How to Stop a Mental Loop Dead in Its Tracks | Dan Harris

Key Takeaway

When anxiety overwhelms you, try this three-step approach: First, bring mindful awareness to the physical sensations of discomfort without being owned by them. Second, take action—any action absorbs anxiety, whether it's informing yourself, connecting with others, or making small moves to protect yourself. Third, never worry alone. Show up in community, talk to friends, create a chat group. As the Dalai Lama says, if there's something you can do about a problem, there's no point worrying—just do it. And if there's nothing you can do, there's also no point worrying.

Episode Overview

Dan Harris answers listener questions on AI anxiety, claustrophobia during medical procedures, breaking mental loops, the need for external approval, and why we need to hear the same wisdom repeatedly. He emphasizes practical strategies like mindfulness, action-oriented approaches to anxiety, self-compassion, and the power of community support.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How to Stop a Mental Loop Dead in Its Tracks | Dan Harris from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. How we doing? Today I'm going to take your questions on a whole range of juicy subjects. AI anxiety, specifically what to do when you're really worried that AI is going to take your job. We talk about coping with an impending MRI when you're claustrophobic. And I'm going to be embarrassingly honest about my own experience with that. We get into a technique from the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein for breaking out of mental loops that you've been in a thousand times.

There's a great question about the need for external approval, which is a former anchorman I have a lot of feelings about. and we wrap up with something I think is actually very profound, which is why we need to hear the same things over and over before they sink in. So, what you're about to hear is a recording of a live session I did with some subscribers to my newish meditation app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. We do these sessions every Tuesday afternoon. It's a great chance to meditate together, to get your questions answered, and really to experience the power of the carpool lane, which accelerates learning, growth, and happiness.

The Buddha knew this and so do modern psychologists who call it social support. Speaking of my app, very quickly, I just want to tell you we've got something very cool coming up this summer. As you may know, the Buddha came up with a kind of cookbook to help you lead a happy life. It's called the eight-fold path. It's one of his foundational lists. And this summer over on the 10% app, Sharon Salsberg, the amazing meditation teacher, will be leading an eight-part series on the eight-fold path.

Every Sunday starting on July 12th, she's going to do a live session where she will guide a meditation and talk about one aspect of the eight-fold path from maintaining focus and mindfulness to communicating successfully with other human beings. So, go to danharris.com to get the app and join the party. This is going to be an amazing series. All right, we're talking AI anxiety, breaking out of mental loops, and much more after this quick break. Laura, often the source of a good question, weighs in. How can you decide when to say dead end?

Like Joseph says, sincerely, someone who is obsessing and scared AI is wiping out my career. Dude, I've been thinking a ton about this AI thing. My friend Sam Harris, some of you may have mixed feelings about because he can be a little controversial, but he's still my guy. He had a great episode a couple days ago with Tristan Harris, who was related to neither me as Dan Harris or Sam as Sam Harris, just another Harris guy. He runs something, I believe it's called the Center for Humane Technology.

And listening to that episode definitely escalated my alarm about AI, not only in its economic impacts, but also just in its overall impacts on us as a species. Tristan is very good though when it comes to helping us engage with action as a way to absorb anxiety so that you know there are things we can do including voting for people who take this issue seriously. AI safety that is informing ourselves and informing others. There's a new documentary I have not seen. It's in theaters. It's called AI doc.

I'm very interested in it. It's the type of thing where you might be able to organize a screening for you and your friends or if you've got a kid in school. You can organize a screening for the parents. You can set up a chat group on text or whatever with your friends to talk about issues in AI. You can go check out the Center for Humane Technology and get involved if you want. I think action whether it's small or large, incremental or super ambitious, is really a great way to reduce concern.

Specifically, your concern, Laura, is about AI wiping out your job. And yeah, I feel you on that. I don't know that anybody, you know, in the long term is safe in this regard. I want to emphasize I I genuinely don't know. And it's that uncertainty that we humans are just not wired for. We're not wired to handle it. And it is really a design flaw because we live in a world, as we all know, characterized by relentless impermanence, ceaseless change, and yet we don't like it.

