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Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book Kindle Edition
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Too busy to meditate? Can’t turn off your brain? Curious about mindfulness but more comfortable in the gym? This book is for you.
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What exactly is meditation? 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 become one of meditation’s most vocal public proponents.
Harris found that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him less annoying. Science suggests that the practice can lower your blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain. So what’s holding you back?
In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris and Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and “Meditation MacGyver,” embark on a gonzo cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that keep people from meditating. It is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions—all of which are also available (for free) on the 10% Happier app. This book is a trip worth taking.
Praise for Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics
“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 Project
“The 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 Magazine
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarmony
- Publication dateDecember 26, 2017
- File size9433 KB
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- Every time you catch yourself wandering and escort your attention back to the breath, it is like a biceps curl for the brain. It is also a radical act: you’re breaking a lifetime’s habit of walking around in a fog of rumination and projection, and you are actually focusing on what’s happening right now.Highlighted by 1,189 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
“The 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 Magazine
“If 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 Apart
“A 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 Awakening
“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
About the Author
Jeff Warren is a writer, a meditation instructor, and the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club, a meditation adventure group in Toronto.
Carlye Adler is a journalist and co-author of many books, including three New York Times bestsellers.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Case for Meditation
If you had told me as recently as a few years ago that I would someday become a traveling evangelist for meditation, I would have coughed my beer up through my nose.
In 2004, I had a panic attack while delivering the news, live, on ABC’s Good Morning America. Being a masochist, I asked our research department to tell me exactly how many people were watching. They came back with the vastly reassuring number of 5.019 million. (If you are in the mood for a nice dose of schadenfreude, you can readily find the whole clip on YouTube. Just search for “panic attack on live TV,” and it will pop right up. Which is awesome for me.)
In the wake of my nationally televised freak-out, I learned something even more embarrassing: the entire episode had been caused by some phenomenally stupid behavior in my personal life. After spending years covering war zones for ABC News as an ambitious and idealistic young reporter, I had developed an undiagnosed depression. For months I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, and felt as if I had a permanent, low-grade fever. Out of desperation, I began self-medicating with recreational drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy. My drug use was short-lived and intermittent. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, in which the characters are pounding Quaaludes every five minutes—it was nothing like that. However, my consumption was enough, according to the doctor I consulted after the panic attack, to artificially raise the level of adrenaline in my brain, exacerbating my baseline anxiety and priming me to have my very public meltdown.
Through a strange and circuitous series of events, the panic attack ultimately led me to embrace a practice I had always dismissed as ridiculous. For most of my life, to the extent that I’d ever even considered meditation, I ranked it right alongside aura readings, Enya, and the unironic use of the word “namaste.” Further, I figured my racing, type-A mind was way too busy to ever be able to commune with the cosmos. And anyway, if I got too happy, it would probably render me completely ineffective at my hypercompetitive job.
Two things changed my mind.
The first was the science.
In recent years, there has been an explosion of research into meditation, which has been shown to
•Reduce blood pressure
•Boost recovery after the release of the stress hormone cortisol
•Improve immune system functioning and response
•Slow age-related atrophy of the brain
•Mitigate the symptoms of depression and anxiety
Studies also show meditation can reduce violence in prisons, boost productivity in the workplace, and improve both behavior and grades for school children.
Things really get interesting when you look at the neuroscience. In recent years, neuroscientists have been peering into the heads of meditators, and they’ve found that the practice can rewire key parts of the brain involved with self-awareness, compassion, and resiliency. One study from the Harvard Gazette found that just eight weeks of meditation resulted in measurable decreases in gray matter density in the area of the brain associated with stress.
The science is still in its early stages and the findings are preliminary. I worry that it has provoked a certain amount of irrational exuberance in the media. (“Meditation can cure halitosis and enable you to dunk on a regulation hoop!”) However, when you aggregate the most rigorous studies, they strongly suggest that daily meditation can deliver a long list of health benefits.
The research has catalyzed a fascinating public health revolution, with the ancient practice of meditation catching on among corporate executives, athletes, U.S. marines, and entertainers, including the rapper 50 Cent. That man got shot nine times; I believe he deserves some peace of mind.
