven't totally conquered this Demon. But I think I'm in a better place in terms of, like, what is motivating me. If you're listening to this and you desire success, it's just interesting to check in with like, what, why? And I'm not anti success. I'm very pro success. But what's driving you? And for me, a lot of it was filling an unfillable hole. And I think I'm a little less caught up in wanting to win and accumulate and achieve just because it will look good or feel good or make me a ton of money that I don't even know what I would do with. And I'm a little bit more motivated by, you know, I have like a little tattoo right here that says FTB oab, which is like a Buddhist phrase for the benefit of all beings. And it's a, it's kind of off brand in its sincerity. But like, I, I try to be motivated by that. And I think you can be motivated by that and still be really successful. And worldly terms, it's just a difference of two motivations.
- [17:15]
Rich Roll
Extrinsic motivation, like the approval of strangers and status and all these sorts of things. Or maybe finally your dad is going to give you the pat on the back that you've always wanted. All that kind of shit versus the intrinsic motivation of, I want to feel like my life has meaning. How do I get that? Well, service to other people, like the benefit of others, of course, is like the pathway to that. So it's just, it's not a lack of motivation. It's just a qualitative difference in where that motivation is generated from.
- [17:48]
Dan Harris
I think that's really well summed up and I think it can still end up with some of the trappings that many of us want. You know, I have a nice house, a nice car, and I can afford nice vacations, but I'm not like a, you know, and I like nice stuff. I mean, I do. I mean, I was raised in a capitalist context and, and I have learned through making lots of mistakes to be a businessman. It's just that I recognize that when the engine is being fueled by extrinsic stuff, it just doesn't feel as good, it doesn't work as well. And actually when I'm being motivated by, for lack of a less gauzy term, love, that's a cleaner burning fuel. Like I'm. I wake up in the morning and I do this super cheesy thing of when I open my eyes, like, all right, my goal today, I say the same thing. To myself every day. My goal today is to make awesome that helps people do their lives better while working on the relationships in my life, including my relationship with myself. That's. That is. That is incredibly powerful fuel for doing the enormous amount of work that I do. And I don't think this is passivity or resignation or never wearing leather again and moving to a monastery in upstate New York. Like, I have no beef with any of that. But if the people. If we're trying to address in this portion of the conversation a skeptic who thinks that meditation is going to make you lose your edge, I just don't see that happening.
- [19:28]
Rich Roll
You're a cultural Jew, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but kind of a secular guy that goes hand in hand with skepticism and also correct me if I'm wrong, but there has been kind of a gravitation more and more towards a Buddhist kind of lens on meditation. There's all different kinds of meditation traditions and practices. Why is it that you have kind of selected this as your. As your sort of discipline of choice? And what have you learned from that tradition?
- [20:02]
Dan Harris
I mean, it's kind of who I fell in with. Right. When I first started getting interested in meditation, I was reading books. I just happened to be reading books by Jewish Buddhists. In fact, the first book I read was my wife gave me a book by this guy, Dr. Mark Epstein, who's a psychiatrist.
- [20:21]
Rich Roll
And in New York, there's a lot of Jewish Buddhists.
- [20:23]
Dan Harris
Yes, there are. Yeah. And we can talk about what the.
- [20:25]
Rich Roll
Reasons are for that. It is. I'd like to know, because it is. I've made that observation. It's super interesting. Anyway, go ahead.
- [20:30]
Dan Harris
And I'm happy to talk about. Because I have. I have a lot of thought. I mean, I'm very close with these folks, and I am one now. So I was reading Mark's books, and then I called him up and it was like, I basically asked, will you be my friend? And he said yes. And so we're still. I mean, I was still very good friends. I met him and then I met Sam Harris, who I know you know, and he. Sam, who I knew at that time, this was in like 2008 or 9. He was not out really as a med. He didn't have a meditation app or anything like that at this time. But he had spent many of many years in his youth as an avid practitioner of meditation, and during that time had become friends with teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. You can tell from the last names that these are Jewish people. And. And Sam introduced me to Joseph, and Sam got me into my first meditation retreat. And so I basically ended up knowing a lot of these Jewish Buddhists, and now I know a lot of non Jewish Buddhists too. But I fell in love with the tradition. Somebody. I'm going to a dinner party the other day in a couple of nights in advance. The organizer sent out a note. I think you were actually invited to this party, but you can't come. Jeff Krasno.
- [21:48]
Rich Roll
Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [21:49]
Dan Harris
And Jeff sent out an email saying, as a, as a conversation prompt, what's the best compliment you've ever received? And the best. I can. Think I can. I know exactly the best compliment I ever received. I was on a 10 day meditation retreat during the pandemic, and it was not at a retreat center. It was like a friend of mine, we just used his summer home in Maine, and we brought in a. A teacher to teach us, which is a very. We were very lucky to be able to do this. The teacher's name is Alexis Santos. And at the end of the 10 days, the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein, who's this legendary meditation teacher and a very close friend of mine, showed up just to kind of hang out with us for a few days. And when he arrived, he asked Alexis, how did Dan do? How was his meditation? And Alexis said, dan loves the Dharma. And that is about the truest thing you can say about me.
- [22:41]
Rich Roll
Tell me more about that.
- [22:42]
Dan Harris
This tradition of that that can be practiced as a religion and millions of people do, and that's beautiful. I'm totally fine with that. But this tradition is really a science of the mind. And many of its observations and practices have been maybe validated is too strong a word. Well, in some cases, the practices have been validated through modern neuroscience. And there's a lot of overlap between the way modern physicists view the universe and the way the Buddha did. And so it's consonant with scientific. The scientific worldview. I was raised by scientists. I'm married to a scientist. I'm not good at math. So I did not become a scientist myself. But this inherently sort of rational, logical set of ethical precepts and mental exercises, which is the way I practice Buddhism, is incredibly beautiful and helpful. And, you know, the Buddha himself was not a God or a prophet or anything like that. He was a mortal man who died of food poisoning in his 80s and literally said to people, do not take anything I say on face value. Come see for yourself. Test it out in the laboratory of your own mind. So there are some metaphysical claims in Buddhism and I have no evidence for any of them and therefore don't pound the table in their defense. Okay, maybe we're reborn, but I don't know. However, what I do know is that doing the practices of training your mind through meditation and trying to behave, you know, in ethical ways has transformed my life. And I think at a time in human history where we appear to be on the precipice in many ways, to the extent that I can muster any optimism about the future of the species, it's not necessarily that I think everybody needs to perform to be a Buddhist, but some of these inner technologies that were developed in the Dharma and in other spiritual traditions, that appears to be the route towards salvation, if there is any.
- [24:52]
Rich Roll
For us, the popularity, the mainstreaming of meditation is just skyrocketed from the days in which you first launched your book. I mean, the timing of that book was like perfect. But, you know, in the interceding decade, like, it's just, it's, it's exploded. Like, very few people are not familiar with what it is anymore, nor are there kind of like weird hippie hang ups around it anymore. Like, and that's by dint of, you know, that your previous app and like, we're going to get into that, but you know, all the apps out there and it's just part of the discourse. Right. But I think within that, there's still a lot of growth in education. I think most people probably think about meditation as a stress relieving hack or a way to reduce your anxiety or perhaps be a little less reactive, a little more present in your life, and the inquiry kind of stops there. So maybe talk a little bit about the more expansive kind of experiences that you had and take it beyond those kind of base level benefits.
- [25:57]
Dan Harris
You know, I want to be honest that there may be people in the dharma world or in the meditation world who disagree with what I'm about to say. But I have no problem if you're using meditation as a stress relieving hack. We're stressed. And if you can relieve your stress through meditation, and there are plenty of other modalities for doing so, go for it. I think that's beautiful. And so if, if you want to just nibble around the edges of this thing. Yeah, that's whatever works for you. I am dogmatically non dogmatic. And I think if you're curious about what resides at the deep end of this pool, there's an enormous amount there. Look, we, we live in a universe that is characterized by non negotiable and ceaseless change. And when you can't adapt to the graying of your beard as I look at you, or the graying of my hair as I look at myself in the mirror, if you can't adapt to the change in culture and politics, if you can't adapt to the fact that everybody you know and everybody you love is going to die, if you can't adapt to these very hard facts to say out loud, and facts that we spend most of our lives trying to deny, you're going to suffer. And there are practices out there that can help you ease into this reality of ceaseless change. And they can help you see that the self, the inner rich, the inner Dan that we spend so much of our time trying to build up and defend actually isn't there on some important level right now. That's a very hard to grok esoteric truth. So let me see if I can put it in a, in a way that would make it actionable for any, you know, anybody right now. And I'll take this from Joseph Goldstein. When you're in the grips of a very powerful emotion, generally, linguistically we say I'm pissed or I'm anxious. What if you just switch the terminology to there is anger or there is fear, then you're not so identified with the emotion. You're not claiming it as your own, which, as one great Buddhist monk said is a misappropriation of public property. You can then work with it. You can view your emotions as meteorological patterns, a storm that comes together because of a variety of atmospheric conditions and can be worked with. And that is just hugely liberating. And so I'm just giving you a little bit of a taste of the way the Buddhists view the mind. And that's quite different from focus on your breath for a minute or two and then every time you get distracted, you start again. That's basic meditation and it can be really helpful. It can give you some distance from your inner chatter. But that's just the first step in a, in a really rich path that I personally have only taken a few steps down. You know, there, there are many, many people out there. Like, again, I'll go back to Joseph Goldstein, who's been practicing for 60 years. He does three months of silent meditation a year. He's on a silent meditation retreat at his house.
