Dan Harris on “Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A How-To Guide” at SXSW 2018 [Video]

In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A How-To Guide at SXSW 2018, ABC News anchor Dan Harris gives a thoughtful presentation on the various benefits of a personal meditation practice. Utilizing video clips from his career and travels promoting meditation, Harris shares conversations with many ‘fidgety skeptics’ about their reservations with meditation and addresses their concerns to the SXSW audience.

"Gratitude, patience, happiness, compassion...these are not factory settings that you can’t tinker with, these are skills that you can work on."

During the Featured Session, Harris focuses on the misconceptions surrounding meditation that discourage people from trying to start a personal practice. These include time commitment, the effect on personality, the amount of experience it requires to reap benefits, and more. Harris also addresses the many misconceptions about supposed benefits of meditation that make the practice seem unrealistic - namely that it can fix all of your mental troubles and that you will be able to clear your mind of all thought. By grounding the practice in a more realistic conversation, Harris is able to appeal to skeptical people that may have been alienated by conversations about mediation in the past.

"The goal of meditation is not to clear your mind, that’s impossible unless you are enlightened or you have died. The goal of meditation is to focus your mind for a few nanoseconds at a time...and when you get distracted, which you will over and over and over again, you just start again."

Watch the video above for the full 2018 SXSW Featured Session, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A How-To Guide, where ABC News anchor Dan Harris discusses the benefits of meditation and how even the busiest, and most skeptical, person can find the time and space in their life for these practices. Learn from a diverse group of visionaries at SXSW — browse more 2018 Keynotes, Featured Sessions, Red Carpets, and Q&As on our YouTube Channel.

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Dan Harris - Photo by Amy E. Price