Episode 12 of the Science of Happiness Podcast from the Greater Good Science Center, featuring Dan Harris in conversation with Dacher Keltner.
Science of Happiness
Dacher Keltner: Having a panic-attack in front of millions of viewers set Dan Harris on a path to seeking help for his depression and anxiety. He found it with meditation, which he says makes him at least 10% happier, which is also the name of his best-selling book and podcast.
On every episode of our show, we have a happiness guinea pig try out a research-based practice designed to increase happiness, resilience, kindness, or connection and then we dive into the science behind why it works.
Today it’s a real pleasure to welcome my friend Dan Harris as our happiness guinea pig. Dan is anchor for ABC News and author of the books 10% Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Dan, it’s great to have you on The Science of Happiness.
Dan Harris: Great to be on. Your thinking has been very influential on my thinking, so nice to be connected again.
Dacher Keltner: You know I wanted to sort of move into the deep background of your engagement in the contemplative world and the science that led to 10% Happier. You visited my lab and you were kind of searching. What was up?
Dan Harris: You know after I had a panic attack and went to a doctor who is an expert in panic and he asked me if I do drugs and I said yeah and he said OK, you know moron, mystery solved. And he pointed out that if you do cocaine with some regularity you will boost the amount of adrenalin in your brain artificially and that will make you more likely to have a panic attack. So that was a big aha moment for me and it kind of set me off on a weird windy path that ultimately led me to meditation.
Dacher Keltner: We’ve been doing a lot of research on getting veterans outdoors and in nature. And their profile sounds in some ways like your profile which is you know you see the atrocities of war maybe you’re affected physically or you affect somebody and you turn to self-medication and tough stuff follows. What was your what was your first taste of meditation?
Dan Harris: I was reading a book by John Kabat Zinn, “Wherever You Go, There You Are” and I don’t know why I just said “you know what? I’m going I’m just going to try this now.” And I got up off of my chair and didn’t tell anybody because it would have been very embarrassing. And I went into the room locked the door and sat on the floor and started to meditate.
Dacher Keltner: A closet meditator!
Dan Harris: I was a closet meditator. And you know that first experience is really intense because you just see how crazy you are. And that’s the point, actually. You know people often think that when they sit to meditate and realize, “Oh my god I’m just so all over the place”. It’s like trying to hold up a live fish in your hand. It’s really hard. People think oh I’m a failure I can’t do this, but actually no it’s seeing how crazy you are is the…is a victory. It’s hugely important because when you start to see how crazy you are the craziness doesn’t own you as much and so that was very clear to me because I was doing it in the right context. I had read John’s book and so I understood that seeing that you’re distracted means you’re doing it correctly.
Dacher Keltner: Yeah. You are not your thoughts as John Kabat Zinn says. You know, I want to return to anxiety because it’s interesting in our world, you know in many different worlds of people working hard and high stress work. that’s tough on your cardiovascular system and when you have one and you realize how exhausting it is, you sense that. How did how did this kind of immersion in meditation and the contemplative approaches, how did it work with your anxiety?
Dan Harris: I have suffered from anxiety and depression, so panic is just kind of like accelerated anxiety. But I have had anxiety and depression, which are often morbid to use a medical term of art since my whole life.
There’s been a bunch of science looking at meditation. I think it’s still very much in its early stages and often sort of overhyped by people like me you know are enthusiastic about meditation. But one of the areas where I think the research is the strongest is around meditation’s benefits for people with depression and anxiety.
Dacher Keltner: I agree. I totally agree.
Dan Harris: And the mechanism from my personal experience is right around what you said before that we are not our thoughts. So anxiety is future-oriented thinking, worrying, handwringing, and through the boosted self-awareness that one gets through meditation you start to realize, oh yeah this is just, these are just thoughts.
Maybe they’re connected to reality or maybe not or maybe. Even if they’re connected to reality, I’ve thought about it enough, it’s time to let it go. And that is that is incredibly useful.
Dacher Keltner: Yeah I agree. What did you build up that led you in terms of a practice that led to 10% happier?
Dan Harris: You know, I think there’s this sub conscious assumption that happiness happens to us. That it’s dependent upon, you know, external factors like the quality of our childhood, the quality of our work life, our marriage all of which are super important. But in fact what the science is showing us is that happiness is a skill that you can work on, that you can generate just the way you work on your bicep in the gym and, you know, we spend so much time on our bodies, on our stock portfolios, on our cars, and on our whatever and almost no time on the one filter through which we experience everything and that’s our minds. And so the idea that the mind is trainable that these qualities that we want—happiness, calm, peace, generosity, compassion, patience—that these aren’t factory settings that can’t be tinkered with that these are actually skills. That is a really radical and empowering notion and so I see that as the common denominator of everything I’m doing.
I embraced mindfulness meditation because there are thousands of flavors of meditation. But I liked mindfulness, because while it is derived from Buddhism, it is thoroughly secularized and there’s no metaphysical claims, no religious lingo. I started with five to ten minutes a day of basic mindfulness meditation. Then ultimately kind of went to a half hour a day and then a couple of years ago I took a big leap, which I moved to two hours a day.
Dacher Keltner: Are you serious?
Dan Harris: Yeah which is going to sound impressive but it’s actually not so impressive once you know that, I, my rule is I can do as many doses as I want, as many sits to use a meditative term of art, as I want throughout the day wherever I want, whenever I want, and my goal is just to accumulate up to two hours over the course of the day.
Dacher Keltner: Now what are all your colleagues out of New York City and the hard charging world of media. What are they saying about Dan Harris?
Dan Harris: What are they saying behind my back? I don’t know. I mean people certainly make fun of me to my face. But it’s become a lot less so. I started meditating before it got cool so that actually, you know I took a lot of crap for that. Now, you know, meditation is kind of mainstream. And I get people making fun of me, you know when I’m, you know, being a jerk which I definitely still have the capacity to do. You know, people will with relish point out you know the deviance from m