- [29:23]
Rich Roll
He's the goat. He's the, he's the goat. He's like the all time goat, right?
- [29:27]
Dan Harris
I mean, there are lots of goats out there right now because you know, here, right. Locally in Los Angeles. Jack Kornfield, who's an old, old friend and confederate of Joseph, lives here. Judy Goodman lives around here.
- [29:40]
Rich Roll
Sharon Sulzberg, she's the loving kindness person.
- [29:43]
Dan Harris
There's the Dalai Lama himself. And then there's these, you know, there are all these Tibetan lamas whose names we don't know because they're not out there writing books who are, as a friend of mine once said, it's like there are, there are these Socrates living in the mountains of Nepal, you know, these incredible minds out there. So what has given me so much faith? And by faith, I don't mean the blind adoption of views that I can't prove, but confidence. That's what I mean by faith, confidence. And that's the way it's generally translated in the Dharma. What's given me so much confidence in the view value of this path is just meeting people who are different. You know, like you spend time with Joseph Goldstein. He doesn't trail pixie dust out of his rear end. It's not like he's, he's, you know, I've spent a bunch of time with the Dalai Lama. These are, you know, they're flesh and blood human beings who have nights where they don't sleep well or wake up in a bad mood or get bitten by a mosquito and they don't like it. But they are handling the vicissitudes and vexations of daily life in a vastly different way. And that's really compelling. That's really compelling.
- [30:57]
Rich Roll
There's a lot in what you just shared, I mean, I think to tease out a few ideas. The first being this notion that you can be an observer of your own emotional state and not self identify with it is like a superpower, right? There's a dualism in that, I think a little bit that gets tricky, but. But that alone allows you to kind of self regulate in a really powerful way. And there's an immediacy to that too. Like, my introduction to that idea was like in aa, like, feelings are not facts or emotion just be present with the emotions. If there's one thing emotions do, they always change. And if you can just observe it and detach a little bit from how you feel about that, which is layering on, want more emotion on top of that emotion and just allow it. Because I think in our lizard brain, we think we're going to die, right? It's going to kill us. And so we, we tense up and we react. But to be that observer and allow it to pass and and when you've had that experience of, like, oh, it went away, or it changed, it shifted. These are shape shifting all the time, right? It's an amazing skill that's worthy of, like, developing.
- [32:07]
Dan Harris
You know, you can do it in just little ways in your life. I'll just give you. This is another thing from Joseph Goldstein. I was having lunch with him a couple months ago, and I was. We were joking about how I constantly, like, lifting ideas from him and using them in places like this. And he's like, yeah, I stole it from other people. We're part of a. I use this phrase that I love.
- [32:28]
Rich Roll
He's like, who owns the ip?
- [32:29]
Dan Harris
Exactly. He said, we're part of a lineage of thieves. And like, and I love that we are part of a lineage of thieves. And like, we, you know, great. I'm not a great master, but great masters have been, you know, building upon the wisdom of the people before them for a long time. So in that spirit, I'll give you, just in case this sounds like, impossibly ethereal to people, try this. The next time you have a desire to check your phone, to eat a sleeve of Oreos, to say something that's going to ruin the next 48 hours of your marriage, whatever. The next time you have a desire, see if you can stop and watch it for a second. You will notice that the desire will come and go. And on the other side of that is immense freedom. It's like you've been released from the jaws of a shark. Oh, yeah. This desire, which felt like monolithic, it was coloring my view of reality. I need this fucking Dorito. I need it. And then just. Just be cool with that for a second, you know, See how it shows up in your body. Watch it come. It will go. Because everything goes. And then what's left? What's left is something new. But it is not going to be that desire anymore. And that is. That's freedom. When people on the spiritual path talk about freedom, I mean, this is, I think, a big part of what they're pointing toward. The. The fact that we spend so much of our lives enthralled and sourceled by this inner dialogue and these powerful emotions. And we're just buffeted by it all the time. We have no way of stepping outside of it. And that is what meditation, and I think, on a deeper level, moving into the Dharma can do for you. And honestly, I think that's just the beginning.
- [34:28]
Rich Roll
So I just got back from south by Southwest, which is this incredible conference held in Austin every year where I had the privilege of sharing the stage with my friend Baratunde Thurston for this panel on the art of interviewing and why long form conversation still matters in our bite sized content world. And it was super fun and Austin of course is just great. One of my favorite places to visit. The food, the people, the energy. Barton Creek Town Lake. I love it there. But this time I didn't stay in a hotel like I've done in the past. I stayed in an Airbnb, this fantastic house that I shared with members of the Voicing Change team, which made such a huge difference in the whole experience, allowing us to connect better, share our experiences and really deepen the richness of the conference in this beautiful, more communal setting rather than all being separated in boxy, nondescript rooms. And all of this left me thinking about how our living spaces can serve multiple purposes, especially when we travel, and how Airbnb is this very cool and practical way to share your space when it makes sense for your situation. The extra income from hosting can actually help fund these enriching experiences, which feels like a pretty smart way to think about it. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host we are brought to you today by Calm. Everything about modern life feels custom, designed to distract us from what's truly important. And what does that do? Well, it undermines our ability to focus on what matters most, such that moments of peace can feel almost impossible. The solution to this is mindfulness, which is basically an antidote that is available on a platform I'm grateful for called Calm, the number one app for sleep and meditation, giving you the power to calm your mind and change your life. Now there are many meditation and mindfulness apps out there, and I think what makes Calm different and special is the wide variety of its tools. There's guided meditations, of course, course, but also tons of super valuable expert LED talks that provide new perspectives on handling life's challenges and of course their legendary sleep stories to lullaby you into a deep slumber just a few minutes each day, I'm telling you, can work wonders for your well being, your mental clarity, your groundedness, all of which in my experience is just invaluable. So stress less, sleep more, and live better with Calm. For listeners of the show, Calm is offering an exclusive offer of 40% off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com richroll go to c-a l m.com richroll for 40% off unlimited access to Calm's entire library. That's calm.com richroll to put the hat back on of the meditation averse or the newbie or the less informed. That person is the person who typically says something like, I tried meditation. My mind was attacking me. I can't sit still. I'm a bad meditator. Not realizing that that is the practice to just draw attention and notice how your mind is operating. It is about your relationship to your. Your own mind. And the more that you can notice that that's the beginning stages of being able to, like, exert some agency over that. So you're actually very effectively meditating if your mind is going crazy, if you're simply noticing it 100%.
- [38:14]
Dan Harris
And I think one of my big jobs now on the planet is just to point this out to people. There are millions of people out there who are interested in meditation or aware of its benefits, but they're not doing it. And one of the reasons they're not doing it is they have fallen prey to this pernicious misconception that in order to meditate, you need to clear your mind. You've probably heard me make this joke before. But clearing your mind is impossible unless you're enlightened or you're dead. That is not the goal of meditation. The goal of meditation is to get familiar with how wild the mind is so that it doesn't own you as much. So in the moment where you sit and try to focus on your breath, and then you inevitably notice that you're planning a homicide or, you know, thinking about what for what's for lunch. Many people tell themselves, oh, I'm failing at this, I can't do it. But actually, that moment is proof that you're doing it right. What you want over and over and over again is to have a collision with the voice in your head, your inner narrator, so that you don't act out all the shitty ideas that your narrator is serving up to you all day long. And that isn't. That's a superpower. That's mindfulness.
- [39:26]
Rich Roll
There are these practical, real world impacts and benefits that you can realize from this. But you said it yourself, the real purpose here is to develop a relationship with your own mind and then to even take that a step further, to recognize the true nature of reality. Right? And now I'm going to thieve from Sam Harris in the Waking up app, like, from his perspective and the way that he teaches. It's a practice of learning how to wake up from this dream in which we perceive our surroundings as real, but in fact are not. And that includes this whole notion that we are a self and we can go down that rabbit hole, we don't have to. But the point being, the more adept you become at this practice, the more profound the questions and the answers become. Like there is no endpoint to this, but the more fascinating and revealing it becomes. And so I guess where are you at with the non dualism aspect of this and sort of convening with reality as it actually is and disabusing yourself of this idea that you are actually Dan Harris to begin with?
- [40:41]
Dan Harris
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it breaks your brain, right, to think about it. It's hard to talk about it. And I sometimes worry about talking about it too much because it can seem off putting or frustrating to people. But I'm a. I mean, I'm four square in Sam's camp. I was listening to his app this morning. You know, he. He's right about all of this, that the, the. The notion of non duality, which is we think we're some. There's some tiny little homunculus of Rich behind your eyes, in between your ears, peering fretfully out at the world. But it's all just nature, right? I love this phrase. There's a Burmese master, Sayada Utah, and he will have his students occasionally drop this phrase into their minds in their meditation. This is nature. Like we feel in our marrow, like we're separate from the universe. It's me, Rich, in here navigating this, this hostile world. But every thought you have, every embarrassing instinct is just an expression of the universe. It's all nature. You are not separate from the world. You are nature. And what Sam is pointing at in his app, which is an incredible resource, the Waking up app, what he's really trying to get people to get in touch with is this dualistic view of the world. Like I am noticing my breath. I am talking to Rich. It is true on one level, right? It's true. You and I are sitting here and I'm in my body and you're in your body. But on some really deep and actually quite accessible level, if you're doing the right practices, you can see that it's all part of nature. It's all part of consciousness. And I think Sam has designed a really good app to kind of gently get people there because it's very frustrating to hear people talk about non duality. And I, we do it a lot on my show. And it's. Those are the episodes I'm always the most worried about because it just takes a while to get it. And if you don't get it. It can be annoying.
