
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics
A 10% Happier How-to Book
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Narrated by:
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Dan Harris
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Jeffrey Warren
About this listen
This book will get you to meditate. Minus the pan flutes.
ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play Ultimate Frisbee, and use the word namaste without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to embrace a practice he'd long considered ridiculous. Harris discovered that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him significantly less annoying. He wrote about his experiences in the bracingly candid and extremely funny memoir 10% Happier, which became a number one New York Times best seller and landed Harris in the entirely unexpected position of being one of meditation's most vocal public proponents.
Here's what he's fixated on now: Science suggests that meditation can lower blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain, among numerous other benefits. And yet there are millions of people who want to meditate but aren't actually practicing. What's holding them back? In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris and his friend Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and "Meditation MacGyver", embark on a cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating. They rent a rock-star tour bus (whose previous occupants were Parliament Funkadelic) and travel across 18 states, talking to scores of would-be meditators - including parents, military cadets, police officers, and even a few celebrities. They create a taxonomy of the most common issues ("I suck at this", "I don't have the time", etc.) and offer up science-based life hacks to help people overcome them.
The book is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions. You'll also get access to the 10% Happier app, where you can listen for free to guided audio versions of all the meditations in the book. Amid it all unspools the strange and hilarious story of what happens when a congenitally sarcastic, type-A journalist and a groovy Canadian mystic embark on an epic road trip into America's neurotic underbelly as well as their own.
Includes two bonus guided meditations.
©2017 Dan Harris, Carlye Adler, Jeffrey Warren (P)2017 Random House AudioEditorial reviews
Editors Select, December 2017
As its title so brilliantly conveys, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics is 100 percent for you if you've considered meditation but are put off by the crystals-and-incense connotations. With laugh-out-loud humor and real-life scenarios, Harris deftly defuses woo-woo preconceptions. A spin-off of his wildly popular 10% Happier, this book is informed by his own transformation from meditation naysayer to eight-years-strong practitioner - as well as the neuroscience of how it literally rewires your brain for self-awareness, compassion, and resiliency. Harris quells concerns that meditating will make you a "lifeless blob" doormat and gives actionable, practicable ways to incorporate it in your life. You'll be on a path to enlightenment - minus the patchouli - before you can even utter "be here now." —Courtney, Audible Editor
Critic reviews
"If you're intrigued by meditation but don't know how to begin - or you've benefited from meditation in the past but need help to get started again, Dan Harris has written the book for you. Well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice, it's also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner." (Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project)
"The ABC News anchor, a 'defender of worrying' who once had an anxiety attack on air, offers a hilarious and stirring account of his two-steps-forward-one-step-back campaign to sort 'useless rumination' from 'constructive anguish' via mindfulness, along with invaluable suggestions for following in his footsteps." (O: The Oprah Magazine)
"If your mind has a mind of its own, this is the book for you! With humor, generosity, and devastating candor, Dan Harris makes meditation make sense. This is news we can all use." (Mark Epstein, MD, author of Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself and Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart)
Featured Article: Beginners Meditation Audiobooks
The benefits of meditation range from the mental to the physical and everything in between. If you want to start meditating but don't know where to begin, we have you covered. This selection of audiobooks will answer your questions, assuage your fears, and get you ready to dive into the ancient practice. Our picks have one shared message: meditation is whatever you need it to be. There are no hard-and-fast rules, no fancy equipment needed. All you need is the desire to begin your journey to inner peace. Each of these listens focuses on a different element to the practice—find the one that speaks to you.
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