Book Summary10% Happier, by Dan Harris

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of 10% Happier

In 10% Happier, Dan Harris asserts that anyone can benefit from a mindfulness practice. He uses his own experience of overcoming his skepticism about self-help programs as evidence, and he argues that meditation is a simple way to improve your life—no start-up fees or large time commitments necessary. Harris—a retired American journalist, former ABC News correspondent, and writer—writes that meditation can help you change your relationship with your ego, become more compassionate, and confidently navigate your career.

Published in 2014, 10% Happier aims to demystify meditation and motivate you to be more mindful. His advice is helpful for people who are skeptical about self-help, beginners to Buddhist concepts, and anyone looking to balance mindfulness with their career.

Harris breaks down his understanding of mindfulness, meditation, and Buddhism. First, we’ll discuss what factors caused him to seek help, such as work stress and problems with his ego. Then, we’ll explore Harris's understanding of mindfulness. We’ll also explain meditation, its benefits, and how you can get started. Finally, we’ll debunk some common misconceptions about mindfulness by explaining why it won’t make you less successful at work or turn you into a pushover.

Catalysts for Change

Harris’s career in news brought him both success and stress. The news environment was competitive and fast-paced. Harris was ambitious, working hard to cover important stories. He worried excessively, letting his mind run through worst-case scenarios and potential outcomes. At the time, he believed this kind of worrying helped him in his career by predicting outcomes so that he could make the best moves professionally.

(Shortform note: According to a 2002 study, there’s a name for the worry Harris experienced: career anxiety. This is the worry that you feel at the start of a new job, when learning a new skill, or when thinking about your long-term career success.)

His work also brought him into contact with traumatic events (such as 9/11 and the wreckage of bombed cities), which affected him psychologically. After he started experiencing unexplained health problems, a doctor prescribed antidepressants—but instead, Harris self-medicated with illegal drugs.

(Shortform note: In The Body Keeps Score, Bessel van der Kolk explores the negative effects of trauma. Van der Kolk describes how even small triggers can cause a fight-or-flight response in trauma victims. This constant hypervigilance can manifest in the body and hinder the victim’s social and emotional health. Additionally, trauma is often misdiagnosed as mental illnesses like depression and anxiety—and the misdiagnosis can worsen negative effects. Treatment for trauma includes therapy, support groups, and physical experiences like yoga.)

On-Air Panic Attack

All of these factors—Harris’s career anxiety, traumatic news coverage, and drug use—culminated in a panic attack on a nationally televised news program. Harris felt ashamed about the incident and worried that it would negatively impact his career. Soon after, he consulted a psychiatrist, who confirmed the earlier diagnosis of depression and prescribed anti-anxiety medication to prevent more panic attacks. Harris started taking the medication but also continued partying and using illegal drugs. A year later, Harris had a second on-air panic attack that mirrored the first one. He realized that if he couldn’t control his panic, even while on prescription medication, something needed to change or his career was in jeopardy.

Crises and the Search for Meaning

Harris's on-air meltdown served as a catalyst for him to change his behavior. Many other self-help books and fables explore this theme of crises and the search for meaning. It often takes a sudden, unexpected emergency for people to seek change and meaning in their lives.

• In The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma tells a parable about Julian, a once successful lawyer, and the lessons he learned from his spiritual journey. During a trial, Julian suffered from a heart attack, sparking his self-improvement journey.

• In When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi’s lung cancer diagnosis sparked his journey of self-discovery as he struggled to understand the meaning of life and death.

• In The Miracle Morning, Hal Elrod discusses how a devastating car accident—that stopped his heart for six minutes—changed his life. He realized the only thing to do when encountering adversity is to focus on having a fulfilling life going forward. He chose to be grateful for what he had and to take responsibility for creating the life he wanted.

Ego Problems

Harris explains that not long after his battle with career anxiety, trauma from journalism, drug use, and on-air panic attacks, he came across philosophies outlining people’s relationship with their own egos—a line of thinking that helped him recognize what was holding him back from psychological healing.

At the recommendation of his coworker, Harris bought a copy of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle’s thoughts on what our ego is and how it affects our behavior helped Harris see...

10% Happier Summary Shortform Introduction

In 10% Happier, former ABC News anchor Dan Harris discusses how he was able to get control of his anxiety and calm the negative voice in his head through meditation, despite his skepticism of self-help programs.

Harris describes the events that led him to start practicing meditation, including a meltdown on live television, and he explores a number of self-help ideas from popular gurus. He explains principles of Buddhism, the concepts of mindfulness, and meditation for skeptics.

Along the way, Harris debunks a few common misconceptions about meditation: that mindfulness makes you a pushover, makes you less successful, inhibits creativity, or requires perfection in order to be effective.

About the Author

Harris is a retired American journalist, former ABC News correspondent, and writer. He appeared on “Nightline,” “World News Tonight,” “20/20,” and “Good Morning America.” He covered stories on a wide range of topics, from evangelical culture wars to the attack on 9/11. Harris has written reports from all over the world, including Afghanistan, Haiti, and Cambodia. He won an Edward R. Murrow Award for a report about a young Iraqi man moving to America and an Emmy Award...

