Dan Harris - How To Keep Your Sanity Right Now

Today's Guest is Dan Harris, ABC News journalist and author of 10% Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Dan has a humorous way of turning ancient wisdom into useful everyday tools for staying sane. In this interview, we talk about Election Sanity (or lack thereof) and trainable mental skills and practices that can give us a bit of a boost right now.

Transcript

Patricia Karpas Welcome to Untangle.

I'm Patricia Karpas.

Today's guest is one of my favorites,

ABC News journalist and author of 10% Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics,

Dan Harris.

He's got a great and very funny way of turning ancient wisdom into useful everyday tools for staying sane.

Today we talk about election sanity,

Or lack thereof,

And he shares some great trainable mental skills and practices that can give us a bit of a boost right now.

I for one really need it.

My favorite new phrase is hugging the dragon.

You'll know why when he describes it later in the show.

Now here's Dan.

Dan,

It's so great to have you back on Untangle today.

Dan Harris Thanks for having me.

Patricia Karpas Yeah,

In preparing for this interview,

I was looking back at an interview you did,

Let's see,

With Sharon Salzberg,

Joanna Hardy,

And David Gillis from the New York Times.

It was in 2016.

And it was so interesting because you guys were talking about the election and how it was one of the most difficult elections any of us ever experienced.

And we're told and like Sharon's advice was not to catastrophize and to stay in the present moment.

And as devastating as things are right now,

I had to laugh a little bit because things did get pretty catastrophic over these last four years and certainly feel that way now.

And I wanted to understand from you,

What are you feeling right now?

And what is your advice as a journalist and also a mindfulness expert?

What are you telling people right now to keep their sanity?

Dan Harris Well,

There's so many things to say about this.

In no particular order,

There are a bunch of things that I would recommend always to keep your sanity.

I call them the pantheon of no brainers.

And notwithstanding the fact that I'm a meditation evangelist,

I'm not a meditation fundamentalist.

So I don't think you can meditate all of your problems away.

I think in terms of having a holistic approach to being sane and happy and flourishing,

There are some obvious moves,

Including meditation,

But also getting enough sleep,

Exercise or movement,

Access to nature,

Positive relationships in your life,

Having social contact,

Which has been deeply undervalued,

Nutrition,

Meaningful work or just meaningful,

Even if your day job isn't meaningful,

Having meaningful volunteer work,

Having some purpose in your life.

So those are just some obvious science backed recommendations.

I would add on two other things for right now.

One is titrate your news consumption.

And I say this as a news professional and somebody who believes that we need to be engaged and informed citizens who vote and who do what we can to advance the policies that we care about.

But you don't want to get so sucked into your Twitter feed that you're useless.

And then the final thing I'd say is that,

I suspect we'll talk more about this,

But we've been over on my podcast,

10% Happier,

We've been doing a special series of episodes about a specific kind of meditation that in my view could be really helpful right now,

Which is a kind of meditation that I was not a fan of when I first heard about it because it seemed very,

Very syrupy,

But a set of practices known as the Brahma Viharas or the divine abodes that are basically training up our capacity to be loving.

So I want you to talk a little bit more about that because I certainly think those and there are four particular skills that we cultivate with those practices.

And I want to understand how you are using the practices personally to manage your feelings.

And also you have to be on guard with the news every minute.

I'm sure you're getting instant messages and phone calls and it's nonstop.

So that's an extreme situation compared to the rest of us who have to titrate watching TV or reading the paper.

How do you implement these practices to feel more sane in your day?

Well,

Let me just say about the news consumption.

Yes,

I am in the biz,

But one thing that's been really helpful is I just turned off all my notifications.

So if there's something where the office needs to reach me,

They'll call me or text me.

But beyond that,

I'm deciding when I'm tuning in.

And I'm not here to say that I'm somehow perfect and that I never compulsively check.

Yeah,

If I'm bored or lonely or hungry or tired,

Then I can definitely fall into doom scrolling or whatever it is.

So perfection is not on offer here,

But we can get marginally better through just being deliberate about it and just setting some boundaries.

I think turning off notifications is huge.