That's a bug that we need to figure out how to deal with. There are a couple things that help me. One is this practice where you really start to get more comfortable in a a a or more aware of in a visceral way, not just an intellectual or conceptual way with the nature of change. As you're doing a body scan and you're moving from the sensations at the head to the to the forehead and and onwards, you can just notice how the sensations you are being mindful of are just constantly in flux.

You can really tune into that change just as a little way to get an experiential visceral experiential visceral experiential visceral sense of impermanence as opposed to just knowing theoretically that everything changes. That's one thing that's very helpful. Another thing that's really helpful in dealing with uncertainty, I've already mentioned, which is the concept of actionabsorbing anxiety. The Daly Lama has this thing that I've often found a little cute, but it is I think it's true nonetheless. I'm not going to be able to replicate the exact words of the quote, but the general sentiment is if there's something you can do about a problem, there's no point worrying.

You should just do the thing. And if there's nothing you can do, there's also no point worrying because there's nothing you can do. I think that kind of unintentionally makes those of us who are wired for worry feel bad because I can't help it. I'm just going to worry, especially when there's nothing I can do. But there are very few issues, I think, where there's nothing we can do. And that's why I think it's worth thinking about. Okay, if your job feels vulnerable to automation, what's in your control?

What are the steps you can take? Oddly enough, talking to AI about this can be useful, but what are the moves you can take to protect yourself? Are there ways within your current organization that you might be the thought leader on AI being becoming the person who helps everybody else in the organization and therefore creating value around you as that person. We have somebody in our organization, shout out to Ben, who uh is playing that role. I think it's a really smart move. It's also a public service.

So other ways that you might be able to deal with this uncertainty. I would add one other thing. So we talked at the beginning about meditation as step number one or one item on the menu. Two, action absorbs anxiety. Do what you can. Three, never worry alone. So showing up here and talking about it with us. Very helpful. At least it is for me. But talking to your friends, I think I mentioned this earlier, creating a chat group where you're all in it together. I think that's very helpful.

And it obviously comports with how we are wired as a species, which is to be in community. Okay, long answer to Laura's question. Jon writes, "Help, please, Dan. I have to have an MRI soon. Any coping hints would be appreciated." Okay, so I I'm going to be honest with you about this because my panic disorder and claustrophobia is so intense. The the last time I needed an MRI, I had them knock me out. I'm like embarrassed to admit that because I feel like I'm Mr. meditation.

And I should have been able to be mindful throughout the thing, but it's just panic disorders. If you have it, it is really, really, really powerful. I wish I could say that after all my years of meditation, I've just conquered it, but I haven't. I hope that you don't have panic disorder and you have more like garden variety discomfort with the claustrophobia associated with an MRI. So, if that's you, let me say a little bit about some coping mechanisms that I think might be useful. One is you can bring your meditation practice into the MRI of course and be mindful of the sensations of discomfort, tightness in the chest, racing thoughts, rumbling in the belly.

In the being mindful of those sensations, you are definitionally not owned by them. Any moment of mindfulness of the sensations brings you out of the fear center of the brain, the amygdala, and into the more rational part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. So that and I might be screwing up my brain, my neuroscience here, so I'm sure there are other parts of the brain that come online when we're mindful. Sorry that I don't know all of them, but anyway, it is a great way to not be swamped by the feelings of discomfort.

And so that's something that I find helpful in situations where I'm not in full-on panic, but I'm anxious nonetheless. Like I was in some elevators yesterday and in the city and I was using that using mindfulness. Another thing to do is and this you should do in consultation with your doctor cuz I don't want to be recommending I don't want to give you medical advice. I am not a physician and what I'm about to say is a little dicey because medication for anxiety also has lots of dependency issues that that stuff can be addictive.