The second thing I learned that changed my mind about meditation is that it does not necessarily entail a lot of the weird stuff I feared it might.
Contrary to popular belief, meditation does not involve folding yourself into a pretzel, joining a group, or wearing special outfits. The word “meditation” is a little bit like the word “sports”; there are hundreds of varieties. The type of meditation we’ll be teaching here is called “mindfulness meditation,” which is derived from Buddhism but does not require adopting a belief system or declaring oneself to be a Buddhist. (In defense of Buddhism, by the way, it is often practiced not as a faith but as a set of tools to help people lead more fulfilled lives in a universe characterized by impermanence and entropy. One of my favorite quotes on the matter is “Buddhism is not something to believe in, but rather something to do.”)
In any event, what we’re teaching here is simple, secular exercise for your brain. To give you a sense of exactly how simple it is, here are the three-step instructions for beginning meditation. You don’t actually have to do this right now; I’ll bring in a ringer soon.
1. Sit comfortably. It’s best to have your spine reasonably straight, which may help prevent an involuntary nap. If you want to sit on the floor in the lotus position, go for it. If not, just sit in a chair, as I do. You can close your eyes or, if you prefer, you can leave them open and adjust your gaze to a neutral point on the ground.
2. Bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and out. Pick a spot where it’s most prominent: your chest, your belly, or your nostrils. You’re not thinking about your breath, you’re just feeling the raw data of the physical sensations. To help maintain focus, you can make a quiet mental note on the in-breath and out-breath, like in and out.
3. The third step is the key. As soon as you try to do this, your mind is almost certainly going to mutiny. You’ll start having all sorts of random thoughts, such as: What’s for lunch? Do I need a haircut? What was Casper the Friendly Ghost before he died? Who was the Susan after whom they named the lazy Susan, and how did she feel about it? No big deal. This is totally normal. The whole game is simply to notice when you are distracted, and begin again. And again. And again.
Every time you catch yourself wandering and escort your attention back to the breath, it is like a biceps curl for the brain. It is also a radical act: you’re breaking a lifetime’s habit of walking around in a fog of rumination and projection, and you are actually focusing on what’s happening right now.
I have heard from countless people who assume that they could never meditate because they can’t stop thinking. I cannot say this frequently enough: the goal is not to clear your mind but to focus your mind—for a few nanoseconds at a time—and whenever you become distracted, just start again. Getting lost and starting over is not failing at meditation, it is succeeding.
I think this pernicious clear-the-mind misconception stems in part from the fact that meditation has been the victim of the worst marketing campaign for anything ever. The traditional art depicting meditation, while often beautiful, can be badly misleading. It usually shows practitioners with beatific looks on their faces. Examples abound in Buddhist temples, airport spas, and in this picture of a man in a loincloth I found on the Internet.
Based on my own practice, this image better captures the experience of meditation:
Meditation can be difficult, especially at the beginning. It’s like going to the gym. If you work out and you’re not panting or sweating, you’re probably cheating. Likewise, if you start meditating and find yourself in a thought-free field of bliss, either you have rocketed to enlightenment or you have died.
The practice does get easier the longer you keep at it, but even after doing it for years, I get lost all the time. Here’s a random sample of my mental chatter during a typical meditation session:
In
Out
Man, I am feeling antsy. What’s the Yiddish term my grandmother used to use for that? Shpilkes. Right.
Words that always make me giggle: “ointment,” “pianist.”
Wait, what? Come on, man. Back to the breath.
In
Out
Likes: baked goods.
Dislikes: fedoras, dream sequences, that part in techno songs where the French accordion kicks in.
Dude. Come. On.
In
Out
In
Alternative jobs: papal nuncio, interpretive dancer, working double time on the seduction line . . .
You get the idea.
So why put yourself through this?
Meditation forces you into a direct collision with a fundamental fact of life that is not often pointed out to us: we all have a voice in our heads.
(The reason the above looks amateurish and slightly creepy is that I drew it, but bear with me.)
