How meditation can change your life.

It seems like there's more competing for our attention today than ever before and that's a big problem because according to Sam Harris lasting happiness can only be found in one place the present moment. The punchline of life really is that you can't become happy. You can only be happy you might know Sam Harris from his popular podcast making sense his meditation app waking up or you might remember him from his appearance in my documentary minimalism. He's an author and neuroscientist and he sat down with me.

For my first post covid interview and this interview. I asked Sam about topics covering minimalism happiness and how meditation can change your life..

So back in back in 2014. I had the chance to interview you with my friend. Josh was my co-producer. We were in an empty Echo filled room and we had a chance to talk about minimalism. And I don't know if at the time you were super familiar with the the movement, like people that were living minimalist Lifestyles know this was a classic example of actually not fully understanding the film you were you were being interviewed for.

So I was I mean, you're just asking me questions and I was answering them but I did not have a clear concept of of what I was going to be embedded in which was which was fine as actually and people love that film and I often get recognized for being in that film, you know, so they may obviously many people have watched it. So congratulations there. But yeah, I was I was kind of an innocent bystander to that interview. Well, thanks for yeah. Thanks for believing in it because it was certainly an indie doc. We had no expectations of.

anybody really seeing it but I mean you definitely gave us quite a bit of credibility and also it was, you know, a part in the film where we had a lot of personal perspectives experiences with it, and we wanted to talk with a neuroscientist an expert somebody who could really talk about culture and how its shape us, but I am really interested in learning about your view of minimalism now after having seen the film after seeing more.

More and more people talk about minimalism as a practice to help combat unchecked consumption. I'm curious how you view it. Now if you think it's a useful tool for people to be more mindful with what they're consuming. I think it's very useful to clearly understand the Mirage like quality of so many of the things we seek in our in our search for happiness, right? So we.

We have this idea of something we want and we move toward that goal. I mean, it could be a could be some kind of Life goal. It could be a career goal or it could be just you know, the sheer pleasure of owning something right? So, I mean, this is This falls into the minimalist animal is framework, right? So you have this idea that you need a new house right or you you need a new car or you have some you want to publish a book whatever it is that is on the horizon of your life. It has not yet been a.

relies, you don't get heavy Union with that object and you begin to tell yourself a story of how good life will be once you can get there, you know, once you own this thing once you're in that relationship once you have reached this landmark,.

And the truth is you are..

Invariably if not just starkly disappointed by how that doesn't help much that does not scratch the itch. You were hoping to scratch you you're confronted by the fact that the again the half-life of the experience is very very short. So it may feel great to you know, win an Oscar or whatever the thing is, but how long does it feel great for right? How long can you milk that?.

I mean mental pleasure from that experience. It's not long at all. Right and and then and you as you become sensitive to what's actually happening there is that you have this experience there on some level. There's no there there right? I mean it really is just this Cascade of sights and sounds and and Sensations and and thoughts as you know is always the case and then after a few moments you are..

Telling yourself the story of what just happened, but you're now thinking about the past. I mean just imagine you you've delivered your your Oscar acceptance speech and you're being whisked off stage by some, you know, pretty woman. Who's who's a head taller than you are and now you're backstage getting peppered with questions about you know, what you're going to do next or how happy you are to have one that's thing and it's already fallen away into the past right like like like you're not telling you.

Of the you know, you're thinking I hope that was a hope the speech came out. Well Eli. I'm now waiting to get home to find out, you know, how you know or good to get back to my seat to find out how about my wife thought about the speech what's like, there's still the anxiety isn't gone like you have you still have further reasons to be uncertain about where you stand in the world and insofar as this thing can really land in your life and and upgrade your life. It is continually a story..

Of you telling yourself a story right here, you know thinking about the past and so it's appropriate to be minimalist with respect to one's expectations that anything that you can go out there and get is really going to equip you to be happy. Right? And I think the the punchline of life really is that you can't become happy. You can only be happy right and and.

our efforts to become happy are predicated on.

the following logic if we can change if we can change our lives in certain ways, we can only Bank certain experiences, you know are arranged the the furniture, you know on the deck chairs on the Titanic just so.