10% Happier Summary Introduction

Dan Harris believes anyone can benefit from a mindfulness practice. Most self-help gurus offer quick fixes, but Harris argues that it's small, consistent mindfulness practices that will make the most difference in your life. He also notes that many gurus make grandiose promises of life-changing results. Harris contends that a more realistic promise is that while meditation may not completely change your life, it will make you 10% happier.

Harris notes that...

10% Happier Summary Part 1: What Caused Harris to Start His Journey?

10% Happier begins by detailing Harris’s journey through the world of mindfulness and self-help. To get a better understanding of Harris’s experience, we’ll talk about what caused Harris to seek out answers: his career in news, an on-air panic attack, and his relationship with his ego.

Step 1: His Career in News

Harris began his career at a local station in Bangor, Maine. He worked his way up the ranks, eventually landing at ABC News. He describes the news environment as competitive and fast-paced: Journalists compete with each other for air time, and they work on tight deadlines to quickly deliver trending news to the audience. Bosses and producers are often critical and difficult to please.

Harris’s career took off following his coverage of the 9/11 attacks. Soon afterward, he was sent to report from Afghanistan. While he was there, he went behind enemy lines and interviewed Taliban leaders. He became an international correspondent and was repeatedly put into stressful situations, where he saw dead bodies, witnessed the wreckage of bombed cities, and dodged gunfire.

(Shortform note: Harris doesn’t discuss it in the book, but he also covered stories on [Hurricane...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Your Ego

Harris identified that his ego was one source of his problems, leading him to seek answers.

Describe a recent situation you couldn’t get out of your head. It could be about a fight with a friend or a comment from a stranger that rubbed you the wrong way.

10% Happier Summary Part 2: Journey Through the World of Self-Help

Now that we understand what caused Harris to seek help and how his ego affected him, let’s explore his introduction to understanding mindfulness. As he developed his understanding, he encountered many different self-help figures who shaped his ideas of mindfulness. As a self-proclaimed skeptic, Harris discusses his reluctance to fully embrace certain philosophies, and he struggled to find his place in the self-help community. First, we’ll discuss mindfulness and the popular self-help gurus who didn’t fully resonate with Harris; then, we’ll discuss the ones who did.

Mindfulness

Harris discovered that the antidote to the ego—which focuses on the past or future—is mindfulness, which focuses on the present. He explains that mindfulness occurs when you are aware of the present moment and the feelings or sensations that you’re experiencing. Additionally, he notes that an important aspect of mindfulness is not just awareness, but an emotional detachment. You aren’t attached to these feelings or sensations—they don’t affect you.

For example, you may notice that you’re hungry at work, but your break isn’t for another hour. Mindfulness would teach you to be aware of your...

10% Happier Summary Part 3: Understanding Meditation

During his journey to understand and apply principles of mindfulness, Harris realized that meditation was the actionable advice he was looking for. After overcoming his biases about meditation being only for yogis, Harris discovered that meditation was actually an advanced mental exercise with many benefits. Meditation gave Harris the tools he needed to address his ego and ease his excessive worrying at work. After fully committing to practicing meditation, Harris became a more mindful and compassionate person.

We’ve already explored mindfulness and how it can help a person control their emotional response to triggers. In this section, we'll explore meditation as a form of mindfulness, as well as several lessons Harris learned from meditation, including how to respond well to stressors, how to worry productively, and how to be compassionate. Then, we’ll discuss Harris’s insights on how you can incorporate meditation into your own life.

Meditation as Mindfulness

If mindfulness is the goal, meditation is the tool needed to create it. Harris explains that meditation is a technique that helps you be mindful and focused on the present. The most common type of...

Shortform Exercise: Add Mindfulness to Your Day With the RAIN Technique

The RAIN technique helps you to incorporate meditation into your everyday life by recognizing, allowing, investigating, and separating yourself from your emotions.

Take a moment right now to try the RAIN technique. The first step is to recognize. What do you feel right now?

10% Happier Summary Part 4: Debunking Mindfulness Misconceptions

During his journey to learn Buddhist principles of mindfulness, Harris overcame many misconceptions he had as a self-help skeptic. He wants you to learn from his mistakes in his mindfulness journey. This chapter will give you Harris’s answers and tangible solutions to your questions about self-help. We’ll talk about how you shouldn’t expect perfection from self-help and how mindfulness can actually help your career, won’t make you less creative, and won’t make you a pushover.

Mindfulness Is About Practice, Not Perfection

Harris points out that we sometimes think meditation has to be perfect in order to be beneficial. We think we have to have a perfectly clear head when meditating or sit completely still in a cross-legged position. Or we think we have to be in the moment all the time, never getting mad at our friends and always being compassionate toward the person who cut you off in line.

In reality, self-help is about the journey. Harris believes mindfulness and compassion are skills you have to practice. Just like you have to exercise your body, you must exercise your mind to strengthen your ability to be mindful and compassionate. You’ll encounter obstacles...

Shortform Exercise: Examine Failure to Do Better Next Time

Mindfulness can help you succeed by becoming more insightful about what you can and can’t control.

Think of a situation where you failed. Describe the situation or source of failure. (For example, you had coffee with a friend and made an awkward comment, and you’re worried that you offended her.)