10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story

by Harris, Dan

  I proudly presented my list to Bianca. Her response was to flash an impish grin and say, “But you’re not actually practicing these.” Specifically, she was referring to the first one about not being a jerk.

  “This is aspirational, not operational,” I assured her.

  While imperfectly applied, my precepts were having salutary effects at the office. Nine months after my initial meeting with Ben, I requested another meeting—this time to ask him a specific question related to this book. I wanted to make sure he was okay with my including old stories of drug abuse. It was the first time I was telling anyone in power about the real story behind my panic attacks. It was fascinating to watch the twitch of recognition on his face as he recalled and reevaluated the event. We discussed the pros and cons of disclosure. Ultimately, he said he would have my back, whatever I decided.

  Then, unprovoked, he raised the subject of the two mantras he had created for me in our last meeting, and declared that I had, in his eyes, fully succeeded in both “upping my game” and becoming a “leading man.” For good measure, he also pointed out that while he had enjoyed a recent story I’d done for Nightline on a squad of teenage girl exorcists, he thought I could have used a cleaner shave.

  Epilogue

  As I write this, in the fall of 2013, it’s been five years since I first read Eckhart Tolle, four years since I started meditating, and more than two years since I had my pivotal meeting with Ben Sherwood.

  I have three significant updates since the end of the last chapter. These include: a flip-flop, a promotion, and I guess what you might call a moment of clarity.

  Let’s start with the volte-face. To my profound surprise, I’ve pulled something of a reversal on enlightenment. As with most of my changes of heart, this one was rooted in science. During my travels in the mindfulness subculture, I heard about a group of young neuroscientists taking a bold, public stance. Unlike their Jew-Bu predecessors, who, like Jon Kabat-Zinn, have bent over backward to distance themselves from traditional Buddhism, these young guns are unabashedly interested in “liberation,” rather than just stress reduction. They’ve been doing fMRIs of advanced practitioners. While they haven’t proven that enlightenment is real by, say, finding the brain signature for stream-entry or arhant-hood, they are interested in trying.

  I was, to say the least, intrigued. I made friends with one of these scientists, Dr. Jud Brewer, a compact thirty-eight-year-old with short brown hair, perfect teeth, and an ebullient manner that reflects both his earnest Indiana roots and Ivy League pedigree. In the course of his research at Yale, he had invented something potentially revolutionary: a real-time neuro-feedback mechanism that allows meditators to see when they’re shutting down the Default Mode Network (DMN) of their brains, the so-called “selfing regions” that are active during most of our waking, mindless hours. From inside the narrow tube of the scanner (which I was too claustrophobic to get inside of, by the way), the meditator can see, via a mirror, a small computer monitor. When the DMN is deactivated, the screen goes blue. When the ego is chattering, the screen goes red. Essentially, Jud’s invention tells people whether they’re meditating correctly. He’s had a dozen or so people who claimed to be highly attained practitioners hop in the scanner; many of them made the machine go deeply blue. Jud’s vision for his technology is that it could teach average Joes how to meditate so well that they wouldn’t waste their time doing it incorrectly, which would then put them on a speedier path toward enlightenment.

  Over plates of pasta one day, I pressed Jud on the whole notion of liberation. “Why am I wrong to think enlightenment is this weird piece of bullshit baked into this otherwise really helpful program?” He explained that the brain is a pleasure-seeking machine. Once you teach it, through meditation, that abiding calmly in the present moment feels better than our habitual state of clinging, over time, the brain will want more and more mindfulness. He compared it to lab rats that learn to avoid an electric shock. “When you see that there’s something better than what we have,” said Jud, “then it’s just a matter of time before your brain is like, ‘Why the fuck am I doing that? I’ve been holding on to a hot coal.’ ” If you give your brain enough of a taste of mindfulness, it will eventually create a self-reinforcing spiral—a retreat from greed and hatred that could, Jud insisted, potentially lead all the way to the definitive uprooting of negative emotions (in other words, enlightenment). “Why would it stop?” he said. “Evolutionarily, it doesn’t make sense that it would stop. Does water seek out the lowest level?”

  This was the first rational explanation I’d heard for enlightenment yet. I found myself sitting there, nodding my head in agreement, stunned by the fact that I was doing so. I could barely believe it, but I was actually thinking, Should I be gunning for stream-entry? Perhaps this was another arena in which I needed to up my game?