We will have good and will discover a good enough reason then to fully relax into the present and find that the present is enough. When I look around. I see a lot of people that are struggling struggling to find meaning to find purpose to find a fulfilled life. What do you think it is that gets in most people's way on their pursuit of lasting happiness. Hmm. Well, it's interesting that we so rarely.

Ask the question what makes life worth living right? It's like we're all living out our default answer to that question. I mean we are we are just by implication doing what we think we should be doing to make life worth living right? We're not trying to have bad lives. But most of us are just doing one thing after the next and we're responding to things that happen in our lives. We're following each desire as it arises where avoiding pain..

Insofar as we can, but you know, if you ask the question, you know, what makes life worth living and you don't have a clear answer to it it your efforts to to live a good life will be fairly haphazard, right? Mm. It's just, you know, if on any given day or any given hour, you know, it would seem that, you know, checking ones email and bouncing around social media is ones answer to that question. And if you take a moment to think about it is clearly not right. So there's a what is the answer?.

I don't think it's on one level. There are obviously many answers to it. I mean, it's you might say, you know love is the most important thing or you're being with people you love or doing meaningful and creative work or understanding the way the world works, you know have the pleasure of scientific insight and I'm all of the all of these are our partial answers to the question and I think I would I would say all of those things are are important..

Being ethically engaged with the world. I mean actually helping people doing good things in the world as opposed to bad things or but there's something that connects all of those answers and it really is the quality of one's attention. It's a capacity to actually connect with one's live in the present. I mean, that is the necessary piece. I'm just take take a look of it'll say love is your answer right? So, what does that mean?.

And you know you presumably you're surrounded by people who you love and who love you, but what does that experience actually, like we all know what it's like to be multitasking in the midst of that experience right to be checking one's phone while your child is trying to tell you a story or you know, where our Attention our attention is not actually located in this circumstance of love that you know ostensibly is the most important thing in our lives or so. We tell ourselves when asked the question like this..

So it really is the quality of one's presence. I mean, can you bring real mental presence to each moment in life? That's what makes life matter. Really? I mean, that's what that's what gets you to the end of the day without regret and that's what presumably if you Lincoln of days like that together. That's what will get you to the end of your life without regret right where you don't you're not looking back and saying to yourself well..

I really cared about the wrong things. I paid attention to the wrong things Moment by moment. And so that quality of attention, you know, real attention to the present moment non distraction in the present moment. That is what meditation is right that I mean meditation is simply the the method of training that deliberately such that that becomes more and more ones default way of being whatever one's doing and whoever one is with.

As you know, I mean I spent a lot of time, you know of late in particular focused on teaching meditation and my meditation app waking up is where I do that but we're misled in thinking that that meditation is a primarily a practice it mean obviously gets presented as a practice and people adopted as a practice. It's if you've never meditated before then you start well, it feels like you've started doing something you've added something to your life, but.

In truth meditation is not something it is it is doing less of something right? Yeah, if you're actually if you once you learn to meditate you notice that it is simply not being distracted by the flow of thought that is what meditation is its able to test the ability to notice. What in fact you notice what your attention lands on clearly without being being lost in thought, you know distracted from.

Or without merely telling yourself a story about your experience based on Concepts, right? So you like there's there's like a non conceptual layer beneath the layer of Concepts that we can connect with and it just so happens. That is what.

Is truly rewarding in any present moment. So if you're if you're having a peak experiencing or you're in some kind of Flow State, right? So you're you're you're having an athletic experience or a creative experience or a sexual experience or whatever. The experience is that has caused you to completely forget about the past in the future because you're getting such immersive satisfaction in the present..

