The Psychology Of Success | Guy Raz

**Dan Harris** (0:03)
Hello everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris.
When you look at somebody who is happy and successful in their career, it can be fascinating to ask, how did they do that? I'm not just talking about the tactical business decisions, or who they knew, or where they went to school. I'm talking about how did they manage their mindset through the ups and downs? How did they know when they were on the right path? How did they choose their partners? How hard did they work? And what did they have to sacrifice? In other words, I'm talking about the psychology of success. Today I'm going to talk to somebody who has achieved enormous success through investigating this very process. Guy Raz is a pioneering podcaster, and perhaps his signature show, he's got several shows, but is probably his most famous show is called How I Built This, where he talks to titans of industry about how they got there. In the process of making the show, Guy has become a titan of the podcasting industry. His other shows include Wow in the World and The Great Creators. He's also written a number of books, including one called How I Built This. We first aired this episode in January of 2025, and we're bringing it back now because you loved it then, and so I suspect a lot of you will love it now. In this conversation, we talk about the challenge and gift of failure, getting comfortable with discomfort and risk, the notion of luck, the balance between your relationships and your work, why scale is not always the answer, success versus happiness, and much more. We'll get started with Guy Raz right after this.
Guy Raz, welcome to the show.

**Guy Raz** (1:34)
Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

**Dan Harris** (1:36)
I'm excited. It's a big get for us, so thanks for making time. I want to talk about success, for lack of a better word. But one thing that's interesting in your work and in your life is that you spend a lot of time talking about what some people think of as the inverse of success, which is failure. You get these big titans of industry on your show and you press them to talk about failure. Then I know failure has been a real theme in your discussions of your own career.
Before I ask you a specific question, does that insight land for you?

**Guy Raz** (2:09)
Thousand percent, yes.
It's the story of my life. I think the story of a lot of people's lives, and I try and think about it so it doesn't become kind of pathology of self-victimhood. But I try to use it as a motivator because I think failure in my life has been really hard but it's also been an incredible gift, which sounds like a motivational speech. But it's true. It's been true in every case. There's a force that's at certain points in my life, and I think a lot of people can relate to this is like you will fail. You will suffer during this failure, but don't worry, it has to happen. And I find that theme recurring again and again in almost every interview I do on my shows.

**Dan Harris** (3:06)
I want to talk about what you've learned from other people's failures, but let me just stay with you for a second. What are the failures that have been instructive and useful, although painful for you?

**Guy Raz** (3:17)
The profession that you and I kind of chose and got into is full of just like small daily failures, right? Just trying to get a story, contacting somebody who won't talk to you, not getting an assignment.
It's full of strong personalities and egos and all those things. For me, I always wanted to be, not always, but for a long time, from the time I was pretty young, you know, like in middle school, I was, I wanted to be a journalist. I was a student journalist in middle school. I was the editor of my high school paper.
I was an editor of my college paper. Like that's really what I wanted to do. There was something about that profession, not something. I knew what it was that appealed to me. And, and I think you could probably relate to this, which is at my core, and I've, I've grown, I'm almost 50, so I've, I've learned to kind of navigate the world. But at my core, I'm socially awkward. I'm, I'm introverted as well. Whether it was justified or not, I always felt a little bit like an outsider a lot, for a variety of reasons, and I'm not entirely sure why, but I always did.