The Voice in My Head Is an A**hole

In 10% Happier, a self-help guide even skeptics will embrace, ABC News’ Dan Harris crushes stereotypes about meditation and recounts how it slashed his stress and quieted his anxious mind. Read an excerpt below.

Initially I wanted to call this book The Voice in My Head Is an A**hole. However, that title was deemed inappropriate for a man whose day job requires him to abide by FCC decency standards.

It’s true, though. The voice in my head can be a total pill. I’d venture to guess yours can, too. Most of us are so entranced by the nonstop conversation we’re having with ourselves that we aren’t even aware we have a voice in our head. I certainly wasn’t—at least not before I embarked on the weird little odyssey described in this book.

To be clear, I’m not talking about “hearing voices,” I’m talking about the internal narrator, the most intimate part of our lives. The voice comes braying in as soon as we open our eyes in the morning, and then heckles us all day long with an air horn. It’s a fever swamp of urges, desires, and judgments. It’s fixated on the past and the future, to the detriment of the here and now. It’s what has us reaching into the fridge when we’re not hungry, losing our temper when we know it’s not really in our best interest, and pruning our inboxes when we’re ostensibly engaged in conversation with other human beings. Our 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.

If you’d told me when I first arrived in New York City, to start working in network news, that I’d be using meditation to defang the voice in my head—or that I’d ever write a whole book about it—I would have laughed at you. Until recently, I thought of meditation as the exclusive province of bearded swamis, unwashed hippies, and fans of John Tesh music. Moreover, since I have the attention span of a six-month-old yellow Lab, I figured it was something I could never do anyway. I assumed, given the constant looping, buzzing, and fizzing of my thoughts, that “clearing my mind” wasn’t an option.

But then came a strange and unplanned series of events, involving war zones, megachurches, self-help gurus, Paris Hilton, the Dalai Lama, and ten days of silence that, in a flash, went from the most annoying to the most profound experience of my life. As a result of all of this, I came to realize that my preconceptions about meditation were, in fact, misconceptions.

Meditation suffers from a towering PR problem, largely because its most prominent proponents talk as if they have a perpetual pan flute accompaniment. If you can get past the cultural baggage, though, what you’ll find is that meditation is simply exercise for your brain. It’s a proven technique for preventing the voice in your head from leading you around by the nose. To be clear, it’s not a miracle cure. It won’t make you taller or better-looking, nor will it magically solve all of your problems. You should disregard the fancy books and the famous gurus promising immediate enlightenment. In my experience, meditation makes you 10% happier. That’s an absurdly unscientific estimate, of course. But still, not a bad return on investment.

Once you get the hang of it, the practice can create just enough space in your head so that when you get angry or annoyed, you are less likely to take the bait and act on it. There’s even science to back this up—an explosion of new research, complete with colorful MRI scans, demonstrating that meditation can essentially rewire your brain.

I came to realize that my preconceptions about meditation were, in fact, misconceptions.

This science challenges the common assumption that our levels of happiness, resilience, and kindness are set from birth. Many of us labor under the delusion that we’re permanently stuck with all of the difficult parts of our personalities—that we are “hot-tempered,” or “shy,” or “sad”—and that these are fixed, immutable traits. We now know that many of the attributes we value most are, in fact, skills, which can be trained the same way you build your body in the gym.

This is radical, hopeful stuff. In fact, as I discovered, this new neuroscience has led to the flowering of an elite subculture of executives, athletes, and marines who are using meditation to improve their focus, curb their addiction to technology, and stop being yanked around by their emotions. Meditation has even been called the “new caffeine.” I suspect that if the practice could be denuded of all the spiritual preening and straight-out-of-a-fortune-cookie lingo such as “sacred spaces,” “divine mother,” and “holding your emotions with love and tenderness,” it would be attractive to many more millions of smart, skeptical, and ambitious people who would never otherwise go near it.

One of the questions I hear most often from skeptics is: If I quiet the voice in my head, will I lose my edge? Some think they need depression to be creative or compulsive worry to be successful.