All of those experiences have something in common in your you have let go of your distraction of are around past and future right? You're not you're not thinking without knowing that you're thinking you're actually unified with whatever that experience is in the present. And the truth is it's the unification that is the the main source of mental pleasure there. It's not the fact that you happen to be skiing right? I mean skiing is great, but when skiing is really great it is this.

Is the unification with the with with the motor experience that is really so satisfying and so it is with so many other things. So anyway, there's a long answer to your question. But really I mean attention is the answer to the question. It seems like there's more and more things that are competing with our attention these days although you know, it seems like we always speak in hyperbole. Like we've never been more distracted or we've never had more things to preoccupy us from what's truly important, but.

You see these are ideas that philosophers and people have been talking about for thousands of years this inability to focus on the present moment. Do you think there is something unique about smartphones social media and the way in which we get absorbed into these technology and pulled out of the present moment. As you know, anxiety depression. These things are on the rise is this because of the technology is it more difficult now to find that peace and quiet.

And how do we come to terms with it? How do we actually mindfully use technology without letting us ruin our lives? Yeah, we'll all of this technology is is obviously a double-edged sword, right? So it's there are good things about the internet and smartphones. I mean, obviously it's I wouldn't want to get rid of all of this but it has made the problem of overcoming distraction harder for most people. I think there's no question about that..

At that, I mean what our attention is diverted more and more because there really is an arms race for our attention right me we have it is just no exaggeration to say that the most highly resource powerful companies on Earth right now are spending all of their time, you know, literally you they have thousands of Engineers spending, you know all of their time trying to figure out how to successfully game..

tension, right and that that is the business model for if your Google or you know or YouTube, you know, which is which is Google or Facebook or any of these companies and.

The think the levers they have to pull our are are powerful and they are working to the you know, certainly the disadvantage of our mental well-being because the levers they're pulling our outrage and you know perience and and just mirrored too superficial desires, right? You know all my God, you know, how does Kim Kardashian look now, right or you won't believe you know, what this this child this.

We star that you used to like looks like me enrolled at it. But whatever it is, it's we get bombarded with these ads everywhere and other products of these algorithms which are meant to be captivating but not ultimately rewarding right. I mean this is like if you if you just keep clicking you are guaranteed to wind up somewhere that's not rewarding in the end right like that. You won't be able to account for the last two hours of your life..

I've and you've just watched, you know, one lurid video after the next and increasingly lurid right. I'm into the algorithm just keeps sending you may be talking about is like the YouTube algorithm. It tends to just send you more of the same but a little bit more extreme of the same, right so you yeah. Sorry cut you off. Also, I think the flip side of that which a lot of people don't talk about and wasn't quite covered in the social dilemma is.

The opposite side of it how YouTube use those losses those levers to manipulate the creators and the creatives whether Independent Media or large media to buy into those algorithms. So we see when we login on the dashboard. How am I last video compared to my last 10 videos and if it's the tenth then you get that gut-wrenching feeling there's all these red arrows pointing down saying that you're screwing it up and then like all of your money is going to go down and you're not gonna be able to do this forever and so it in so many ways..

Is like the cycle that kind of feeds itself where you know, if you're not getting that attention you feel like you need to succumb to the algorithm to be able to get it. Yeah, so it's basically turned culture into a clickbait factory. Right? And and so that's obviously this in many ways not good for culture. It's not good for politics. It's not good for social cohesion. I mean that would people get siloed into these Echo chambers that are mutually.

Lling and have no points of contact with with other Echo Chambers. So it's isolating. It's deranging. It's it's it's caused us to lose faith for obvious reasons in in our institutions like the media. I Miko's that the media is participating in this every even our most respected journalists are feeling the same pressure. You just described because their business model is Clicks in the end. So there's so many ways in which this is not good..

In particular is not good for each of us to continually have our lives fragmented by you know, notifications or just the the self notification that you it's been 10 minutes since you've checked your email or since you've checked Twitter and you want to do that now, right you actually want to interrupt yourself, right and you and you tend to live with this illusion that you can successfully multitask right? We know we.

