Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - From "Good Inside with Dr. Becky": If You Think You're Bad at Meditation, Dan Harris Says You're Doing it Right

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Bringing you an episode of Good Inside with Dr. Becky Kennedy. Even if you don't consider yourself an anxious person, once you become a parent, it is easy to start worrying about the health and wellbeing of your child. But parents need to learn to manage their anxiety for themselves and their kids. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of his book, 10% Happier, Dan Harris joins Dr. Becky to dispel some of the myths about meditation and to show parents how meditation can be a practical strategy in their everyday lives.Check out Dr. Becky's appearance on the 10% Happier Podcast here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier, early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. ["Wonderful News Theme"] Hello everybody, How we doing? Today we're going to talk about parenting and anxiety, two issues I know very well. This is a conversation I had with my new friend, Dr. Becky Kennedy, who's a clinical psychologist, mother of three, and the host of Good Inside, which is a parenting podcast that takes a different approach to raising children.

So many of the parents I know love Dr. Becky. She's got a huge following on Instagram. I've spent some time with her in person. I find her ferociously impressive. What I'm about to play you is an interview she did of me on her podcast. However, I also interviewed her on this show back in November of 2023. We'll put a link to that interview in the show notes if you want to go back and check this out. But again, this is me talking to Becky on her show. And again, we talk about parenting and anxiety, whether meditation can help. So please enjoy this conversation and go check out Becky's show, Good Inside, wherever you find your podcasts.

Anxiety. Even if you weren't someone who had anxiety growing up, it is so common for parents to find themselves feeling anxious often. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. And today on the pod, I have Dan Harris. Dan knows a thing or two about anxiety. In fact, he had a nationally televised panic attack while he was a news anchor on ABC.

And since he's done a deep dive into anxiety and into the role meditation can play in helping manage anxiety and lead a happier life. He wrote the book 10% Happier 10 years ago, and he has a very successful podcast, 10% Happier, that I was a guest on. I'm excited to be talking to Dan and to dispel some of the myths about meditation and to see how meditation can show up as a practical strategy in parents' everyday life. Hi, Dan. Hi. Good to see you.

Likewise. So, we were just reminiscing about our time at TED. That was such an amazing time. I remember I previewed my talk with you. You were like one of five people in the room. That's right. It was so good. That talk was great.

Thank you. And I think about, there was a thing you talk about, not in the talk. I mean, the talk had a lot of influence on me. I remember seeing it not only in rehearsal, but also live. But then there's something that when you came on my podcast and you talked about MGI versus LGI, which is related to the subject of repair, are you going to have the most generous interpretation of the other person's action or the least generous? That has become a thing that my family and I talk about regularly.

Well, I'm so glad that was impactful. I feel like, like you, like, like small, nuggetable, easy things that you can actually remember to use in real life. Anything that does not meet that standard, I'm like, well, I'm just not going to remember it or use it. Especially, I mean, you're in a time, you've got three kids with 12, nine, six. Yes.

And anybody who's in that space asking them to, you know, imbibe like the entire poly canon from Buddhism or something like that. It's just too much. The brain, most brains literally just can't handle it. We can only take in so much information. So I think these little nuggets are super helpful. And hopefully you're hearing it enough

so that you remember it in key moments. That's right. That's right. So speaking about the entire canon of Buddhism, I feel like that's not the brand of meditation that you necessarily, you know, put out there. I think that's what a lot of people think. And speaking about parenting and kids, you have a kid, I have three, it's so crazy. And it's a time of so much stress for parents, and they feel so overwhelmed. And I know sometimes when I talk to parents, and I talk to them about

the way they kind of know they need to focus on regulating themselves before they can even help their kid. And I'll bring up the word meditation and their reaction. It's like, I'm sure you see it. It's not like, yes, it's like, I can't do that. I'm not good at that. I don't. So I'd love you to, I feel like you explain it in a way that feels so I'd love you to, I feel like you explain it in a way that feels so palpable and accessible and not like something in the clouds that I just don't have the time for. Well, I have a bunch of things to say about this. You'll have to cut me off if I get annoying,

but I think there are, we can maybe taxonomize the different sources of resistance to meditation among parents. And I'm guessing, and I mean, this isn't a guess. I'm a person with a parents, with a, I'm a person with parents, yes. I'm a person who is a parent also. I think one of the big sources of resistance is,

