From ABC, this is the 10 percent happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. We've backed away from celebrity interviews on this show of late because we got a lot of feedback from listeners saying they were having trouble relating to some of our more famous interviewees. I am confident that this is not going to be the case with today's guest. Brett Eldridge may be a big country star six number one hits, but he is no dilatant when it comes to tackling mental health challenges.

You're about to listen to somebody who is truly digging in and doing the work by way of background. I had never personally been a big country fan, but I met Bret when he came on the show a few years ago to talk about his onstage panic attacks and general anxiety. And after that, we struck up a friendship. And I also really started to like his music. I've been so impressed by the rigor with which he has attacked his mental well-being.

And in this interview, he really goes there speaking in utterly unguarded ways about how ambition and perfectionism have fueled his anxiety, as well as some of his romantic challenges, describing a special kind of therapy designed to address his panic attacks and holding forth on the impact that meditation and just loosening up in general have had on his creativity, as evidenced by his new album, which is called Sunday Drive.

Before we get to Bret, quick reminder, our free election sanity meditation challenge starts inside the 10 percent happier app next week on Tuesday, October 27th. Download the 10 percent happier app today and join us for the challenge. We're really excited about this thing. We really put a lot of work into it. And by we I mean pretty much everybody else but me. We designed specifically to help you face the commotion of the current election without getting burned out.

So download the app today. We'll see in the challenge. OK, now here we go with my friend Brett Eldridge. Very nice to see you again, thanks for making time. Good to see you, man. Big country star on the show. I love it. I told you this. I was texting with you a couple of weeks ago, and I told you that our nanny, my son, who, you know, his nanny, Eleanor, who you've met.

I walk into the kitchen in our house all the time. And who's coming out of Alexa? Brett Eldridge.

Yes. Well, you know, I really appreciate and I got to meet her and was just really impressed. And she's such a sweetheart, so I appreciate her. Still holding strong as a fan. That's the message.

She's number one. She's going to be so mad at me when I go downstairs after this for dinner and tell her that I talk to you about without including her. I will. Eleanor and my son and wife and I went to see Brett's Christmas show last year pre covid, and it was awesome. And we got to say hello.

So the last time you were on this show, you were really candid about some of the panic and anxiety issues that you've struggled with, such as? You know, I've struggled with them, too. And you and I have spoken about them both publicly and privately. So I'm just curious to check in with you now. What's new on that front? How are things going?

Yeah, it's trying to figure out how along with that was we did our first podcast together maybe a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, a lot has happened since then. I was. At that point, starting to become aware of the things that were causing me to be some of the ways of, you know, with my anxieties because I mean, that was I had to figure it out, but I was starting to at least get some good awareness of what would put me in these situations in the patterns, you know, because in our last hour, I kind of talked about how I dealt with anxieties and kind of just worst case scenario of my kind of guy through the years.

And I really did. A lot of it came from the pressures of having to deliver every single time and be perfect, like I was in perfection. And that started to eat me alive. I would wake up in the morning. I was sleeping maybe an hour or a night, not because I wasn't getting to bed at a good time. I just wasn't. I was just tossing and turning and I was riding on a bus down a highway at times, and that was tough.

So all together. And then I would I would sit in the back of the bus and I would sit in the closet on the back of the bus, like this little closet, like almost just kind of waiting for the day, waiting for the moment where I was going to take the stage. And it was just brutal time. Then I got to the point where I would almost pass out before I walk on stage, and then I'll be putting so much pressure on myself from my voice.

And by the way, nobody knew this, which was crazy. No one even knew. Hardly anybody knew. And then I would go on stage and start seeing stars lose my breath. I find a breath, you know, just a bad place. And then I got tired of that and kind of decided to start my journey to try to figure out how to deal with that. And since then, since two years ago, I and I was already on that path.

Since two years ago we were talking and I started to really getting in a better place. But then I decided to take the pressures so far back to I wanted to make a really special record. I want to change several things in my professional life. So I changed a lot of things and I got off social media. I got a flip phone.

You meaning no more smartphone? It's just a flip phone. Yeah, I was just a flip phone.

I had an iPad for like email and stuff a little bit, but it's like I was walking down the street with my iPad, like trying to figure out. So I hardly would ever use that because I just found it easier to use the phone. So I was off the grid in a major way and I said, I'm going to do this. I'm a go off the grid for however long it takes me to figure out kind of the heart and soul of who I am.

I was telling you earlier, like a two thousand a.m. record deal and I've never stopped since then. I've had an incredible career up to this point. But I felt like, man, I've left out a lot of myself through this whole journey I have left out. I've not allowed myself to feel a lot of things. I'm not dealt with a lot of things that I could have because I was just gone. I was just, you know, here's the next stage or I just got to number one song.