And then also just using your capacity for mindfulness,

Self-awareness to see like,

How's it going on hour number three on Twitter?

How do you feel?

And using that as a good feedback for whether you should continue or maybe do something else.

I find that a lot of the people that you're talking to and a lot of the guests that you're having on 10% Happier feel a low level of frustration or agitation.

And do you think,

And I do want to get into the Brahma Vahara's,

Do you think that those practices help to turn down that frustration or agitation a notch?

Yes.

And I think the key yes to everything you just asked,

All the questions.

Okay.

Yes,

My guests are the everybody I've talked to is feeling some level of agitation about the election and everybody I talked to is professional meditator.

And so that should make you feel better about whatever anxiety you right now,

Whoever's listening feel you're not malfunctioning.

If you're feeling anxious,

It simply means you're paying attention.

And yes to the other part of your question,

Which is do the practices of meditation specifically in my life,

The suite of Buddhist meditation practices,

Do they help turn it down?

And you use a very key phrase there,

Which is a notch.

Yes,

They do.

It's really helpful to manage this anxiety.

We don't have to live with unbridled,

Paralytic anxiety.

We can turn it down a notch or two,

Depending on our facility with and experience with these various practices.

So let's talk about the Brahma Vaharas.

And if you wouldn't mind going through each of them and making them easy to understand,

Which I know you're very brilliant at doing,

And also maybe tying it into how they help us right now with this agitation.

Sure.

And I'll do one at a time just so that I don't flood you with too much information.

If you have questions about any particular practice or mental quality,

Then I'll give you space to hop in,

So I won't go on some uninterrupted discourse here,

Which I know can be annoying.

I'll start with the first Brahma Vahara.

And again,

That term Brahma Vahara roughly translates into divine abodes,

Which is a highfalutin kind of grandiose term.

And it's easy to get hung up on that,

At least for skeptics such as myself.

But you can think of these instead as mental qualities or mental skills that are trainable.

And there is a significant amount of science that shows that these practices get up all sorts of psychological,

Physiological,

And behavioral benefits.

So the first of these mental skills is often called loving kindness,

Or the ancient Pali term is metta,

M-E-T-T-A.

I'm not a huge fan,

As you might imagine,

Of loving kindness.

It sounds pretty over the top hallmark-y.

So another way to translate it is simply friendliness.

Loving kindness,

That word sounds like Hollywood-esque.

You're just going to be smothering everybody in your environment and perhaps even all living beings with this overwhelming,

Overbearing love and light.

And I don't have access to that.

What friendliness implies is like a skosh north of neutrality,

The human capacity to give a crap.

And that capacity is hard-wired into us as a species.

We were not physically very remarkable,

And yet we've come,

For better or worse,

To dominate this planet because of our capacity to work together.

And having the capacity to have warmth toward other people,

And this is key,

Toward yourself,

Because this capacity of metta or loving kindness is omnidirectional,

Is really,

Really useful.

How the practice works is,

At least for me,

Initially was very,

Very annoying.

But you sit with your eyes closed and you envision this being,

And then you repeat a series of phrases like,

May you be happy,

May you be healthy,

May you be safe,

May you live with ease.

And then you do a bit of a bait and switch and switch in yourself,

Call to mind an image of yourself,

Maybe as a kid or just the sense of your body sitting and repeat those same phrases.

And then classically,

You move on to a benefactor,

A neutral person,

Somebody you often overlook in your life,

A difficult person,

And then all beings.

So that's the basic practice.

And I'll just say one last thing before I shut up and let you jump in with any question,

Which is that for me,

It's a key unlock in my practice and in my life has been having some warmth toward myself.

Wealth love is one of these cliches that can be very hard to understand or off-putting or even,

I think perhaps the key thing is it's very hard to operationalize.

But developing a sense of humor,

A sense of warmth toward all of my neurotic programs,

All of my habitual storylines and resentments,

Seeing that in fact,

These old patterns that I've spent so much time either in denial about or fighting,

That if I can't,

Instead of slaying these dragons,

If I can learn to hug the dragon,

That is a really key unlock because that changes your own internal weather in a really significant way.