- [42:48]
Rich Roll
It's very difficult to get.
- [42:49]
Dan Harris
Yes.
- [42:50]
Rich Roll
Basically, this idea that everything is happening in our head, you know, and disabusing people of the idea that you even have a head, like, just to even conjure that and wrap your mind around that is almost impossible. But I think the way in and the way that Sam kind of gently tiptoes you towards this is the practice of noticing thoughts as they arise and getting people to understand that this is happening on its own. Like, you're not willing a thought to occur. These thoughts occur. So from whence do they come? You know what I mean? And that, I think, gets you into this sense of connectedness and oneness and then that, like, what is free will? Like, all of these. There's a domino effect here that requires some understanding of quantity, quantum physics and neuroscience and the like, which means. I mean, to me, I interpret that. It just gets more fascinating because this is like, what is even happening, you know, Like I mentioned to you, Annika Harris was here the other day, and she's got this fantastic new audio documentary series, Lights On. And in that, like, she talks about, like, the trippy kids, like, the kids who are, like, when are the adults gonna actually tell us what the fuck is happening? You know? And we kind of live our lives blithely, kind of ignorant and unaware and incompetent. Curious about, like, the nature of, like, all of it.
- [44:12]
Dan Harris
Yeah, we live our lives. I. Well, I'll speak for myself. So much of my life is just consumed by the mundane and we're shutting out the majesty of the universe. And we're living. You know, sometimes it's described like we're living in mansions, but we're spending our whole time under the stairs on the first floor. Like, there's so much more to this being alive thing that we tend to overlook. And just starting to play around with contemplative practices like meditation, non dual meditation, which is part of the Dharma, but it's also part of other traditions. It can be, like, mind blowing in a really nice way. I just.
- [44:51]
Rich Roll
But it's intimidating for somebody who's like, you know, new to this or just trying to get their feet wet.
- [44:57]
Dan Harris
Well, let me. So I'm glad you said that because let me just throw a couple of little practices that might make it less intimidating because I always like to try to take it out of the clouds and put it here on planet Earth just for. For. Especially if you're new, one little exercise you can do. This also comes from Joseph Is just, you know, in the course of the day, every once in a while, notice that you're thinking, I've just had a thought. And the thought is, I need to go to the bathroom. Okay, That's. I don't actually have to go to the bathroom, but hypothetically, you just had that thought. Then just do this little move in your mind of like, go look for that thought. Where is it now? Like, what. What happened to it? Where. What is a thought? Just exactly like, what. What's a thought?
- [45:40]
Rich Roll
Where is it located?
- [45:41]
Dan Harris
Yeah, where is it located? Where does it come from? Where does it go when it's done? That. That gives you a sense of the mystery of consciousness, that we know that the lights are on for ourselves. We know that we know stuff. In other words, I know I'm taking in the visual information of you across this table for me right now, but I don't know who's taking delivery of that package. Like, who's the knower? So just looking for thoughts is just a nice way to, like, kind of knock on this door. Another. Another one is. And you kind of made an oblique reference to this is just to imagine as you're walking around that you have no head. There's a book, Douglas Harding's book. It's called On Having no Head. And Sam and Joseph both recommended this to me early in my practice. And it's just a really cool. Just little thought experiment. What if you had no head? What's happening there? Because that can help. Just that. And again, don't push too hard at this. Just play with it gently. But what it can do in a very interesting way, imagining that you have no head, is to dissolve the barrier between you and the world. And again, I want to recognize, as you've said before, these can sound like, big and to be a little cute, heady ideas. And so the trick is to have just little contemplative exercises that help you get in touch with what is probably the greatest mystery, which is that we. We know. We're like, how do we on this planet go from. I heard Jack Kornfield say this once, how do we go from rocks to singing opera? Like, how did we become conscious? And like, what is consciousness? These are really interesting questions. They have a direct bearing on your understanding of your life and how you lead your life. But it's a lot. And so it's helpful to start small.
- [47:35]
Rich Roll
Yeah, Sam's way of entering into this is to, you know, first let you know that, like, everything is perception. Like, you're over there. I'm here I can feel the gravity, you know, kind of anchoring my butt in this chair. My foot feels one way and I. And we locate these things in time, but these are all like neural signals. But what is the raw data? Like, can you kind of, you know, disconnect from like those, this, this pattern that we have in our mind that this means this and this means that and to just, you know, kind of transcend that and realize like I'm perceiving you is over there. But like, you know, that's just a perception of reality through this filtering mechanism that we have in our mind that we mistake for being, you know, kind of an authentic version of what is actually real.
- [48:26]
Dan Harris
What it leads you to ultimately is humility. And I think it leads you to many places, but one place where I think it leads you is a kind of humility about how confident you can be in anything, you know, and, and I know we live in a time where it's been described as a pandemic of certainty. And everybody.
- [48:51]
Rich Roll
Yeah, you shared a little quote the other day from Bertrand Russell on that, didn't you?
- [48:56]
Dan Harris
Something like, the problem is right now the worst people are the most cocksure and the best of us are not full of doubt. Yeah. And the worst tend to have the most power. And that's because we've created a world where the algorithms reward certainty and outrage and fear monger mongering. And, and if in fact, the best way to come to understand your life, to understand the universe, to understand the way the world's working, is to have some intellectual humility, is to have some open mindedness. And by the way, that correlates with lower anxiety, increased sense of meaning and purpose. It's also, Adam Grant has written a book called Think Again which talks about how open minded and open mindedness and the willingness to second guess your reflexive conclusions can make you more successful. And, and so again, whether you want to investigate the nature of consciousness, whether that's interesting or not, what all these questions lead us toward is something very practical, which is not being overly confident in every little thought that flits through your mind.
- [50:04]
Rich Roll
Yeah. In other words, like, the more you kind of dive into the deep end of this, like the more kind of astounding and, you know, difficult to grasp it becomes. And that's where you find the humility. Like, oh, I thought I knew what was going on. I actually don't know anything basically. And I think the benefit of that is putting you in close contact with your relationship with uncertainty. Like you mentioned uncertainty earlier, like we're so hardwired to resist uncertainty. But the truth is like everything is uncertain. And I've had all these experts come on here and they just talk about uncertainty. It's like if you can just accept uncertainty and develop a healthy relationship with that using humility, you're going to be able to comport yourself more consciously and more positively. And I think right now, also to your point, this is an incredibly uncertain time and I think we're meeting it with tremendous amounts of anxiety and fear and that metastasizes into all kinds of like, you know, negative errant behaviors that are serving nobody. Right. So maybe talk a little bit more about like our current moment. I mean, you've been, you know, kind of pretty forward facing, public facing and how to counsel people about how to, you know, conceptualize what's happening right now and conduct themselves, you know, in a way that's a little healthier and kinder.
- [51:31]
Dan Harris
Do you think it'd be helpful for me to give like I have, have two thoughts that are coming to mind, very practical ways to like manage uncertainty. Do you think that would be a helpful way to do so? Okay, well, so first, one idea is, is is going to involve meditation and the other won't. Basic mindfulness meditation really involves sitting comfortably, closing your eyes, picking one thing to focus on, usually your breath, but it could also just be any sensation from your body or sounds in the environment. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again. So you're trying to concentrate on one thing and then your, your thoughts will invade. Eventually you'll wake up from the distraction, blow to kiss, and gently escort your attention back to the breath or whatever you've chosen to focus on over and over and over again. This sometimes frustrating, sometimes stupid feeling exercise can really help help with uncertainty because you start to be okay with whatever you're feeling. The goal of meditation is not to feel any kind of way, it's to feel whatever you're feeling right now and be cool with it. Uncertainty is really uncomfortable. It produces a lot of physical sensations in the body. It produces a lot of fear based forward projecting thoughts. And what a basic grounding practice like mindfulness meditation can help you do is learn to be equanimous with whatever's happening, which is a great place from which to take action. So actually I'm going to give you three.
- [53:07]
Rich Roll
I mean that's a superpower.
- [53:09]
Dan Harris
It's a superpower. So I'm going to give you actually three. I said two. But I'm going to give you three three ways to handle uncertainty. So the first is like, just to learn to sit in the middle of chaos and be okay with it. The second is taking action. So this is. I'm not about passivity. There's a great expression. It's not mine. Action absorbs anxiety. So, yes, we should take action. Whatever your political beliefs are, whatever your major concerns are, doing something about it is a great way to restore your sense of agency. And what mind state do you want to be in as you're taking action? Do you want to be overwhelmed by fear, or do you want to be in a more equanimous mode? Let me just say about taking action, it doesn't even have to be relevant. Like, if you're upset about politics in America right now, you don't even need to join a political campaign, volunteer at a soup kitchen. Just increase your utility quotient with the people in your life. Those things are incredibly helpful, not only to the people around you, but to you. And so it's a great way to counteract the exquisite discomfort of uncertainty. And I'll just give you a third quickly, this is another phrase that I love, but it's not mine. Never worry alone. This being alive thing is not a solo endeavor, despite the individualistic messages we get from the larger culture. It's a team sport. It's always been a team sport. That's how we're designed. The reason why we, as an animal rose to the top of the food chain is not because we have wings or claws or fangs or anything like that. It's because we have this. Speaking of superpowers, this capacity to cooperate, collaborate, communicate. That's. That is our superpower as a species. And yet we are encouraged by the culture to go it alone, to bootstrap, just keep your nose in your phone all day long. But if you want to make it through uncertain times, either like, from a macro sociopolitical standpoint or just from your own life, which is going to be filled with all sorts of ups and downs. Call your mom, you know, like, call your friends. Do it with people. And, you know, from the program, like, that is the. You know, I'm not an expert in the sobriety, Various sobriety communities, but one of the superpowers is doing it with other people. And there's real brilliance in that.
