Sometimes, life can seem hard and tough to navigate, but what may seem like the smallest tasks such as getting out of bed, or even brushing your teeth, should be celebrated as a win.
And State Farm is here to help you celebrate all your wins.
The State Farm Personal Price Plan helps you create an affordable price just for you.
Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan.
Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.
Coverage options are selected by the customer.
Availability amount of discounts in savings and eligibility vary by state.
One in three women and one in four men experience domestic abuse in their lifetime, and nearly half of survivors delay leaving because they can't bring their pets with them.
Purina started the Purple Leash Project to help eliminate one of the many barriers domestic abuse survivors face.
A lack of pet -friendly domestic violence shelters.
Through the Purple Leash Project, Purina is helping to create more pet -friendly domestic violence shelters across the country so abuse survivors and their pets can escape and heal together.
Visit purina .com slash purple to get involved.
This is Radi DeVlucia from A Really Good Cry.
When you take a shower, where does your shower take you?
If you're like me, your shower is your escape from everything.
The Kola Anthem Plus Smart Showering System lets you create a personalized refuge by fine -tuning water, steam, light and sound all from a single control.
You can customize music and lighting, even preprogrammed steam therapies.
With Anthem Plus, you're not just imagining your sanctuary, you are creating it.
And you can save up to nine of your customized favorites.
Personalize your escape with Anthem Plus Smart Showering only from Kola.
Stress is the difference between the things on your to -do list and your capacity to handle that to -do list.
Deciding is fretfully projecting and fearing that bad things are going to happen.
Both things are probably at the worst point they've ever been since we started keeping those records.
Former ABC News anchor.
Author of 10 % Happier.
Mr. Dan Harris. People who live the longest have strong relationships.
Dose yourself with some discomfort.
Go to that party. Accept the invitation.
The number one health and wellness podcast.
Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.
The one, the only, Jay Shetty.
Dan Harris, welcome to On Purpose.
It's so great to finally have you here.
I feel like this has been years in the making.
I know my audience has wanted to hear from you.
My community has asked for us to get together.
I've seen so many comments tagging you, saying, you have to have Dan on the show.
And so this is really exciting for me.
And I want to thank you for taking out the time and being here with us.
Thanks for having me.
It's a little embarrassing because they might have tagged me in the comments, but I wouldn't have seen it because I wasn't on social media until a few months ago.
And and I had an Instagram, but I didn't really post to it much.
And so about six months ago, I started putting some videos up and I was looking at it one day and I saw that I had a message from you, but it was from 2020.
So I answered it. And that's why we're here.
Absolutely. And I love it.
Yeah, I reached out.
Yeah, I'm glad glad you're.
Yeah, I reached out 2020 and was probably aware of your work even before that.
And I feel like there's so many similarities and differences that we can explore today in our in our personal journeys.
But let's dive straight in.
I think at this point in time, it feels like we've talked about this topic for a long time, but it still feels like we have.
A slightly unhealthy relationship with it and somewhat a subconscious relationship with it.
And I'm talking about stress.
And it seems that year upon year, people's stress increases.
People's variety of causes of stress increase even after the pandemic.
We saw a different type of stress that we experienced.
I wanted to get your thesis on how you feel about the state of stress at the moment.
It's not good. I recently learned this is embarrassing that I recently learned this.
The difference, the specific difference between stress and anxiety.
Hopefully I don't mangle this, but it's something like stress is the difference between the things on your to do list and your capacity to handle that to do list.
The difference between your the demands on you and your ability to meet those demands and anxiety is a little bit more fretfully projecting forward into the future and fearing that bad things are going to happen.
And so I think actually both things are probably at the worst point they've ever been since we started keeping those records.
So from what I can tell, anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction and loneliness are according to the numbers I've seen at unprecedented levels.
Now, we haven't been keeping these statistics for that long.
So I suspect when we were on the edge of World War Two, things were worse.
But in the modern era, things have not been worse from what we can tell.
And I think a huge contributor to that is the pandemic that we just lived through.
I sometimes describe it as a global unregulated experiment into what would happen when you deny people social connection and put people in a state of deep uncertainty about the future and add into that political polarization, the noxious impacts of social media, which we were just talking about, war,
climate change. And you have a very tough situation for individual minds.