But if your doctor thinks you can handle it and are a good candidate for some sort of sedation that is not as intense as what I had to do, maybe that's something to consider. Bringing somebody with you to sit while you wait so that you're not, you know, that the runup to the experience isn't as lonely and isolating. That can also be helpful. I will say my cousin Deb who like me has claustrophobia, I was supposed to bring her to an M MRI recently because uh she wanted to take some sedation, like mild sedation, not again not what I had to do, but she needed somebody to drive her.

And so I said, "Yeah, of course I'll drive But then it turned out the scheduling thing got screwed up and she wanted to go at a time I couldn't go and so she just did it. She just white knuckled it and she I believe and I apologize to Deb if I'm getting this wrong but she was talking to herself out loud in the machine and she was like I don't care if the guy operating the machine thought I was crazy. And I think there's a lot to this because we know, and you've heard me say this before, that you really can relax your nervous system by talking to yourself the way you would talk to a friend who is experiencing distress.

And so just doing that out loud or internally while you're experiencing the sensations of discomfort in the MRI can really help because the truth is you are not in any danger. Um, and so just reminding yourself of that is a great way to get you out of the amydala or fear center of the brain and into the prefrontal cortex. So that's another suggestion. Let's see. Heidi says, and this is more of a comment, but a good one than a question. question. question. It's really interesting when you say that about all that stuff about the stories in our heads is I've realized since I've been meditating that I don't see the world as it is, but as I am.

That is a a nice restatement of the Anais nin quote that we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are. I'm trying to see things from different perspectives and not just mine. I think this is super helpful. It's people don't love when I say this, but I think it's really helpful in a political context these days to open yourself to other points of view. That is not meant to argue that you should drop your values. There's a difference between your opinions and your values.

The values don't have to change, but your opin opinions might change if you open yourself up up to other points of view in this topsyturvy political environment. I find that very helpful. Doesn't mean you have to do it, but it's definitely helpful outside of politics and just in your life. As Joseph says, he has two great little expressions on open-mindedness. One is don't side with yourself. yourself. yourself. You have to be careful because that doesn't mean don't stick up for yourself and doesn't mean be a doormat.

But just when you're in when you feel yourself locked into your POV, maybe ask yourself like why does the other person or other people believe what they believe? Another little expression from him is certainty is not an indicator of truth. Just because you feel certain does not mean you are right. And I just find that very helpful as a person who tends toward dogmatism and certainty. Kelly says, "I really like the guided body scan meditations, but I feel like I get much more distracted when I'm trying to do it on my own.

I think this is because my mind is moving versus one focus like like the breath. Any suggestions?" Well, I think the first thing to say is, Kelly, often even in my own practice, when I'm doing like a loving kindness practice or a body scan, I am more distractable when I'm not guiding somebody else. If I'm just on my own, it's I think this is very natural for there to be more distraction when you're on your own. And I wouldn't beat yourself up for it. It's just part of the deal.

I'm really behind on these comments. Okay, Sarah. Sarah says, "We will euthanize our elderly cat tomorrow, and I would love some thoughts on being peaceful and supportive during his transition." H I'm so sorry. That sucks. Uh two things coming to mind. Uh one, um the difference between empathy and compassion. When we're in empathy, which is a natural human mind state of feeling the pain of somebody else, animal or human, that can be overwhelming. But compassion is empathy plus the desire to help. And so just tuning in to the love you feel and the desire to help your cat.

I think that's just a different more empowering mind space. Um yeah, so I would try that. And then another thing and I again I'm quoting Joseph Goldstein but I've heard him when he talks about grief which I think you are probably justifiably feeling preemptive grief and you will maybe feel even more grief when your little man is gone. Just because the person we loved or the animal we loved is no longer with us does not mean that the love is no longer with us. that is unchanged.

So, this is a horrible thing you're having to do. I feel really badly for you. And this is um I once heard a local news anchor in New York City. Actually, I was at a ASPCA fundraiser and one of the local news anchors in New York City was a spokesperson for them and he got up and said something really beautiful, which is is is that animals teach us about loss because their lifespans are so much shorter than ours. Taking in an animal really teaches us about loss.

