What if the toughest boss you’ve ever had is the voice inside your own head?
Think about it. That voice wakes you up at 3 a.m. to remind you about the invoice you forgot. It replays the argument you lost last Tuesday. It tells you the deal is dead before you even pick up the phone. It critiques your haircut, your parenting, your golf swing, and your last decision. And it never takes a day off.
Dan Harris has a name for that voice. I can’t print it in a family column.
This week’s book is 10% Happier by Dan Harris. And I’ll tell you right now, I read it twice. Not because I missed something the first time. Because I didn’t want to leave.
The Algorithm Knows Me Better Than I Do
People always ask me how I pick my books. Sometimes it’s a buddy who won’t stop talking about something he read. Sometimes it’s Audible. And I’ll be honest, their algorithm is scary good. It knows what I want before I do.
I was all set to start Siddhartha. Cued up. Ready to go. Then Audible slid Dan’s book in front of me like a waiter with the dessert tray.
Siddhartha could wait.
And here’s the funny part. Harris ends up talking about the Buddha in this book. Siddhartha himself. The original. The OG of sitting still. So I didn’t skip Siddhartha after all. I just took the scenic route to get there. And guess what’s on deck this week.
I Didn’t Sign Up for This
I did not pick this book up thinking I was getting a lesson in meditation. I figured I was getting a news anchor’s memoir. Some war stories. Some behind the scenes at ABC. Maybe a little drama.
And I got that. Harris had a full blown panic attack live on Good Morning America. Millions of people watching. Imagine locking up on the biggest stage of your career while the whole country eats their cereal.
What I didn’t see coming was where that moment took him. Self help gurus. Spiritual teachers. Scientists. And eventually, a meditation cushion.
Along the way, the guy is funny. Laugh out loud funny. His stories about working under Peter Jennings are pure gold. Picture the most demanding boss you’ve ever had, then give him a nightly audience of millions and a red pen. Harris tells those stories with the timing of a stand up comic. And the stories about him and his wife? Classic. Every married man reading this book is going to nod along and probably hide the page from his spouse.
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Turns out you can’t judge it by its author either. A cynical TV reporter is the last guy I expected to sell me on sitting still. Which is exactly why it worked.
The Skeptic’s Guide to Sitting Still
Here’s what makes this book different. Harris doesn’t show up to meditation in robes burning incense. He shows up like a reporter. Arms crossed. Eyebrow up. Prove it.
That’s my kind of guy.
He’s not promising you’ll float off the ground or find inner peace by Thursday. He’s promising 10 percent. That’s it. Ten percent happier. Ten percent less reactive. Ten percent better at catching yourself before you say the dumb thing.
Now put on your business hat. If somebody offered me a 10 percent improvement on everything I do, every day, for the rest of my life, I’d sign before they finished the sentence. Compound that over a year. Over ten years. That’s not a small number. That’s a different life.
And meditation works like anything else worth getting good at. Nobody picks up a squeegee for the first time and leaves a streak free window. You get better by showing up. The more you put in, the more depth you get out.
4 A.M. and a Brain That Won’t Shut Up
Let me tell you how I got here.
About six months ago, I started meditating. Or at least I attempted to. Let’s call it what it was.
I don’t own an alarm clock. Don’t need one. My eyes pop open at 4 a.m. If I’m lucky, I sleep in until 5. By the time most people are crawling out of bed and fighting their way out of the fog, I’m a solid four hours ahead of them. That’s my time. Nobody calling. Nobody texting. No fires to put out.
I use it. I stretch. Then I think.
And that’s the problem. A guy like me has a brain that does not shut down. Ever. It’s my superpower. It’s also my curse. Pick whichever one you like. The same engine that helps me build a business also wants to run at full throttle at 4:15 in the morning while I’m trying to touch my toes.
So I figured, why not meditate? I’ve already got the quiet. I’ve already got the time. Let’s see what happens.