Which one's been the one that you feel you've heard about the most from the people that follow your podcast that have read your books?
Like, what's the stress that you think is weighing them down the most?
I'm projecting a little bit here and guessing.
But I sometimes think there's a difference between what people perceive to be the source of their stress or anxiety and what actually is driving it.
So we might fasten on to things that are real for sure.
I mean, like work stress, economic stress, so there can be stress about the state of your job and then economic stress about the larger state of the economy.
There's increasing stress around inequality and bigotry, increasing awareness of it.
So the question is, are those the proximate causes for your stress or could there be subterranean contributors that you might not be aware of?
So I think today's media environment, particularly social media, and I'm not anti -social media, we just talked about the fact that I recently went on it.
But I think there are aspects of social media we need to be aware of and too much comparing yourself to other people is, as you've talked about, the source.
It's a really good source of unhappiness and stress.
I think also if you're spending too much time staring at a screen, two things can happen.
One, you can get a distorted view of the state of the world because the algorithms feed off of conflict and anger and outrage.
They feed our anxiety.
And then the other thing is the more you're staring at the screen, the less time you're spending connecting to actual human beings.
And so I think this is the deepest contributor.
We are, and this is to state the obvious, social animals, you hear this in every TED talk.
I think I said it in my own TED talk, so I'm like deeply unoriginal here.
We are social animals.
We're designed to interact with other human beings.
And yet everything about modern life militates against this basic obvious fact.
Everything drives us into our own information silos, into curating our own resumes and working on our own little homes and all that can be beautiful.
But when you overlook what we need, that is going to create stress and anxiety.
And you might think it is observable things out in the world and it probably is those things too.
But I just wonder for many people, whether it's this deeper contributor that they're not looking at.
Yeah, I'm so glad you just made some two really good distinctions there.
I love the way you were sharing the research around the difference between anxiety and stress.
And going back to that for a second, that example you gave of having your to do list and feeling like you don't have the capacity, it sounds like what you're sharing is that there's a capacity challenge and then also a control challenge.
And when you're naming all those things external to us, there's a feeling of I can't control any of those things.
All of those things are uncertain and they're from dealing with constant states of change.
And that in effect creates a sense of stress.
And to some degree, if I'm forward projecting, then anxiety as well.
Yes. When I think about all of that and I love what you just said about actually getting to the root of it, because I think you're spot on that we often discover a new symptom and there will always be a new thing we'll discover every day that causes or triggers stress because there'll be a new change,
a new uncertainty and new thing we can't control.
But at the core of it, you've highlighted this need for connection and this need for belonging and this need for human touch, both physical and mental and emotional that we seem to be feeling further and further away from.
I was talking about this with my best friend today, who I speak to probably like three or four times a week.
And it's the person I probably speak to the most in the entire world.
And he was my best man at my wedding.
He introduced me to spirituality.
So we have a long history of 18 years of a friendship.
So he knows me very well and we still talk three to four times a week.
He lives in London.
I live in L .A. And we still find a time to connect.
And that's mainly because he always makes time and he's very kind.
And I often think about it in that I don't know how I would navigate life without that friendship because of having someone who understands me deeply, someone who allows me to be seen, someone who allows me to be flawed and imperfect, yet allows me to process all of that, is so profoundly needed.
But it required certain deposits that had to happen 18 years ago in order to get there.
Do you find human connection is easier with people you've known for a long time or have you found it to be building new relationships and new friendships?
What would have been the pros and cons or the ways you've navigated both of those?
One of the things that I really try to do in my work is move away from abstractions or cliches or big ideas and get really practical about how you can actually act on these things because it's easy to scroll on Instagram or read a book or hear a Ted talk.
And you hear these inspirational notions like we're built for connection and we need belonging and you need to invest in relationships.
And then what do you do?
I can't agree more.
And so I think about that a lot.
And I think you just gave us an example.
You made a deep friendship 18 years ago, but it's not enough to just have a connection with somebody.
You need to invest in it over and over and over again.
That's true for any level of a deep relationship.
It's true. I would imagine with your wife.
I mean, you've written a whole book about this.
So I'm not talking to you like you don't know what you're talking about.