For the past four years, I’ve been road testing meditation in the crucible of one of the most competitive environments imaginable, television news. I’m here to tell you, it’s totally doable. More than that, it can give you a real advantage—and, not for nothing, it might even make you nicer in the process. Yes, as you will see, I did stumble into a few embarrassing pitfalls along the way. However, with the benefit of my experience, you should be able to avoid them.

What I’m attempting to do in this book is demystify meditation, and show that if it can work for me, it can probably work for you, too. The best way to illustrate this is to give you, as we say in the business, “exclusive access” to the voice in my head. All of us struggle to strike a balance between the image we present to the world and the reality of our inner landscape. This is particularly tricky for a news anchor, whose job is to project calm, confidence, and (when appropriate) good cheer. Most of the time, my external presentation is authentic; at baseline, I’m a happy guy who is keenly aware of his good fortune. But there are, of course, moments when my interior reality is a bit more complicated. And for the purposes of this book, I am going to put a magnifying lens directly on the knotty stuff.

The story begins during a period of time when I let the voice in my head run amok. It was during the early part of my career; I was an eager, curious, and ambitious cub reporter who got swept up, and swept away—and it all culminated in the single most humiliating moment of my life.

From 10% HAPPIER: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story, by Dan Harris. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollinsPublishers

Maður sá hefir fundið frið ...

70. Maður sá hefir fundið frið, er getur látið langanir allar renna um huga sinn án þess að ró hans raskist, - eins og úthafið, sem elfur allar falla í án þess að það ókyrrist, - en ekki sá, er girnist girndir. 

 

71. Hver sá maður hverfur inn í friðinn, er hafnar óskum öllum, fetar löngunarvana feril sinn og er laus við alla eigingirni.

 

72. Þetta er, Arjúna! ástand hins Eilífa. Enginn getur farið villu vegar, er í það kemst. Og sá fer inn í nirvana hins Eilífa, sem er í því jafnvel á andlátsstundu sinni.

 

 

Hávamál Indíalands (Bhagavad Gita) - Sigurður Kristófer þýddi 

Zazen (Sitjandi hugleiðsla) leiðbeiningar

 

 

Zazen leiðbeining

Mánudaginn 31. mars kl. 19:15 verður Zazen leiðbeining fyrir þá sem vilja læra að sitja Zen hugleiðslu. Áhugasamir vinsamlega skrái sig með því að senda póst á [e-mail]. Verð er kr. 3000,- og er iðkun allan mánuðinn innifalin í verðinu.

Lífspekifélagið um helgina - Stjörnuspeki, spjall og hugleiðing

 

 

14. mars. föstudagur kl 20:00 Gunnlaugur Guðmundsson, stjörnuspekingur: Sálarnetið.
Um tengsl manns, náttúru og alheims og hvernig þau birtast 
í persónuleika mannsins á einstökum tímabilum. 
Hver er bakgrunnur spádóma?

15. mars laugardagur kl 15:30 Bjarnheiður Bjarnadóttir leiðir hugleiðingu. 
Umræður í höndum Gunnars Mássonar sem fjallar um Antakarana-vitundarbrúna.

 

 

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Iðkendur yoga hreinsa stöðugt hjarta sitt - Hávamál Indíalands

11. Iðkendur yoga hreinsa stöðugt hjarta sitt,

er þeir eru ekki framar háðir athöfnum sínum,

hvort sem þeir vinna með líkama sínum,

huga, mannviti eða skynjunum.   

 

12. Hugrór maður, er hefir hafnað ávöxtum athafna sinna,

öðlast friðinn eilífa.

En hinn, sem er ekki hugrór,

er knúinn girndum og bundinn

við ávöxtathafna sinna.   

 

Hávamál Indíalands (Bhagavad Gita) – 5. kviða, 11. – 12. vers.

Lífspekifélagið um helgina - Innhverfur/úthverfur og Gísli V. Jónsson leiðir hugleiðingu

7. mars. föstudagur kl 20,00

Persónuleikagerðir Jungs 
Hugtökin innhverfur (e. introvert) og úthverfur (e. extravert) eru nú á 
allra vörum en það eru færri sem vita að þau eru runnin frá Carl Gustav 
Jung. Hugtökin notar hann í persónuleikagreiningu sinni sem hann kynnti í 
bókinni Psychological Types sem kom út 1920. Í fyrirlestrinum verður sagt 
frá fjórum hugtakapörum sem persónuleikagreiningin er byggð á. Þá verða 
tekin dæmi um hvernig slík persónuleikagreining nýtist sem tæki jafnt í persónulegum sem fræðilegum tilgangi.

