News Anchor Dan Harris on the Pursuit of Manly Happiness
Dan Harris — the deep-voiced co-anchor of ABC’s “Nightline” and “Good Morning America” weekend edition — is cool, calm and collected in front of the cameras. But he wasn’t always so Zen. In fact, the newsman had a full-blown panic attack on the air back in 2004, in front of 5 million GMA viewers. It sent him into a doctor’s office, and onto a therapist’s couch, and though that quelled his panic attacks, there were lingering issues, from depression to self-doubt, that kept him both self-medicating (hello, cocaine) and searching for answers. Coincidentally, that’s when Peter Jennings assigned him to the religion beat, which included the self-help universe, and suddenly Harris’s professional quest merged with a personal one.
He admits he was a hard sell, particularly being male, mainly because self-help seems “lame,” he says. But eventually Harris, 42, found surprising solace in meditation. He’s written a new book about his odyssey, “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,” and spoke with Yahoo Shine about "moronic" inner voices, and achieving greater happiness with just five minutes of meditation a day.
What caused your panic attacks and subsequent depression and anxiety?
I think the root of it is something a lot of people share, which is a desire to be really good at their job. I was in my 20s when I got to ABC News, and I was aware of how inexperienced I was, working with these giants like Diane Sawyer and Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings. I was insecure, so I compensated by becoming a workaholic. When 9/11 happened, I volunteered to spend years on the frontline in places like Afghanistan and the West Bank, and I didn’t contemplate the psychological consequences of it. When I got home I got depressed. But I wasn’t conscious [about it] — I felt like I had the flu all the time — and would later learn from a doctor that when you’re depressed and un-self-aware, it can manifest in your body. I realized I needed to make some sort of changes.
You write about how you were averse to the idea of self-help. How was that related to being male?
As a guy, self-help as it’s commonly presented is just irretrievably lame. There are so many permutations of lameness here! So with [someone like] Eckart Tolle, who I do think has a lot to offer, he’s just weird, I’m sorry. I like the guy a lot, but he’s like a slow-talking little gnome and I don’t think your average beer-drinking guy — which I was-slash-am — can relate to him. Even though his diagnosis is so astute, it’s a stylistic issue. [Also], I was raised by recovering hippies and my parents made me go to yoga class when I was 5. I have a memory of this woman disapproving of the Toughskins I was wearing and making me take them off and do sun salutations in my tightie-whities in front of all the other little kids, and that created in me a lifelong hatred of all things touchy-feely. But I do think the average guy thinks meditation requires sitting cross-legged (which most of us can’t do), wearing robes, lighting incense, listening to Enya — basically a collection of all the things our worst ex-girlfriends did.
Why “10%” happier?
The 10 percent is completely random. It comes from a discussion I was having with one of my colleagues who likes to make fun of me. When she heard I was meditating she gave me this kind of withering look and asked, “Why are you doing that to yourself?” I just randomly said, “Because it makes me 10 percent happier.” A look of scorn was immediately transformed into a look of interest. She was like, “Well, I would like that.” I think we’re ready in America for a realistic fix. And if somebody as fidgety, skeptical and with as busy a mind as me can do this, anybody can do it.
What are five ways others might achieve greater happiness, too?
1. Meditate. Sit up straight. Pick a spot — your chest, your belly, your nose — and just feel your breath coming in and going out. You don’t have to breathe deeply, just feel it as it comes and goes. And every time your mind wanders, which it will, a million times… just catch yourself and bring yourself back to the breath. Tell yourself you’ll do 5 minutes a day and never any more.
2. Overcome skepticism. Meditating lowers your blood pressure, boosts your immune system and has been shown to effectively rewire the part of your brain that regulates stress, self-awareness and compassion. Also, consider that modern meditators today include the cofounder of Twitter, the US Marines, the US Army, Phil Jackson the basketball coach, the lead singer of Weezer and executives at General Mills and Aetna.
3. Develop a different relationship to the voice in your head. The inner narrator we all have is often a moron. For example, if you’re online at Starbucks and somebody cuts you off, you automatically think, “I’m angry,” and then you inhabit that thought and become angry. If you have enough meditation under your belt, you might notice the emptiness of the thought and make a decision about whether it’s worth being angry in that moment. And that is a super power.
4. Know the difference between humility and humiliation. Most of our inner chatter revolves around something to the effect of, “Do you know who I am?” We take things personally, like when we don’t get an invitation or a job or an assignment we wanted. Recognizing that not everything is necessarily personal, and that you aren’t as important to other people as you are to yourself — and not spending as much time resenting — clears up a lot of space to think about things more clearly.
5. Don’t get attached to results. We all want everything we’re working on to succeed, but we live in an entropic universe where basically everything’s out of our control. So it’s wise, I think, to work your ass off on things and to worry to a certain extent. But if you recognize at the end of the day there are so many variables in an infinite, impermanent universe that you’re not going to be able to control the final outcome, you will become exponentially more resilient.