But I just think you're giving a great concrete example of one little thing you can do, which is figure out who you like and then make an investment in that person and hopefully a few other people consistently over time because the rewards are huge.
And this isn't just like a nice to have.
I know you're familiar with this research, but the study that comes up for me all the time is this study that was done that's still ongoing at Harvard University.
It's overseen now by Robert Waldinger.
And the idea is that they've been following several generations of people who live in the Boston area to see what contributes to a long life, longevity, health, happiness.
And what comes screaming out of 80, 90 years of data is that the people who live the longest have strong relationships.
And what's the mechanism for that?
Stress is what kills us.
You started this whole conversation with the idea of stress.
Stress is what kills us most of the time.
And the best way to reduce stress is to have positive relationships.
Waldinger has this great expression, never worry alone.
And that's what you're doing three times a week with your buddy.
And there are obviously things you can talk to your wife about, of course, but the whole and again, again, you know all of this, but you can't.
You can't your wife can't be the Alpha and Omega.
Your wife can't be everything to you.
And again, there's data to support this contention, too, that the strongest marriage is a romantic relationships in those relationships.
The participants have other relationships that support that you're getting certain needs filled through your best friend.
And, yeah, so I just go back to what you said that that seems to be a direction that people can move in when they're trying to think about how to operationalize this stuff in their own life.
Yeah, no. And I'm glad that you brought it to this and I genuinely couldn't agree with you more.
And that's that's why I've always wanted to talk to you is this idea of well, how do we actually do that?
Because these big ideas and big concepts often, as you said, I give you that short term inspiration, but then it doesn't translate into any discipline or habit or creation of a routine or rhythm that allows us to repeat it and make it real.
And so let's let's kind of zone in on that.
For some of the points you made, one of the things you talked about, of course, is social media.
And the truth is that all of us are in some way, shape or form addicted to this.
It's designed to make us addicted.
It's not that we're addicted because we have some flaw or some weakness or because we're not, you know, because we're alone.
I think a lot of us share this.
I've found myself doom scrolling.
I found myself wasting hours and hours on social media, feeling like I didn't achieve anything or gain anything from it.
So no one's immune to this.
I don't think there's a select few people who've beaten it.
I think it's it's consumed all of us.
What have been the practical steps that you maybe have put in place for yourself, people that you know in your life that you think have actually helped people develop a healthy relationship?
Because I think it's also not just like saying, well, just don't be on your phone, which is often, again, one of these big ideas that's portrayed, which is like, well, just turn it off or, you know, don't be on it.
And we know that that's not sustainable either.
Like we're both carrying our phones to this.
First of all, you said this thing about how you have struggled with social media.
I just want to add that I have, too.
I mean, I just started as we've discussed and I can't tell you how many times I've gotten sucked into either scrolling and looking at things that I mean, you know, I'm I could be like talking to my child during that time or and this is even more embarrassing, you know, compulsively checking back to
see how a specific video is performing.
And and so, yeah, I don't come to this conversation with any superiority.
I also think and I will get to some things that have been useful for me, but I also want to say that I'm not against social media.
I think there are beautiful aspects to it.
I think there are also very difficult aspects and we'll talk about that if you want, but it is popular not only for the negative aspects for it.
And I think it's, you know, you can get some degree of pleasure through social media for sure, and I think it's true just for any dopamine hit in our life.
You can get addicted to anything that is the source of fleeting pleasure, from food to cocaine to alcohol to gambling, to shopping.
And there's healthy use, healthy involvement in all of these activities and then unhealthy.
And it really just depends on the circumstances of your own brain, your own life, and it's a thing everybody has to work on for themselves as it as it pertains to like practical things that work for me with technology addiction.
One is just being pretty disciplined about putting it away.
And, you know, usually at the end of the day, I try to put it away and have a proper evening with my family.
Don't always succeed at that.
But I notice when I do it, I feel better.
And that leads to the second piece of advice, which is, as you know, I'm a big advocate of meditation, as are you.
And I think the self -awareness that can be generated through contemplative exercises like meditation can help wake you up to the fact that you will feel better if you don't get sucked into your phone for prolonged periods of time.
And that can the brain is always looking for pleasure.
