51 pages • 1 hour read
Dan Harris10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Power of Negative Thinking”
Harris initially felt that his aversion to meditation’s New Age reputation, along with his flickering attention span, made him an unlikely candidate for this practice. However, after reading that scientific studies were showing the physiological benefits of meditation, he became more open to the idea. He followed the traditional and simple instructions to begin a session: Sit in a comfortable position, follow the breath, and when the attention wanders, just begin again (100). Harris soon learned that “this was not some hippie time-passing technique, like Ultimate Frisbee…It was a rigorous brain exercise: rep after rep of trying to tame the runaway train of the mind” (101). It wasn’t easy, but Harris kept at it. By starting a daily practice, he got into the habit of following the breath to alleviate anxiety and to focus on present moments. The results were immediate. He started to see an increase in his own mindfulness, the ability to recognize what happens in the mind moment by moment while recognizing the transitory nature of any thought.
However, mindfulness wasn’t always easy, especially when Harris’s work life was thrown into flux. Changes at ABC happened as anchor Charlie Gibson retired and Diane Sawyer took over the news desk, which caused reassignments of other major positions. Harris was up for two positions: anchor at Nightline and weekend anchor of Good Morning America. To alleviate his anxiety while waiting, he decided to go to a three-day conference on Buddhism where Epstein was one of the speakers. Another speaker was psychologist and meditation-leader Tara Brach, who introduced the audience to her acronym RAIN. RAIN stands for a four-step mindfulness technique that incorporates recognizing your thoughts, allowing them to exist, investigating how they feel in the body, and then not identifying them as permanent states of being. Harris embraced this practice with some success. However, Epstein suggested if he wanted to go deeper, he should also attend a retreat led by Joseph Goldstein, a noted meditation teacher who was part of the “Jew-Bus” (95) group.
Meanwhile, “Face-Off” filmed another episode with guest Deepak Chopra regarding whether God and science could go hand in hand. Chopra debated with Michael Shermer, head of the Skeptics Society, and Sam Harris, a best-selling author on atheism. Chopra again did not offer the answers Harris sought, but Sam Harris—who is unrelated to Dan—clicked with Harris, and the two became friendly. It turned out Sam Harris and his wife had also studied meditation with Goldstein. Based on his trust of Epstein and rapport with Sam Harris, Harris signed up for the retreat, eager to tame his monkey mind. The timing proved to be fortunate: Just before he left for California, he learned he did not get the coveted position at Nightline.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Retreat”
Harris flew to California’s Spirit Rock Meditation Center to attend the 10-day silent retreat headed by Goldstein. Meditation time was approximately 10 hours a day, and Harris worried he wouldn’t be able to succeed at that kind of rigor. After the first few days, he felt defeated though buoyed by Goldstein’s evening talks, which were filled with humor and enthusiasm. He was assured that this was a common experience for those who decide to commit to a retreat.
Harris had particular difficulties with metta, or loving-kindness (or compassion) meditation, as led by one of the teachers, Spring Washam. While Harris understood the purpose to develop compassion, he felt “boredom, disdain, and insufficiency” (135) when attempting it. At this point, he considered fleeing and telling all his loved ones he had failed. The next day, however, he talked to Warsham, who advised him to not try so hard. The experience, she acknowledged, was the antithesis of how one would normally think or behave: People like Harris are often goal-oriented, and she impressed on Harris that he wasn’t the only person struggling. This helped him open up again, and shortly after talking to Warsham, he had a breakthrough with a meditation that caused intense NPRs, or “noticing per minutes” (146). In this state, he was completely aware of all his thoughts as they passed and felt exhilarated. Suddenly, the painful and lonely work of repetition seemed to pay off.
For Harris, the intensity continued during a metta meditation in which he was so moved he couldn’t stop crying: “Waves of happiness [kept] coming…It [was] the best high of my life” (142). These heightened feelings continued the next day when Harris experienced mudita, the Buddhist term for sympathetic joy. However, by the afternoon, this heightened spiritual connection dissolved. When he privately met Goldstein again, the teacher assured him that awareness of consciousness would increase with practice. However, frequent ebbs were also to be expected. Later, during a public question-and-answer session, Harris asked Goldstein about how to handle worry practically. Goldstein replied that asking whether worrying is useful, while simple, can be enormously helpful. Harris noted that “[a]chieving choiceless awareness and metta-induced blubbering may have been the most dramatic moments of the retreat, but this [advice from Goldstein] was unquestionably the most valuable” (149).
Chapters 6-7 Analysis
These chapters show the success Harris has in completing the first leg of his quest: finding practical advice in taming the nasty voice in his head. The experience of meeting Tara Brach and discovering her technique of using RAIN along with his retreat experience with Joseph Goldstein empower Harris to do the work of mindfulness: No longer searching for the right technique, Harris must work on gaining some mastery of the technique of meditation. In these chapters, Harris goes to great lengths to clearly explain a variety of terms in Buddhist meditation, gives step-by-step instructions to explain techniques and meditations, and gives vivid descriptions of both his failures and successes to illustrate the importance of even his small successes.
A key component of meditation is that it requires effort. He does not qualify the rewards or the difficulty in achieving them, noting that going on the retreat to Spirit Rock in Woodacre, California, was “the longest, most exquisite high of my life, but the hangover came first” (121). Harris openly struggles with the requirements of the retreat but is determined to see it through and begin again instead of giving up.
These chapters make use of the description of Buddhism Harris provided in earlier chapters. It provides context for both the ups and downs of his transformative experience. That this experience happens to occur just when Harris loses a big promotion to his friend Bill Weir helps Harris understand why he needs a method to keep his ego in check.
Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the retreat is Harris’s experience with the hummingbird, which seems to both trigger awe at its beauty and increase his NPM. There is no question that this is transformative as Harris conveys his enthusiasm, wonder, and incredulity. His deep experience with metta, a practice he later resists, sets up the second crisis arc. This event is beautiful, too, but Harris doubts he has the emotional bandwidth for this. This shows that even someone who can achieve success with meditation may still have a way to go, which helps Harris not judge himself unfairly.