I can't successfully multitask but you know if you're on the phone with someone and you know, the conversation isn't demanding a hundred percent of your attention. It's very tempting to check slack or check Twitter or chairmanship me this just this is what has happened to our brains. We have we've changed our brains based on how we've used them in the last decade. And if you if you care about the quality of your life and you care about the quality of your relationships, and you care about having something more than a superficial.

Level level of insight into you know, both the workings of your own mind and just the way the world works and if you actually want to be a contributor to an interesting conversation and an honest one..

All you really have is the currency of your attention right all you can that's all you can muster in any moment. This is the quality of what you can notice how often you can notice it and how satisfying that engagement with the present moment is and again that's that in the end. That is a synonym for what meditation is. In fact, you know, it's just not it's not a specific practice you are adding two..

The default settings of your of your mind is actually recovering 8 deeper more interesting default setting and then it's from that place that you can do any other thing right? Because I mean once you know how to meditate then it is mrs. Sort of a paradox when people wonder we know whether they can get the same benefits by working out, you know, or hiking or running or playing a musical instrument or listening to music whatever it is they like to do and it makes them feel.

feel good and the answer is no right. I meet like you and you're not going to learn to meditate by jogging more or by playing the violin or like this just not how anyone learns this skill. But once you learn the skill, you can do all of those things and they can become synonymous with meditation, right? Because again meditation isn't some extra thing that is that you do and then you stop doing and then then you pick up the violin and then you're playing the violin know you can actually play the violin from a place of.

Of clear awareness and non distraction, but that you know, the difference between distraction distraction is something that really you only figure out by by learning to meditate and I think in so many ways, you know, I could say that even my work in a way as meditation. I certainly have those Peak experiences where eight hours go by and I'm wrapped in the present moment. I'm in a flow state, but you do that over and.

Over and over again and then eventually you take the work away and what's left is anxiety because you're not doing something you're not moving. You're not feeling productive or moving towards a specific goal. And I think that's one of those examples of where meditation is obviously a much better way to find that kind of clarity in the present moment. It sounds like meditation is the effective way to be able to combat some of these negative influences on our lives the the lack of attention that we give to.

That the meaningful things and it perhaps gives us Clarity that how would you go about building a meditation practice? I know for me personally, you know, I even made a course on habit change like I know a lot about how to build effective habits, and I also know that it's very difficult to do and it's also very flimsy, especially in 2020 during the pandemic. I think it's challenged so many of our habits and to figure out new ways to you know, stay.

Earthy to stay active and all of that and so when it comes to building meditation practice though that's always been a difficult thing for me to do because it's like flossing where it's not important until there's a problem or at least it doesn't feel important until there's a problem. And so how do we meditate before we really need to how do we make a daily practice of it? Yeah. Well, you know luckily there will always be a problem. Right and so it unlike flossing where you find out, you know, whatever 20 years from now that you really should have been flossing..

Meditation is something that can be advertised to you hourly. If you become sensitive to the mechanics of your own mental suffering, right? Because I you just wait around long enough. You're going to feel crappy about something. Right your you can be telling yourself a story that is going to be producing, you know, self-doubt or anxiety or regret. Somebody will say something that annoys you I mean you're you just you just you know..

Imagine your game your life as a video game, right and that this level you're guaranteed to encounter something over the course of the next few hours that bumps you right? And the question is, you know, how long do you want to stay D stabilized by those moments? I mean like it. So if the next time you become angry, do you want to stay angry just as a mere hostage of that mental state for as.

long as that lasts based on just the Dynamics of your own conditioning or do you actually want the ability to to decide to step off that that ride, you know when it no longer seems useful to be angry and I'm not saying it's never useful to be angry and I think negative emotions are.

Indications that's there's something in the environment or something in our lives that needs paying attention to right there. These are signals of salience. Right? But it's almost never the case that anger or fear or anxiety or any of these other classically negative emotions is the best place from which to engage whatever challenge has just Arisen. So if someone says something that makes you angry right or somebody, you know, somebody startles you right, you know, you're on the sidewalk.