And if you can show the brain that there's what my friend, Judd Brewer, calls a bigger, better offer, which is that it will feel better to connect to your family most of the time, because sometimes our families are annoying, but it will feel better to connect to other people, to read a book, to take
a walk in nature, than it will to, you know, attach your arm to the IV drip of FOMO that that social media can be.
And so I think meditation is a great way to do that.
The final thing is see if you can ask yourself this question.
And I get this from a woman named Catherine Price who wrote a book that I recommend called How to Break Up with Your Phone.
And she encourages people to ask themselves to try to get in the habit of asking themselves a very simple question when they're when they find their zombie arm reaching for the phone.
What do you need right now?
What what need are you trying to fulfill when you pick up that phone?
For me, it's often because I'm bored or I'm in an uncomfortable situation or I'm tired and I don't have to wear with all to do something or I'm lonely or I'm hungry.
And actually if you run that program, you run that algorithm internally for yourself, you know, you're you're only going to remember this 10 percent of the time.
But if you can remember to do it some percentage of the time and ask yourself, what is it that I'm actually going for here, you might realize actually the phone is not what I need right now.
And for me, I found that really helpful.
Doesn't work all the time, but it helps.
Yeah, absolutely. I like that idea of how we're almost having to sell to our brain.
The idea of selling this.
You call it the great.
What was it? The great?
It's not my phrase, but it's from this guy, Dr.
Judd Brewer, and he's written some books about anxiety and it's called the Bigger Better Offer.
The Bigger Better Offer.
Sorry. Yes, the Bigger Better Offer.
I love that idea of having to sell that idea, pledge that idea, propose that idea to the brain.
And and I definitely see that as valuable.
And I found that with the way that that worked for me was having to.
Remind myself after I made the right decision.
So what I mean by that is.
If I'm going to reach for my phone right now and I have the courage enough.
To not reach for it, but I end up spending time with my family as the Bigger Better Offer.
Now, after I spent time with my family and I've enjoyed it, this time they're not annoying.
Then after I do that, I need to deeply code that into my memory.
Yes. Like I need to make a feel out of it.
Like I need to tell my friend about it.
I need to journal about it.
I need to record it.
I need to take a picture, whatever it is, because what I found is that the mind needs to be reminded again when I reach for the phone that the Bigger Better Offer will win, but that memory doesn't get stored deep enough for us to be able to rediscover it when we most need it.
Yes. And so that's definitely helped.
And I loved what you said a couple of seconds ago about being able to switch it off.
I fail at this all the time, but I've at least set the rules.
And I think that's what we have to do with this because it is hard.
But a few years ago, I set no technology times and no technology zones in my home.
So I almost envisioned a no phone sign in the bedroom.
And at the dining table.
And at one point I used to envision lasers around a room.
And it's like if I walked past it with my phone, then, you know, whatever.
The floor is lava. Yeah, like Mission Impossible just to give that feeling.
And and yes, of course, have I walked through a laser with my phone?
Of course I have. But I like the idea of knowing that, look, there are certain rooms in my home where technology is not the space.
So actually, if I want to use my phone, I have to leave that room to use it.
And like you're saying about leaving your phone in a in another room or whatever it may be, I think it's really powerful.
One thing you brought up, which I actually think is that the crux of so much of this and you mentioned the word you've been embarrassed sometimes in your social media usage, and I find that to actually be one of the deepest roots of the challenges we have with change and habit or even with meditation.
Like, I think as you know, you've been teaching meditation for years as a viand when I first started meditating and even now when I when my attention is not as present as it can be, I'm not as focused or I'm distracted, which still happens today after all these years of meditating, it's so easy to feel
embarrassed or ashamed or guilty.
And we can often start to develop in a critic that can say some of the most hurtful things, like I'll often say to myself, like, come on, man, you've been meditating for 18 years now.
How are you still distracted?
Or, you know, you've been, you know, by now you should have been an expert because you're surrounded by so many experts or what's wrong with you?
Like, or how can you teach meditation if you can't meditate deeply?
Like, you know, whatever it may be.
And it's so easy to get into that space.
And one thing that I came across recently for myself was recognizing that you can't hate yourself into change.
Like you can't guilt yourself into growth.
You can't make yourself feel so guilty that you'll suddenly achieve your goal.
There almost needs to be grace.
There needs to be kindness.
There needs to be a safe space for you to have imperfections.