When I talk about the voice in your head, I’m not referring to schizophrenia or anything like that; I’m talking about your internal narrator. It’s sometimes called your “ego.” The Buddha had a cool name for it: “the monkey mind.”
Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar.
•It’s often fixated on the past and future, at the expense of whatever is happening right now. The voice loves to plan, plot, and scheme. It’s always making lists or rehearsing arguments or drafting tweets. One moment it has you fantasizing about some halcyon past or Elysian future. Another moment you’re ruing old mistakes or catastrophizing about some not-yet-arrived events. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.”
•The voice is insatiable. The default mental condition for too many human beings is dissatisfaction. Under the sway of the ego, nothing is good enough. We’re always on the hunt for the next dopamine hit. We hurl ourselves headlong from one cookie, one promotion, one party to the next, and yet a great many of us are never fully sated. How many meals, movies, and vacations have you enjoyed? And are you done yet? Of course not.
•The voice is unrelievedly self-involved. We are all the stars of our own movies, whether we cast ourselves as hero, victim, black hat, or all three. True, we can get temporarily sucked into other people’s stories, but often as a means of comparing ourselves to them. Everything ultimately gets subordinated to the one plotline that matters: the Story of Me.
In short, the voice in my head—and perhaps also yours—can be an asshole.
To be fair, our internal narrator is not all bad. It is capable of brilliance, humor, and compassion. It is also extremely useful when designing irrigation systems and composing piano sonatas. Nevertheless, when I bother to listen, most of what I hear inside is rather obnoxious. I am not alone in this. I have a friend, a fellow meditator, who jokes that when he considers the voice in his head, he feels like he’s been kidnapped by the most boring person alive, who says the same baloney over and over, most of it negative, nearly all of it self-referential.
When you are unaware of this ceaseless inner talkfest, it can control and deceive you. The ego’s terrible suggestions often come to the party dressed up as common sense:
You should eat that entire sleeve of Oreos; you’ve had a hard day.
Go ahead, you have every right to make the wisecrack that will ruin the next forty-eight hours of your marriage.
You don’t need to meditate. You’ll never be able to do it anyway.
One of the things that most powerfully drew me to meditation was the realization—many years after the fact, sadly—that the voice in my head was responsible for the most mortifying moment of my life: my on-air panic attack. It was because of my ego that I went off to war zones without considering the psychological consequences, was insufficiently self-aware to recognize my subsequent depression, and then blindly self-medicated.
I began my meditation practice slowly, with just five to ten minutes a day, which is what I recommend everyone aim for at the start. (And, frankly, if you only find time for one minute a day, you can count that as a win. Much more on this soon.) For me, the first sign that meditation was not a waste of time came within weeks, when I started to overhear my wife, Bianca, at cocktail parties telling friends that I had become less of a jerk.
Internally, I pretty quickly began to notice three primary benefits, in ascending order of importance:
1. Calm
The act of stepping out of my daily busyness for a few minutes and simply breathing often injected a dose of sanity into my hectic day. It served to interrupt, if only briefly, the current of mindlessness that often carried me along. The issue of calmness is a bit tricky, though. Many people are drawn to meditation because they want to relax, but they end up disappointed because the ever-declaiming ego keeps butting in or because itches and knee pain arise. While meditation can often be calming, it’s best not to go into it expecting to feel a certain way. And, importantly, even if an individual meditation session isn’t mellow, I’ve found that the net effect of having a daily practice is that, overall, my emotional weather is significantly balmier.
2. Focus
We live in an era defined by what’s been called “omni-connectivity.” Many of us are beset by emails, texts, status updates, and push notifications. It can leave us feeling frayed and frazzled. In my job, I actually have other people’s voices piped directly into my head, and I have to get the facts straight, on short notice, in front of large audiences. I found that the daily exercise of trying to focus on one thing at a time—my breath—and then getting lost and starting again (and again, and again) helped me stay on task during the course of my day. Studies show the more you meditate, the better you are at activating the regions of the brain associated with attention and deactivating the regions associated with mind-wandering.