I don't have time for this. You know, like, and I think that's super legit. And so I'm not here to try to cut against the grain in any way. I think there are short daily or daily-ish doses that anybody can do no matter how busy you are. There are these little times in the day, we all have them, that we're probably reverting

to little ticks and habits that are not giving us much, like doom scrolling, for example, where you could fit in a minute or two minutes of meditation. So that's just one thing. And on this subject of time starvation, there are just perfectly on-the-go type of practices that don't require any formal sitting or whatever that you can. And there are so many flavors of this that we can talk about from just waking up and being mindful while you're doing the dishes, while you're walking between appointments, putting down the phone and just focusing on the raw data of your physical sensations of your legs moving or your hands moving through the water while

you're washing dishes, changing diapers, whatever it is. There's just little moments where you can drop in, drop out of the wild stories in your head and into your body. I know this can sound a little touchy-feely, but you know, Bill Hader was on my show recently and he said the most annoying thing about meditation is that the hippies were right. And so if you can drop out of the spinning stories and into your body just for a little snatch as a time during the day, it makes a huge difference. I mean, I have a lot to say about this, but I'll just stop there. Okay. Well, I have so many things I want to actually ask you about that to go further, but I actually want to rewind before we go there.

So you weren't always into meditation. That wasn't like your life story. Is that fair to say? It's very fair to say. Okay. So can you share a little bit about like how you got there and how it related to your kind of struggles with anxiety? Yeah. I mean, anxiety's been, you know, a factory setting. I mean, the story that I've dined out on

for nearly 20 years now is that I had a panic attack on television. I used to be a news anchor, so I was on Good Morning America 20 years ago in 2004 and had a panic attack. If you Google panic attack on TV, it's like, I think the first result. It's probably the most popular video I've ever made,

which is very embarrassing. Anyway, so that happened. People like raw truths. People like, I mean, that is raw truth. Although you can say, I mean, like when I look at it now and I've looked at it so many times, I mean, I was such a, and am still like not emotionally that expressive.

I mean, talk to my wife about this. She would probably talk your ass off. We'll have her for the next episode. She's a great guest. So she would say I'm ear off. We'll have her for the next episode. She's a great guest. So she would say I'm not emotionally expressive, and you can see that in the videos. You can tell that I'm freaking out, but I hold it together reasonably well.

Contained. Yes. And so the backstory there is that I had spent a lot of time post-9-11 as a young war correspondent, and that had been psychologically challenging. And then I had done some very dumb things in my personal life to compensate, including recreational drugs.

Cocaine was a favorite. And I was not high when I had the panic attack, but later when I went to a psychiatrist, he pointed out that my intermittent drug use was enough to change my brain chemistry and make freaking out much more likely. So that panic attack led to me going to therapy for a long time and that led me to meditation. And as you indicated, it was not like on my dance card in any prominent way.

I was raised by ex-hippies and so they had made me do yoga and taking me to health stores and go hiking and camping. And so I hated anything having to do with the new age or hippies. And so it was not something I ever considered. What changed my mind was that I started to see all of the research that shows that it's really good for you. This isn't like 2008, 2009, a couple of years after the panic attack in my job as a journalist, I started to see this research that at the time was not well

publicized That suggests that like a little bit of meditation can rewire key parts of your brain lower your blood pressure boost your immune system It's quite powerful and it's also been shown to be quite good for anxiety and depression so I started doing it just a little bit every day and It started making a big difference for me. And so that's the story of how I got into it And when you hear people say of how I got into it. And when you hear people say now, and I imagine someone's listening thinking,