So, it's a really tough thing you're having to do, Sarah. And my condolences and my compassion go to you. And I hope some of these suggestions are useful. None of that is meant to minimize the pain of it. Let's see. Oh, right. So, somebody asked about dead end and I didn't answer it. Thank you, Danny, for reminding me. So, let me just give some context. Joseph, one of his little mantras is dead end, which is when you find yourself going down going down going down the same rabbit hole again and again.

It could be seductive fantasies. It could be negative toxic projections into the future about AI, which is something I do, or anything else. It could be practicing some glorious expletive fililled speech you're going to give to the whatever bad guy or bad person in your life who you're pissed at. When you're noticing repetitive and really not useful thought patterns arise, one little thing you can say to yourself is dead end. Just dead end. It doesn't mean it won't come back again, but it's a it's a dead end.

And using that mantra, using that phrase can help shut it down. And it may you may have to do it many times, but that's okay. It's just a signal to yourself that like, okay, I get it. This is there's no utility here. And so the question I believe earlier was like, how do you know when to use that? You know, when is it fair and when is it unfair to label a particular thought stream a dead end? Well, first in meditation, we're not really following our our trains of thought.

So, I think you can be pretty liberal with dead end in meditation. You don't want to do it in a hostile way. That's the key here. There should be some lightness to your touch. The more we're resisting something, the more likely we are to empower it. But when you're not meditating, it can be very helpful to label something a dead end. As you all know, I used to have a meditation app. I separated from my co-founders. I experienced a lot of anger during the course of that.

That's not to say that I was always in the right. I made tons of mistakes, but I was experiencing anger nonetheless. And dead end was very helpful for me in that experience. And to this day, because there's still vestigial stuff that comes up in the mind. But of course, there are some times again now I'm talking about off the cushion when you're not meditating when some thought streams are worth pursuing. And it's more art than science. just deciding like using your common sense, is this just some habitual neurotic pattern that I'm in that there's really like I've thought this all the way through.

That is definitely true for me with my corporate divorce. There's no new insights on offer for me. So, when I see it come up, it's like, yo, dead end. Again, no no hostility to the best of my ability toward myself. In fact, it's just the opposite of hostility. It's self-compassion. Like, there's nothing good for you down here. So you don't need to go in that direction. So it's up to you to figure out is this a new and useful thought about my mother or is it um just the ego vomiting up more nonsense and you don't need to go down that route.

So check it out. Follow your innate wisdom on that. All right, let me get to some of the there are like so many comments in here and I can't keep up. But I do want to be fair to those of you who were on your game and submitting questions in advance. So, I do want to answer some of those. Lynn, in a recent podcast, you mentioned having resting face. Me, too. Any thoughts or strategies for appearing more friendly or open and less It's exhausting to keep telling myself to smile and doing so feels disingenuous.

I definitely don't think uh you should like fix your face. I'm not a fan of that, especially when that advice is given to women who are generally socialized to be people pleasers. So, I don't think you need to like wor I don't spend a lot of time worrying about like my face. It's just it is what it is. However, conversational strategies you can use that verbally signal to people you are a listening and b not hostile. So, one of them I'll just give you a couple.

These, by the way, come from my friends Dan Clerman and Muda Nisker, communications coaches, who's been on the podcast multiple times and I talk about them all the time and we are producing a course from them that will be out in a few months. But one of them is very simple. They call it looping. So when you're in a conversation, try to get into the habit of staying in the loop with the other person by asking simple questions like, "Did that make sense? Are we on the same page?" So don't just assume that whatever you've said has been comprehended.

Check. Stay in the loop with them. And that I think is a really reassuring signal to send to people. Another and a related technique is to do reflective listening. You've heard me talk about this a million times so I won't dwell on it too much, but when you're in a conversation with somebody and they've said a bunch of words to you, try to listen journalistically so that you can report back to them the headline of what they've said. And people find this to be massively, massively satisfying.

Even if they don't know what it is, what kind of voodoo you're doing to them, they love it. And again, this is, I think, a much more winning strategy and a more fair strategy to you than to get you to be compulsively thinking about, you know, what your face is doing at any given moment. So, yeah, hopefully that helps. Lynn, Keith asks a question here. To what extent do you think alcohol consumption conflicts with a mindful life? I know a lot of modern lay Buddhists who drink.

