had a panic attack on live television. I was doing a job that I'd done many times before

which was filling in as the news reader on Good Morning America. The job basically entails

coming on at the top of each hour and reading a series of headlines to the audience, bringing

them up to date on the news of the day. And I was happy and excited to be there. I had

no way to foresee what was about to happen. As soon as the anchors tossed it over to me

I was in the middle of the first story and I was overtaken by this irresistible bolt

of fear. My heart started racing, my palms were sweating, my mouth dried up and my lungs

seized up. And I was simply unable to breathe.

You can see it and hear it on the tape. I'm gasping for air. It would have gotten a lot

worse, it would have become something like the famous clip from Broadcast News where

Albert Brooks breaks out in flop sweat except for I did something halfway through my newscast

I'd never done before which is I quit. I gave up. I punted. I sent it back to the main hosts

of the show. What I said was, "Back to you Robin and Charlie." But it was actually Diane

Sawyer and Charlie who were anchoring and in my panic I was unable to remember that.

And you can see that actually in an absurd little crescendo roll video of Harry Potter

which was the next story I was supposed to read that the control room thought I was going

to read but I was unable to do so.

And in the moments afterwards I realized that I'd had a panic attack. And I was deeply,

deeply embarrassed. It wasn't until later that I learned what caused it. I went to see

a doctor who is an expert in panic and he asked me a series of questions, one of which

was do you do drugs. And I sheepishly said, yes, I do. And he leaned back in his chair

and said, "Mystery solved." The backstory is I got myself into trouble basically because

of a desire to do great at my job which is something I think a lot of people can relate

to. You might call it ambition or just a drive for excellence and being in love with my job.

I got to ABC News when I was 28 years old. And if you look at the pictures I look like

I'm barely post pubescent. And I was working with these giants like Diane Sawyer and Peter

Jennings and Charlie Gibson and Ted Koppel and I was keenly aware of how green I was,

especially when compared to these famous people I had been watching on television since I

was a kid.

And my way of coping with that was to become a workaholic. And I threw myself into the

job and after 9/11 I volunteered and spent many years overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan

and the Middle East. And when I came home from that I developed a depression and I self-medicated

with recreational drugs which was a toweringly stupid move on my part. And even though I

wasn't doing it when I was working and definitely not when I was on the air, I learned from

my doctor in his office after my panic attack that the drugs I was taking, cocaine and ecstasy

raised the level of adrenalin in your brain and basically guaranteed that I had the panic

attack. So that moment in the doctor's office when he explained to me what a moron I'd been,

I knew I had to make some changes in my life. And that set me off on a strange little unplanned

journey that I talk about in my book, 10% Happier.

Coincidentally at around the same time my boss at the time, Peter Jennings, had assigned

me to cover religion for ABC News, a job I didn't want because I had been raised in a

very secular environment. My parents were both scientists. And I tried to tell him I

didn't want to do it and he told me, "Shut up kid, you're gonna do it." So I ended up

spending many years meeting people of faith and it really changed my view of the world

and it showed me the value of having a view of the world that is larger than your own

narrow self-interest.

I read a book by a self-help guru by the name of Eckhart Tolle. He has sold millions of

books. I had never heard of him. A producer recommended I read the book because she thought

maybe it would be a good story. So I read the book and at first I thought it was irredeemable

garbage, nonsense. There's a lot of grandiose language in there and pseudoscience and over

promising about how this book is gonna change your life. But then I stumbled upon this diagnosis

of the human condition that I'd never heard before. Eckhart Tolle says we all have a voice

in our head. He's not talking about hearing voices in the schizophrenic sense. He's talking

about our inner narrator, the thing that wakes us up in the morning and yammers at us all

day long. It's an unpleasant stew of negative, repetitive, ceaselessly self-referential thoughts

constantly judging, wanting, not wanting, comparing ourselves to other people, casting

forward into an imagined future, remembering an idealized past as opposed to being where

you are right now.

And I thought yeah, that describes me. In fact, that voice pretty much is responsible

for all the things that I'm most ashamed of in my life including that panic attack in

front of millions of people. And so I was completely captivated by this description

of the human condition and I went and met Eckhart Tolle and I found him to be almost

exactly the same in person as he is on the page which is he's half incredibly interesting

and incisive and half deeply, deeply confusing. So unsatisfied by that encounter I then went

off and met a bunch of other self-help gurus who also left me confused. Many of them left

me mildly infuriated because they were full of a word that starts with S and ends with

T. And my wife at some point after hearing me yammer on about Eckhart Tolle and the like

for many, many weeks gave me a gift. She gave me a book by a guy named Dr. Mark Epstein

who's a psychiatrist in New York City who writes about the overlap between psychiatry

and Buddhism.

And I realized when I read this book that all of the smartest stuff in Eckhart Tolle's

book was actually taken pretty much from the Buddha. And unlike Eckhart Tolle the Buddhists

have some actionable advice for dealing with the voice in your head. The problem was I

didn't want to do it. Their advice is to meditate which I always thought was uniquely ridiculous

and only for people who live in yurts and are really into aromatherapy and collect crystals,

et cetera, et cetera, and wear little cymbals on their hands. But, in fact, as I learned

there's an enormous amount of science that says that meditation is a simple brain exercise

that can have an extraordinary impact on your brain and your body. It can lower your blood

pressure, boost your immune system and literally rewire key parts of your brain that have to

do with self-awareness, compassion and stress. So when I heard that I decided to give it

a shot.

So now I find myself in this funny position. I always thought that meditation was uniquely

ridiculous. Now I'm a daily meditator and, even worse, I'm a public evangelist for meditation.

What I like to say though is it's not gonna solve all of your problems. All those self-help

gurus who tell you that you can magically cure everything in your life through the power

of positive thinking -- that's baloney. It's not gonna happen. It's demonstrably untrue

and possibly even a damaging message to send.

However, meditation is a scientifically tested simple thing you can do every day that will

make you significantly happier. I called the book 10% Happier for a couple of reasons.

One, I wanted to counter-program against the over-promising of the self-help gurus. But

also it's -- I think we're ready for a more mature, realistic dialogue about happiness.

And nothing's gonna solve all of your problems but meditation can change the relationship

between you and that voice in your head which is responsible for most of the things you're

probably most embarrassed about in your life.