well, like I've never been good at meditation. Yeah. I hear that all the time. Those are my people. Those are your people. So, okay, what do you want to say to those people? The thing, they have such good news on this score. The reason you think you're bad

is actually proof that you're doing it right. Most people start meditating, they sit, try to focus on one thing, usually it's the breath, and then their minds go wild. But the fact that you're seeing all of these distractions is proof that you're meditating correctly. Clearing your mind is impossible. I always joke that it's, you know, the only people who can clear their mind are the enlightened and the dead. And so the whole goal in meditation is not to like stop thinking that's impossible. Every eight-year-old tries that and sees you can't. The whole goal is just to notice, to try to focus for a little bit on one thing like your breath or some other physical sensation. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again. And that waking up to distraction is meditation.

That's not like a problem. That's not you doing it wrong. I was saying recently, or somebody was saying to me recently, when you wake up from distraction, if you just say to the words in your head, say the word, great. Great? This is what is supposed to happen. Why? Because the whole goal of meditation is to get familiar with the wildness of your mind. We have this inner conversation, which if we broadcast aloud, we'd be locked up, right? With this wild conversation of, I want this, I want that, I'm thinking about the past or the future, I'm judging people, I'm judging myself, you know, planning a homicide, whatever it is,

I just have all these crazy thoughts. And when you don't see it, it owns you. And what meditation does is just get you familiar with your inner landscape, and that familiarity is mindfulness. So if I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I have time for like a one-minute meditation instead of doom scrolling, and I'm doing something,

I'm listening, and then I notice, oh my goodness, I have to order fresh direct, and oh my goodness, I forgot to sign my son up for soccer. That's the point that you would say great. I'd say great. Because what I'm doing in that moment, tell me if I got this right, is I just noticed that my mind wandered.

And if I build the muscle of noticing when my mind wanders, then that muscle will probably activate in the moments I'm not meditating and I'll just be in a little more control of my day. Is that right? Two things. One is you're changing the part of the brain that's associated with focus or attention regulation. The bicep curl of trying to focus on one thing, getting distracted, starting again, starting again, starting again, rewires the parts of the frontal lobe that regulate our capacity to pay attention and to be awake and aware

right now, which is the only time it ever is. That's one thing. The second thing is the more you notice how slippery the mind is and how it has these old grooves and habitual neuroses that keep popping up, the less owned you are by this ancient, ancient wiring, and that you may have picked up from your parents

and they picked up from their parents, or you're picking up from noxious inputs from the culture. And so that's the mindfulness part. It's a kind of self-awareness that allows you to see what's happening in your head without being owned by it. And that is just an incredibly powerful thing that's available to everybody. I'm thinking about even the relevance directly, these moments with our kids, where let's say my six-year-old, I very clearly, I even connected to him,

and I'm like, okay, I'm going to go to the kitchen, you're going to clean up your room, and I come back and he didn't clean up his room. And it's so easy to go into like, oh, he doesn't respect me or has some like, you know, grant, or he's going to be a sociopath, he's never going to listen to anyone, he's going to be in jail. But based on what you're saying, like the practice of mindfulness for a minute, might increase my chances in that moment. I was kind of noticing, oh, like my mind just went to the future.

And then I can probably respond from a more grounded place, not in my fear. Exactly. There's actually a word in Buddhism for what you're describing. So things happen, like your kid doesn't listen to you, or you stub your toe or whatever. And we have these immediate, reflexive, habitual mental movies we make projecting

into the future of all the terrible consequences. So the word for that in Buddhism is, this is an ancient word, propuncha. Propuncha, I'll say that. Propuncha. Yes. And it translates into the imperialistic tendency of mind, which basically is, it's an amazing phrase because something happens right now

and then we colonize the future with our phantasmagoric projections of what's gonna happen. And so if you have the self-awareness that's built up through meditation, boom, you catch in the moment, propantia, that's what it is. I don't need to act on that. I can let it go and act on what's actually happening right now.