 

8. mars laugardagur kl 15:30 Gísli V Jónsson með hugleiðingu. Kaffi á eftir og erindi. 

Fjallað verður um sjálfsþekkingu og sýnt stutt myndband.

 

 

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DVD með Krishnamurti 5. mars - Í einveru getur þú verið algjörlega óhult/ur

Viðræður Krishnamurtis við

Dr. Bohm og Dr. Shainberg:

The transformation of man.

 

Næsta miðvikudag, 5. mars verður þriðji þáttur í þessum viðræðum sýndur af mynddiski kl. 17:30 í bókasafni félagsins.Heiti þessara næstu viðræðna er: In aloneness you can be completely secure (Í einveru getur þú verið algjörlega óhult/ur). Viðræðurnar fara fram á ensku og enskur texti fylgir. Þeir sem hug hafa á að sjá þessa þætti þurfa helst að skilja ensku, en það er ekki skilyrði.  Engin þýðing fylgir. Hins vegar verður efni þáttanna rætt á eftir hverri sýningu. Þetta er annar þáttur af 6 þáttum sem fyrirhugað er að sýna vikulega fram á vor. Hver þáttur tekur um 1 klst.  

Nálgun að Zen - Þriðjudaginn 11. mars nk. hefst námskeið í hugleiðslu og fræðsla um Zen búddisma hjá Zen á Íslandi

Nálgun að Zen
Þriðjudaginn 11. mars nk. hefst námskeið í hugleiðslu og fræðsla um Zen búddisma hjá Zen á Íslandi – Nátthaga. Námskeiðið sem ber yfirskriftina:Hvernig má færa friðsæld, gleði og kímni inn í annasamt daglegt líf?stendur í 4 vikur og fer kennsla fram á þriðjudagskvöldum kl. 19.30-21.00. Leiðbeinendur verða þau Helga Kimyo og Ástvaldur Zenki, sem hafa hlotið prestvígslu hjá Jakusho Kwong-roshi, kennara Zen á Íslandi – Nátthaga og gegna stöðu aðstoðarkennara í Nátthaga. Þátttökugjald er kr. 13.500. Námskeiðið fer fram í aðsetri Zen á Íslandi á Grensásvegi 8, 4. hæð til vinstri. Nánari upplýsingar og skráning: [e-mail]

Daglegir iðkunartímar:

Alla virka morgna kl. 07:20-08:35
Mánudagar kl: 17:30-18:50
Fimmtudagar kl: 19:30-21:05
Laugardagar kl: 08:00-09:40

Lífspekifélagið um helgina

 

28. febrúar, föstudagur kl. 20:00. Pétur Sigurðsson fjallar um kynni sín af andlegum málum.

 

1. mars, laugardagur kl 15:30. Þorgerður Jóhanna Guðmundsdóttir leiðir íhugun kl. 15:30 og spjallar eftir kaffið.

 

www.lifspekifelagid.is  

Viðræður Krishnamurtis við Dr. Bohm og Dr. Shainberg: The transformation of man

Viðræður Krishnamurtis við Dr. Bohm og Dr. Shainberg: The transformation of man.
Næsta miðvikudag, 26. febrúar verður annar þáttur í þessum viðræðum sýndur af mynddiski kl. 17:30 í bókasafni Lífspekifélagsins. Heiti þessara næstu viðræðna er: Can I completely change at the very root? (Get ég breyst alveg frá rótum?). Viðræðurnar fara fram á ensku og enskur texti fylgir. Þeir sem hug hafa á að sjá þessa þætti þurfa helst að skilja ensku, en það er ekki skilyrði. Engin þýðing fylgir. Hins vegar verður efni þáttanna rætt á eftir hverri sýningu. Þetta er annar þáttur af 6 þáttum sem fyrirhugað er að sýna vikulega fram á vor. Hver þáttur tekur um 1 klst.  

 

 

www.lifspekifelagid.is