“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.”

This book is one part Meditation how to, one part road trip, one part Dan Harris being cantankerous and introspective and just very frank about his own life. I featured it on my podcast “Advice from the Cheerbrarian” in the episode titled “The Power of Yes (Part 3) – Give meditation a whirl: how meditation has helped me and might help you.” Juuust had to get that icky self-promotion outta the way. And now onto the book!

Firstly, who is Dan Harris? You may have heard of him. He is a journalist who very famously in the early 2000s had a panic attack live on air on Good Morning America. He had been experiencing a period of depression and had PTSD from some of the work he’d done in the field, and to top it all off, he also had a raging cocaine habit. All of that manifested together into this panic attack, which left him questioning where his choices had led him and looking for answers on how he could be different, which led him to mindfulness and meditation, and he is now a wellknown advocate of meditation. His first book was called 10% Happier by Dan Harris, and he was a founding member of the Happier app, which provides guided meditations. I’m a BIG fan of his work and similarly named podcast. What I like about him is that he was a regular person who was having a tough time in his life and then turned to meditation, with a huge chip on his shoulder, anticipating on the front end that it wasn’t for him. And I can totally relate to that!

But now meditation is part of his daily life, and in many ways, I still think he is a fidgety skeptic, which makes the title of his second book even more appropros. This book is written in tandem with Jeff Warren, a meditation teacher, as they go on an 11-day bus trip to spread the good word of meditation. They meet with, Dan’s former co-workers at Good Morning America, celebrities, military officials, and people just looking to find some peace in life.

What’s great about this book is number one, you’ve got these fun vignettes from this travel. But also, they examine and work to debunk seven common obstacles to meditation, but in a friendly way. They aren’t here to tell anyone that they are wrong, but rather here are common things that people say are difficult and here’s some information that may help.

The seven obstacles are:

1. I can’t do this.
2. I don’t have time for this.
3. People might think I’m weird.
4. Meditation is self-indulgent.
5. Pandora’s Box (which is them talking about people who are like, I’m afraid to look inside, I’m afraid to kind of know what’s going on).
6. If I get too happy, I might lose my edge.
7. “Blank” is my meditation.

The book follows their bus journey, and reframes and tells the story of their trip as they address these obstacles; throughout it are sprinkled actual meditation practices you can do. This is moreso a book that you live and learn with, versus something you should sit and read cover to cover. I had it both on audio, and snagged the physical book from the library. I’m going to buy a copy because I’m going to go back to this book a lot. It’s a great tool, almost a beginner’s toolkit for mediatation.

If you follow me in social media, I share a lot of his stuff because he’s got a lot of wisdom and a lot of things that are helpful to me. So thank you for coming to my Ted Talk on meditation, aka, my review of this book.