And I'm curious that if that falls into not ideal, but we all have our imperfect tools, or if you think there's not really a conflict here. No judgment on drinkers. Just curious as someone who's relatively new, less than 5 years, to both meditation and being alcohol-f free. Congratulations on on your meditation practice and your you didn't use the word sobriety, but either way, I'm glad you've made a choice that's helpful or that I'm assuming is helpful to you. My view on alcohol, not super judgmental. I try not to be super judgmental about anything unless you're just like straight up being a dick to somebody.

But alcohol, the way I think about it is in the Buddhists, and again, you don't have to be a Buddhist. You can take or leave this, but I find this very helpful framing. In the Buddhist precepts, you know, they have these five precepts. Don't kill, don't steal, that type of stuff. One of them is don't use intoxicants to the point of heedlessness. And I like that because there's a there's elasticity here. There's room for interpretation. And I know plenty of very prominent meditation teachers who love to have a glass of wine once in a while, and I have no problem with that.

But are they getting shitfaced and being unkind? Well, that I would have a problem with, and I would argue that they should get help. I've never seen a meditation teacher do any of those things. But so to the point of heedlessness, I think is the real thing to keep in mind. And we're all wired differently in this regard. So some of us, you know, I come I have a lot of alcoholism in my family. Mercifully for me, I I I developed a kind of allergy to alcohol in the late as.

And so I just don't drink. I don't even drink coffee because of my panic disorder. Makes me too jittery. Definitely don't do cocaine. If I have a flight or something like that, I I might need to take a sedative, but I do this in very strict consultation with my physicians because I'm always worried about addiction. Once or twice a year, I will I haven't done it in a while, though, so it's probably not once or twice a year, but I will do MDMA with my friends.

To me, like that is in the zone of a spiritual practice. And I think we all know that MDMA can be used therapeutically. And I think the early scientific results on this are really compelling, specifically PTSD among veterans. I'm not obviously doing it therapeutically, but I love my friends. Friendship is a huge part of my life. And once in a while, bonding in that way is really fun. And we have deep conversations and connect. We do that without MDMA, of course, but there's a reason why MDMA was used in couples counseling, I believe, for many years.

it it really can lower the ego walls. Yeah. So that's my take on it. But what I like about the Buddhist take is that it's really up to you. And yeah, so you should do you. I'm being open and forthright with you, but not to present myself as any kind of model other than that you should do what works for you. All right, let me do one more question. All right, this one is something that I've struggled with. This is from Nef999. Nef999. Nef999. Any suggestions for practices to acknowledge and work through my need for external approval?

external approval? external approval? Side note, you don't become an anchor man if you don't need external approval or I guess what I am now. I guess some sort of like influencer or whatever I am. Um, so like I feel you on that. I was feeling good about my recent increase in meditation and then realized I was hoping to hear from people about how different I seemed. Sigh. Like I think embedded in your question is the answer. There is a a lightness and a humor and a humility and that to me is a huge part of mindfulness.

Can you just be aware with a half smile on your face of like how ridiculous the mind is? That for me is how you defang the ego. I mean the ego is just serving up shitty pernitious ideas all the time most of them about like how to you know a grandise itself the self to see it with some lightness I find is a great way to defang it I'm not presenting myself as somebody who has overcome the need for external validation definitely not but another thing that I find helpful other than a sort of ongoing ongoing ongoing humorous humorous humorous mindfulness of my own pension for grandiosity.

Another thing I find really helpful is helpful is helpful is repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly being in touch with my actual values which of course are connected to my value as a human. It's why I have this tattoo on my wrist and that I can't show it. I think many of you know about it anyway. It's just an acronym FTB OAB for the benefit of all beings. And it just reminds me throughout the day every time I look at my watch. Yeah. Like what's my job? My job is, you know, when I'm not so worried about like how well did my latest Instagram post do or, you know, like how many people subscribed to this app, which I, you know, of course I do all those things and some of it is necessary, right?

