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.
Themes
Moving From Mindless to Mindful: The Hero’s Quest
Harris’s journey from what he calls mindlessness to mindfulness through his embrace of meditation embodies the traditional hero’s quest in which the protagonist leaves the familiar landscape to go on an unexpected but necessary journey. Once on the journey, the hero’s challenges and trials help them to eventually return to their former world with a wiser outlook. By having his journey unfold in this manner, Harris also helps the reader imagine their own participation within similar circumstances. As he notes, “[I]f it can work for a restless, skeptical newsman, it can work for you” (2019 Preface, xix).
In a traditional quest narrative, the hero receives a call to adventure and generally has a period in which they refuse the call due to fear or doubt. Harris receives his call to adventure when Peter Jennings asks him to take over the religion beat for ABC News in 2001. Initially, Harris hesitates since he doesn’t have much personal faith or regard for those that do. Additionally, the events of 9/11 and his new gig as a war correspondent add to Harris’s delay of embracing a quest that would prove life changing. Only after Harris knew his life had headed in a direction that felt unsatisfying, and his drug use caused increased anxiety and panic, did he reconsider.
When Harris first takes on the religious beat, he doesn’t take it seriously, a common reaction when someone begins something they don’t want to do. In a literary quest, the hero must receive some sort of aid to encourage him to accept the call. In Harris’s case, this aid comes from disgraced pastor Ted Haggard. Haggard’s religious devotion despite hardship makes Harris rethink how people experience faith, but more importantly, it causes him to re-evaluate his own belief system.
After meeting Haggard, Harris fully commits to his quest to discover how to soothe his anxious mind through. Like the literary hero, Harris shows a willingness to change himself and become more open in order to receive what he desires. In the traditional heroic quest, such a protagonist then must undergo a series of tests, tasks, and ordeals. Harris’s subsequent meetings with those who cannot clarify Eckhart Tolle’s suppositions (Deepak Chopra) and those whose strategies seem suspect (Joe Vitale and James Arthur Ray) seem to lead him to a dead end full of frustration.
In this part of journey, there is a temptation for the hero to abandon the quest—or in Harris’s case, he feels “this scene was not for me” (84). However, as in most literary quests, just at this crisis, assistance arrives from a figure who represents unconditional love, usually embodied as a goddess or mother figure in literature. In this case, Harris’s wife, Bianca, serves as this figure. She presents Harris with the work of Mark Epstein, a psychotherapist, who revives Harris’s interest.
Epstein is a mentor who resituates Harris on his quest, as he gives him insight into Buddhist meditation and tools to aid in his quest. These include Epstein's recommendation that Harris meet a meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, and attend his retreat in California. In turn, Harris progresses in his quest at the Spirit Rock retreat under Goldstein’s guidance: Here, despite initial difficulty, Harris achieves breakthroughs in his mediation practice, experiencing a kind of transcendence. He seems to have found practical answers to the initial dilemmas set up by his conversation with Tolle.
However, the most important part of the quest remains. Having found success, the hero now must return to the ordinary world to share his transformed wisdom with others. In the mythic hero's quest, because of the hero's strange or wondrous experiences, he may have difficulty articulating those experiences to others or have trouble reentering daily life. Harris expresses this phase in his return to ABC News, where his newfound equanimity is read as passivity. Further, he has trouble articulating how meditation functions for him.
Like the hero in the mythic quest, he must turn to outside guides for help. Both his wife, Bianca, and Epstein again serve as allies. They urge Harris to balance his Zen motives with his ability to be resilient in the face of change. Harris has to be able to negotiate both the material world of work with the spiritual world of meditation. At the end of the literary quest, the hero artfully becomes the master of each world and finds freedom from failure. This is essentially equivalent to Epstein’s insistence that Harris must work hard but have “nonattachment to the results” (206). In other words, the successful hero tries hard but understands the outcome is out of his control.
Buddhism and Practical Tools for Stress Management
Much of the self-help in Dan Harris’s 10% Happier centers on the Buddhist practices of meditation. The memoir portion of the book is filled with emotional story-telling and wry humor, but its self-help guidance is laid out in ways to help it be accessible to the reader. Harris clarifies terminology, imparts practical instruction on major types of meditation techniques, uses known experts and scientific study for validity, offers his own advice, and in the 2019 version, adds an Appendix of noted teachers' instructions on how to proceed.
Buddhism is an Eastern philosophy, and many of its terms are not in English. Harris is careful when introducing concepts like dharma, metta, mudita, and dukkha, offering definitions that help those who might be unfamiliar with Buddhist terms. This is important since many of the terms stand for complex concepts that have no direct English translation. For example, dukkha is translated from the Pali language into English to mean “suffering” (142). Harris points out that this has “made Buddhism seem supremely dour” (142) because Pali word's meaning is more nuanced that that. Other translations for dukkha, he notes, are “stressful” or “unsatisfying” (142). These translations seem less bleak, and this, in turn, makes meditating to relieve those feelings seem more doable.
