Book Review – 10% Happier by Dan Harris

If you’re guided by voices, you’re not alone. Dan Harris, ABC anchorman and author of the terrific 10% Happier, has them in his head. So do I (or using bizarre Bostonian phrasing, so don’t I). Harris writes that these voices are “engaged in a ceaseless stream of thinking – most of it negative, repetitive, and self-referential.” Overall, we’re talking about the useless mental noise that results from the multitasking and madness that make up the busy workday. And while we’re on m-words, the two that you won’t find referenced on the cover – but that are the heart of the book – are mindfulness and meditation. Harris is a gifted reporter and whip-smart writer and surely bright enough to know how skeptical most of his audience will be of such concepts and practices. Wait, you’re asking, you want me to read about this hippy nonsense? Well, only if you want to quiet what he calls the clatter of the mind while maintaining an edge. (Patriots fans will chuckle here, noting that former head coach Pete Carroll is a huge proponent of mindfulness and that it didn’t do him or his Seahawks much good when they stood beast-like a mere three feet from Super Bowl glory earlier this year only to then literally throw it away, but let’s stay focused now, sports fans.)

Harris’ story begins with an on-air meltdown. This is a guy who became obsessed with his hair, rank on the newsroom food chain, and certain future demise in news media (unfounded as that fear was). His solution: ingesting massive amounts of hard drugs. Turns out that behavior, coupled with a distinct lack of REM sleep, is not ideal when you read news into camera to the here-we-are-now-infotain-us masses of a national audience, resulting in what appeared to be a stroke on live television. Call it a wake-up call, which it surely was. The author found himself on a path toward – for lack of a better term – enlightenment and therein lies the value of this book. The reader gets keen access into Harris’ investigations of so-called religious leaders, swarthy self-help TV pitch men, and then mercifully some genuine, thoughtful counselors who guide him to a sane place. Throw in a 10-day meditation retreat and you’ve got yourself an embedded reporter delivering pretty damned compelling report from the front lines of the massive – and growing – self-improvement industry. The punchline of all this? Some help in becoming just a wee bit happier.

Hesitant as he was, Harris learned to meditate, starting with five minutes and slowly building to a half-hour sessions, which seems a lot harder than it sounds. (Raise your hand if even a few minutes of silent, uninterrupted reflection might feel like an eternity.) Buddhist thought taught him to picture his mind as a waterfall. “The water is the torrent of thoughts and emotions,” he writes. “Mindfulness is the space behind the waterfall.” Write that off if you will, but for what it’s worth this imagery has stuck with me since reading that passage on p. 105. One can get as earthy, crunchy, corny, far out, etc. with this core concept as they wish – or not (dropping acid being neither necessary nor recommended). The key takeaway is to learn to respond, not react. We cannot control what Larry David might call “the pop-in,” those things that enter our mind without warning. All we can control is how we handle these thoughts. Harris has a friend in the technology business who calls mindfulness a superpower for negotiations, remaining the calmest person in the room during heated discussions. So if you’re headed into a high-stakes client conversation or seeking an overdue pay raise, get behind the waterfall and repeat after me, Grasshopper: serenity now.