- [55:32]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I really like that. I mean, I think with equanimity, you're able to identify the opportunity. Like, everything that's happening is actually neutral. Neutral until we apply our perspective, right, and we label it as good or bad. Or whatnot. And equanimity gives you that distance to kind of detach from labeling or judging events as you see fit. And I think recognizing, like, everything is an opportunity for your growth and evolution. And if you apply that perspective to it, then you can find the next right action that is in service to yourself and in service to other people. And I think to your point of, of activism or getting involved or whatever, there is a. I'm curious around how you think about motivations there, because if you're doing it out of a place of anger or that certainty, Right. If you're certain that you're right and you're out there fighting, like, are you any different than the people you're fighting against?
- [56:29]
Dan Harris
Okay, so this is controversial, and so I'll step gingerly, but I'm going to argue, and this kind of goes back to the beginning of our conversation, that, that it is important to be motivated by love, even for the people you think are doing a lot of harm. Okay. So that some people might be recoiling at the sound of love.
- [56:48]
Rich Roll
I mean, who's gonna recoil at that?
- [56:50]
Dan Harris
Well, because many people, when they hear me talk about having compassion in divided, polarized times, they say how you. And there's some legitimacy to this pushback. You're a wealthy, straight white guy. You're not going to be as impacted by some of the things that are happening on a policy level in D.C. right now. You're recommending that I operate from a place of love? Well, that's. That is, you know, I think this is an overused term, privilege. But this is. That is privilege in its most extreme form.
- [57:27]
Rich Roll
I see.
- [57:27]
Dan Harris
And I get that. And all those things are true about me. And, and if you look at our contemplative traditions, from Jesus to the Buddha to Gandhi to Martin Luther King, if you look at science, modern psychological research, it will show you time and again that hatred and anger are not clean burning fuels. You will burn out. If you're motivated by love, it just keeps you. It is what is going to help you stay resilient in the face of the ups and downs. So what do I mean by love? Love? Well, it's very clear when it comes to, like loving the people you're trying to protect. I think it's semi clear when we talk about self love, like protecting yourself, but loving the quote, unquote, bad guys like that, that's a bridge too far for many, for many people. And so I just want to be clear that compassion or love for Donald Trump, if you're on the left Or Joe Biden. If you're on the right, doesn't mean you're inviting these people over for dinner. It doesn't mean you're co signing on their behavior. It just means that you are not. You can define it in the negative. It's just non hatred. You can take all the same actions to counter the forces that you object to. You can take all the same actions, the same firm steps from a place of love as you would from a place of hatred. But the color of your mind will be different while you're doing it. Your resiliency will be stronger. And so I'll just end this little rant with a good story that Sharon Salsberg, a great meditation teacher and one of the premier purveyors of love and compassion in western culture, she tells a story about being in India in the 60s and 70s when she, you know, she was just getting interested in meditation and she was hearing all these teachers talk about love and compassion and whatever. She was like, well, what if I step outside and somebody tries to mug me? And the teacher, whoever she was talking to at the time, said you can very compassionately smack them with your umbrella. And so just to be clear, like you can be really tough, you can be fierce and uncompromising in your actions at this dicey moment, but it doesn't need to come from a place of hatred because that's not good for you.
- [59:46]
Rich Roll
If you're fighting the good fight, you're still fighting is sort of a tangential idea to that on some level, I guess.
- [59:56]
Dan Harris
Are you saying that like, like, but.
- [59:59]
Rich Roll
I guess it gets to motivation. Like if you're fighting out of anger, if you are standing up for a cause and that's coming from compassion either towards the person who is your opposition or the people that you're representing in that campaign or whatever, it's hard to get your head around that. It's very anti Western.
- [60:21]
Dan Harris
The way I'm arguing it is just practical. I want you, whoever's listening to this, to be as effective and happy as possible, no matter what you're trying to do in your life. And I just don't see any evidence that anger and hatred, which are natural and you're gonna feel them, I feel them. So I'm not saying you gotta be some sort of saint for whom this, these emotions never arise. But if you're using that to fuel all of your actions, like, like you will burn out. And you see a lot of this in the activist community, real burnout. So I think a kind of omnidirectional compassion, which starts with yourself taking care. I don't think we should go straight to, like, generating loving kindness for our quote, unquote enemies. That's probably not the place to start. But start by, you know, wanting to take care of yourself and then broaden your circle of concern to the vulnerable people you're trying to protect. And then you can, and this is kind of the ninja move here. Include the way the Dalai Lama does with the Chinese, include your quote unquote enemies. Not because you want them to succeed in whatever objectionable thing they're endeavoring to do, but because it's in your best interest to. It allows you to access the full creativity of your brain. If you're not locked in the kind of hatred that literally, there's a reason why we call it blind rage. High conflict, anger, hatred. This has been shown. It reduces your peripheral vision. Loving kindness, basic friendliness. Again, not being a doormat, but just basic, well, wishing benevolence broadens your peripheral vision. This is some of the work of Barbara Fredericks. That's fascinating and instructive. Hard to do. But as a North Star in these difficult times, notwithstanding my admitted privilege, I recommend it.
- [62:26]
Rich Roll
Well, all you have to do is look back on the great leaders who faced great opposition, who practiced this. It's like, it's Gandhi, it's mlk, it's the Dalai Lama, it's Jesus Christ. These are the people that we most revere. And why? Because. Because they were the embodiment of that. That very thing that feels so difficult to, you know, to connect with. But obviously these people who exemplify it, like, they, they resonate, you know, throughout history for that reason.
- [62:58]
Dan Harris
Yes. Yeah. And the Dalai Lama was asked, you know, like, what was it appropriate to kill Osama bin Laden? And I might be mangling this, so my apologies to His Holiness or anybody who's a Tibetan hhl. My understanding is that he said yes. Yeah. You know, there are moments where self defense in the form of violence is necessary. So it's not. It's not always turn the other cheek, but it doesn't. Your. Your mind does not need to be colored by hatred and rage, which is not going to allow you to function at your highest and best.
- [63:38]
Rich Roll
Well, I want to trade notes on the Dalai Lama. You had this opportunity to go to Dharamshala and spend time with him. You're making, like a documentary out of this?
- [63:48]
Dan Harris
Yeah, I made a little. A Free Course.
- [63:51]
Rich Roll
Oh, you did?
- [63:51]
Dan Harris
Yeah, like the Dalai Lama's like, guide to happiness.
- [63:55]
Rich Roll
So walk me through this whole experience, I'm fascinated all the way from, like, arriving in Dharamshala, your impressions, your preconceived ideas of what your experience with His Holiness was going to be like and the reality of that and kind of like what you took away from it.
- [64:11]
Dan Harris
Well, see, the. For me, I have been speaking of privilege now. This is real privilege. I have interviewed him four times. And so the time that I went to India a couple years ago was the fourth time I had interviewed him.
- [64:22]
Rich Roll
Oh, I didn't realize I had met.
- [64:23]
Dan Harris
Him before, but I had never been to India and seen him in his natural habitat. I had interviewed him twice in the States in person, and then one time on zoom in the middle of the pandemic, and then a fourth time in person. And what the. The fourth time in person in India was. What was unique about the fourth time I went is that I actually spent a lot of time in his orbit. And I. I'll just pick out one detail that I think is interesting is I. As we said before, I mean, I retain some skepticism. I. And, And Tibetan Buddhism, you know, there's a lot of metaphysical claims is the incarnation.
- [64:59]
Rich Roll
Yeah. Like, yeah. The reincarnation of the Buddha and all. All of that.
- [65:02]
Dan Harris
The 14th Dalai Lama, the 14th reincarnation of the highest llama in the. In the. In this. In the Tibetan tradition. And so I don't know. I don't know where I stand on rebirth because I have no direct evidence of any of this. And, and, and, you know, you go to Dharamsala, there's just lots of, like, religious activity, people bowing to him and being blessed by him. And a couple of. A couple of things are interesting that are coming to mind as we're speaking. One is, first of all, he just does not take himself very seriously, which is really interesting. You know, there's so much pomp around him. But when you spend time with the dude, you know, you ask him, do you ever get mad? Absolutely. Would you ever kill a mosquito? Yes. He makes fart jokes like, he's just a pretty embodied normal dude in some ways. And there's something going on with him, like when you are seated across from him and you're getting his full attention. When somebody has trained their mind toward compassion in that way, and you're. You're the object of their gaze. I know that's a little dualistic, but when you are being fully held by an individual's attention who has spent 80 years cultivating warmth, it's, you know, it's. That's a real experience. And I don't know how to fully explain its power, except I saw things that were very interesting in his presence. A friend of mine who was with me on this trip. Well, I couple of friends with me on this trip. One was a hard bitten TV news cameraman who I brought to film my encounter, who I had covered mass shootings and war and natural disasters with Tommy K. And he had, he had no idea who the Dalai Lama was beyond like just knowing, you know, the name. And the first day in India, the first thing he did was, and this is an atheist too. He, the first thing he did was shoot two hours of the Dalai Lama greeting locals and giving them blessings. And when he was done, he put the camera down, wept and hugged me and said, this is the most meaningful thing that's ever happened to me. Thank you for bringing me to India.