It's so funny, I call it the fast-forward error, but that's right, because then what happens, and I think this is one of the number one kind of quote errors we make as parents, is we see something today, maybe my nine-year-old lied to me, or I'm like, you know, I just saw you hit your brother, and she's like, I didn't hit my brother, you know, I'm like, okay, right. And she's like, I didn't hit my brother. You know, I'm like, okay. Right? And I fast forward to, she's gonna be the teenager who lies. She's gonna get involved in drugs and not gonna know about it.

Like whatever my whole story is. And then I think what I do is I respond to the moment happening based on all my anxiety and fear about the next 10 years, which really is very experienced, distant from, like, I don't know, whatever just happened. She probably was just embarrassed that she hit her brother. That's all probably it was. And I love that word, propantia. Yes. That's like exactly what's happening. And just to name it again, just to name it in that way, really takes, it even adds some levity. I

feel like that's not even a word I could ever say without laughing just because it kind of has a humorous. Yes, right, it sounds ridiculous. Yeah, right? But then I add levity instead of the kind of intense seriousness of that moment. I think about this story a lot, it's not that exciting of a story, but it just comes to mind all the time.

When I was in my early 20s, I had a lot of back pain and I went and got an MRI or an x-ray or something like that. And I was, the doctor showed me, oh, you have something called, I think it's called spondylolisthesis. It's like one of your lumbars slightly out of trajectory with the rest and I was like, what do you do about it? And he said, I don't know, you have to talk to a physical therapist about that, but isn't it nice to know there's some pathology? And at the moment I found it annoying, but over time, I've been like, yes, I'm not making this up. There is a problem here, and it's like a known condition

that has a name. And the same thing with this fast forwarding that we all do that we can tend to write off as like a bespoke, unique, personalized form of lunacy that only we are doing. But the fact that there's a name for it and it's 2,600 years old, really takes some of the air out of you. You don't have to take it personally.

It's just a natural phenomenon that happens with all of us. Well, I also think what it does in naming a problem, why it's nice, is we often are mislabeling the problem. I would think in a moment that the problem is my daughter's so disrespectful and she's going to be a lying teenager. But that's actually, there is a problem, but that's actually not the problem.

The problem is my fast forwarding to the future and not being able to stay grounded in this moment, right? So the problem, whatever it was with your back, now that you know what it is, you probably aren't staying up being like, I wonder if it's cancer and I wonder if it's this liver disease, right? You know what it is, you probably aren't staying up being like, I wonder if it's cancer and I wonder if it's this liver disease, right? You know what it is.

And so that stops all of that kind of anxious worry. I think you and I in many ways are in the same business, which is that there are so many ways in which the way the mind works prevents us from seeing things clearly and then acting sanely. And so you just want as many tools, and I'm not a meditation fundamentalist, I'm a huge fan of it, but meditation is one of many tools that can help you not get yanked around by all of these evolutionarily wired quirks to the human mind. Mm-hmm. I think that's exactly right. Okay, so you're not a meditation fundamentalist, but you do know quite a bit about meditation,

right? And it is now, you better. Well, it's 10 years, right? Yes, 10 years since I wrote the book. Since you wrote 10% happier. I'm curious, like what it's like for you 10 years later to look back. I think about what it'll be like to look back on my book

and I'm sure I'll be like, I can't believe I haven't said some of that. Like, I don't even believe that anymore. Wow, I can't believe I thought that then. I think that even more now. Could you speak a little bit about the kind of your evolution and your approach to meditation and the self from 10 years ago? I did make some changes in the book. I reread it and this edition that I just

put out is revised. There were things about the culture 10 years ago that, I mean, they were small, but they were, reading it now, there were things that were like mildly offensive. I made some joke about bearded Swamis or something like that, which at the time nobody flagged, but now I read it and I was like, why am I not canceled for this? You know, is it flip and disrespectful?