And that then leads into a virtuous cycle where your relationships improve because relationships are key to a flourishing human life.

Then your inner weather improves as a consequence,

And then your relationships improve and then your own inner life,

Et cetera,

Et cetera,

Onwards and upwards.

And so that's a really key facet of this.

Yeah,

And I love that part of it.

And I really like that you just said hug the dragon,

So I'm going to have to use that.

But the problem is when you go to the part about sending friendliness or kindness to a difficult person,

And depending on how deep you go with difficult,

It can be extreme.

And this gets into how do we open ourselves right now to listening to deeply opposing views and,

For example,

I interviewed Koshin last week and he was talking,

And I know you're good friends with him,

And he was talking about how every morning he listens to this white supremacist.

I think it's on the radio.

And he feels that this is part of his karma to understand this and to potentially send friendliness.

So I think that that's an incredibly difficult thing to do.

And would you suggest that you only go so far with offering friendliness?

Or how do you apply that to this real world you're living in right now?

Well,

It's important to note that Koshin,

Who is a phenomenal human being in every possible way,

And somebody I really love,

Is a Zen priest,

A professional meditator,

And he's playing a varsity game here.

So I don't think these practices are designed to lower our reactivity and our stress a little bit.

I don't think you want to dive into the deep end of the pool.

And if you're a Republican,

They're trying to generate loving kindness for Nancy Pelosi and if you're a Democrat for Trump,

Like it's not going to happen.

Yeah.

I mean,

If you feel like you can handle it,

Then great.

This is where the practice,

If followed diligently,

Ultimately takes us to the Koshin level.

But let's just start with having some basic warmth for the people in our immediate environment.

And I think perhaps most importantly for ourselves,

Because this is a stressful time and in order to function well,

We need to be able to see all of the stuff that's coming up in our mind with,

Again,

A hug the dragon attitude as opposed to fighting it or fleeing from it or pretending it's not there,

Which are habitual responses to whatever comes up in our mind.

I do think with time though,

We can use that.

Many of us are confronted with people with whom we disagree on Facebook,

Maybe even at the dining room table every night,

And if you're feeling up to it,

It can be very useful to start to practice with that.

But I wouldn't push yourself if it's not feeling right,

Then just stick with the easy people and yourself.

And then there's compassion.

Very much related to this.

So compassion is,

We all know what empathy is,

Which is the capacity to feel other people's emotions.

We all,

I think,

Have heard that it's,

Or might have even experienced the concept of empathy burnout,

That if you're watching too much news,

Or if you're in a caregiving profession,

That you can burn out and move into defensive apathy or even hostility.

The difference with compassion is it's got a key add on,

Which is an ennobling,

Empowering add on.

It's not just resonating with somebody else's feelings,

But you also have the desire to help.

And that shift,

That psychological move,

And this again,

Don't believe me,

This is backed up by a significant amount of science.

Brain science and psychological studies is really a key one that helps you in a moment of national and international crisis,

Move from a sense of being swamped by the difficulties in your life and the lives of the people around you,

To feeling empowered.

To just give you a practical example,

Dr.

Vivek Murthy,

Former Surgeon General,

Has written a book about loneliness,

Which was a pandemic even before the pandemic.

And one of the counterintuitive pieces of advice he gives for people who are feeling lonely is to engage in acts of service.

So that is right in line with this notion of compassion,

Which is you're not just resonating with the suffering around you,

But even if you're not acting on it,

Even internally,

You're moving into an attitude of how can I help?

And so how does this play out in a meditation practice?

Very similar to the Metta practice,

You call to mind people who are suffering,

And you send phrases like,

May you be free from suffering.

I found,

And I still do this practice,

As a white person during the height of BLM back in June and July,

Sometimes moments of feeling like I wasn't fully connecting to the story.

And so just bringing some,

It is hard,

But bringing to mind George Floyd and saying,

May my mind may be free from fear,

May be free from pain,

May be free from suffering.

And then the officer,

May you be free from hatred,

May you be free from anger,

May you be free from suffering.