You turn around something like somebody's in your face, right? You know, what is the situation like it is worth having this this moment of adrenaline because you know, somebody could be attacking you or something that you could be in the presence of a dangerous lunatic you do you like like this deserves your attention, right? But once you you're you're in a situation and responding to it, how long do you want to feel adrenaline used for or neurotic for or you know painfully awkward for whatever?.

the thing is that has destabilized you into some classically negative state of a fact and I think you know most If we're honest with ourselves most of us want to recover very very quickly, you know, I mean the pleasures of being an angry asshole are overrated, right the pleasures of being the person who's taking up a lot of space with their neuroses, you know, the the the actions of our are the current occupant of the Oval Office not with.

And they're overrated, you know, it's like we want to actually be calm and compassionate and balanced and you know, non prickly, you know in our religion and our relations with other people and with with ourselves and with respect to our you know, our concerns about the future say, so if you step away from work and you're now beginning to feel the urgency of not getting enough done, right?.

I'm you're telling you're telling yourself a story of some but some place in you. So, you know some part of your your system is keeping score. Right and it's been long enough that you've done something productive and now you're getting anxious that you're you know, you're not doing enough..

that is almost that experience is almost always coincide and.

well, first of all that that anxiety again, it's a signal of salience, right? So it's like is there actually something you need to do right now? I mean, this is a choice point you can decide to keep watching Netflix or you can decide to go do some work. So maybe there's there's decision to make but if you're going to keep watching Netflix, you might as well be able to enjoy it right? It's like you to the anxiety is serving no purpose unless you use it as a signal to just do something..

Different right and so it is with future events. It's like, you know, we feel anxious about something that's coming in the future and the anxiety almost never serves any purpose and we it serves only the purpose to make us miserable until that thing happens and then the thing happens and it's either just as bad as we thought or not nearly as bad as we thought or different than we thought what it so and the the precursor of suffering..

Simply conspired to make us suffer twice, you know, even if the thing in the end was was unpleasant, right? So the Dalai Lama has a.

The formulation about this which is just you know, this thing you're worried about either you can do something about it or you can't if you can do something about it. Well do something about it. And therefore you don't have to worry if you can't do something about it. Well, the worry is extra. I mean you have you're going to have to suffer this thing, you know, whatever. It is a medical procedure. Whatever it is in the future. All of the the antecedent anxiety is just extra pain right and yet you can't do anything with that advice..

Unless you understand something about the mechanics by which anxiety arises, you know, and and what it means to be mindful of thoughts and emotions and to be able to break that spell. If you don't know how to meditate you you are simply someone who is analogous to so, you know, someone is asleep and dreaming you fall asleep. You're dreaming. You don't know it's a dream the dreams going to be as bad or as good as it'll be and you are a mere captive of that experience..

Until you wake up, and you can't decide to wake up right? And so it's a meditation essentially gives you the ability to decide to wake up from the band dream of you you're having in, you know in in in thought space, you know, while while ostensibly awake, aw, Sam after having listened to your podcast for so long and also listening to The Waking Up app for so long really exciting to be able to have this opportunity to talk..

Got more documentaries plan in the future. So it would obviously love to bring you back on for one of those and hopefully once this whole covid thing comes down, maybe we can do it in person interview. Yeah. Yeah. I'll see you on the other side of a vaccine. Will you get back from Australia and get the vaccine and we're there? Yeah, it's exciting. It sounds like it's right around the corner. So fingers crossed everything works out. So yeah. Well, thank you Matt pleasure to do this with you. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks so much to Sam Harris for taking the time to do this interview. It was fun to have an interview for the first time in about.

About eight months or so if you want to get started with meditation, I highly recommend you check out Sam Harris app waking up. I've been using it for over a year now, and I absolutely loved it. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time..