This book will get you to meditate. Minus the pan flutes.
ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play Ultimate Frisbee, and use the word “namaste” without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to embrace a practice he’d long considered ridiculous. Harris discovered that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him significantly less annoying. He wrote about his experiences in the bracingly candid and extremely funny memoir 10% Happier, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller and landed Harris in the entirely unexpected position of being one of meditation’s most vocal public proponents.
Here’s what he’s fixated on now: Science suggests that meditation can lower blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain, among numerous other benefits. And yet there are millions of people who want to meditate but aren’t actually practicing. What’s holding them back?
In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris and his friend Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and “Meditation MacGyver,” embark on a cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating. They rent a rock-star tour bus (whose previous occupants were Parliament Funkadelic) and travel across eighteen states, talking to scores of would-be meditators—including parents, military cadets, police officers, and even a few celebrities. They create a taxonomy of the most common issues (“I suck at this,” “I don’t have the time,” etc.) and offer up science-based life hacks to help people overcome them.
The book is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions. You’ll also get access to the 10% Happier app, where you can listen for free to guided audio versions of all the meditations in the book. Amid it all unspools the strange and hilarious story of what happens when a congenitally sarcastic, type-A journalist and a groovy Canadian mystic embark on an epic road trip into America’s neurotic underbelly, as well as their own.
Includes two bonus guided meditations.
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"Part romp, part travelogue, part meditation manual, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics takes us along for the journey as Dan Harris and meditation teacher Jeff Warren traverse the country. We discover meditating police officers, moms, media figures, and the meditator on the street (literally, as they open a pop-up meditation booth). Dan discovers some things about himself as well. This book is fun, instructive, timely, and immensely helpful."
— Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Real Love
If you’re intrigued by meditation but don’t know how to begin—or you’ve benefited from meditation in the past but need help to get started again, Dan Harris has written the book for you. Well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice, it’s also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner.
— Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness ProjectThe ABC News anchor, a ‘defender of worrying’ who once had an anxiety attack on air, offers a hilarious and stirring account of his two-steps-forward-one-step-back campaign to sort ‘useless rumination’ from ‘constructive anguish’ via mindfulness, along with invaluable suggestions for following in his footsteps.
— O: The Oprah MagazineIf your mind has a mind of its own, this is the book for you! With humor, generosity, and devastating candor, Dan Harris makes meditation make sense. This is news we can all use.
— Mark Epstein, MD, author of Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself and Going to Pieces Without Falling ApartA gold mine of wise guidance for fidgety skeptics and experienced meditators alike . . .With Dan’s humorous, self-revelatory style and incisive questioning and Jeff’s down-to-earth, transforming wisdom, this book addresses the common obstacles people face as they begin and deepen their meditation practice. . . . Highly recommended.
— Joseph Goldstein, author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to AwakeningBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Dan Harris is a correspondent for ABC News and the coanchor for the weekend edition of Good Morning America. Before that, he was the anchor of the Sunday edition of World News. He regularly contributes stories for such shows as Nightline, 20/20, World News with Diane Sawyer, and GMA. Harris has reported from all over the planet, covering wars in Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq and producing investigative reports in Haiti, Cambodia, and the Congo. He has also spent many years covering America’s faith scene, with a focus on evangelicals—who have treated him kindly despite the fact that he is openly agnostic. Before joining ABC News he was in local news in Boston and Maine. He grew up outside of Boston and currently lives with his wife, Bianca, in New York City.
Carlye Adler is a best-selling author, book collaborator and award-winning journalist. She is the founder and chief ghost of the Casper Media Group, which creates content for well-known entrepreneurs and leaders in business, entertainment, philanthropy and politics. As a journalist, Carlye’s writing has been published in BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Time, and Wired and has been anthologized in The Best Business Stories of the Year.
Jeffrey Warren designs and teaches meditation based on the book 10% Happier. He also writes and speaks about how different practices work, what they suggest about the nature and scope of the human mind, and how to regulate the human brain.