So I wanted to ask you, like, what have you done with that emotion of feeling embarrassed?
Because I actually think meditation is powerful for helping us overcome embarrassment.
But I'd love to approach that with you.
Well, I've had the same thoughts of, you know, I don't know if you've experienced this, but, you know, once you step out into the world as like something approaching a self -help person, as soon as you're an asshole, you tell yourself a story about how like you're a total fraud.
Like the first day you screw up, you know, you you're like, all right.
Well, I got to close this whole business.
I can relate to that.
Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I and I think it goes to something really important, which is personal growth, spiritual development, whatever you want to call it, is hard and messy and perfection is not an offer.
And I think just knowing that and even hearing Jay Shetty talk about making mistakes and getting his shins cut off by a laser as he walks into the bedroom with his phone is useful because people need to know it's not a straight, unbroken, upward trajectory.
That's that's not what this is.
That's not what this is about.
There was a great tweet or I guess we call them exes now or whatever, whatever.
Great ex. There was a great ex the other day from a Zen Roshi, Roshi Joan Halifax.
She's this incredible human being.
And she posted a picture that was basically a bunch of squiggly lines just going nowhere.
And then the caption was the path.
That's the thing. We are this is messy.
We are messy animals and that's OK.
And and I what I think is important to know is that growth is possible.
But it is impossible without making a bunch of mistakes.
And if you can get that into your head, you're better off.
So how do you get that into your head?
There's a bunch of research that I've become increasingly interested in about the possibility of reprogramming your inner dialogue.
We most of us have really nasty inner weather.
You know, I sometimes joke that if anybody said to me the types of shit that I say to myself, I would be punching that person in the face.
And yet I talk to myself in a quite a scathing venomous way.
And I know this is not unusual.
So what can we do about it?
Well, you can get into the habit you can develop.
And again, this is the data and evidence backed assertion.
I'm not just making this up, nor is it an original observation.
But what I've learned is that you can get into the habit of talking to yourself the way you would talk to a friend.
And there are some little hacks that make this easier.
One of them is to actually refer to yourself by your name.
So, Jay, I know you just got distracted in meditation, but dude, as you know, getting distracted is a part of meditation.
If it was possible to clear your mind, then we'd have lots of people walking around with no thoughts.
But that that isn't possible.
What is possible is to focus your mind for a few nanoseconds at a time and then start again and again and again.
And we are very good at giving advice to other people, but not taking our own advice.
And so this technique, which is called distance self talk, where you use your own name to create some distance, can allow you, Jay or me, Dan, to give ourselves the advice that we're so willing to give other people and then actually to hear it.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely. No, that resonates.
That resonates so deeply.
And I actually feel that makes complete sense because even the negative of that is true.
And so I was reading just a couple of weeks ago, maybe around how the two ways we talk to ourselves negatively are either I am.
So we say things like I am lazy or I'm so I'm not good enough for I'm the worst or I'm the least intelligent out of all my friends or whatever it is.
I am statements. And the other one they were saying, which was even worse, was we have a voice in our head that sounds like an authority figure that says you're the worst or you aren't good enough or you're behind or whatever it may be.
And that almost sounds like there's an external authority, whether it could have been a teacher, a parent, a family member who may have said that to us.
And now it's internalized as a negative authority in our minds.
And so what you're actually saying is the positive authority also works, that if someone says your name, Jay or Dan, and then coaches you and guides you through that, would you say that that's a skill that you have harnessed and nourished through meditation or do you see that as separate to meditation?
I think it's absolutely complementary.
You know, as you know, in meditation, you are one of the benefits is that you're more self -aware, you're more aware of all these wild thoughts careening through your head.
And so it's easier to wake up.
Now, I mean, I get lost in, you know, homicidal fantasies and, you know, unspeakable fantasy, other kinds of fantasies.
That's just the mind.
But I'm more likely now to have some self -awareness.
I mean, another word for that is mindfulness, to be able to see what's happening between my ears, behind my eyes without necessarily being caught up in it.
And so the sooner I can wake up to the fact that I'm in the middle of a jag of self -judgment, then I can bring in these other tools.
Oh, yeah. You know what I need to do right now is have a talk between the sane part of myself and the insane part of myself.