3. Mindfulness
This rather anodyne-sounding word has become quite buzzy of late. There are now countless books and articles on mindful eating, mindful parenting, mindful sex, mindful dishwashing, mindful yarn-bombing, mindful conjugation of verbs in Esperanto, and on and on. The media fuss has, at times, turned this down-to-earth, universally accessible concept into an impossibly precious thing, and provoked a not-entirely-unjustified backlash. And yet, if you can get past the breathless headlines and press releases, mindfulness is an enormously useful skill.
It is a rich, ancient term with lots of meanings, but here’s my personal definition:
Mindfulness is the ability to see what’s happening in your head at any given moment, so that you don’t get carried away by it.
As an example, imagine you’re driving down the road and someone cuts you off. How does that moment go for you, usually? If you’re like me, you may feel a big blast of anger, which is normal. But then you might automatically act on that anger, honking, and cursing, and so on. There’s no buffer between the stimulus and your reflexive reaction.
Product details
- ASIN : B06Y58KF6P
- Publisher : Harmony (December 26, 2017)
- Publication date : December 26, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 9433 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 288 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #166,613 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #79 in Meditation (Kindle Store)
- #185 in New Age Meditation
- #423 in Happiness
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Carlye Adler is an award winning journalist and coauthor of many books, including four New York Times bestsellers. Her writing has been published in BusinessWeek, FastCompany, Fortune, Forbes, Newsweek, TIME and Wired. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two daughters, and skateboarding bulldog.
For more information, please visit www.carlyeadler.com or www.caspermediagroup.com
Dan Harris is a correspondent for ABC News and the co-anchor 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. He has been at ABC News for 13 years. Before that, 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.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book informative and helpful with useful meditation exercises. They describe it as a fun, witty read with entertaining writing style. The concept and application of meditation are easy to understand and follow, with clear guidance and examples. Readers appreciate the relatable and realistic writing style. The book provides positive and encouraging messages about happiness and a calmer existence.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book helpful and informative for meditation. They say it provides useful exercises and ways to change thinking. The book helps focus and energize the mind and body. Readers mention it has helped them tremendously in conjunction with therapy and changed their lives.
"...I just love his transparency and honesty and his fresh approach to meditation where he breaks it all down in a way that really takes the pressure..." Read more
"no nonsense help for meditators. I gave it as gifts to several people who aren't okay with more in depth spiritual guidance." Read more
"...It included a number of great insights on different methods and philosophies on how, where, and why to meditate...." Read more
"...The benefits were immediate and the practice enjoyable. Then life happened and I fell out of practice and was struggling to reestablish the routine...." Read more
Customers find the book readable and enjoyable. They find it credible and helpful, making meditation enjoyable. Readers also appreciate Dan Harris' podcasts.
"...Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics is a good book and includes a lot of valuable information; however, it's wasn't as much a "fun" read for me as was 10..." Read more
"Love, love this book! It has truly made me more comfortable & confident that meditation is for me!..." Read more
"...The benefits were immediate and the practice enjoyable. Then life happened and I fell out of practice and was struggling to reestablish the routine...." Read more
"...That only comes in pill form. Well Savage tells his tale in a very enjoyable read while actually giving advice to a fellow sceptic." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's humor and witty writing style. They find it entertaining and engaging, covering goofy questions and frustrations in a humorous way. The writing style is intelligent and conveys thoughtful commentary on the benefits of meditation. Readers appreciate the stories about diverse people trying to start meditating.
"...it in a way that is so refreshing and engaging and while he is super articulate his style and delivery are completely relatable...in other words he..." Read more
"...Plus there is a lot of humor and the book which I dearly appreciate!!!" Read more
"...anecdotes, simple meditation instructions and suggestions, and thoughtful commentary on the benefits of the practice make this an enjoyable read and..." Read more
"...He is obviously witty, bright, high energy, very enthusiastic, and clearly sincere in his hopes for this project...." Read more
Customers find the book easy to understand and use. They appreciate the concise writing style and realistic guidance. The book provides a comprehensive, accessible, and actionable guide to starting and maintaining a meditation practice.
