#855: Tim Ferriss — How to Quiet the Ruminative Mind, Avoid Traps of Self-Help, and Focus in a World of Promiscuous Overcommitment

Why hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.

This is Tim Ferriss.

Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.

I'm recording this one on my iPhone because I was inspired actually by the episode you're going to hear, the person in question, Dan Harris.

And I am now at a secluded mountain retreat to sit and stare at a wall, doing meditation.

[chuckles] I'm going to share more on that another time, but this episode is going to be a little bit different.

I am in the hot seat this time.

Dan Harris, more on Dan in a second, interviewed me for his show, the Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris Podcast, and I thought it would be worth sharing here.

We cover a lot of things that have been on my mind in more than one way.

So, for instance, my most recent brain stimulation protocol, and this was born initially of conversations with the late Nolan Williams, and there's been a lot of trial and error with different doctors, different researchers, and I think I've ended up someplace very, very interesting with non-invasive brain stimulation.

But putting that aside, I've also been thinking for a while, meaning decades, but it's taken me quite a bit to actually ferret out the traps of self-help, the dangers of optimization.

And these are persistent, almost tectonic plates, I would say, that are elements that you need to nudge in the right direction, or you can end up going very much in the wrong direction.

Dan is a wonderful interviewer, and we really got into the zone, so I thought, "You know what? Why not share this?" He is also the bestselling author of Ten Percent Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A Ten Percent Happier How-to Book.

He's done a lot more.

He's also been on The Tim Ferriss Show, so you can hear him in the back catalog, but I will stop there.

You can find Dan Harris and certainly his podcast and everything at danharris.com. That's D-A-N-H-A-R-R-I-S dot com, and without further ado, please enjoy.