And again,

It's just a psychological inner training that's building up our muscle to not only empathize,

But also have this desire to be of service.

What's radical here is these capacities are not factory settings.

You are not just as compassionate now as you will ever be.

These are skills that are trainable.

And by the way,

Compassion is linked to greater happiness,

Health,

Popularity.

And so there's every reason to want to practice these skills.

And when you are meditating on compassion,

And I really like what you're saying about this being inner training and really building our capacity and our inner resources,

Do you think it's harder right now to take it off the cushion and be of service because of COVID and because of how complicated the world is right now?

Or do you encourage people to do whatever they can to be of service?

Yes,

And yes,

It's definitely harder.

There's no question.

Everything's harder.

And yes,

There are ways to be of service.

We don't have to go straight to the varsity level here and go out and have compassion for and be of service to people with whom we disagree.

It can simply just be super empowering to volunteer and be politically active for your team because it takes you out of feeling like you're constantly buffeted by the waves of tumult around you and instead giving you a sense of agency and connecting you to what is good about you.

That is why service is so helpful.

And it doesn't have to be some big grandiose thing.

It can be,

I'll give you an example,

Some minor act of service that my family and I engaged with since the beginning of the pandemic.

I want to be clear as I say this though that while this is going to maybe make me look like a somewhat decent person,

I retain the capacity to be a schmuck in a million ways.

So don't get the wrong idea what I'm about to say.

But at the beginning of the pandemic,

It became clear to us that we had one neighbor on our hallway who was an 85-year-old woman who all of a sudden was just kind of marooned.

And so every night we would meet her in the hallway,

Socially distanced and hang out with her.

We subsequently moved to the suburbs,

But I still go on walks with her and I consider her a friend and I'm probably getting more out of our relationship than she is because she's so smart and it's really great to hang out with her.

But just doing something simple like that,

Which is not like a headline making move,

It takes you out of your own junk and just helps you orient toward other people.

Yeah and you have no concept of how much that helps the other person.

I mean you're saying it helps you more,

But I'm sure it's made a huge difference in her experience right now.

And then there's sympathetic joy.

So let's talk about that.

I think that's a really tough one for people.

Yeah these are all tough,

But worth doing.

Sympathetic joy is tough,

But again there's a way to think about this that can make it less tough.

So you start with the tough stuff and then give you sort of an actionable way to approach it.

Sympathetic joy you can think of as the opposite of schadenfreude.

So I was talking to my podcast recently about how there's an old expression that every time a friend of mine succeeds,

I die a little bit,

Which I think sums up the way many of us feel about other people succeeding.

The Germans came up with this word schadenfreude,

Which is the pleasure of seeing other people suffer.

And I think many of us will recognize that capacity in ourselves.

Sympathetic joy,

Often known by the ancient Pali word of mudita,

Is the opposite.

It's the joy of seeing other people's joy,

But really hard to do given the salience of envy in many of our minds.

We had a guest on our show,

Her name is Tuare Selah,

She's a meditation teacher from Seattle,

And she practices mudita in a way that I think a lot of people will find easier to do.

She calls it borrowing joy.

She says,

Don't expect yourself,

There may be people who's successful,

Like if you're a Democrat,

Don't expect to be excited every time something good happens for the Republicans.

That's just too much of an ask.

However,

Given that there's only so much joy that's going to happen in your life,

Because any human life has a finite amount of joy that's going to just naturally arise,

You can find people whose joy it is easy to borrow and borrow that.

For example,

Cat videos,

Puppy videos,

That is borrowing joy if you watch that.

If you're systematic about it,

Instead of just doing it when you're strung out and have nothing else to do,

But if you're systematic about it and deliberate and intentional about it,

There's a way that that can give you sustenance to endure this dumpster fire of an election that we're living through.

This finally to say,

How do you practice this on the cushion?

The practice is again,

Your eyes closed,

Calling to mind somebody who's doing really well right now.

Again,

Try to not pick people where you might be able to tell yourself a story that their success is somehow hurting yours.

By the way,

That is almost always just a story.

But start with easy people and repeat the phrase,

May your happiness grow.

