DORÉ

Have you ever had a panic attack? Dan Harris did. Except it wasn’t like mine, which I had in the privacy of my home. It was on-air, as he was news anchoring one of the most popular shows in America.

So, looking for ways for this to never happen to him again was how Dan found meditation.

I have been fascinated by Dan Harris’s podcast and his book – his very down-to-earth approach to the often very woo-woo world of meditation and spirituality, speaks to me. His sense of humor, his self deprecation and honesty makes him a wonderful author to read, and a delightful guest.

[podcast_episode episode=”254320″ ]

On what he wanted to do when he was a kid…
I knew I wanted to do something glamorous, and I had, in my mind, television news and the movies mixed up. I had them all in the same bucket. And I went to film school for a little while here in New York City, at NYU, long enough to realize that I had no talent for anything having to do with the movies.

On discovering meditation…
It was not neat and tidy. It was not like I had this conversation with the shrink and then I started meditating and everything was hunky dory. It actually took severals years and it started because a colleague recommended that I read a book by self-help author named Eckhart Tolle.

He was the first person I ever heard point out that we have a voice in our heads. He’s not talking about schizophrenia or hearing voices, he means our inner narrator, our blah, blah, blah all the time. Nobody had ever pointed that out to me before. And it just struck me so powerfully.

This is the first time in my life where I’ve ever been ahead of a curve, I started getting interested in meditation before it became popular and trendy!

On the analogy of meditation as the equivalent of going to the gym…
If you go to the gym and you’re not panting or sweating, you’re cheating! Same thing with meditation. It is challenging. Sometimes you’ll have a great run where it feels completely seamless and that’s true for meditation, too. Sometimes it’s really blissful, but you can’t expect that to happen every time, it’s not the way it goes!

On defining balance…
You always need balance but it’s just a question of how you define it and what the dosage is. I still am really intense and really ambitious, and I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool meditator now, if you are starting something that you truly believe in and you want it to succeed, I do think you need to kind of hurl yourself into it, and your definition of balance in those moments will shift.

On our inner narrator…
I have a friend who jokes about the fact that he feels like, when he thinks about the voice in his head, he’s been hijacked by the most boring person alive, who says the same shit over and over, most of it is negative and all of it is self-referential, and when you don’t know you’re having this non-stop conversation with yourself, it controls you. Your ego controls you…

On what works for him…
I’m a maximalist, I think that when it comes to mental wellbeing, happiness, you should pull every lever you possibly can. Talk therapy, getting enough sleep, having good relationships in your life. having pets if that helps you, meditation, medication. All of the possible arrows in your quiver, you should use.

On meditation misconceptions…
There’s this misconception, a huge and pernicious misconception, that in order to mediate you have to clear your mind. Clearing your mind is impossible. You cannot stop thinking, unless you’re enlightened or dead. The goal of meditation is not to stop thinking, it’s not to clear your mind, it’s to focus your mind, often for just nano-seconds at a time, usually on your breath.

On the benefits of meditation…
One, it makes you just a little bit calmer. Again, not super blissed out, imperturbable, but just a little bit less frantic. Two, makes you more focused. And the third benefit is emotional reactivity, and another way to say that would be mindfulness. It’s the ability to see what’s happening in your head without getting carried away by it.

On not taking meditation too seriously…
I like to joke that there were no original ideas in my book, that I’m just the first person who’s writing about meditation and using the word “fuck” a lot.

What he loves about being on the news…
Garance: What do you love about it? Is it the fact that it’s the news and you’re influencing people’s lives? Or the part about being recognized? Is that something you got into?

Dan: Oh yeah. All of it. I think that motivation runs along a spectrum. If you’re being honest about your motivation it’s usually going to run on a spectrum from high-minded to really crass. On the crass end of the spectrum, when you to go sporting events and if you see people who realize the camera operator put their face on the jumbotron, they get so excited to see their faces. Imagine doing that for a living! So there is that, it is thrilling to be on TV and have people recognize you. There’s no doubt that that has been and still is, part of my motivation.