And as you said before, the the the inner critic comes to the ball masquerading as wisdom, but it's not wisdom.
It's it's the it is your ancient fears and it is the dysfunction of the larger culture.
So you might be telling yourself you need to look better.
Well, that's not your voice.
That is, as to invoke another amazing person, Sonia Renee, what am I?
Sonia Renee Taylor, I believe is her name.
I'm embarrassed and I'm forgetting her last name.
But she's a great writer and she said something to the effect of when I see self -criticism, I realize it's not my voice.
It's the voice of the system.
And so you're telling yourself you don't look good.
Well, who's by whose standards?
It's the culture standard.
And I have two modes that I'm least proud of.
One is greedy and the other is angry.
And as over time, I've learned to actually have some affection for these modes because it's just the organism trying to protect itself.
It's just my ancient fear based patterns doing their best.
Usually, you know, like it's a five year old's version of doing their best to protect this body.
But I don't need to listen to them.
In fact, the radical disarmament is to actually make friends with them to kind of high five those demons instead of trying to slay them.
And for me, that's been really useful.
And just to get it back to your question, combining these, I would say modern psychological tools with ancient contemplative tools has really been helpful.
Creating really great retail experiences is tough, especially with multiple stores, teams of staff, fulfillment centers, separate workflows.
It's a lot, but with Shopify Point of Sale, you can do it all without complexity.
Shopify's Point of Sale system is a unified command center for your retail business.
It brings together in -store and online operations across one thousand locations.
Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.
Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up in -store all made simpler so customers can shop how they want.
And staff have the tools to close the sale every time.
And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive.
With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first party data that give marketing teams a competitive age.
In fact, it's proven based on a report from EY that businesses on Shopify POS see real results, like 22 percent better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an eight point nine percent uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed.
Want more? Check out at Shopify dot com forward slash J or lower case and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity.
Shopify dot com forward slash J.
Sometimes life can seem challenging and overcoming problems can seem impossible.
But when you focus on your problems, it can keep you from seeing the good in your life.
One thing that helps me when I need a change in perspective is acknowledging the small wins in life.
I encourage my team to pay attention to small wins because it helps them see positive outcomes and the steps that they're achieving on the road to a bigger goal.
Use the power of small wins to shift your outlook and you will start to see positive changes.
State Farm is also there to help you find personal wins and celebrate the small things in life.
The State Farm Personal Price Plan helps you create an affordable price just for you.
Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the personal price plan.
Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.
Coverage options are selected by the customer availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
For me, the best part of the holidays is going home to spend time with my family.
There's just nothing like being all together, catching up, sharing laughs.
It's the kind of cozy that you can't get anywhere else.
December just has this magic way of bringing out the best moments, right?
And while some love to bundle up in a soft blanket with a steaming mug of hot chocolate or settle in for a holiday movie marathon, Therapee can offer that same comfort in a deeper way.
It's not only about working through major challenges.
It's a space to understand yourself better, to learn positive coping skills that make everyday moments feel lighter and to set boundaries that protect your peace.
Therapee can empower you to show up as your best self and carry that sense of inner calm with you no matter what the season it is.
And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.
It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule.
Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists anytime for no additional charge.
Find comfort this December with BetterHelp.
Visit BetterHelp .com forward slash J's top three today to get 10 percent off your first month.
That's betterhelp, H -E -L -P dot com forward slash J's top three.
Absolutely. Yeah, I love you just reminded me of making that point about the system that you quoted there reminds me of years, years, years and years ago.
I was when I was a student in London and I remember walking through, you know, like a department store and there was a big advert that said, get the natural look, and then it was like all these things that products that can help you get the natural look.
And just that idea of purchasing a natural look is fascinating because as if you weren't born with.
Yeah, exactly. And but it is that voice right saying, OK, well, even to get a natural look.
And again, you know, I think there are pros and cons.
I mean, I'm a big fan of so many products, so many services, so many things.
And so it's not to say it's all bad.
But there is a need in mindfulness to I think what you're saying is to differentiate and have the ability of discernment between is this voice me or is this something outside of me, whether it's a system or a person or whatever it may be.
And I think that's the quality that we need because it isn't necessarily saying, I'm just going to shut everything off and nothing matters.