And so I took out things like that. And not that I think people should be canceled for something like that, but it's more like a certain amount of sensitivity makes sense. It wasn't in line with your current values. Exactly. But the bigger things are like, I just stunned by the passage of time. And you know how when you first have a kid, everybody says, enjoy every moment?

It's like this thing, it's like this hiccup everybody has, enjoy every moment. It's like this thing, everybody, it's like this hiccup everybody has. Enjoy every moment. And at first I was a little annoyed by that because it just seemed rote. But now I realize that what's going on is that life moves incredibly quickly. And you, the most jarring example of that is how fast your kids grow up. It's hard to talk about this without lapsing into cliché, but it is really true. And I mean, that's how cliches get to be cliches. They're true. And so for me, for 10 years to have passed since the book came out, it just, it is kind of stunning. I also feel, yeah, reading back, reading the book back that I am quite different. The technology works, you know, 10% happier.

I like to think of it like an investment, so it compounds annually. So I don't know what the number is now. I mean, it was always a joke, the 10%, but I'm a lot happier. And what's interesting in like the last couple of years for a bunch of reasons have been very difficult objectively. My wife's had some health problems and I've had some business tumult.

And so there's, there've been like difficult things in my life. Yes. And yet there've been, and I've had many sleepless nights in the last couple of years, and yet they've been two of the best years of my life. And so how can those things coexist? I think it's that you get the compounding effect of putting in the work. And that's why I recommend people start with meditation or therapy or whatever it is that's going to help you.

If you can just be consistent, it doesn't have to be a huge time stock. If you can be consistent over time, it just will pay off when you need it.. Yeah. So I'm curious, you wrote the book before you had a kid. Yes. Right? Yes. Now you're a dad, a nine-year-old. Has that changed how you look back at the book? Like, are there things that feel more true now or feel harder to put into practice, you know, now that your parent or feels so important for your son to learn in this world he's growing up in.

Well, one thing is that parents ask me all the time, how do I get my kids to meditate? And I've learned through having a son that you should not try. My parents were very annoying about certain things. Like I couldn't have sugar. I wasn't allowed to like watch TV. Now I eat candy all the time

and I worked inside the box for 30 years. So- You showed them. Yes, exactly. But so I didn't do anything they lectured me about, but I did, I do everything I saw them do. So they were very avid exercisers, they were very serious about their careers, they were both physicians, they were very serious about their relationship,

they were very serious about like doing good things in the world, family, the extended family. All those things are massive priorities for me now, but not because I was lectured about it, more that I absorbed it. And so with my son, you know, he knows I meditate. He travels with me. Like you, I travel and give a lot of speeches. So I usually, last year, I think my son missed a couple months of school because I just pulled

him out and took him with me and with the teacher's permission. And so he's seen me give my talk a million times, but I never say to him, hey, you should meditate or force him to meditate. But he has picked it up and I'll give you an example. Like I found out from his principal that he had started guiding kids in school in loving kindness meditation, which is the cheesiest form of meditation there is.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of it, but it's very corny. And he's a very sort of heteronormative nine-year-old football watching kid. And he started guiding kids in his school in loving kindness meditation. And the high school heard about it and asked him to come to a high school, all school assembly in the gym with hundreds of kids and guide them in loving kindness meditation.