- [67:28]
Rich Roll
Wow. Just watching a guy hug other people.
- [67:32]
Dan Harris
And another guy who's on the trip, like, I don't want to say his name because, but. But somebody who was in our crew after I interviewed the Dalai Lama was given a chance to have a picture taken with him. And this is a guy who's practiced zero Buddhism. He'd done some qigong, right? But not. He's not a Buddhist. And he kneels next to the Dalai Lama, you know, because he, the Dalai Lama's sitting and this guy kneels down to have his picture taken. And the Dalai Lama reaches over and grabs his hand. And what ensued was 15 minutes of weeping and wailing and hurling himself onto the ground. And I guess what you would call a psychic break. But this is a, this is like a highly educated, buttoned up professional dude with no religious background. And I'm still friends with this person. And he doesn't even remember it. He got zapped and he doesn't, he just kind of remembers like me consoling him 15 minutes later. And it utterly upended his life. But came home and made all these changes in his personal life, has gone back and had another audience with the Dalai Lama. Very similar reaction where he like it, it just kind of upgraded the software of his brain. So long way of saying we talked a lot about having an open mind. I am a scientific materialist on some pretty basic levels and I do retain some openness to there being things that we don't understand and that he might be an embodiment of that.
- [69:12]
Rich Roll
That is wild. That is really wild. I mean that would be, that's what's called darshan, right? Basically a transmission of energy. I mean, what is the, you know, rationalist science, science minded, fidgety, skeptic. Make of that. Like, does it just like sort of inform your humility or, or give you a sense of awe and wonder that maybe something else is going on? Like, how do you make sense of that for yourself?
- [69:38]
Dan Harris
Both. It definitely gives me a sense of awe and wonder that there may be more going on than. Than. Than science is aware of. It nudges me into that space of not knowing. Here's a great little. I'm always. I'm always fan of giving people things they can do in their mind. Little practices that you could put to use in your own life. There was a great Zen master whose name I'm sure you know. Tik Nhat Hanh, Zen master, died a couple years ago. He would tell his students to just get in the habit of asking themselves one question all the time. Time. And that question is am I sure? And I love that question because it's especially for me. I was an anchorman. We're supposed to be sure. My job is to like intone from the thunder from the mountaintop about like what is true because it's written in the teleprompter. Are you sure? Like, are you sure? It's great. You know, like when you're looking at the political scene or the world scene, like, that guy's a bad guy. Say, am I sure? Yeah. Like, is it worth just investigating that continuously? Like reconsideration as a way of life. To be clear, there's a difference between your values and your opinions. So I'm not saying you should question whether cruelty is okay, but you know, to be in the habit of like, where when it comes to your opinions, holding them much more lightly, that's very healthy.
- [71:12]
Rich Roll
There's a lot of discussion around the number of hours we need to sleep to be well, but actually it's the quality of our sleep that matters most. How restful? How many hours are you spending in the REM state in the deep phase of. Of sleep, which of course is a function of your sleep environment, the foundation of which of course is your mattress. A big purchase. Yes. And therefore one I think you should make consciously. Because if you've had the privilege of slumbering on a birch, you already know well that a mattress is not just a mattress. It is truly a worthy investment in your well being that will return your life 100 foot. Why? Because all birch mattresses are crafted with organic fair trade cotton, natural latex and other responsibly sourced materials specifically to create a sleep surface that's both environmentally Conscious as well as importantly, incredibly comfortable. The attention to detail is impressive. Each mattress is made in their own facility, ensuring consistent quality. The natural materials make it hypoallergenic and help regulate temperature. And while their non toxic construction means no harmful off gassing, it's that kind of thoughtful design that makes a real difference in your sleep quality. You know what? I would really like all my listeners to enjoy a deep, restful night's sleep with a new mattress from Birch. To do that, go to birchliving.com richroll or their spring savings event. 20% off site wide. That's birchliving.com richroll and get 20% off sitewide. I'm still thinking about like the wailing and the weeping. You know, that's like, like we didn't, I didn't witness anything like that when I had the, you know, privilege and opportunity to visit. But I do like, when I reflect back on it, it's a weird mishmash of like strange contrast because on the one hand, like you're in Dharamshala and it's like clearly this is a, you know, a magnet for seekers. You know, people from all over the world like congregate to this place for a reason and there's a center of gravity to it, but it's also, you know, junkie vendors selling shit. You know, like this is like all the India craziness at the same time. And there's like power lines that are like, you know, basically draping, you know, you're afraid you're going to get electrocuted and all that, right? And, and I don't know where your experience took place specifically, but we were in this kind of like a ballroom that was adjacent to his domicile, right? And we had to go through incredibly intense pat downs. Like you think it's like TSA times a thousand, like the most intense security check, which I understand, it's like this, perhaps the greatest, the world's greatest living spiritual leader, right? And then you go in and you're in this room and it's sort of cool, but it's sort of like a Marriott ballroom with like, you know, like the, like, like maroon upholstered chairs. And you're like, okay, like here we are, you know, like. And then you know, his monks bring him out and they put him in like this, what looked like kind of like a beaten up lazy boy chair. So there's like all this humor. I'm like, this is hilarious, you know, And I was with this group and I'm sitting next to Rainn Wilson. I'm like. I'm with Dwight Schrute from the office. And I'm like, there's a surreal aspect to the whole thing that maybe is, you know, like, allows me to, like, you know, inhabit a little bit of that Dalai Lama energy of, like, am I supposed to take this seriously? Am I allowed to, like, have fun with this? And then you see his joy, and you're like, oh, I think he's giving us permission to, like, you know, laugh along with him.
- [74:56]
Dan Harris
I think you're absolutely right. Side note, I'm feeling slightly guilty because I haven't. There are a million questions I want to ask you, and I've dominated the mic. This is.
- [75:06]
Rich Roll
You're the guy.
- [75:07]
Dan Harris
We are.
- [75:07]
Rich Roll
No one needs to hear from me, Dan. Trust me.
- [75:10]
Dan Harris
Just so the listeners know, I'm going to interview Rich for my show immediately after this. First of all, your description of it was spot on. I've been in that room, and the vibes are exactly as you describe. And second, my job, and I did not expect this is the way my life would go, is to interview the greatest spiritual practitioners alive. And what I can tell you as a common denominator among pretty much all of them is a sense of humor, seeing the absurdity of life. The word that Joseph Goldstein, who I always come back to, the word that he uses the most when we're talking about the mind, is ridiculous.
- [75:51]
Rich Roll
Give me an example of that.
- [75:52]
Dan Harris
Let's just. I'll come to him with some whole story about, you know, the way my practice is going or what should be happening, and he'd be like, that's. That's just one time, actually, we were talking about work. My attitude about work and how I had the sense that, you know, in order to get anything done, I needed to be, like, in a clench all the time. And he was like, the good stuff doesn't come from the clench. And your idea that you need that in order to get anything done. He's like, that's just you being stupid.
- [76:26]
Rich Roll
I plead guilty to that.
- [76:29]
Dan Harris
So you can't sit and look at your mind for decades without developing a sense of humor because the mind is ridiculous. Or there's one great expression that Joseph likes. The mind has no pride. It will do anything. The ego is just constantly coming up with stories and interpretations and excuses and. And justifications and ancient resentments. To be able to kind of relax back into it and to. Out of it, rather to relax, to take a perspective, sort of a warm, nonjudgmental, removed perspective on all of this does require a sense of humor, is just really helpful.
- [77:14]
Rich Roll
I'm curious, with so many years of devoted practice, like, are you able to you pretty consistently, like, drop in, like, more quickly? Like, does it get easier? Are you able to, like, progress is the wrong word, but, you know, kind of inhabit that space of capaciousness and, you know, not zero thought, but maybe less thought, more quickly and effectively and reliably.
- [77:41]
Dan Harris
It's not so much about, you know, clearing the mind of thoughts. It's more like, can I wake up to where I am right now? Can I just wake up out of the dream of thoughts and just, like, feel my butt in the chair right now and look at your face and hear the. My vocal cords vibrating? Like, just to drop out of this normal mode that we're in of projecting to the future or ruminating about the past and just arrive right now over and over and over. Yes. The hardest part of personal growth or spiritual development. For many of us, the hardest part is to remember. To remember. Like, we listen to a great podcast like yours and we hear amazing advice, but then our old habits reassert themselves. So the hard thing is to remember to do stuff, to remember to do this smart stuff. We've heard from contemplative traditions or modern science and. And what meditation has allowed me to. It's a practice in remembering, remembering to wake up. In fact, the word mindfulness in the ancient language of Pali is S a t I sati, and one of the translations of that word is remembering or recollecting. And so I'm just better at remembering to wake up and to not take my thoughts so seriously. Deny me sleep, put me under pressure, bully me, whatever. Can I forget? Absolutely. Do I retain the capacity to be a schmuck? Absolutely. So I'm not perfect at all. One of my little jokes is, some gurus teach from the mountaintop, and I teach from the fetal position. You're like, I'm definitely, like, a flawed dude who's making mistakes and trying to be open about all the shit I'm dealing with as a way to be useful to other people. I'm not in love, enlightened, you know, Like, I don't have that to offer. All I have to offer is, like, I'm a guinea pig. I'll go deep on this stuff and I'll learn as much as I can, and I'll try to extract, like, very practical nuggets for other people. That's my way of being useful.