  To make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, I called the most skeptical person I knew, Sam Harris. Lo and behold, he, too, said enlightenment was real, although he used a different analogy. Just as it’s possible for humans to train to be fast or strong enough to compete in the Olympics, he argued we can practice to be the wisest or most compassionate version of ourselves. In fact, he said he had personally achieved something roughly analogous to stream-entry, the earliest stage of enlightenment—that he had “seen through the ego in a way that is decisive.” Although he quickly added, “That’s not the same thing as being a Buddha, where you’re no longer capable of being a schmuck.”

  To top it off, Sam told me he thought it was entirely possible that some people could become suddenly enlightened with no meditation at all. Specifically, he was referring to Eckhart Tolle. “I don’t have any reason to doubt his story,” he said. He added that there’s something more “authentic” about people like Tolle, who have accounts of breakthroughs that come out of the blue without any formal training—“because they’re not getting it from anywhere else.” This was a bitter pill to swallow. Mockery of Tolle had been my one true north on this journey. Now, as the Buddhists say, maybe I had to let it go. I went back and read that first Tolle book, the one that kicked off my whole “spiritual” odyssey, and while it still struck me as flowery and bizarre, it made a lot more sense to me now than it did five years ago. When I first read A New Earth, I had rolled my eyes when Tolle rather immodestly promised that his book would “initiate the awakening process” in the reader. Now I had to admit that, in my case, the weird little German man was, in a sense, right.

  Here’s where I’ve come down on this, for now: I don’t know if it’s possible to be enlightened, either through meditation, or through a Tolle-style sudden awakening. I’m agnostic—but not with the deadening incuriosity that characterized my stance before I began this whole trip. I now realize that on the issue of enlightenment I was blinded by my own skepticism. All the poetic language about the Buddha sitting under a tree and reaching “the beyond,” “the deathless,” “the very hard to see,” and so forth had provoked a sort of intellectual gag reflex. I had, in essence, inverted the normal quandary that spiritual seekers face. Instead of a Meat Puppets–esque “open your mind, in pours the trash,” I had closed my mind prematurely. This whole experience had been a process of my seeing over and over that many of my assumptions were wrong. Enlightenment was perhaps the latest example.

  I do know one thing for sure: there’s much more for me to do. Whether or not 100% happy is achievable, I can definitely be more than 10% happier—and I’m excited to try. I often think about a quote from a writer I admire named Jeff Warren, who called meditation “the next frontier of human exploration.” It’s insanely encouraging to see that my Jew-Bu friends, all a full generation older than me, are still as excited about this stuff as when they were in their twenties. Mindfulness, happiness, and not being a jerk are skills I can hone the rest of my life—every day, every moment, until senility or death. And the payoff is less reactivity, less rumination, and—who knows?—maybe stream-entry. I have willingness and curiosity. I have confide
nce and trust. I guess another word I could use is . . . faith.

  The next update is more down-to-earth.

  The other day—on October 7, 2013, at eleven A.M., to be exact—Ben asked me to meet him on the set where we shoot most of our major broadcasts. He stuck out his hand and offered me a job as one of the co-anchors of Nightline. I said yes, and then he gave me a hug. My face only came up to his solar plexus. (It’s worth mentioning here that Ben recently started meditating and loves it. Diane Sawyer is also now meditating. So is George Stephanopoulos. Even Barbara Walters recently tried it, although it apparently didn’t stick.)

  True to the Buddhist principle of suffering, by the time I got the job I’d coveted for years, the show had been moved back to a later time slot. However, as my colleague David Wright, the correspondent I used to compete against when we were both younger and more uppity, wrote me in an email, “It’s still the best perch in network news.” I heartily agree. Nowhere else in television do journalists have the kind of freedom and airtime that we enjoy at Nightline. A few days after Ben gave me the job, the news was announced in front of the show’s full team. As I stared out at the faces of my friends on the staff—which I consider to be among the best in all of news—I was engaging in a positive version of prapañca, picturing all the adventures we could have, stories we could tell, and bad guys whose days we could ruin. Meanwhile, I convinced the bosses to let me keep doing weekends on GMA, a job I am enjoying more than ever. On most mornings, I’m actually excited when the alarm goes off at four A.M.

