Mindfulness games
How distraction can make you a better meditator and help you relax anyway
Dan Harris is co-anchor of ABC’s Nightline and the weekend editions of Good Morning America. His first book, 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge and Found SelfHelp That Actually Works — A True Story (Dey Street Books, 2014), was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.
His new book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book (Spiegal & Grau, 2017), co-written with meditation teacher Jeffrey Warren, addresses common roadblocks to meditating.
Harris took some time to answer questions about his books and meditation.
Q Dan, you famously had a panic attack on live TV. This led you to delve into meditation as a way to manage your anxiety. How has your life changed thanks to meditation? A Not being so owned by my emotions. I still experience plenty of difficult emotions — most notably for me is anger. But it’s like you have an inner meteorologist who can see the storm before it makes landfall. You’re less likely to be carried away by it. That makes a huge difference ... The mind is trainable. All the things we want most — happiness, calm, patience, gratitude, compassion, peace of mind — these aren’t factory settings you can tinker with but skills you can work on. That’s an incredibly radical and empowering notion.
Q What do you think is the biggest misconception about meditation? A The idea that you have to clear your mind. There are thousands of kinds of meditation. The one I talk about is mindfulness, which involves sitting in a reasonably quiet place and focusing on the feeling of your breath coming in and out. Every time you get distracted, you start over again ... For many people, the moment they get distracted, their ego tells them they are failed meditators. What you need to know is the moment you notice you were distracted, that’s a victory! It means you’re doing it correctly. You’re noticing again and again how distractible or emotional or negative you tend to be. The result is that you aren’t so yanked around by these tendencies. That’s an incredibly important and powerful process. The biggest obstacle — also a misconception — to meditation is that meditation requires a bunch of time.
Five to 10 minutes a day is a great meditation habit and scientists agree that even this short amount of time allows you to access the benefits: A boosted immune system, less vulnerability to anxiety and depression, etc.
The even better news: If you feel like five to 10 minutes is too much, one minute counts. Really.
Q You went out on the road to meet everyday people and share insights about meditation. We learn about the twists and turns (some very funny) of this journey in your book. How would you sum up your experience? A Eye-opening. You see the depth of the misunderstandings and the difficulties people face in adopting a simple habit that is manifestly beneficial. Evolution did not bequeath us a brain and a mind that is good at adopting long-term healthy habits. We evolved to detect threats on the savannah and to find sources of pleasures like food and sexual partners so we could pass on our DNA ... For me, adopting meditation was reasonably easy. Because I suffered with anxiety and depression my whole life, I embraced the habit much more easily when I saw the data around how meditation can help and when I noticed the benefits in my own life.
Q Dan, you have a wonderful sense of humour. Has meditation made you funnier? A Doing so has immeasurably boosted my ability to respond spontaneously. I found out that when I’m not always feverishly planning on what I’m going to say next, something useful and maybe even funny can come up. There are times when I get nervous or distracted or stuck in a rabbit hole of worry. But it’s very interesting for me to notice
that I can trust that something will come if I’m not tying myself up in knots.
Q What inspired you to share your thoughts and teach meditation to others? A I was reading a bunch of books that were excellent but also a little cloying and syrupy. I had an entrepreneurial hunch that if I could write a book with a little bit more of a skeptical and even cynical tone, it might appeal to people like me.
There are no original ideas in my book. My innovation is that I tell jokes, add the F-word and tell embarrassing stories about myself. The second reason is having experienced the benefits meditation personally and waking up to the fact that the mind is trainable.