- [79:47]
Rich Roll
How old is your son now?
- [79:48]
Dan Harris
He's 10.
- [79:49]
Rich Roll
10. How old? Are your kids. They range from 17 to 29.
- [79:55]
Dan Harris
You're a different life stage. Is the 17 year old still home?
- [79:58]
Rich Roll
Boarding school. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But close by, not far away. And then 21 year old who's in college and then the 28 and 29 year old who are going to be moving out soon but still live at home. They had moved out Covid, they moved back. They're still at home.
- [80:15]
Dan Harris
That's actually kind of nice.
- [80:16]
Rich Roll
It's been fantastic. Yeah, I really like having them. But yeah, different stage. But I'm curious around the parenting piece. Like, is any of this, like percolating down, down into his young mind or how is this, yeah, how's this gonna play out?
- [80:32]
Dan Harris
Well, it's funny because. So we only have one kid and we had a protracted infertility struggle. And I am obsessed with this kid and I really, I take him with me every, it's very rare that I'm here today without him. So last year he missed a month of school because I, I, I, I, I travel with him. We go everywhere together. So we've been all over the world together. And so he could probably deliver my speech because he's heard me deliver it so many times. That being said, he, I, I'm very careful not to like push meditation or anything else on him. The only thing I push on him is like, you can't be an, you know, if I catch him being unkind, which, you know, we are all unkind sometimes, then I'll bring the hammer down. But I don't, I don't push meditation on him because children, as you know, are like wired to reject all the shit their parents say. That being said, I found out a couple years ago that he was teaching his classmates how to meditate. And that's a big proud moment. Yeah, well, so he freely admits that he doesn't actually do it himself. He just likes the attention.
- [81:41]
Rich Roll
Whatever gets you there.
- [81:42]
Dan Harris
What I found out, the way I found out that he was teaching the other kids kids to meditate, was that the principal of his elementary school called me, called my wife to say that the high school had heard that there was this kid who teaches meditation. And would he come and teach the senior class 10, it was nine at the time, or eight, I don't know. So I went with him and he taught, he guided them in loving kindness meditation. It was unbelievable. And so I was obviously very proud. And you know, I don't know what his practice is like. I don't know what my wife's practice is like. Because I've learned to not like you invite. If you invite me here and put me in this beautiful studio, I love it. But I really try not to push it on people because that's very annoying.
- [82:30]
Rich Roll
Yeah. I want to talk about another evolution that you've been on. I kind of opened this talk like the evolution of Dan Harris, you know, as a teacher, as a human, as a meditation practitioner. But the other piece is professional. Like you've been through the fucking ringer brother with your business and it's this arc of like kind of being under the umbrella of the behemoth MSM Legacy media all the way to you doing your own thing on Substack and having to reinvent yourself. And it's been an arduous number of years that have, you know, really brought you to your knees and, and, and, and made you kind of like put your, what you've learned from meditation into actual practice. So can you just, you know, give us a sense of, you know, what it was like, what happened and what it's like now?
- [83:23]
Dan Harris
Sure, yes. If you, if you like Schadenfreude, this is going to be a fun story for you. Let me say that you, you may notice my tone changing a little in this and that I want to be, be totally candid about why that is. So generally speaking, I am like a no guard rails type of person. Like I, I have, you can ask me anything and I will talk about it. You will hear me being slightly more careful because I'm going to talk about a legal process in which I uncoupled from the co founders of a company that I was in. And part of why I'm being careful is because it involves the legal process, but also because there's some structural unfairness. They don't have a podcast, they're not invited on other people's podcasts. They have their own version of these events and don't really have a chance to say it as loudly as I do. And so I like, you know, don't want to abuse that privilege, that disclaimer issue. Yes. I was with ABC News for 21 years and I retired about three and a half years ago. And I retired in order to keep doing my podcast and also keep working on, on a meditation app called 10 Happier.
- [84:34]
Rich Roll
But you started the podcast when you were at ABC and so there was some IP stuff there. Right.
- [84:41]
Dan Harris
So there was a lot of. ABC was very kind to let me go in the middle of my contract. I think it's very rare for somebody to go to. I can't think of an incident where a well paid anchor has gone in the middle of the contract and said, hey, can you just, you don't have to pay me anymore. Could you just let me stop working here, here. But there was this complication of the fact that they owned my podcast and they were willing to let me leave with it. But I did have to pay. In the process of my leaving the podcast, I tr. I transferred the ownership of that podcast over to my company and that company. So the podcast was called 10% happier. The company was called 10% happier. And that company's primary mission was a meditation applause app that I was very proud of. And it really poured so much of myself into and had brought a lot of my meditation teacher friends into, like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg. And so it was just like the, you know, I considered it like my baby. Truth of the matter is I had co founders and investors and so it wasn't like just mine or me or anything like that. It was a group effort. And there were creative and interpersonal and financial differences among the co founders that ultimately resulted in my leaving. And that was a three year separation process that for me was agony. Not only because I was losing this company that I poured so much of myself into, but also because it exposed many of, like, the less beautiful aspects of my own mind. Anger, fear. And I made, you know, so many dumb mistakes in the process. But I, you know, I learned a lot ultimately in we were able to consummate a deal where I, I left the company. The company changed its name. It. They still have a meditation app. It's just not called 10% happier anymore. I have my podcast back for the first time. I actually own the podcast, or I will in a few days from this recording. And I'm starting again. You know, I start I. As an experiment. I launched a substack and I don't know what that will grow into. I have my own little team now that I really get along with. And so I feel, after some very dark years, I feel really optimistic about what's coming next. And I have lots of thoughts and dreams and aspirations about, like, what I. I can build. And it was really brutal. And there were two little mantras that Joseph gave me during the process that really helped. One was don't side with yourself. And I love that because I was really locked in the story of being the victim. And it was very, really helpful to just be like, all right, no. These guys who I know to be decent human beings have their reasons for what they're doing. And can I. I. I would sometimes like, talk to chat GBT to try, like to try to really inhabit what was in their minds and to try to get chat GPT to make the case to me from their standpoint.
- [88:01]
Rich Roll
Steel man there.
- [88:02]
Dan Harris
Yes, their. So that really helped. And I also, you know, I. I have this like, primordial thing around bullies. When I was a kid, I was both a bully and. And was bullied. And I felt bullied. I don't think that was their intention, my counterparties, at all, but I felt bullied. And so that made me like, there's this great expression. If it's hysterical, it's historical. And so like I was hysterical at times for some historical reasons that I felt it was. It was kind of jabbing at some of my ancient vulnerabilities. And so the other little expression that Joseph uses, and this gets back to our compassion discussion, is love, no matter what. Now, that does not mean give up the negotiation, hand over my IP or whatever, stop fighting. It just means. Means can I try to conduct this negotiation from a standpoint of, to the best of my ability, goodwill. And so to this day, when my mind kind of enters the default mode of resentment or whatever, no, this is a dead end. Don't side with yourself, Love, no matter what. Everybody. Everybody's got this vapor trail of past causes and conditions, past trauma, all their ancestral stuff. And if I came out of the womb of whoever I'm disagreeing with and lived that life, I would probably do exactly the same shit they're doing. And so can I just view. Can I just view it? Everything through that lens? And that's been really helpful, especially as we've now entered this really tumultuous political period. Like, there are people out there who hold beliefs that I find abominable. Can I just. Like, it doesn't matter. I have. I can counter them to the best of my ability. But just seeing that there's a reason why people arrived at that point of view, it just lowers the temperature and makes me less hysterical anyway. Did I answer the question?
- [90:05]
Rich Roll
No, I think it's perfect. Like, it's this gift, actually, as hard as it was, like from a Joseph Campbell kind of hero's journey perspective, like you're the. A reluctant Luke Skywalker who has to have a panic attack to get dragged into this meditation stuff to begin with. You build up this thing, you get knocked down, and at the bottom of the second act, you go through this experience that brings you to your knees. And that's all for a Reason to prepare you to be a more embodied vessel of this message that you carry. Is this guy for real? Well, let's test it. You know what I mean? Let's. Let's see what he does when we put him in this situation. And whatever happens, he will emerge from that, like more fully formed and more capable to actually walk his talk. Right. It makes you a better teacher. It makes you a better kind of ambassador of this movement. My wife, you know, always reminds me, like, every man is right from his own perspective, and I fucking hate that. Right. Like, who wants to hear that? But it's true. Like, people behave for a reason. And if you go back through the course of their life, it all makes sense why they're behaving the way that they are. And for you to have to confront those historical wounds that get inflamed is this opportunity for you to confront that and heal it so that it doesn't continue to do that. And whether you call it God, the universe, just the design of consciousness, whatever label you put upon it, the pattern making mind inside, in between, my ears can see this logical thread here that helps me make sense of the whole thing.
- [91:46]
Dan Harris
I love that. And the only thing I would add is that from the Joseph Campbell hero's journey story, it's to understand that everybody else is the hero of their own story. Right. So, yeah, this is my perspective, but.
- [92:00]
Rich Roll
That'S the beauty of it. We all get to have our own thing. Right? Right.