It's this idea of can I tell, can I tell that when I'm listening to the voice in my head as to whether it's truly mine or whether it's being picked up or nurtured by some other external force.
Another fascinating question is what is me?
Close your eyes and look inside.
Can you find some core nugget of J and spend some time with that question that'll pop you out of ruminating about lots of other unhealthy things?
Where is that question taken you?
I think I think I think you come more out of the Hindu tradition.
And I come a little bit more out of the Buddhist tradition, even though I don't look like it.
But, you know, that's that's where I've spent the last 15 years of my life really doing a lot of study.
And one of the things they say in Tibetan Buddhism is that.
The not finding is the finding because there's nothing to find there.
Yes, I mean, on the on the convention, on the level of consensual, conventional reality, I'm Dan and that camera is taking a picture of me.
And yes, that is true.
But on the deepest possible level, if I look for some core nugget of Dan, there's nothing to find.
And that not finding.
Is the answer. And if can you stay with that ambiguity?
There is something healing about that.
So how how do you take that out of the esoteric clouds into your actual life?
One little linguistic trick you kind of teed me up for this before, because you you use the phrase, I am like I am so and so.
What if you just and this is I want to give credit to the person who came up with this.
It's Joseph Goldstein, who's a great meditation teacher, but he often advises his students to say instead of I am fill in the blank.
There is fill in the blank.
There is hunger right now.
There is anger in my mind right now.
There is sadness in my mind right now.
There's no you to find the adding of the you on top of it is just adding insult to injury.
That's extra. But that it's true that hunger, anger, sadness can be here right now.
But if you can take the I am out of it and to the there is, well, that it's workable.
Right. You can do something with it.
You can let it pass.
You can observe it.
You can try to work with it.
But if you add in a whole story about how I, J, or I, Dan, curably fill in the blank.
Well, that that's much that's a much bigger problem.
Yeah, I love that. I mean, I've never heard that there is.
That's beautiful. That's that's really, I can totally see how that is such a beautiful tool and an insight for people to use as language, because it's interesting, though, isn't it?
Because it feels like we're all so obsessed with identity and our stories.
And almost what you're proposing is this idea of recognizing that.
There's somewhat of a distance between us and our identity and story.
Yet everything we've been discussing today, whether it's social media, whether it's the system, whether it's the story your parents laid out for you, all of that, there's there's stories to be lived, crafted, told.
And almost we're all living our own stories and our own mind.
And so, yeah, how are you able to operate as Dan Harris, the teacher, the guide, the, you know, podcast, etc., and then also have the the balance of this recognition that actually there is and there is no I am.
Well, can I turn it around?
Like my last retreat was six to nine months ago.
I've got one coming up.
So I'm like further and further away from sanity.
But you are much fresher like you've just come out of a retreat.
How do you balance that?
There's an understanding of the needs and interests of.
The different. Vehicles in which I live, so the body being one vehicle and the body has certain needs in order to operate.
And in order to function.
And then the mind has certain needs and awareness that it will easily be a support or as the Gita says, the best friend of the worst enemy.
So recognizing again, as you said earlier, the befriending of the mind requires an awareness and then.
At a deeper level, looking at our emotions, looking at our spiritual or consciousness connection.
And so to me, it's the outlining and awareness of the needs for that specific vehicle.
But not falling into the trap of believing the vehicle is me.
And the balance comes from recognizing.
Using there is is beautiful, actually, but recognizing that there are needs for each aspect that need to be taken care of, but that one should not accept each of them to be oneself.
I think for me, that comes in the form of having to remind myself of that which is beyond the physical self.
Because it's easier to get connected and identify with the physical self than it is with the nonphysical self, because the nonphysical self is intangible.
It's unseen, unaware of it.
We don't live in a society that reminds us of it.
I was thinking about this while I was actually at the monastery, so the monastery doesn't have mirrors.
And that was something I've talked about before, where you lose your sense of your physical self.
Like while I lived there, I didn't really I forgot deeply what I looked like.
And so if I was out on the streets when I was traveling, I would always try and look at my reflection in a, you know, in a shop window, whatever it may be.
And when I was back this time as well, I was having that realization that the number one thing I do in the morning when I wake up back at my home is I look in the mirror.