Here’s what happened. It calms you down. Plain and simple. It lets you organize your thoughts instead of letting them organize you. It’s like walking into a garage where every tool is thrown on the floor and finally hanging them back on the pegboard. Same tools. Way more useful.
And it gives you room to reflect on what you’re really searching for deep down. Not the next deal. Not the next location. The bigger stuff.
I get a lot done. Anybody who knows me knows that. But getting stuff done and knowing why you’re doing it are two different things. Meditation is where I go to work on the second one.
Ten Days of Silence
Now let’s talk about the retreat.
Harris goes to a silent meditation retreat. Ten days. No talking. No small talk. No distractions. Just you, a cushion, and that voice in your head with nowhere left to hide.
My first reaction reading it? Cold sweat. Ten days without talking? For a guy like me, that sounds like a hostage situation.
Then I sat with it. Pun intended.
And you know what? Heck yeah, I’d go.
The silence would probably do me good. The business runs without me. That’s the whole point of building a real company instead of buying yourself a job. It would survive a week or two just fine.
And being alone with my own head for ten days? Maybe that’s exactly what I need. Maybe it’s what most of us need. We spend our whole lives running from that voice with podcasts, phones, meetings, and noise. At some point you have to sit down and have the conversation.
That’s what makes Harris so good. He describes the whole experience. The boredom. The frustration. The moments he wanted to quit. The breakthroughs. And he’s funny as heck the entire time. He tells it so honestly that you feel like you’re sitting on the cushion next to him. Your legs go numb just reading it.
Hippies, Gurus, and Empire Builders
Let’s be real for a second.
When most of us hear “meditation,” we picture hippies, crystals, and some guy named Moonbeam telling you to breathe in the universe. You raise an eyebrow and wonder how they got so weird.
But here’s the thing. They’re probably looking at guys like me thinking the exact same thing. A bunch of conservative task masters building empires and calling it the peak of success. Up at 4 a.m. Grinding. Scaling. Never satisfied.
Maybe both sides have something to learn.
Harris is the bridge. He’s an ambitious, competitive guy from a cutthroat industry who figured out that sitting still didn’t make him softer. It made him sharper.
We’re All Fighting the Same Fight
This is the part that grabbed me. Harris talks about his struggles the same way all of us think about the stuff that bugs us day to day. The worry. The stress. The anger. The voice.
Everybody is fighting it. Some people just know how to handle it better than others.
And the rest of us? We need help. Harris lays it out for you. No fluff. No guru talk. Plenty of laughs along the way.
The older you get, the more you start asking the big questions. Who am I? What do I actually want out of this life? You can ignore those questions for a while. Stay busy. Stay loud. But they don’t go away. They just wait for you at 4 a.m.
So ask yourself. How much better would your business run if you reacted 10 percent less? Your marriage? Your crew? Your kids?
You’d be better off. And so would everyone around you.
The Golden Squeegee Rating
I’m giving 10% Happier 4.5 Golden Squeegees.
My only knock? It’s not long enough. Around 200 pages. Now, 200 pages is perfect if you’re the guy who reads two books a year because his buddy bet him a beer and a plate of wings he couldn’t finish one. But that’s beside the point. When a book is this good, you don’t want it to end. If it was 500 pages, I’d still have read it twice.
This book has more nuggets than a California gold mine. Great personal stories. Real insight. Real humor. And a practice you can start tonight. Or tomorrow at 4 a.m. if you want to join me.
We’re all wrestling with our own feelings and beliefs. We’re all trying to figure out how to keep it all together. Dan puts it in a way that’s fun, relatable, and witty. He’s a good guy with great insight. When you finish the book, go check out his podcast too.
Pick it up. Read it. Then read it again. Get your laugh on and start working on yourself. Because 10% Happier will help you with the person you’re hardest on.
Yourself.
You’ll thank me later.
Next week, I’m finally diving into Siddhartha. Stay tuned.
Follow my journey at gabesalinas.com, subscribe on Substack, and connect with me on social media.
Keep Shining,
Gabe
