The Best Way To Feel Calm (Is to Not Try To Feel Calm)
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Dan takes live questions from subscribers to the 10% with Dan Harris app. Topics include: meditating through grief and serious emotional pain, the hidden addiction to feeling calm during meditation, how to find focus and concentration without straining so hard you get a headache, whether guided meditations are just "training wheels," and how to practice when ADHD or restlessness makes sitting still feel impossible.
Throughout, Dan returns to a central theme: the point of meditation isn't to feel any particular way — it's to relate differently to whatever is already there. To join the live Tuesday sessions, sign up for a free 14-day trial at danharris.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:18.2 | Hello, everybody. How we doing? So today I'm going to talk about a bunch of stuff. How to meditate when you're dealing with serious emotional pain, the deeply unhelpful addiction that many of us have to feeling calm in meditation. Feeling calm is not the point. How to achieve focus and concentration without straining so hard that you give yourself a headache, |
| 0:41.9 | what to do when you feel too physically restless to meditate, and much more. |
| 0:47.9 | What you're about to hear is a recording of a live session where I take questions from subscribers to my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. |
| 0:50.7 | We do these live sessions every Tuesday at 4. |
| 0:52.7 | If you want to join us, you can sign up over at Danharris.com. We do these live sessions every Tuesday at four. If you want to join us, you can sign up over |
| 0:54.8 | at Danharris.com. We always start these sessions with a guided meditation, but I'm going to cut |
| 1:00.1 | the meditation out of this episode so we can get straight to the burning questions. One bit of |
| 1:04.8 | context before we dive in here. At the very top, you're going to hear me reference something |
| 1:09.1 | that I said during the guided meditation. |
| 1:12.3 | It's a really interesting technique that I actually lifted from a great meditation teacher named Henry Shookman. |
| 1:19.6 | Henry recommends that we look for the part of ourselves that's trying to hold it all together, the little CEO or inner hall monitor, it can be very poignant and powerful to look for this part of yourself. |
| 1:32.8 | Anyway, keep that in mind when you hear me reference it. |
| 1:36.5 | Okay, we'll get started with some Q&A right after this. |
| 1:42.2 | Just to say a thing about what I did there at the end, I just kind of ad lib that, the Henry |
| 1:46.8 | Shookman thing about looking for the sense of yourself, the part that's trying to keep our shit |
| 1:52.1 | together all the time. |
| 1:53.4 | It's very poignant, actually, when you think about it, or at least for me. |
| 1:56.5 | This goes to a question that I get in pretty much every session, which is this idea of non-duality |
| 2:02.7 | or the self-being an illusion, it's breaking my brain, Dan, help me. And I always say, like, |
| 2:07.6 | I get it. It's supposed to break your brain. And don't worry if you don't understand it at all. |
| 2:11.7 | That's totally fine. I didn't for a long time. And even now, only episodically. But I henry's idea of just looking for this sense this |
... |
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