Because I'm running a business and if I don't do a good job with this business, I can't do things like this, you know, cuz we'll be out of business. But what is my real job? My real job is to be um yeah to be a beacon to be useful and doesn't matter what anybody else thinks of me in that context. Like there are no existential existential existential there are no egoic stakes when I'm in that zone. I was talking to my son the other night. We went out to father-son dinner Sunday night.

I was talking about for the benefit of all beings and he was like, "Well, some things I do just for me, like going to sleep or whatever." And I said, "No, but you actually can think about about about and dedicate everything you do your whole life from going to sleep, from going to school to playing video games, whatever. You can reframe it as I'm doing this to take care of myself so that I can be useful to other people." And it was one of the first times I've ever lectured my son.

He hates when I lecture him, so I don't I really try not to. But it was one of the first time I've ever been in teacher mode with him where I saw the light go on in his eye like, "Oh yeah, my dad is not a complete idiot. I think he thinks I'm mostly an idiot." But that point landed for him. And it's it's really been helpful for me late in life to really start to reframe everything I do all day long when I can remember as being of benefit.

There is one other question because it gets to this point about remembering. Okay, this is from Sarah. Sarah L. I'm fascinated by the fact that I've been listening to you and other teachers for over a year and I often hear the same phrases, ideas, and answers to questions and yet I still seem to need these reminders even though I've heard them repeatedly. Sometimes I'm able to predict what you, Dan, are going to answer to a particular question before you say it, but it doesn't bother me.

It just makes me laugh. I'm a longtime yoga practitioner over 20 years and it's reminding me of doing the same poses over and over with the same instructions and still learning something new or applying to new contexts. I'm not sure what my question is other than what's going on here? Why do we need these phrases, answers, approaches repeated over and over again in order to actually integrate them? Is this a forever kind of learning? Yeah. Yeah, that's the deal. Yeah, you've you landed on a really important insight that it's the benefit of these sessions.

It's the benefit of listening to a a great podcast or reading a great book. Like once in a while you'll hear something totally new, but often you're just going to hear me say the same I said two weeks ago, but you forgot it. Why? because the life pulls us back into our habit patterns, has us focused on our individualistic needs or distracted by um cat videos on TikTok, whatever. Like life is constantly pulling us back into the stream of the mainstream. And that's why the Buddha talked about his teachings as being against the stream.

And what you need in this context is to be reminded over and over and over again. And as you've heard me say before, the original translation of the term that we now translate as mindfulness, the word is sati in pi, the ancient language that was I think probably spoken around the time of the Buddha or at least that's the language in which his teachings were written down. In that language pi sati we now translate as mindfulness. But one of the original translations is remembering. remembering. remembering.

So take solace in that. Like we are just programmed for denial and forgetting and we just need to be reminded to wake up all the time. And I love it because it gives me permission to say the same over and over again. But also like we need to do that. The other day I called Joseph like because I was feeling a little depressed about something and I will own that. That is a very lucky position that I'm in that I can call Joseph Goldstein when I'm feeling depressed.

But you know he said a bunch of things to me. Not one of them was new. I I had heard him say everything he said to me, but I just needed to hear it again, and I needed them to be tailored to my current situation. All right, now I'm going to step down from my u pedestal, my soap box. Always so fun to be with you guys. Yeah, thanks for taking time to do this. I know I've said this before, but it really is a community service to take care of your own mind in this way.

And so I hope you feel like it tees you up to deal with whatever's going on in your own life and in the world more effectively because that's the goal. Thank you again for your time. Love you guys. Thanks for being part of this. Peace. Okay. Thank you for listening today. Uh before I leave you, if you sign up for my newish meditation app, it's a great way to support teachers because we pay them to create meditations for our growing library and also to create courses like the upcoming A-fold path course with Sharon Salsburg.

It's also a great way to support me and my team. Uh you can go to danharris.com to get the app and there's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out. I just want to end by saying thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmir is our executive producer.

And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.