  So, now that I have these two amazing gigs, am I finally fully satisfied? Have I truly arrived? Am I like a shark that no longer needs to keep moving? I don’t know—probably not. But for now, at least, I’m not thinking about what I can do next, only about how I can keep my current circumstances from changing.

  In any event, while the promotion was a huge deal for me, a more significant moment actually came a few months before.

  I was in Rio de Janeiro, shooting a piece about police efforts to clean up the city’s drug-ravaged slums before the 2016 Summer Olympics. One night, my crew and I found ourselves in a small concrete structure, down a dark and filthy back alley, filming members of a drug gang as they prepared marijuana for sale. All of a sudden, a tank of a man came charging in, with an entourage of teenaged henchmen. This guy was carrying a semiautomatic rifle and wearing layers of gold chains in a style reminiscent of Mr. T. When he shook my hand, it actually hurt. He was the leader—or “don”—of the gang, and he was willing, he said, to grant us a rare interview, as long as we promised not to show his face. We hastily set up our cameras, with the don’s heavily armed lieutenants looming over my producer’s shoulder, peering into the viewfinder to make sure we didn’t compromise the boss’s anonymity.

  When the interview got under way, I asked him, “Would you describe your work as dangerous?”

  “Your job is dangerous,” he said. “What if I decided to kill or kidnap you right now?”

  Awkward silence.

  I was 97 percent sure the don was kidding, but the remaining 3 percent was enough to throw me into a funny headspace. What followed was what I’m calling, for lack of a better term, a moment of clarity. Again, nothing mystical—just a series of thoughts, realizations, and entreaties that arose in a flash.

  It began with an internal plea: Dear Drug Lord, please don’t kill me just when I’ve finally gotten my shit together.

  This was followed by a sort of stock-taking, a review of how far I’d come since my bad old days of mindlessness—the days when I might have come face-to-face with a drug dealer under entirely different circumstances. It struck me that the voice in my head is still, in many ways, an asshole. However, mindfulness now does a pretty good job of tying up the voice and putting duct tape over its mouth. I’m still a maniacally hard worker; I make no apologies for that. I still believe firmly that the price of security is insecurity—that a healthy amount of neuroticism is good. But I also know that widening my circle of concern beyond my own crap has made me much happier. Paradoxically, looking inward has made me more outward-facing—and a much nicer colleague, friend, and husband to the wonderful Bianca (who, when she hears that I’ve gotten myself into this situation with the drug lord is probably going to threaten to kill me herself). And while I still worry about work, learning to “care and not to care,” at least 10% of the time, has freed me up to focus more on the parts of the job that matter most—such as covering great stories like this one.

  Then I sent one more little mental plea to the drug lord: Meditation (which—and I say this with nothing but respect—you should really try) has made me much less reliant on unstable and constantly changing external circumstances. My happiness is much more self-generated. In other words, I’m increasingly comfortable with impermanence—but not so comfortable that I am okay with you erasing me right this very moment.

  As I said, this all happened very quickly. Seconds after he issued his threat, the drug lord’s ample belly began to shake with laughter. “Tell him I’m joking,” he said to my translator. The gangster then reached out and put his bear claw on my shoulder, in what was either supposed to be a gesture of reassurance or intimidation—or a little of both—while I chuckled nervously and gulped down saliva.

  I had one more thought. Ironically, it was the exact same thought I had had more than a decade prior, at the beginning of this odyssey, on the top of that mountain in Afghanistan when I was shot at for the first time:

  I hope we’re rolling on this.

  Acknowledgments

  In the immortal words of Jay Z, “First of all, I want to thank my connect.” Huge gratitude to my wife, Dr. Bianca Harris, for making me 100% happier before I became 10% happier. Thank you for introducing me to the work of Dr. Mark Epstein, for tiptoeing around our little apartment when I’m meditating, for putting up with my going on retreats, and for helping me every step of the way with this book—even though you were uncomfortable with my repeatedly gushing about your brilliance and beauty. I love you.

