10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works

In the 2014 Preface, Harris notes how he learned that if we fail to observe our internal monologue, we may be headed for a more difficult life. He knows this because of his own personal journey. He explains that “[o]ur inner chatter isn’t all bad, of course. Sometimes, it’s creative, generous, or funny. But if we don’t pay close attention—which very few of us are taught how to do—it can be a malevolent puppeteer” (xxi). Several unexpected encounters with a variety of celebrities, religious leaders, and Zen masters led Harris to realize that studying meditation could mitigate his own harmful inner voice. A meditation habit directly improved his day-to-day life and relationships with others, personally and professionally. Harris shares that other skilled practitioners have also experienced serious positive change in focus and emotional resiliency by committing to a meditation practice. Moreover, there are genuine scientific studies supporting the truth of this behavior. He urges others to try meditation by noting that if meditation worked for him, it could also work for them. In order to impress upon his readers the benefits of meditation, Harris notes he’ll be recounting his personal journey from mindlessness to mindfulness.

In the first chapter of 10% Happier, Harris summarizes the factors that led him to one of the pivotal experiences of his life. In 2004, Harris had a panic attack on live television while filling in as a news correspondent on Good Morning America, commonly abbreviated GMA. He experienced “air hunger,” a physiological sensation that makes a person feel their lungs can’t take in enough air. This event, which jeopardized his career, triggered Harris’s journey to discover the root of his panic.

First, to set the stage for his transformation, Harris goes back in time to show the steps that led him to ABC News. Due to hard work, Harris had a quick rise from working behind the scenes at a small television station in Bangor, Maine, right out of college to being asked to host an overnight broadcast for ABC news at the age of 29. When that job didn’t pan out, Harris was still asked to join the nightly news as a correspondent and moved to New York City in 2000. Taking advantage of his big break, Harris began to hustle for stories in order to please the then head of the news broadcast, the esteemed news anchor Peter Jennings. While he learned professionalism and how journalism was “a sacred trust with the audience, and a vital part of functioning democracy” (7) from Jennings, Harris was dogged by his mentor’s capricious temperament. Determined to succeed and please Jennings, Harris worked excessively, constantly measuring himself up to other correspondents.

When the Twin Towers fell in New York City on September 11, 2001, Harris was on the news team that covered the aftermath. Later, as a correspondent in the Middle East, Harris first experienced was he calls “journalistic heroin” (14), becoming addicted to the adrenaline rush of reporting from the midst of the fighting. Although he was in danger during this time and was fired upon, he sublimated the horrors of war and concentrated on the fact that he was helping to record history. However, there were consequences to this emotional detachment. Upon his return to the United States, though outwardly more confidant and assertive, Harris developed an illness that could not be diagnosed. He also was living with increasing anxiety.

A psychiatrist suggested perhaps he had depression, which had developed since Harris’s withdrawal from the high-pressure life of war reporting. In truth, unbeknown to this doctor, Harris was compromising his health by self-medicating. Harris indulged in both cocaine and ecstasy, drugs that simulate feelings similar to adrenaline. While Harris realized that the drugs added to feelings of panic, it was only when he experienced the panic attack on the set of Good Morning America that he admitted to himself he had a problem. He did not reveal this to his superiors or close relatives, but he made an appointment with another psychiatrist, Dr. Andrew Brotman, who confirmed that the drugs he was using increased panic. He insisted Harris get clean. Learning that, like war veterans, many correspondents also experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Harris felt comforted (25). Still, he remained embarrassed regarding his personal failing, berating himself for allowing his bad behavior to almost destroy his career. Although he had a reason for his behavior—mindlessness—he was befuddled about how to change it.