10% Happier with Dan Harris

He wrote a book, it's a letter to his wife and you're going to hear him speak about why he did it and you're going to hear some, as I said, it's really an honor, it was an honor to sit with him and talk about this stuff and I think it's going to be very useful to anybody who listens to it so I give you Joe DiNardo.

And so I asked my friend Charles Coplman, who would you ask to help you put this together? He had lost his wife to Bankradic Cancer as well. He said my daughter and law Amy Coplman is a writer and she can help you. So I called Amy up, sweetheart of a person.

It's fundamentally the letter which is a couple of pages and then various chapters about me and about my wife and about us and things like that.

I write this letter tonight on tear-stained paper. My heart lies in pieces on our bedroom floor but I wanted to share something with you before you go on your journey.

So I'm reading a book right now by Desvin Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

It comes from this famous short film of the same title by Charles and Ray Eames, the famous American husband and wife design team

I liked the, we had a book of it at home and I used to flip through it when I was a kid.

there's a there's a book by Daniel Coniman called Thinking Fast and Slow

he talks about system one thinking and system two thinking and you you system one is your sort of intuitive reactive way of thinking it's just you just your habits of mind and and system two thinking is reflective thinking where you actually think about the data you're taking in and you reflect about it

there was a theologian here in New York City I believe his name is Paul Knitter who wrote a book called without the Buddha I couldn't be a Christian

No I actually learned it through Barbara Fredrickson.

She's a scientist or researcher of some sort. . . I think her book is what I read that was fantastic.

It's called 32 Yokes from my mother's table to working the line.

And you do talk about some painful incidents from your past in the book, including your parents' divorce and physical abuse from your stepfather and also being abused by a priest.

My stepfather was very abusive in terms of like beating me and verbally because I was a very difficult child.

So that Catholic priest tried obviously not obviously but he tried to abuse me sexually.

And until I discovered Buddhism, I was kind of lost.

So that summer I bought my first Mindfulness for Beginners book by Jack Cornfield and just committed to doing the practices and it changed everything about my life.

He's written 10 cookbooks.

Eleven now.

one of the first books that I ever read about mindfulness about Buddhism was called The Heart of Buddhist Meditation by a who I thought was a Sri Lankan from Salan named Nyanapanaka Tara Tara's T.H.E.R.A which just means elder

Did you read the book On Having No Head I did Joseph what loves that book yeah he recommended it to me too so it's a book called On Having No Head

She's written 15 books including the number one New York Times bestseller Thrive and more recently and this is the book she's come here to discuss. The Sleep Revolution which is also a New York Times bestseller and is a very effective call to arms or call to bed actually.

You say in the book that we are in a sleep crisis.

What I mean is that in the States but it's a global crisis but let's just look at our country. 40% of people don't get the sleep they need and the consequences are pretty dramatic in terms of our health and our healthcare costs.

In the book you'd say dates back to the Industrial Revolution. When we started treating human beings like machines, and we thought since the goal with machines is to minimize downtime, it's the same goal with human beings.

I found a very useful I think a very effective call to arms on the sleep front and I learned a lot from sitting here talking to anything else I should ask before we or anything else you want to say before we wrap it up.

He's got a new young adult book out and it's called Girl About Town.

Yeah so it's called Awake at the Bedside contemplative teachings on pallet of end of life care and it's a really, it's a book that our students have been asking for and that's the doctors and nurses and just folks who are taking care of people.

So it's a compendium of essays and poems by leading physicians and and Buddhist teachers who are really reflecting on their own personal experience with death and dying and suffering.

I wrote a book about it called Ten Percent Happier started an app and now I'm launching this podcast to try to figure out whether there's anything beyond ten percent.

I didn't really know anything about the culture and reading about you, I realized actually there's a, for lack of a better word, a major spiritual component to the world of drag and I just want to read you a quote from you because I never realized until I read your now, sadly out of print autobiography letting it all hang out, that's right in the name of it.

I haven't, honestly I haven't read that in 20 years but that's exactly right. I love that.

Got my blood type tested and he was like, I really recommend this book, eat right for your blood type.

And I thought okay, well, I guess I'll check it out and I knew I was a positive. So I got the Dr. Diama book.

And a positive blood types are gardeners where we're not supposed to be eating heavy meat.

She wrote excellent books by the names of Faith and which we will talk about.

If you are meditating today, whether you've heard of Sharon or not, she is most likely part of the reason. She was part of a small handful of people who helped bring meditation to the United States from Asia back in the 1970s.

you have been very open in a very brave way about the suffering of your childhood specifically in your phenomenal book the aforementioned faith which we will talk about what you mean exactly by when you use the word faith.

And so I did those things and that's when I read Tony Robbins book a week in the time and then try to figure out why I wanted to do what I wanted to do and how.

I wrote a book about it called Ten Percent Happier, started an app and now I'm launching this podcast to try to figure out whether there's anything beyond ten percent.