And I came with him that day, and he was nervous beforehand, but then they called his name and he marched up there and he grabbed the mic and he guided these kids in meditation. And that, I never taught him any of this. And so my point to all this is, if you want mindful kids, if you want healthy, sane kids, you've got to be healthy and sane and mindful yourself. And so that has been a big learning for me

The other thing is just the this capacity Two things the the capacity to be awake and aware for what's happening right now to be present to use the cliche I mean that that is because it moves so fast That is an incredibly valuable skill and I don't want to look back at this time and think, oh, I wasted it, I let it all slip by. And so meditation has been really helpful in that regard. And then the other thing is that there are so many moments that are really difficult where having the ability to regulate my own emotions has been very helpful. In particular, when he does things that I hate about myself,

so his anxiety can be triggering for me. Or if he's like talking nonsense or like bragging or, you know, talking out of his head. Is that what you do? Yeah, because that's what I do. You know, that's what I did when I was a kid. And I still see that tendency in my mind now. And I don't like that about myself.

So when I see that in him, it's easy for me to, I think if I didn't have these tools, I might've scarred him in some ways. I might've been overly harsh with him. And who knows, I probably did that too, but I've caught myself a lot when he's crying and I'm in my mind saying, oh, he's being manipulative or histrionic or whatever.

You know, what do I really know? And so being able to have a break on some of my more manipulative or histrionic or whatever, you know, what do I really know? And so being able to have a break on some of my more harsh tendencies, I think has been really helpful. If parents are listening and they're thinking like, how do we start this? Like, because, okay, I hear the benefits, it would definitely help most parents. We know this to like be a little more present, more regulated in the moment. Every parent I know wants that.

What are some of the ways that very busy parents that you recommend, they actually start some practice that is a small step that's both meaningful and impact, but also possible in actuality? This is a great question. And we talked about it a little bit at the beginning, so I'll just go back to it. Just the overarching thing to say is, and you know this,

but just for the listeners that what we know about habit formation is that it's just diabolically hard. And actually that sounds dark, but it's nice to know there's pathology. Just to know, it's not just hard for you, it's hard for everybody, especially when you've got a bunch of demands on you. So I'm speaking from a very sympathetic, non-pressuring perch here when I say these things. So what we know from the data is that if you're trying to start a habit, starting small is incredibly useful. So my little mantras here are one minute counts and daily-ish.

I think it's really important to give yourself the flexibility to screw up, you know, fall off the wagon and start again a million times, just the way in meditation, you know, quote unquote, messing up and getting distracted, you have to, you know, it's like you want to be able to give yourself permission to start over a million times. Same with this. You can, maybe you'll get on a good streak for a few weeks,

but then life happens and you, eight weeks later get on a good streak for a few weeks, but then life happens and you, eight weeks later, you realize you haven't meditated once, nothing's been lost, just start again. So I want to set the bar low and take the pressure out of this and say that you can integrate this into the little nooks and crannies of your day, very brief meditations, and don't force yourself

to do it every day because inevitably you will miss a day and then the voice in your head will tell you you're a failure. The other thing is that you can co-opt natural moments in your day like doing the dishes or like just walking around, changing a diaper, all of these rote activities where you might be stewing or, you know, I'm not anti-daydreaming, but a lot of the time when we're in our, what brain scientists call the default mode of our minds, of our brains, that we're just, we're thinking in ways that are making us unhappy. And so if you can co-op some of these moments that otherwise you'd be musing darkly on something

and just to drop into the raw data of what's happening right now. What does the water feel like on my hands? What does this toothbrush feel like in my hands? What does the body feel like as it's moving through space? That's mindfulness. And then every time- I want to go through that with like washing the dishes.

Cause are you saying, it's like you're like, you're gonna wash the dishes regardless. So like that's happening. And if I leave myself to my own devices, I'm probably saying, like, I can't believe I have to do this, or this is, like, one of a million things I need to do. Or maybe I'm thinking of,

I can't believe my son didn't listen to me, he's a sociopath, and I'm just, like, telling myself that story over and over. So, I'm doing the activity anyway. It's already built into my day. And if I leave myself to more mindlessness, I'm probably going in a direction that's interesting, I don't know that, like that's probably gonna work against me.

