Dan Harris Led Colbert’s Audience in a Meditation Last Night

ABC Anchor Dan Harris talked about his new book, 10% Happier, on the Colbert Report last night, and led Colbert and the audience through a mindfulness meditation. 

Dan Harris, bestselling author of 10% Happier, talked to Stephen Colbert about exactly why he’s only 10% Happier (he doesn’t subscribe infinite happiness schlock pedalled by self-help gurus) and how meditation helps quiet that negative voice in your head.

Harris currently works as a co-anchor for ABC’s “Nightline” and is a “Good Morning America” weekend correspondent. When he had an on-air panic attack in 2004, it prompted him to visit a psychiatrist and find a way to cope with his “well-hidden and well-managed” drug use and depression—both of which had developed after he returned from covering the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Palestine.

Harris explained to Colbert how meditation is akin to a “bicep curl for your brain” and helped him change some automatic, negative behaviors:

It’s a very simple brain exercise, and the superpower is that it gives you a different relationship to the voice in your head…your inner anchorman is yammering at you all day long having you compare yourself to other people, judging, wanting, not wanting, casting yourself forward into an idealized future or remembering the past and not focusing on what’s happening right now.

Watch the full interview.