I sometimes picture my son who's five and his cat,

Who's remarkably tolerant with a five-year-old and the two of them will sometimes play together all the time.

And I'll just say they're happy together.

They really love each other.

And so I'll sometimes picture them and say,

May your happiness grow and expand.

Then I'll move to other people.

I'm in the very crowded and competitive TV news space and I spent a lot of time suffering over other people's success.

And sometimes I'll just picture people who are experiencing success and try to feel happy for them and to counteract this inner narrative of like somehow their success is coming at my cost.

And then can you apply that to the other team?

If you're a Republican,

Can you picture Nancy Pelosi somehow besting Steve Mnuchin in negotiation over a stimulus or whatever?

That may be too much to ask,

But it's worth a try.

And if it's too stressful,

Then back up.

AMITA NANDELA You're a different person having practiced sympathetic joy than you were when you first started all of this,

What,

Eight years ago,

Ten years ago?

In this particular regard,

I wouldn't say that I've made massive strides,

But a little bit.

I think it's much easier for me to question the reflexive narrative of,

Oh,

Well,

This person's succeeding.

If they hadn't or has Sharon Salzberg talks about this in a really great way that like,

There's a way that you can see somebody else's success as if that success was headed toward you and they just jumped up and grabbed that it was otherwise that glory was going to be yours.

And that's just really almost never the case.

And I found that I'm much better at questioning that reflexive narrative that comes up when I read about somebody in my industry who's doing well.

And then I also have a lot of personal curiosity about taking the next step and actively,

In my mind,

Celebrating their success because it just feels so much better than wallowing in resent.

AMT The wallowing never really feels good,

Does it?

I really like that you brought in the metaphors of training and varsity level because I feel like people often feel like they'll start to meditate and all of a sudden they should feel a certain way or their life should change in a certain way.

And the way that you talk about it in terms of increments and you can get to be Koshin varsity level,

But that's a lot of training and we all move at our own pace.

So I think that's a really cool way of looking at it.

I'm certainly on the freshman team right now.

JIM My too.

But better to do the work than not do it.

I'd rather be 10%.

I mean,

Again,

Back to my sort of ridiculous percentages here,

But maybe Koshin's 100% happy.

Fine,

I have Mudita for him,

But I can only start where I am.

I don't look at him and think,

Well,

I shouldn't even start.

I think,

Okay,

I can have a piece of the peace that he feels.

So I'd rather do that than not do it.

AMT Absolutely.

So let's talk about the last one of the Brahma Haras,

Which is equanimity,

Which is my personal favorite and one that I will strive for for the rest of my life.

How do we practice this and maybe talk about what it is for people that haven't heard that term before?

JIM Yeah,

It's just the capacity to stay calm,

Whatever's happening.

To stay cool,

Whatever's happening.

Again,

This is aspirational,

Not something you're going to be perfect at.

And actually,

So we had a different guest on the 10% Happier podcast for each Brahma Vihara and the guest for equanimity.

We chose Roshi Joan Halifax,

Who's a Zen meditation teacher,

And she is,

By her own admission,

Not very good at equanimity,

Which made her the perfect guest.

She has been passionately politically engaged her whole life.

And so she's on Twitter and freely admits to occasionally falling into like doom scrolling mode and just getting too caught up in and obsessed with the news.

And so working on what she calls vitamin E equanimity,

Keeping it cool is a lifelong practice for her.

And those are my people.

That's who I want to talk to because they're perfected.

Or first of all,

I don't believe anybody is.

And second,

Those who are,

At least if they were,

They would be pretty boring.

And so that's what equanimity is.

And there are lots of ways to practice equanimity.

But I think actually,

For freshman level meditators,

Anybody who's done the basic meditation practice of watching your breath,

And then every time you get distracted,

You start again and again,

You are building equanimity in this way,

Because you're seeing the chaos of your own mind.

And some percentage of the time,

You're in a non-reactive mode.

And by the way,

The non-reactivity,

And this is a mistake that I've fallen into many times,

The non-judgmental,

Non-reactive mode that we can,

Which is otherwise known as mindfulness,

This sort of self-awareness that is both intimate but not yanked around by what's coming up in our mind.