"...pressure off (CRITICALLY important to a meditation practice), is understandable and even fun...." Read more
"...But the book explained it and made perfect sense so I could move on & learn what to do! I am so happy I found this book!..." Read more
"...Greatest takeaway - Begin Again. Humorous anecdotes, simple meditation instructions and suggestions, and thoughtful commentary on the benefits of..." Read more
"...Their strategy for taking meditation mainstream is to: 1. Make it effortless. (One minute a day will get you started.); 2...." Read more
Customers find the book relatable and realistic. They appreciate the real-life examples and useful meditation exercises. The book is based on experience and dedication to this ancient practice. Readers find the author's style and delivery relatable.
"...and engaging and while he is super articulate his style and delivery are completely relatable...in other words he doesn't talk above you and is even..." Read more
"Humorous, and very realistic; too bad the app is only on phone" Read more
"...and commentary provided by Jeff Warren were a great compliment to Harris' style...." Read more
"Love this book! Funny, honest, and extremely helpful! It honestly and hilariously covers all of the goofy questions and frustrations we all..." Read more
Customers find the book helpful and positive. They say it's easy to follow, encouraging, and inspiring. The author is described as witty, bright, and energetic.
"...He is obviously witty, bright, high energy, very enthusiastic, and clearly sincere in his hopes for this project...." Read more
"...I’m so much calmer and I feel less stressed out...." Read more
"...if meditation can give them a little more peace, freedom, and calm in their life." Read more
"...with the whole mindful / meditation approach, I found this book very positive and easy to follow...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's writing style. They find it down-to-earth and humorous. The author is praised as a narrator, with an emotional and funny tone. Readers appreciate the author's genuine enthusiasm and support for the project.
"...witty, bright, high energy, very enthusiastic, and clearly sincere in his hopes for this project...." Read more
"...Easily understandable meditations, and a supportive encouraging voice...." Read more
"...psychological and practical aspects of meditation are presented in a sincere, emotional and often funny manner...." Read more
"...Some narrators can be really boring but not this one. Loved having author as narrator." Read more
Customers find the app useful. They say it works well and they have done meditations with it.
"Really good book and app...." Read more
"I really wanted to like this book. The app works well and have done several meditations on it but of course they really would like to sell you the..." Read more
"Dan Harris' honesty makes this book, his podcast, and his app truly worthwhile..." Read more
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Books arrived damaged~content is great
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2018This book about meditation that was put together by what might be considered an unlikely author on the subject is one of THE BEST I have ever read which is just crazy lol. I didn't even know who Dan Harris was but I am PLENTY familiar with the practice of meditation...a practice which like a lot of folks I have gone in and out of for years after spending considerable time reading some of the most highly regarded texts on the subject. Well this Dan Harris just really NAILS it in a way that is so refreshing and engaging and while he is super articulate his style and delivery are completely relatable...in other words he doesn't talk above you and is even pretty funny at times like you're hanging out with him. I just love his transparency and honesty and his fresh approach to meditation where he breaks it all down in a way that really takes the pressure off (CRITICALLY important to a meditation practice), is understandable and even fun. So glad I stumbled across this book this is truly a book for EVERYBODY who wants to get into meditation:)
- Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2024no nonsense help for meditators. I gave it as gifts to several people who aren't okay with more in depth spiritual guidance.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2020This was an interesting overview of a multi-city exercise in putting meditation techniques into use. It included a number of great insights on different methods and philosophies on how, where, and why to meditate. However, it didn't provide me the fun writing and stories about learning about meditation from a personal perspective that had been provided in Dan Harris's earlier book,10% Happier. Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics is a good book and includes a lot of valuable information; however, it's wasn't as much a "fun" read for me as was 10% Happier, which I have am reading for the second time now, and plan to read again.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2018Love, love this book! It has truly made me more comfortable & confident that meditation is for me! I had a time with that nagging voice in my brain telling me meditation wasn’t for me cause I had to do it a certain way!! But the book explained it and made perfect sense so I could move on & learn what to do! I am so happy I found this book! Thank you, thank you, Dan Harris for trying to help us skeptics find the way to make meditation a part of our lives! Plus there is a lot of humor and the book which I dearly appreciate!!!
- Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2017I read Dan Harris' first book and put meditation practice into my routine a couple of years ago. The benefits were immediate and the practice enjoyable. Then life happened and I fell out of practice and was struggling to reestablish the routine. I am not a skeptic at all but was eager to pick up this second book and it has inspired me to again prioritize meditation into my daily life and for my own self care. Greatest takeaway - Begin Again. Humorous anecdotes, simple meditation instructions and suggestions, and thoughtful commentary on the benefits of the practice make this an enjoyable read and reference. Thank you Dan and Jeff!
- Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2018Meditation has gone mainstream. And for good reason. It’s a great way to focus and energize the mind and body. I do it, and if you don’t, you should try. Simple as that.
Perhaps more than anything else this book is a testament to just how mainstream it has gone. That’s not a criticism. But let’s face it, a bus tour is pretty mainstream. Wanting to be 10% happier is very mainstream. And putting it all together in a convenient app is the essence of mainstream in the 21st.
I don’t watch television, so I’ve never seen or heard the name, Dan Harris, the ABC news anchor and correspondent behind the book. He is obviously witty, bright, high energy, very enthusiastic, and clearly sincere in his hopes for this project. And in many ways that makes him perfect for this book. He is a very good pairing with Jeff Warren, the professional meditator who represents the “let’s hug” branch of meditation that the mainstream associates with the practice, who is every bit as sincere and earnest as Harris. It’s a bit like pairing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in Twins, but I make the comparison in the most positive way.
Their strategy for taking meditation mainstream is to: 1. Make it effortless. (One minute a day will get you started.); 2. To expand mindfulness into a path to patience, compassion, generosity, and, ultimately, happiness. All while keeping it secular without offending the religiously inclined.
It’s a tall order. And they achieve it more successfully than I would have guessed if I had picked up the book with any preconceptions, which I didn’t.
The problem with both meditation and attempts to mainstream much of anything, however, is accepting that line on the horizon. Where does the ground end and the sky begin? There is, as a result, a tendency to overshoot the mark; to extrapolate meditation or whatever you are trying to mainstream into something more that it really is or can practically become.
That line on the horizon, however, is perceived differently by each of us. If you draw it at a level similar to where Dan and Jeff draw it, you will probably love this book. And since you are the one who is likely to be considering this book having read the summary, my rating is for you. I think you will enjoy the book.
I draw the horizon in a different place, however. That doesn’t make me better or worse, but the book, as a result, is much less of a fit for me. I found the book to be far too long and repetitive, too light on the philosophy, too heavy on both the hugging and the flippancy, and far too quick to reference the 10% initiative. While Dan and Jeff clearly come down on the meditative side of Buddhist meditation, to try to explain, I come down on the Buddhist side. While I practice meditation, I am much more interested in understanding what gives our lives meaning and purpose.
But that’s just me.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2023I personally found this book hilarious. I am the last person to believe in meditation. That only comes in pill form. Well Savage tells his tale in a very enjoyable read while actually giving advice to a fellow sceptic.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2024Humorous, and very realistic; too bad the app is only on phone
Top reviews from other countries
- Oran KaneReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Very enjoyable
Dan writes just how he speaks. This book carries his sense of humour throughout
- EvaReviewed in Canada on January 9, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read for deconstructing meditation
Really enjoyed reading this book. Simple, concrete and reground to the true essence of meditation, it’s purpose and benefits. Love Jeff Warren and Dan Harris no nonsense style. Particularly enjoyed Jeff’s welcome to the party meditation.
- ViergiebelReviewed in Germany on June 4, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars At first overwhelming but then fantastic
First I was overwhelmed with the sheer overload of information. I think it would have been better if the book would have had more graphic layout with some pictures or information boxes, Some colors or something that would make the reading more easier. But when I started to read more slowly and underlying important sentences the whole book made sense. Now I think it is the most motivating and encouraging book ob meditation I ever read.
- Angela VargasReviewed in Canada on January 20, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read
My sister asked for this for Christmas and really enjoyed reading it. She highly recommends it.
- JoeReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Okay.
Light reading. Not bad.