How To Communicate Effectively With Other Human Beings
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sharing an episode featuring Dan from a podcast we love, Think Fast, Talk Smart.
Whether presenting to millions on live television or talking to just one person, Dan Harris knows that the quality of every interaction depends on the presence you bring to it.
Harris is a former national news anchor for ABC News and is now the host of the 10% Happier podcast and author of 10% Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. As he knows from experience, there’s power in “Waking up to something fundamental, that the mind is out of control, and you don't want to be owned by it.” How do we break the pattern of being controlled by our thoughts? Mindfulness and self-awareness, he says, put “distance” between us and our “thoughts and urges and emotions,” enabling us to connect with ourselves and others with greater consciousness and clarity.
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Harris and host Matt Abrahams discuss how mindfulness can transform our communication, sharing strategies for deeper listening, responding versus reacting, and reflecting what others say back to them. “Relationships are the most important aspect of your happiness,” Harris says. “The quality of those connections goes up when you’re less stuck in your own head.”
Episode References:
Dan Harris: https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/dan-harris/
Dan’s Books: http://fastersmarter.io/10-percent-happier
https://fastersmarter.io/meditation-for-fidgety-skeptics
https://www.fastersmarter.io/179-communication-happiness-wellbeing-finding-positive-in-negative-emotions/
https://www.fastersmarter.io/180-unlocking-your-future-self-communication-happiness-wellbeing/
Tickets are now on sale for a special live taping of the 10% Happier Podcast with guest Pete Holmes! Join us on November 18th in NYC for this benefit show, with all proceeds supporting the New York Insight Meditation Center. Grab your tickets here!
Tickets are now available for an intimate live event with Dan on November 23rd as part of the Troutbeck Luminary Series. Join the conversation, participate in a guided meditation, and ask your questions during the Q&A. Click here to buy your ticket!
Join Dan’s online community here
Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:19.3 | Hello, happy Sunday, everybody. One observation that you might have heard me make before, |
| 0:25.1 | but that I never get tired of thinking about, is that we are, as everybody knows, as every |
| 0:30.1 | TED talk reminds us, social creatures. We need interaction in order to thrive. One of the |
| 0:37.4 | principal ways in which we interact is through speech, conversation. |
| 0:41.5 | But very few of us are ever taught how to, in the words of a popular book on the subject, |
| 0:47.7 | talk so that people will listen and listen so that people will talk. |
| 0:52.5 | We've got all these untrained speakers out there, billions of them, interacting with other |
| 0:57.3 | untrained speakers, and you see the results, not only in all of the interpersonal tangles |
| 1:02.3 | in which we find ourselves on the daily, but also on a macro scale in the political and |
| 1:09.0 | geopolitical morass that is playing out on our screens. |
| 1:13.1 | It's babble. |
| 1:14.4 | So today, I'm going to play you a conversation I recently had on the subject of conversation. |
| 1:20.0 | Actually, in this conversation, I am the interviewee. |
| 1:22.5 | I recently went on a podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart. |
| 1:26.9 | It's hosted by Matt Abrams, who is a senior lecturer of |
| 1:30.5 | Strategic Communication at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. By the way, if you want to learn |
| 1:34.8 | more about Matt and his show, I have put a link in the show notes. Before we dive in, just a reminder |
| 1:40.1 | that if you sign up over at Dan Harris.com com you now get bespoke guided meditations that come with |
| 1:45.8 | all of our monday wednesday episodes you also get to come to our weekly live meditation and |
| 1:50.8 | q and a sessions we do these every tuesday at four the next one is on october 24th and features |
| 1:56.2 | our teacher of the month seven a salasi one final thing to say very quickly before we dive in. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from 10% Media, LLC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of 10% Media, LLC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.