  Speaking of the amazing Mark Epstein, I want to thank him for agreeing—for reasons I’ll never fully understand—to make friends with an obnoxiously inquisitive stranger. (Meanwhile, a big “you’re welcome” to Mark’s wife, Arlene Shechet, who, when she heard that I’d made fun of her husband’s clogs, said, “Oh, thank you—I hate those shoes!”)

  I want to thank all of my Jew-Bu friends, including Mark, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Daniel Goleman and Tara Bennett-Goleman, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Richie Davidson. You guys changed my mind.

  I can’t forget my other contemplative co-conspirators, whose writings, friendship, and advice have benefited me enormously: Sam Harris, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Thurman, Jud Brewer, Jack Kornfield, Matthieu Ricard, Jay Michaelson, Jim Gimian, Barry Boyce, Melvin McLeod, David Gelles, Josh Baran, Representative Tim Ryan, Jeff Walker, Jeff Warren, Daniel Ingram, Tara Brach, Spring Washam, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Chade-Meng Tan, Mirabai Bush, Vince Horn, Elizabeth Stanley, Janice Marturano, Soren Gordhamer, and Gyano Gibson.

  I was lucky enough to have a volunteer army of first readers, who dedicated truly unreasonable amounts of their personal time, and saved me from embarrassing myself in countless ways. Chief among them are: Matt Harris, Regina Lipovsky, Karen Avrich, and Mark Halperin, four of my favorite people on earth, to whom I am now forever indebted. Other game-changing first readers included: Jessica Harris, Susan Mercandetti, Kris Sebastian, Amy Entelis, Kerry Smith, Andrew Miller, Nick Watt, Ricky Van Veen, Wonbo Woo, Glen Caplin, Zev Borow, and Hannah Karp. This book would not have happened without their guidance, or without the early encouragement of my hilarious and supportive book agent, Luke Janklow, as well as my excellent and patient editor, Denise Oswald, both of whom talked me off of countless ledges. (Not incidentally, I also want to thank the whole team at It Books: Lynn Grady, Michael Barrs, Sharyn Rosenblum, Tamara Arellano, Beth Silfin, and ace copy editor Rob Sternitzky.) Also, I must acknowledge William Patrick, who swooped in
late in the game and made some hugely valuable contributions.

  There are many past and present colleagues at ABC News who contributed in various ways to this book: Ben Sherwood, Diane Sawyer, James Goldston, Barbara Walters, David Muir, George Stephanopoulos, Bill Weir, Chris Cuomo, Dr. Richard Besser, Jake Tapper, David Wright, Bob and Lee Woodruff, Jeffrey Schneider, Alyssa Apple, Julie Townsend, Barbara Fedida, Felicia Biberica, Almin Karamehmedovic, Jeanmarie Condon, Bianna Golodryga, Ron Claiborne, Ginger Zee, Sara Haines, John Ferracane, Tracey Marx, Cynthia McFadden, Dan Abrams, Alfonso Pena, Diane Mendez, Nick Capote, Miguel Sancho, Beau Beyerle, Wendy Fisher, David Reiter, Joe Ruffolo, Simone Swink, Andrew Springer, and Jon Meyersohn.

  A few personal friends I’d like to mention who also hooked me up along the way: Willie Mack, Josh Abramson, Jason Harris, Jason Hammel, Kori Gardiner, Meg Thompson, Stephan Walter, and Kaiama Glover.

  In the book, I borrowed or modified some lovely turns of phrase from several authors I admire: Gary Shteyngart seems to have invented the word blightscape in The Russian Debutante’s Handbook; Benjamin Kunkel writes about “reality . . . gathering in the corners of the room” in an ecstasy scene in Indecision; Ben Sherwood uses the term “honeyed light” in The Survivors Club.

  Finally, to Jay and Nancy Lee Harris, the two truly indispensable “causes and conditions” (to use some Buddhist phraseology) for this book. This seems like a good place to note, for the record, something my dad recently said that surprised me: the “price of security is insecurity” line was not, in fact, his personal motto, but instead something he concocted to make his anxious young son feel better about worrying so much. So apparently, the advice was not strategic, but rather compassionate. It only took me four decades to figure out how to put it to use wisely. Thanks to both of you for being as close to perfect as parents could possibly be, for letting me write about you honestly, and for not freaking out when I finally told you (nearly a decade after the fact) about the whole drug thing. Also, I forgive you for sending me to that yoga class.