#1062 - Dan Harris & Jeff Warren

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dan Harris and Jeff Warren. I don't know why I started off that way. Just felt weird. It's always weird to start. Starting these things is always very odd.

Welcome, welcome, Jeff, very nice to meet you.

Jeff Warren (0:19)

Thank you, man.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

And Dan, first tank experience. We didn't talk too much about it.

Dan Harris (0:23)

No.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

You just got out.

Dan Harris (0:24)

Yeah, you dragooned me into your tank.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

I don't even know if that's a word, dragooned?

Dan Harris (0:29)

It is a word. You know, we should tell people how you did it.

Joe Rogan (0:33)

Okay.

Dan Harris (0:34)

You basically taunted me on text, which was awesome.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

It wasn't quite a taunt, but you were saying that you were scared of being in there. I'm like, how can you be scared? There's nothing to be scared of. It's just water.

Dan Harris (0:46)

Yeah, but it's not just water because you're in this enclosed space and you can't see anything or hear anything.

Joe Rogan (0:53)

All danger is in your mind, though.

Dan Harris (0:55)

Well, that is absolutely correct. I just happen to have a mind that is really good at panicking. I mean, I've demonstrated that time and again to myself and others. So, I was a little wary. Then you called me a chicken and I was like, well, fuck, now I have to do this thing.

So, I did it, not without trepidation, but it was really interesting, really interesting.

Joe Rogan (1:14)

I know you spend so much time exploring your consciousness and meditating and just being in your head that I felt like this is something that you really should be exposed to.

Dan Harris (1:24)

You're absolutely right and I appreciate it. I really do.

What I realized is I think I need to do more of it because the brief discussion we had, I know we wanted to not fully explore it until we got on the pod. The brief discussion we had afterwards, one of the things you said is that it's good to kind of explore your boundaries when it comes to fear. This is something actually that my meditation teacher has said to me before and it made me realize I think I need to get in there and start pushing it a little bit in the tank because it will help me in lots of areas of my life because when you don't test those boundaries, your life becomes smaller and smaller. And that happens to people with panic.

Joe Rogan (2:07)

I think it happens to people in general and I think it's one of the reasons why people fall into panic is because they don't have enough experience with stressful situations to the point where they can just relax and just let it happen.

And that's one of the reasons why I think martial arts training is very good for people, not just for the self-defense aspect of it, but for the aspect of just dealing with stressful situations on a regular basis to the point where you're very comfortable with them. And then you realize that the consequences of this is it's not really as bad as you think it is. Like most people are terrified of physical confrontation. But when you have physical confrontation on a regular basis, especially through my favorite, which is jujitsu training because there's no striking. So you don't get hit in the head. You're not worried about brain damage or any of that stuff. It's just basically grappling.

But that through the continual process of testing yourself and stress and regular life stresses sort of become diminished.

Dan Harris (3:08)

I think it's really important. I do some of this in my life. Live news presentation is stressful and I do that a lot. I've covered many war zones, which is much more stressful, very stressful.

But I think there are areas in my life where I've closed off because of claustrophobia in particular. I need MRIs for certain. I've jacked up both of my shoulders and my knee and I haven't been able to deal with them because I just won't get in a scanner. Jeff and I were down at actually at Vanderbilt where they wanted to take a look at my brain in a scanner while I meditated. I couldn't do it. That was a great opportunity. It's really expensive to get a neuroscientist to look at your brain while you meditate. And I wasn't able to do it because I'm afraid.

And so I think.

Joe Rogan (3:54)

Well, what are you afraid of? It seems like there's no physical fear, right? It's not like there's a dog in the room that's gonna bite you, right?