Probably, so what's the road activity for you? Is it dishes, I don't know, do you do the dishes, does your husband do the dishes? Loading and unloading the dishwasher, I'm up early in the morning so I generally go and I'll hear the beeping from the night before and I'll be like okay, I'm gonna just get this done. So unloading the dishwasher is a perfect one.

And what is happening in your mind generally while you're doing that? I think I'm thinking of everything I need to do that day and I'm getting overwhelmed, ready about this list and it's 6.30 in the morning or something. We talked briefly before we started rolling and maybe of the opinion that perhaps you're doing too much. But I say this as somebody who has fallen into that hole myself many times.

But having said that, like there's a certain amount of planning for the day ahead that is useful. And so there's this line between useless mentation and cogitation thinking, useful, I call it constructive anguish, a certain amount of plotting and planning that makes sense. And then often we tip over very quickly into useless worry and projection, propantia, et cetera, et cetera. So having like a release valve on some of that, a practice where you are deliberately turning the volume down a little

bit, trying to focus on what's happening right now. And then when all that stuff bursts through the wall, like the Kool-Aid man, like, that's cool, you just notice it and start again and start again. And so unloading the dishwasher or loading the dishwasher is a good moment for that because there's a lot of mechanics. The arm is moving, you're grasping porcelain or metal, and then you're putting it in. There's maybe moisture

on your hand. There could be coolness or warmth in the overall air. The body is maybe crouched down a little bit so you feel it in your hunches. There's a lot to tune into if the channels are open. And so just exploring, like, what are the physical sensations? What am I hearing? What am I feeling? What's the temperature? And then inevitably, you're going to get distracted

a million times, and that's cool, catch it, great, and then go back. That is a full-fledged meditation. Interesting. So to flesh that out even more specifically, so I'm doing this, would I be literally narrating to myself, grabbing the fork, or is it more like, no, Becky, that's working too hard,

just notice it without, like, I want to get into the specifics. You're asking, these are really good questions, and so I'm glad you're asking them. There is a concept in Buddhist meditation of right effort. So it's, this is really one of the trickiest parts of meditation, like how hard should you try? And the only way to figure this out is to mess it up over and over and over again, because especially

for type A people, we're gonna wanna win at meditation. And so, you know, this is just a thing to notice about your mind, which eventually becomes very powerful. You notice how hard you're pushing all the time. And so meditation can be like a crucible where you're really seeing this. So to answer the actual question you asked, which is, should I be narrating? There is a technique called mental noting. So it wouldn't be so much like, I, Becky, am now picking up the fork.

It's more like dropping little words into the mind that help you direct your mind to the sensation, like moving, coolness, tension, tightness. You don't want to be like, you don't want to be noting, noting, noting all the time, just dropping it in once in a while as a way to help direct the mind to the raw data of the physical sensations. Does that make sense? That makes so much sense. Right effort. I like that. Okay, I'm going to go for this one too.

I feel like I noticed my workday. I will like bring my phone to the bathroom. Oh yeah, I'd do that too. Okay, so is that another, could I just like mindfully? Yeah, pee? Yeah, pee. Or more?

Yeah, whatever I'm going to do. Yes. Like just walking to the bathroom without my phone. like mindfully. Yeah, pee? Yeah, pee. Or more, yes. Yeah, whatever I'm going to do. Like just walking to the bathroom without my phone, like that could be, that happens multiple times a day. So that could be a shift from just some mindless moment where, yeah, again, I'm probably like on email or whatever I'm doing right into the moment I get to the bathroom.