- [92:05]
Dan Harris
And that's what don't side with yourself kind of nudges you toward, you know, like, I feel right from my perspective, but I know the people I was negotiating against to be deeply decent human beings, and they've got reasons for. For believing they're doing the right thing. And the more I can inhabit that, you might worry that that's going to make you soft in some ways. It doesn't. I don't think it just switches you from rage and retribution as the engine to like, no, let me try to do the right thing for me and for everybody else.
- [92:38]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I don't know that I'd go so far as maybe that you're like, you can look at it right now and be grateful. Can you say that? Or do you need a little bit more time? Because you're still kind of in it.
- [92:46]
Dan Harris
I am still a little bit in it. You know, you and I are recording a couple of days before, like, what is supposed to be the end, end, end. So I am a little bit in it. And if I get, you know, if I get Worked up. I can. I can. I can spit hot fire, as they say on the Chappelle Show. And, yeah, I actually can now start to feel some gratitude. I was actually having a conversation with somebody who was involved with the company the other day, a very wise person who was involved with the company and is no longer involved. And he was the first per. Many people had said this to me, but he was the first person who said it, and I believed it. He was like, this is for the best. This is for the best for you. Specifically for you, Dan. This is for the best. Best. And I was like, ah, yeah, it sucked. But I actually think that's probably true.
- [93:37]
Rich Roll
I think it's pretty clear, like, when I look back across your career, like, you had this amazing opportunity to be at ABC for 20 years. You built this career and this skill set, Right. That is portable, but you were, you know, living under this sort of protective womb of salaries and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Right. And. And it's a kind of growth arc to be able to be like, do I need that? What part of that is ego am I state, you know, like, what is it that I'm actually doing? And, you know, maybe you were forced into some of these things, but to also, you know, kind of have the courage to be like, what happens if I go over to Substack? And like, what does that register with my ego as somebody who, you know, used to host Nightline, but also, I get to, like, control my whole universe and, like, build it the way that I want to. And, you know, it's a reminder that this is about service and this tattoo that you have on your forearm. And in short shrift, to be, like, the number one person on Substack in your category, like in the health and wellness category, pretty quickly, it's a white space that you kind of moved over to. So this is my home. I'm going to build my thing here. People will come, and they're coming, and that has to give you a sense of gratification that even, you know, being at the highest level of ABC News probably didn't.
- [95:01]
Dan Harris
It does, because it's mine, you know, and. And when you're at ABC News, it's like you're never really using your own voice.
- [95:08]
Rich Roll
There's somebody in your ear all the time.
- [95:10]
Dan Harris
Yeah. And. And I mean, your. Your whole career as a. As a public figure, you've been able to just be yourself.
- [95:19]
Rich Roll
Yeah, but, like, I would. I would have happily gone to ABC News. I didn't have a choice.
- [95:23]
Dan Harris
Right, exactly. But there's some beauty in that, and there's some beauty in working at ABC News, too. And it's all. It's all fine. But the demerit to being in the MSM is that there's a kind of, you know, you can hear, watch the news. There's a way we all talk, and, you know, you have to pretend to not have any opinions, and you can't use the word fuck, for sure. And so the ability to, like, like, own my stuff and truly be who I am, like a little experiment, I actually think you. You just naturally do this. But for me, having come out of the news business, which is kind of performative and. And has a certain falseness baked into it because, you know, you're in a suit and tie and, you know, supposed to be very serious, and I'm looking at the camera, you know, really, you know, authoritative guy, and, you know, there's a certain amount of Persona in that. I've really tried to make it so that there is no difference between the way I am in this conversation in public and the way I will be when we have lunch together, or the way I am with my son or my wife, to really just collapse that so that I am as holistically honest as I can be. And I fail at this, but that's kind of my North Star.
- [96:41]
Rich Roll
What can you say about what's happening right now with respect to institutional legacy media brands? I mean, this is the center of the culture war, right? Like the decline in trust in legacy media and also the fracturing of the business models. All these anchors like yourself are trying to renegotiate their salaries right now and are getting a kind of heavy dose of reality, like, you know, the good times, times are no longer. And when you think about what it takes to run a news bureau and all the people involved, the sort of revenue per employee, it doesn't balance out anymore. And podcasting, low overhead, kind of. You could do the same things. You don't have the legal department. There's a lot of checks and balances and protections, et cetera, that don't exist. But what is your kind of sense of what's happening, where it's going, and where kind of things like substack are headed?
- [97:44]
Dan Harris
I think there are a couple of macro trends all kind of converging. One of them is, as you said, the business model for the mainstream media, both print and radio and television, is falling apart. And that's largely the result of it. The. The fact that we've had this communications revolution, new forms of Media rising up, social media, podcasts, now things like Substack and Patreon. And so the advertising dollars are just going elsewhere. And, and the eyeballs went elsewhere first, and now the advertising dollars are following them. And so the, the, the model is really falling apart. And then you look at the cable aspect of this too, where, you know, I don't know how much you know about the cable business, but if you were cnn, for example, you were getting paid not only by the advertisers who advertise on your show, but the cable companies were paying you for the right to carry your feed. And so that model's falling apart too, because people are cutting the cord and leaving cable. And so it's a really brutal time in the industry that I left behind. And I have a lot of compassion for the people who are kind of stuck losing their jobs or don't know how to translate their skills to whatever's coming next. It's, it's really sad and scary for many of my former colleagues. I mean, it's a little interesting. I feel really lucky because when I left three and a half years ago, there were, especially among the older generation, like my mom and stuff, they were like, so wait a minute, you're, you're leaving network news for a podcast? Like, what? Why would you do that? And now it actually kind of makes sense because we have, there's a name for what we do now. It's called the creator economy. And Mr. Beast is more famous than any news anchor, especially with younger people, and is making more money than any news anchor.
- [99:48]
Rich Roll
Well, there's a lot of people more famous than the most famous news anchor. I mean, what are the numbers, like, you know, in terms of, like, you know, how many people are watching nightly news broadcasts?
- [99:57]
Dan Harris
They're quite a bit lower. I mean, David Muir, who. And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to name my bias here because I'm a fan of his, but. And he's got the number one newscast at ABC, and I think it's like 7 to 9 million people a night. That's a huge number in this day and age to be able to.
- [100:12]
Rich Roll
That's higher than I would have thought. Much higher than CNN numbers.
- [100:15]
Dan Harris
No, CNN numbers are, yeah. Have taken a real hit. The morning shows, you know, like back in the day when I had, unluckily for me, when I had a panic attack on GMA, the audience was between 5 and 6. Now it's between 2 and a little bit over 3 million. So, yeah, the, the, the audiences have gone down. It's just really hard. And I think you're just going to see. We already are seeing it. And we're going to see even more accelerated salary cuts, cutting of entire cuts to entire teams. It's a brutal time. And I can tell you, I mean, you and I, we're in the creator economy, which has so many amazing benefits to it and so much freedom, but it's also got like, lots of ups and downs. And you and I are not business people by nature. We're creators by nature. But we're forced into like navigating relationships with, you know, large companies who sell our ads. Although you don't, you don't do that. I do. We're in relationship with Meta and our, and our Facebook and Instagram feeds and I'm in a relationship with substack. And so it was cozier when there were just a few employers and you got paid a bunch of money to do that.
- [101:25]
Rich Roll
Yeah, well, what goes around comes around, right? Like ultimately don't these things sort of mature and then start to look more and more like ABC News? I mean, on one level, we need to be able to trust some form of institutional media that is robust enough to have teams of fact checkers and kind of ethical journalistic principles, et cetera. It can't all just be substackistan. We've kind of eroded our trust in those institutions. So either they need to figure out a way to re engineer it, or there needs to be new institutions that have those things built into them. Otherwise it is this weird wild west situation. Whereas if somebody defamed somebody in the New York Times, there's repercussions for that. If they do it on substack. Well, probably not. So where does that leave us in terms of getting our footing? And it goes back to the uncertainty thing. But on some level, to cohere as a society, we have to have some agreement about what's actually real.
- [102:34]
Dan Harris
I 1 million percent agree. And you were kind of getting at this when you first asked the question. And I kind of whiffed and didn't answer. You said that, but you're totally right. I think this is a huge problem. As amazing and exciting as this, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom aspect of the creator economy is where the barriers to entry to becoming a media personality have, have basically gone away. Anybody can start a substack or a Instagram feed or a new podcast. That's amazing. And in my opinion, there are, there were and continue to be real benefits to having institutions that have journalistic norms, have standards and practices departments, have lawyers on staff who take the mission of journalism, the calling of journalism, seriously. And what we have now is an existential threat to the health of our democracy, which is we can't even agree on a basic set of facts from which to have a debate. And that is deeply problematic. If you're looking to me to figure out, like, what the answer is, I don't know, but I think you've correctly diagnosed a grave problem.
- [103:45]
Rich Roll
I suspect that at some point the larger creators who are in the kind of journalistic news space will mature to the point where then there is some, some legal liability and they are going to have to have a legal department and they're going to realize, like, they can't print whatever they want because they're so large and somebody will hold them to account. And like I said earlier, like, then they, then they start to look like what they were trying to kind of transcend in the first place.
