Worthy Read #2: "10% Happier" by Dan Harris

Last spring my friend J, with whom I went on retreat, first lent me the book "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. I was, admittedly, somewhat skeptical initially. While I'd been exploring mindfulness for a number of years, was experimenting with meditation and was reading some books on compassion and acceptance, I wasn't really looking for a "self-help" book, per se. But, as I'm betting many of us has felt before, there's a certain sense of obligation to read a book that's been lent to us. After all, when our friend asks, "So, what did you think?" or "How'd you like it?" when we return it, it's difficult to fake it or say, "Um, well, I didn't read it." So, I opened the cover and delved in, good friend that I am.

And how glad I was that I did - I not only finished it in a few days' time, but have since reread it in its entirety and have referred to certain segments repeatedly! Harris is an American journalist and television news anchor. His writing is immediately engaging, his voice wry and witty, honest and loudly skeptical. Truly, if I thought I was skeptical before beginning to read his book, I needn't have feared: Harris is skeptical enough for the lot of us! Through a first-hand account of the incredibly interesting professional life he's lead, which takes us into a myriad of colourful places, including the war zones of Afghanistan, the West Bank and Iraq, to in-depth coverage of America's diverse religious cultures and subcultures, Harris opens up with shocking candour about how his internal voice, that infernal narrator of our lives which just won't shut off or up, guided him through many of these experiences. His own trials with drug addiction, self-criticism, anxiety and stress play out in a well laid out plot, interspersed with a cast of memorable real-life characters including but not limited to renowned news anchors, fallen-from-grace pastors, self-help gurus, and a host of neuroscientists. Harris' unabashedly honest portrayal of his own inner voice which fuels his competitive edge in his career but also creates a quagmire of stress in his life is both laugh-out-loud hilarious and embarrassingly too close to home, as many will be able to relate to some of his feelings and tendencies. 

To give you a brief taste of both his style and the book's content, here's an excerpt from the first two pages of the preface: 

"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 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." 

This book is a perfect introduction to the concepts of mindfulness and meditation, which Harris makes accessible to all with the sharing of his own journey through skepticism, research and experimentation. Whether or not these topics are of any interest to you, the fantastic writing and terrifically engaging autobiographical elements of Harris' account are immensely entertaining, deeming this a definite worthy read in my books!

Harris, Dan. 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. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014.

My wonders (sometimes I have many!): Had you heard of Dan Harris before reading this post, and/or have you seen him on television? If so, what were your impressions? Have you read any other books about mindfulness and/or meditation? If you have any favourites, please do share the titles with me. Do you enjoy reading autobiographies and/or biographies? If so, do you have a list of any that you would recommend?