And so I'm already from the moment I wake up living in my physical self, I'm now living, believing that I am this body and this is all there is.
And so that automatically sets me up on the opposite end of what I'm trying to practice spiritually.
And so I found that the balance is kept by making that reminder that first thought of the day of recognizing, whether it's in your language, the, you know, that which is not or that which is unseen and in the Hindu tradition, the accepting of us being pure, eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss
as consciousness, identifying with that before I identify with anything else.
And that to me is what helps the balance, is not falling into the easy identification.
I don't know if any of that made any sense.
Well, I, it does. I think, well, you're aware through your own practice that there's more than just the J you see in the mirror.
And yet you live in a busy world and you're actually like me.
You're you're kind of building a business around the small version of yourself, like the physical corporeal version of yourself that presents here and now smaller than the sort of vast, infinite, mysterious.
We don't know what that is somehow.
It lives in your mind.
And the way that you balance it, I heard, is just engage in the messy business of trying to remember to the best of your ability.
Yeah, I can't. I can't.
I don't need to remind myself that I'm Jay, this physical version, because I'm reminded of that every day, but I have to remind myself of that, which is beyond this, because otherwise it's so easy to lose touch with it because we are living with the bodily needs as the prime focus.
And I think that's why retreats and experiences are so supportive, where the bodily needs somewhat become a background priority and the needs of the deeper self rise and the connection with that self is more prominent.
And I find that starting my year off that way helps.
I was actually just I was talking to someone who was mentioning they came to one of your retreats at Omega and they were saying what a beautiful experience that was.
They said it was the only retreat they've ever been on, but they plan on coming or more.
And it was for that same reason to be reminded.
And I think that's why we do anything.
I think we most of what we do is to remind ourselves of something that we care about and something that's meaningful to us, like whether it's spending time with our family or why we celebrate the holidays.
Like so much of I think the most beautiful things in our world are reminding us of what truly matters.
And I think spirituality and meditation, to me, meditation is my daily practice of reminding myself of what truly matters.
Exactly. I mean, I think the biggest problem, in my experience, the biggest problem in whatever, again, like I don't know what to call this personal growth, spiritual development, whatever it is, the biggest challenge is forgetting because you hear a great podcast, you see a great Instagram post, you
read a great book, you go to a great retreat.
But then everything about modern life pulls you back into the I'm going to get satisfaction from the next thing.
Oh, no, no. The next thing I'm going to keep scrolling.
I'm going to get that next sip of a latte.
I'm going to get the next promotion.
And again, I'm not saying these are bad things, but they won't do it for you, right?
There's a reason why you keep wanting more because because the way the human animal is designed is natural selection didn't want us to be satisfied because then we'd stop, you know, having babies and that wouldn't be good for for the species.
So you need to wait.
You need this is a urgent mission.
You need to find as many ways as possible to wake back up.
And you just describe, you know, meditation is a great way to like pound this stuff into your neurons.
It's probably too aggressive of an analogy, but it gets it into your molecules in a way.
And another thing you also described earlier is having good friends.
You know, if you can surround yourself with people who are also taking this thing seriously, that is a great way to wake yourself back up and also, by the way, is a great way to get you out of your attachment to the sort of I don't know if this is the appropriate term to use, but the sort of smallest,
most superficial version of yourself, the brand of Dan, the brand of Jay.
Well, if you're if you're talking to your best friend, he's got a problem and you're helping him with it.
Another word for that would be generosity.
Right. If you're being generous in some way, that's going to get you out of your head.
That is a form of letting go.
I like that. Yeah, that that that really that struck a chord there.
Like how. Again, going back to that being, when when we're being a, I guess in that case, you said generous.
There's an element of us not living in the system, is what you said that feels right.
Why is that? Why do you think that breaks the system?
There's a little line that I have, which is impolite, but the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass and you know, if you're being generous, your head's out of your ass.
Even if you have ulterior motives, which I think we unfairly demonize, like it's OK to give because, you know, you have some there's something in it for you.
By the way, there is something in it for you.
The brain is wired to to experience intense reward in the act of generosity.
That's cool. But you're still more of your bandwidth focused on the benefit to somebody else than there would be if you were like mindlessly scrolling or binging or eating or whatever it is.
And it is just fundamental.