Harris explains the steps necessary for basic meditation and loving-kindness meditation (metta) and synthesizes the concepts of others, like Tara Brach’s RAIN technique. His description of basic mediation is laid out in numbered sequence: "1) Sit comfortably […] 2) Feel the sensations of your breath as it goes in and out […] 3) Whenever your attention wanders, just forgive yourself and gently come back to the breath” (100). These breakdowns lay out the process and offer sufficient explanation for beginners to engage In the practice.
Harris supports his personal experience of meditation's benefits with research from like Dr. Richie Davidson, who studies the effects of meditation at University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dr. Jud Brewer at Yale; and Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn from the University of Massachusetts. By bringing in those with knowledge of the subject greater than his own, Harris is able to make a stronger case for his own ideas and avoid the pseudoscientific approach that he finds in the work of other self-help authors. This expert validation is enhanced further in the 2019 Appendix, which includes answers to commonly asked questions and specified instructions by teachers like Goldstein, Spring Washam, Sharon Salzberg, and others (227-42).
Finally, besides detailing personal anecdotes about what meditation felt like for him, Harris summarizes his findings in a handy 10-item list called “The Way of the Worrier” (208). This list, while humorously titled, is an actual practical how-to list, offering steps to achieve the state of being 10% happier, including tidbits like “don’t be a jerk” (209) and “go easy with the internal cattle prod” (211), along with directives on mediation and nonattachment.
What Harris suggests is designed to be accessible, unintimidating, and achievable. Throughout the book, Harris positions himself as a pragmatist. The way he conveys his self-help techniques, even the most complex ideas, is consistently practical and clear.
Metta and the Softened Edge
The book suggests that meditation is self-help that “actually works” while preventing one from “losing [one's] edge.” This promise made 10% Happier resonate with readers who experienced problems in workplace culture, particularly in the United States. Due to long-standing ideas that aggressiveness and ruthlessness are necessary for success in the corporate world, losing one’s “edge” can be of deep concern even when presented as part of an activity that is beneficial. Work culture is often rooted in the idea that the primary goal is to rise toward the top through any means necessary. This idea runs especially deep in high-stakes professions with entrenched hierarchical structures.
The fear of losing one's edge is exacerbated by the perception of what it means to be strong and competent. There is a tendency in mainstream American culture to perceive men who are emotional as weak. Women in the workplace also face encouragement to be less emotional in order to be seen as driven and competitive. The stereotype of a successful professional is someone who is strong, assertive, and willing to go the distance at all costs to achieve goals, accolades, and financial success. At best, this competitive edge suggests a savvy awareness of bringing a sharp focus to work and ideas. At worst, it encourages a cutthroat mentality wherein a person must be willing to move forward at the cost of their own well-being and the well-being of others. As a result, softer skills, like compassion and generosity, are dismissed.
Therefore, it makes sense that Harris struggles with metta, a meditation in which one wishes wellness and ease to other people, starting with the self then moving out toward the entire world. Harris is forthright in sharing the fact that he does not initially like or incorporate metta into his practice for fear of losing his ability to compete effectively. For him, metta “generated thoughts of boredom, disdain, and insufficiency” (135). This insufficiency translates even further for Harris into incapacity, and he wonders if “we each have a sort of kindness set point […] that could not be altered” (179). Despite participating in successful metta meditation at the Spirit Rock retreat, Harris needs the backing of scientific research, which proves that metta has a profound impact on the centers for happiness in the brain, actually causing them to grow, before he can add it to his practice.
Throughout 10% Happier, Harris is honest about his feelings of weakness, doubt, jealousy, and fear. His openness about his panic attack, worry over facial surgery, and tentative embrace of his spiritual quest show that vulnerability can exist while one conveys strength. Yet the extreme vulnerability Harris experienced with metta at Spirit Rock makes him wonder if it could undermine his edge. When he eventually does practice metta, he mistakes it for passivity: Under work stress due to administrative changes, Harris decides to cope by passing opportunities along to others, and his career suffers as a result.
Epstein and Bianca help reorient Harris, explaining the necessity of balancing assertiveness and compassion. Harris eventually is able to combine the hustle of his earlier competitive self with his gentler, Zen self. Harris doesn’t lose his edge but learns to soften it, tempering it with compassion. By being honest about his vulnerability and extending compassion to others while not succumbing to passivity, Harris shows that softness and grit can be used hand in hand. What many might assume would make him weak actually enhances his playbook for success.
