It's a familiar refrain: "I wish I could meditate, I know it's good for you, but my mind is just too busy."
ABC News anchor Dan Harris has something to say to all of these people: "Welcome to the human condition. This is the way all of our minds operate."
Harris, who is an anchor for Nightline and co-anchor for the weekend edition of Good Morning America, didn't come to this realization overnight. A self-described "Type-A striver," Harris was at the height of his career when he experienced a dramatic wake-up call: an on-air panic attack that forced him to quit his broadcast mid-sentence.
Harris started seeing a psychiatrist and realized that his early days as a war reporter in the Middle East got him hooked on adrenaline, which ultimately led him to self-medicate.
Around the same time, Harris was asked to cover faith and spirituality for ABC News. It was then that he encountered a book by spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle about the voice in our heads that is constantly judging, commenting and criticizing. The solution to the tyranny of that voice? Meditation.
"Meditation really helps me stay on task, and five-to-10 minutes a day is enough to change your relationship to the voice in your head," Harris said. "And that changes your life."
Harris has been meditating for over six years. He's used his mindfulness practice to improve his career, and to be more present in his daily life and with his family. It even inspired his memoir 10% Happier, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller, and a companion meditation app of the same name.
Check out the video above to learn more about how meditation has changed Harris's life. The video is the second episode of Pioneers, a new HuffPost Originals series that profiles leaders in various industries who have redefined success by making it their mission to live more meaningful and less stressful lives.
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