I often fell into,

And this will bring us full circle back to metta,

I often fell into a sort of clinical journalistic awareness of what was coming up in my mind.

And that was useful,

Kind of,

But in the last couple of years,

The more I practiced the Brahma Viharas and started to get into this hug the dragon mode,

Having some warmth toward my own nonsense as it comes up in my mind,

That has really changed the way I've related to it and to other people.

JENNIFER WISDOM That's a lot of self-compassion,

Right?

It starts there.

When you talk about the chaos inside your mind,

And then we've been talking about the chaos out in the world,

And these practices are all connected.

And I think the only way that we can stay sane is to work with the chaos.

And sometimes,

I guess this is what you're saying,

You welcome it and inquire into it.

CHASE Yeah,

Look,

Chaos,

Impermanence,

Entropy,

These are non-negotiable.

JENNIFER WISDOM Right.

CHASE I don't know that you need to necessarily welcome a victory by the opposing team in the election.

But you can welcome your anger and resentment and your own inner dramatis personae that will inevitably come up and tell lots of stories during this process,

Because it is the welcoming of your own stuff.

That's what I mean by hugging the dragon instead of slaying it.

Like can you develop some more warmth and to see these inner characters of yours as people who are as like neurotic programs that were injected into you by the culture,

By your parents that are trying,

Often unskillfully,

To help you.

Your anger,

Your resentment,

Your fear,

It's trying to help you.

You don't need to act out every thought that these modes of mind offer up to you blindly.

But you can welcome them to the party with some sort of warmth and equanimity and then instead of reacting blindly to everything they're telling you,

You respond wisely.

And that is just a game-changing skill,

Even if you're only able to apply it 10% of the time.

JENNIFER WISDOM Do you have a practice for equanimity that you do?

Or do you feel like that's just the mother lode and everything you do ramps into equanimity?

CHASE There are specific practices,

Brahma,

Vihara style where you're using phrases.

But for me,

And Roshi Jon,

I believe is the same advice,

Just basic mindfulness is so chock full of equanimity.

In other words,

Every time you sit and do basic meditation where you're just watching your breath come and go,

The whole goal is whatever comes by and swallows your attention and takes you off on a ride,

When you wake up from that,

You're developing equanimity because you're able to blow it a kiss and then go back to your breath.

JENNIFER WISDOM I feel like we've talked a lot about election sanity or maybe a little bit about insanity.

Is there anything else that you guys are doing that you think would be helpful for our audience?

I know you've got a meditation challenge and then you're doing something I think after the election,

Assuming that there will be X number of people that will be disgruntled or challenged.

What do you suggest?

What kinds of things are you doing?

CHASE So there's a whole slate of offerings.

So on our podcast,

We've done four special episodes,

Each one dedicated to one of the Brahmaviharas.

Wednesday morning after the election,

There will be another special episode where we'll just debrief with a great meditation teacher by the name of Lama Rod Owens,

Who wrote a book called Love and Rage.

He's a very interesting character.

Gay African American man who's dealt with no shortage of difficulties in his own life,

And so he's going to be a really interesting person to process it all with.

The other thing we're doing on the 10% Happier app is starting seven days before the election,

We're going to do a meditation challenge where you'll get a free video from one of the teachers who you heard on the podcast explaining a little bit about how to operationalize these qualities in your own life.

And then hopefully,

That will leave you on election day to use the,

Go back to the phrase you used at the beginning of this,

To having had your anxiety turned down a notch so that you can be both engaged and somewhat calm.

We'll be following all of that.

And thanks so much for doing that.

I mean,

I think it's such a complicated time and you guys are doing such great work to help the rest of us.

So I really,

Really appreciate that.

I always love the way you explain all of these what can seem like complicated concepts.

So thank you,

Dan,

So much for being with us today.

Well,

I'm obsessed with this stuff.

So thanks for letting me yammer.

Thanks so much to Dan for being on Untangled today.

Thanks as always for being with us today.

We'll see you next week.

Reviews

Great!! 🙏

Excellent. Thanks!