How To Stay Calm Under Stress | Dan Harris

Michael Gervais (0:00)

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Dan Harris (1:37)

Probably the thing I'm best known for in my 21 years at ABC News was having a panic attack on Good Morning America. But it's too early to prescribe statins slowly for cancer production. I wasn't high when I was on the air, but the doctor explained that my ambient drug use made me more likely to panic.

Michael Gervais (1:58)

When anxiety shows up, do you try to outrun it or do you try to learn how to work with it?

Dan Harris (2:05)

I had spent a lot of time in war zones after 9-11 and I had gotten depressed and then done this really dumb thing of self-medicating with cocaine and other recreational drugs. That moment sent me on this weird, whiny thing where I ultimately ended up finding meditation.

Michael Gervais (2:19)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. Now, the idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinaries, to learn, to really learn how they work from the inside out. Today's conversation is with Dan Harris. He's a journalist, best-selling author and host of the 10% Happier podcast. Many first met Dan after a panic attack on live television.

Dan Harris (2:51)

I was pretty unhappy. I loved what I did, but I was really stressed and really frustrated. Every time I got passed over for a job, which happened a lot, I would spin out and take it out on the people in my life.

Michael Gervais (3:02)

What followed was not a quick fix, but a serious commitment to understanding anxiety, attention and how the mind works.

Dan Harris (3:10)

Most of us are like drill sergeants with ourselves, but we actually need to move into a coach mentality. So that's the self-love piece. There's a whole body of research around something called micro-interaction, so we can inject massive doses of happiness into our life by just paying attention to these little interactions we're having throughout the day that most of us just ice out.

Michael Gervais (3:31)

In this conversation, Dan and I explore what it looks like to live with anxiety. We also dig into identity, meditation, self-talk, and a process to choose growth over avoidance again and again and again.

Dan Harris (3:43)

A lot of people try meditation and then notice how distractible they are and feel like they're failures. You sit and try to focus on one thing at a time, then your brain comes in and starts like planning a homicide or whatever it is, and you notice that, start again, notice it, start again, notice it, start again, and what happens over time is you build this muscle of self-awareness that allows you to see the contents of your consciousness without being owned by it.

Michael Gervais (4:06)

So with that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dan Harris. Dan, I always look forward to spending time with you. And so, thank you for coming back and sharing the adventure you've been on since we last spoke. But for folks that, the one folk or two folk that might not know kind of where you come from and how you and I became friends at this thing, can you just share an overview, a flyover of the kind of major points of your life and what got you here?