So like, that's my break. That's a way of infusing mindfulness into my already busy day because I'm already going to the bathroom. I love the way you're thinking about this. You can view your day as a target-rich environment for mindfulness breaks. So there are these things that you non-negotiably have to do throughout the day, like going to the bathroom, eating, drinking, moving from one meeting to the next,

and you can put the phone away. This doesn't have to be onerous at all. It can be a minute, two, three minutes, put the phone away and just tune in during those moments. And then again, you're gonna get distracted a bunch, but those distractions are so useful because you start to understand what are the habits of Becky's mind

and are some of these really counterproductive? And can I learn to spot them and ride them instead of drowning in them? Does that land? Yes, so helpful. I'm curious in the 10 years going back to the book, I mean, we had cell phones then, but I feel like phones didn't play the same role

in our lives. Has that impacted how you look back on the book or the way you think about mindfulness now? Maybe it's even more important, is it even harder to do? Both of the things you just said, it's more important and it's harder to do. And we're not gonna change it and I'm not anti-technology. I just think, I think it's useful for people in my position to say that out loud because it's nice for people listening

to have their experience validated. That, yeah, if you're noticing you're more distracted these days than you used to be, you're not making that up. Sorry, there's a siren here. But the siren really does put some punctuation and exclamation onto how hard the situation is. It's a bit of a psychological emergency. We don't have space. There are very few moments in our life

where we're not stimulated. And again, I remember in 2007 or eight when I got my first iPhone thinking I'll never be bored again. And it was like a great feeling. But that sound we're listening to right now, that's what we're curating a non-stop siren and horn in our head all the time. And we need to, and stuff like, you can't live without it.

It's hard for most of us to live without it in the modern world. And so this is just a thing we have to learn how to navigate. And there's, you know, Catherine Price, have you ever talked to her? Catherine Price, she had her on the show. She's a mom and she wrote a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone. And there are lots of like ways to create some distance

with your phone that mindfulness can superpower, supercharge. Yeah. Any last words you want to leave for the parents listening? Because I feel like you've already done such a service. I feel like probably the number one thing that gets in people's way of meditating is the thought that I'm not a good meditator. I've tried it before and I can't do it.

It doesn't work for me. Yes. Right? And to give people a different framework, no, that probably means you did it really well, so good job, right? I think it's just so hopeful and empowering. So I think parents have gotten that, and I'm glad to really, really drive that message home. Anything else?

I mean, just what's coming to mind as you're talking is that I think in our best moments, we're really understanding and forgiving of our kids for their mistakes. In our best moments. In our best moments, we're really understanding and forgiving of our kids for their mistakes. In our best moments. In our best moments, yeah. But you can channel that attitude toward yourself. Because so much of what we're talking about today is this kind of perfectionist, perfectionistic attitude

that we bring to meditation, to parenting, to everything. And that's totally unreasonable. And we wouldn't, in our saner moments, apply it to our kids. And so can you channel some of the magnanimity that you bring to your kids, to yourself? And there's a lot of data that I'm sure you're familiar with about the effectiveness of self-compassion, which is really just talking to yourself

the way you would talk to a friend or a kid in your good moments of talking to the kid. And you can channel that even towards your parenting. Okay, Becky, Dan, whoever. I yeah, I blew that moment with my kid. But like that's part of being alive and the potential for repair is there. In fact, you couldn't repair if you didn't screw up. Can you have a Dr.

Becky or a Dan in your head who's coaching you the way you would in your best moments, coach your kid. That's a mental habit that is available to all of us that I would highly recommend. Love that. Well, thank you. Congratulations. 10 years. Thank you.

He's 10% happier. And I believe it, the compounding impact is just small steps in the right direction, right? They compound into amazing results. There was a great tweet recently from Roshi Joan Halifax, who's an American-based Zen master. It was the squiggly line. It was the line was just going all over the frame. And then she wrote in the caption, the path. I mean, that's what we're all like a mess. And this is going to be like marginal, messy, uneven improvement over time. And that's available to all of us.

And that's the best it gets. That is the best it gets. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you to our podcast sponsors, Airbnb and Guranimals.

Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world, and you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered and confident for this very important job you hold. I'm so excited to share Good Inside membership. It's the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like-valued parents. It's game-changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they have. Good Inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise.

Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Knapp, and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erika Belsky, Mary Panico, Brooke Zant, and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.