How Dan Harris Got Me To Meditate
And Why I Could Not Be More Surprised
I am the classic definition of a “doer.” I get stuff done. I am not good at sitting and watching TV, at least not channel surfing for something good to watch. I am typically reading six books at once on different subjects. I have several hobbies and go from one to the other never feeling like I have enough time to fully embrace each one.
Sound familiar?
I always thought that meditation was nice. For other people. I counted myself in the camp of people who didn’t need it, and couldn’t do it. And I’ve tried it several times.
There was that one time living in North Carolina where a friend talked me into going on a “3-day Yoga retreat” in the mountains. I like Yoga, and thought it would be fun to take my flexibility up a notch. What she didn’t tell me was that it was a SILENT retreat filled with sitting meditation. Yoga was about an hour a day, the rest of the time was spent sitting, or walking really really slowly in what they called walking meditation. And by silent retreat, that meant no talking. At all. For three days.
That retreat was painful. And I never got near anything like it again. Don’t get me wrong, there were some cool things about those silent three days. The biggest one being that I could actually survive such an experience. But I also slowed down quite a bit during that weekend, and I realized a lot of “conversation” can happen with others, even strangers, without using words. It was just not something I was interested in repeating. I didn’t become a convert. I also didn’t have any wildly insightful moments.
There were no epiphanies. I was really hoping for one, but nothing ever came.
I returned home from that retreat and mentally checked “meditation” off my to-do list. I had tried it and it didn’t do anything for me. So, there. And I returned to my normal way of being in the world which is primarily being in motion all the time.
About five years ago, I decided to give meditation another try. I kept hearing stories from people who were meditating that called it a game changer for them. And these were people I deeply admired. I found a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) eight-week program. MBSR is based on the work by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It is about creating a mindfulness practice. The first session was four hours of lecture, teachings, and sitting quietly, focusing on breathing, and just tuning into yourself. After that first session, the group met once a week for an hour of instruction and practice until the last session which was another four hours. I completed the course and again was eager to check it off my list.
“See, I did it!” That is what the note said in my daily planner. I gave myself a gold star.
But, here’s my confession. I took the classes but I didn’t meditate every day like I was supposed to. I told myself that driving to work in the morning without the radio on WAS my daily meditation practice. There is benefit to a quiet start to the morning, but I was deluding myself if I thought that was formal meditation. It wasn’t. And after the 8-week class was over, I stopped any kind of practice or pretense.
Then several things happened at once. Like everyone, I have recently found myself at home a lot more. I had also left a corporate job to start my own consulting and writing career. And, I stumbled upon Dan Harris and his Podcast Ten Percent Happier. I had his book by the same title and it was in my stack to read but I had not gotten to it yet. But his Podcast was something I could listen to while working out, gardening, and painting- the best of my doing.
If you don’t know Dan Harris he is a fidgety doer himself, with a high amount of skepticism and sarcasm. He is the co-anchor of Nightline and weekend editions of Good Morning America.
Dan’s story is this: on June 7, 2004, on the set of Good Morning America, he had a major panic attack on air.
His panic attack hit out of nowhere, right in the middle of the second voice-over. He says it felt like he was being stabbed in the brain with a raw animal fear. It was a paralyzing wave of panic. He fumbled his way through his segment, cutting the stories short and mumbling through them. Then he decided to resort to a gambit he had never used before on TV. He bailed. He turned it back over to hosts Charlie and Diane. After a decade of professional work as a journalist and reporter and cultivating a commanding on-air persona, he had lost it in front of a national audience. Dan was ashamed and embarrassed wanting to cover the whole thing up and pretend it didn’t happen. But he had to face it, and one of his tools was learning to meditate.
News anchor Peter Jennings then assigned Dan to cover faith and spirituality in America for CBS News. He reluctantly took this beat and after some time started to learn about “that voice in our head” that talks to us all the time. This is not the same as “hearing voices” or a psychic break. This is something we all have. When we sit still for even a few seconds we hear it. It’s playing in our heads all the time. Some people call it the “racing mind” and I call mine the paparazzi. When I sit still and close my eyes all I see are flashing lights going pop, pop, pop in my head. I fidget and squirm, adjust my position, scratch my sudden itches, yawn, open my eyes, then close them again. My thoughts tumble over one another, not speaking in complete sentences because they get constantly interrupted.
I got intrigued after reading Dan’s story of his path to a daily meditation practice and how it has helped him manage his panic, anxiety, and depression. He’s not a touchy-feeling person. He is a high achieving, accomplished author, journalist, news anchor, podcaster, and speaker. It appealed to me that he was a high achiever wanting to bring a more relaxed mindfulness way of being into his life. That combination of success and relaxation was too enticing to pass up.
So, I started to sit. I began with 5 minutes. It was the longest 5 minutes of my life. That is when I met the paparazzi in my head. It was a loud party with lots of lights flashing and loud conversations. It was a cacophony. I initially felt surprised by how much noise there was. The surprise was followed by some sadness as I realized that my mind was suffering from overload of thoughts. I had a deep desire to take better care of my head similar to how I have taken care of my physical health by exercising and eating healthy foods.
My brain has been overworked, stressed, and tired. I find meditation has been good exercise for my brain, and a time where I am checking in with myself and being kind to me. I am still very new to meditation, but this kind of mental training is what I have wanted and probably needed for a long time.
So, I continue to sit every day. I’ve gone from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Some days that time seems unbearably long, and other days it goes by gently and without a lot of angst. There is one thing that is very consistent and that is the minute I close my eyes, after getting into the sitting position, I see the lights flashing and tune into the wavelength of my thoughts. It is always a loud party when I tune in. But, as I pay attention to the lights and noise, they begin to relax and slow down. They don’t go away, and as I read more about meditation, I’m told that is not actually even a goal. This practice is about tuning in and paying attention. I think it’s also about respecting what’s happening inside your thoughts, and recognizing that our brains need exercise and support too.
Someone asked me what difference meditation was making in my life and the first answer I had was I am more aware of my responses and feel like I have more “control” over them. Between stimulus and response there is a space. My space had grown short because of the lack of training and lack of being more mindful. Now my space is bigger. That means I don’t react as much as I used to because I have that pause, I take a breath, and by the time I am ready to respond in anger, disagreement, or with sarcasm, the moment has passed and I find I don’t have a response. This is not the same thing as holding in your anger. This is about noticing the wave, whatever the emotion, letting it crest and then fall to the shore.
I’m not perfect, and certainly not calm all the time. But I am getting better at riding the waves and that is producing more inner calm. I think 10% more calm, or 10% happier, is worth the training.
Thank you Dan Harris for leading me to meditation by being a high achieving, sarcastic, fidgety, honest, and candid evangelist for meditation practice. I hope you get the irony of your evangelical path. :)