- [104:13]
Dan Harris
Maybe. I think that's possible. And I also, you know, as you're speaking, and I'm just kind of extemporizing here, I just wonder whether market forces might dictate some of this in that, that right now there people seem to be moving away from the mainstream media and toward more partisan voices who I've sometimes heard referred to as conflict entrepreneurs who kind of, who just inflame our differences. But I wonder over time whether there won't be a reassertion of a thirst for objective is such a hard term, because I think it's, it's actually not a reality, not something we can achieve, but, yeah, something closer to traditional purveyors of information. I wonder if, because I can feel it in myself, I, I try to listen all across the spectrum and I just, you know, I, I, I so often want a source that's gonna succinctly sum up to me what everybody's saying about the outrage of the day so that I'm not just sucked into believing what the mainstream media is saying, which I, you know, obviously I have a lot of sympathy for them because I, I was part of that. Matt Taibi, who is a writer that I sometimes deeply disagree with, but is a very smart guy, and I do read him. He once described the modern news media chaotic environment as like, he compared it to whaling. Like, you, they, you catch a whale, you bring it ashore and then all, and that's the story, in this case, the story of the day. Then all descend upon it and they take one part for burning lamps and another part for food. And another part for whale bone, blubber, whatever. You're just taking the various parts of the story. And so Ben Shapiro is talking about one aspect of it, and Pod Saves America are talking about another aspect of it. But it's very hard to, like, get a holistic understanding of the whale of the story. And I find a deep thirst. I really want to consume from many perspectives, and it's very hard to find that. And I can imagine people moving into that space and creating a really good business.
- [106:27]
Rich Roll
I think that's inevitable. I think as media and our attention becomes more and more atomized, like, we don't have a monoculture anymore. Like, there is very few things other than, like, the super bowl or like, maybe, you know, a gigantic Marvel movie, like, kind of capture everyone's imagination and attention at the same time. Like, even current events don't do that in the way that they used to. They tend to divide us more than they unite us these days. And our sources, our information silos, are so dispersed and bespoke and individual just to us that at some point I do feel like there's so much, you know, it's an infinite scroll, right? And the need that kind of comes up is like, who's helping me curate this? Where's my compass in all of this? Who can I trust that's going to guide me? Or watch this, don't watch this, pay attention to this. Everything else you don't need to pay attention to, I think those people are the ones that will kind of ascend, will kind of percolate out of this boiling pot of hot water to fill that need.
- [107:35]
Dan Harris
Then you're starting to see some companies emerge doing this. Like the 1440 newsletter is a good example of this pretty nonpartisan tangle, is an interesting newsletter where they really try to wrap things up from all sides. And so I can see smart players starting to move into this space. The question is whether the market will reward them.
- [107:55]
Rich Roll
Meanwhile, we should all remind ourselves, like your meditation teacher said to, like, you know, are you sure you're right? Like, we're all reading stuff that, you know, lights us up because it's confirming our, you know, know, our. Our. Our bias or whatever. And the responsibility is on our own shoulders to, like, break out of that, read other things, have some humility, entertain different perspectives.
- [108:20]
Dan Harris
Do you remember the phenomenally successful advertising campaign that ran in the late 90s and early 2000s against smoking? They were TV commercials aimed at young people trying to wake them up to the fact that cigarette companies were selling them something dangerous and trying to Pretend it was cool. And so they appealed to this kind of revolutionary spirit that a lot of teenagers have. And I sometimes think about that as it pertains to this discussion. Like, don't be suckered. Recognize that there are very powerful forces, not only in the news media, but among social media purveyors who are designing their algorithms to piss you off and make you scared and to incite in you hatred of the other. So don't be suckered by that. Just the way we shouldn't be suckered by Marlboro trying to tell us that the ultimate avatar of masculinity is a cigarette smoking dude riding through the, you know, high plains. I'm kind of making this up as I go, but I feel like there's something there. Does that.
- [109:26]
Rich Roll
Does any of that? I think so. I think so. I think so. Well, let's end this with perhaps some kind of takeaways around meditation. This is supposed to be a conversation about meditation for that new person or for maybe that person who's had fits and starts, can't make it stick, really sell it here. What are some things that people can take away? Keep in mind that might I encourage them.
- [109:57]
Dan Harris
So I really. I went back recently and I listened to, and I know you've been doing this on your podcast where you make master classes, where you go back through like the. The best people on any given subject. And I went back through and listened, or I looked at the transcripts of all the best experts we've had on habit change. And I know you've done a lot on this too. And I was just trying to like, sum up for myself a what do we know about how to make and break habits? Because it's really hard. And to say that it's really hard can sound discouraging because somebody listening to this might be thinking, well, I want to start a meditation habit and you're telling me it's hard. That's not the best place to start, but it actually is the best place to start because many of us labor under this delusion that we are somehow uniquely dysfunctional because we're having trouble starting a meditation habit or any other habit habit. But actually, just to know that it's hard for everybody is really useful. So that's one piece of good news. You're not alone if it's hard. The second piece of good news is that there are these strategies that have been developed in modern psychology and modern psychological research that are really helpful. And one of them is start small. And so with meditation, as with any other Habit like setting your sights really low, making it so easy that it's like hard not to do. I really recommend that. So one of the things I recommend is like one minute counts. And I would add onto that make it daily ish. So if you tell yourself you're going to do something 20 minutes every day or 30 minutes every day, it just, you're going to miss a day. And you want some like a steam release valve, you want some elasticity in the system. And so I think if you set the bar low, 1 minute, 2 minutes daily ish is a great way, way to get things going. Another thing is self compassion, which is just the ability to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. So now I think most of us, if we say we're going to start meditating and then we do it for a couple days and fail, we berate ourselves. But actually there's a lot of evidence to show that if we can talk to ourselves the way we talk to our kid or a friend. Oh yeah, that's a fine. You missed a couple days. Just start again. That and actually if you use your own name while talking to yourself too, there's some evidence from Ethan Cross, who I think you know.
- [112:19]
Rich Roll
Yeah, he just can't. He just was just here recently.
- [112:22]
Dan Harris
Fascinating guy from the University of Michigan who's pioneered the research into something called distant self talk, where you use your own name or I'll talk to myself using the word dude. Like, dude. Yeah, you missed a couple days of meditation. I know that seems hypocritical for somebody who's a meditation evangelist, but like, just start again. You're good. Learning how to talk to yourself that way in the process of habit formation. Ton of data to show that it's really helpful. And then the third thing I'd say as it pertains to meditation and also to any other habit you're trying to make, if you can try to make it a team sport. Because there's all this research around social support for any habit. Like if you're in a run club, you did a lot of Ironman, which is a group, or ultramarathons, which are group activities. You may have trained by yourself, but maybe you didn't. And I think having people around you who are encouraging you and holding you accountable and making and creating a kind of jet stream that you can ride on is really helpful.
- [113:24]
Rich Roll
Also making it fun.
- [113:25]
Dan Harris
Totally, totally. Making it fun is huge. And the best way in my experience to make something fun done is to do it with other people.
- [113:33]
Rich Roll
Yeah. You have guided meditations on your substack.
- [113:36]
Dan Harris
Yes.
- [113:37]
Rich Roll
Yes. People can find that there. That is the hub for everything that you're doing.
- [113:41]
Dan Harris
Yes. Dan harris.com. or you can go to substack and search for my name. There are guided meditations there. I'm also. We've talked about Sam Harris. I've also been doing some partnership with him and I'm posting some content on the Waking up app. And so actually there's another link, wakingup.com 10% T E N P E R C E N T. If you sign up for Waking up through that link, it supports me and my team, but it's a great app. Wherever you sign up, I'm for it. The cool thing that both Sam and I do is if you can't afford it, we'll give it to you for free. And to me, that just feels good. I would love to have people with me on substack or with me and Sam on Waking Up. But if you can't afford it, the most important thing is that you get the meditation.
- [114:31]
Rich Roll
Awesome. And the podcast. 10% happier available wherever you enjoy your podcast.
- [114:36]
Dan Harris
Exactly.
- [114:36]
Rich Roll
Yeah. Awesome, man. Dan Harris, I think you're more than 10% happier.
- [114:40]
Dan Harris
Yes. I didn't answer that question. You asked me that right at the moment.
- [114:43]
Rich Roll
Put a percentage on it very quickly.
- [114:45]
Dan Harris
I have no percentage to put on it. But you said, does the 10% compound annually and. Absolutely it does. And the amazing thing is, and this is a through line in your work that like happiness, physically, psychologically, it's like these are. This is a skill that you can develop in many, many ways, including meditation. And so, you know, we can all get 10% happier and then the interest will compound annually. And that's really fucking good news.
- [115:18]
Rich Roll
That's awesome, man. Well, thank you, dude. That was. That was great, man.
- [115:22]
Dan Harris
Thank you.
- [115:23]
Rich Roll
You're a pro. I love it. You're a gift. And I think your teachings are really important. There's a. There's a need for it right now in a. In a kind of a heightened way. So I am here to support you and I appreciate the work that you do. It really is meaningful and impactful for a lot of people.
- [115:40]
Dan Harris
Thank you, brother. Right back at you.
- [115:42]
Rich Roll
You're welcome here anytime. Time.
- [115:43]
Dan Harris
I appreciate it.
- [115:44]
Rich Roll
Back. We don't have to wait seven years. Cheers.
- [115:47]
Dan Harris
Peace.
- [115:55]
Rich Roll
That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page@richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra Voicing Change and the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power meal planner@meals.richroll.com if you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com sponsors and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the Meal Planner and other subjects, please please subscribe to our newsletter which you can find on the footer of any page@richroll.com Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Cameolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our Creative Director Dan Drake, portraits by David Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis and thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course our theme music was created by Tyler Pyat, Trapper Pyatt and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon.
- [117:34]
Dan Harris
Peace Plants Namaste.