What's the next one? I can figure out a way to just focus on that and not focus on the other stuff. And that started eating me alive. So I stepped away. So what do I really want in this or allow me to do it to get off the grid? And it was really surprising. And I actually heard one of your podcast and Kyle Newport's book, Digital Minimalism, which was something I was getting up on some of the literature about really how to because I was on social media all the time, like they were calling me the Snapchat King.

And like I was like the guy, you know, for country music. And really I was the guy that was I would wake up and do bedhead jams where my hair was all messed up and I'd seen my phone every morning. Then I had all this pressure from doing that and I was checking all the time make sure everybody was liking it. And then if somebody was really mad, if I didn't do it one day, that would eat me alive that I wasn't doing.

Then I started to realize I got to just step away from social media for a while. That's not what I want. I had my dog on my social media all the time, and then it became a thing where my dog was on there all the time. If you will get mad if I didn't bring him on stage and it was just this endless cycle of things where I was like, I'm putting all these pressures on myself. I don't want a dog that's a influencer on Instagram.

I don't to be my dog. You're that's supposed to be famous, you know. I mean, it was a great ride with that, but it was like, I want to have a dog to be able to come home and just that's the dog that loves me unconditionally. And that's for me, that moment for me. And so I just took all those things out of the picture and took all those pressures. And I started feeling a lot of things.

And I was going to therapy during this. I'm just really working on myself in that process of turning down the volume, turning down the kind of going for a long walk in the woods. You know, I found not only was I starting to feel things and starting to feel kind of connection myself a lot more, I was starting to get all these melodies and these lyrics and these emotions pouring out. And that way it was like my true self of the music that I want to create was really starting to show up and not to just have this music be something that I had to run it by a bunch of people to say, is this cool?

Because the moment you start getting a bunch of opinions on it, then you might get yourself away from what you're going after. And so I was just me and my manager going through music. I was working on myself and I would just keep sending songs I recorded on my. And I was just getting this profoundly different sound of I truly feel what is fully coming out of my heart and the person that I am, because I was really digging deep on those emotions and letting them show up.

And then so I think that was kind of where I've been since then. And now, you know, I'm in a much better place than, of course, a pandemic came along and all sorts of other things in our world where it's brought up tough times for all that. But I feel like I've had the tools, a lot better awareness to at least be able to take a better step forward and kind of feel things a little better. I have my bad days still, but I'm in a much better place and I'm optimistic that we'll get to play music again.

And I put out an album in the middle of a pandemic, which was really something I never thought I would do. But all these things aside, you know, I'm grateful to be here and to be able to still do it and hopefully to get some music out there that gives people hope and lets them put some things in life into perspective. And that's what I want to do with my music. So that's where I'm at. I have a million questions about the music and the new record and the different approach you took to it, the new record, Sunday Drive.

But let me just stay on the line, if you don't mind, and you can bet this away if you do mind. But on the panic slash anxiety tip, you said you have some bad days still. What does that look like and how do you deal with it now as opposed to like the sitting in the closet method you were using years ago?

There's a couple of things that I do with. Look, I have to learn fear that I found and I've told you about before, probably, but I'm not afraid to talk about it at all. Long story short, I was in an interview in Scotland before kind of really taking this whole journey. It was a year, a year and a half ago or two. I was in an interview up on stage. I think there was an artist before me interviewing.

I was jet lagged as you as much as I possibly could have been. I was drinking a lot of coffee. I was wearing a really heavy jacket because I just got in Amsterdam and I thought it was cool. So I was wearing that and but it would look cool and I thought it wasn't that hot. So I go in there. So anyways, I was going to go to this interview in front of a bunch of people and I'm pretty good at interviewing and like I always felt pretty comfortable in that kind of a shy guy, but I feel pretty good in interviews.

Like I can turn that part of myself on and turn it off when I get off stage and be kind of an introverted person. But I can kind of get lit up and go in front of people and kind of entertain. And I enjoy it. While I got up on stage in the middle of interview, there's a small crowd in front of me and I, the guys asking me a question in Austin. I just get a massive panic attack on stage in front of all these all these people, meaning maybe one hundred people.

And for me, it was something I never I've had a panic attacks, which usually like in the middle of the night or, I don't know, just in different situations, but never in front of people like that. And so I was I was having that jacket. So, of course, I'm sweating like crazy. My heart's racing like crazy. I get nauseous. I think I might throw up in front of all these people. And then I the guy asked me a question like, when you really want to be that song, how long was it between the moment you got the idea and when you actually wrote it?

And I had a whole story about it and he asked me that and I was like, oh, my God, I'm a throw up on the throw up throw, which is like completely massive nightmare in my head.

I thought I throw up and all these people I somehow like kind of just answer something and no one realizes, no one knows. I had probably the worst moment of my life or one of them in front of all these people. I stumbled through it and I walk offstage and then I, you know, I'm out of it. But then I kind of have it living on, you know, and the next couple of shows and after that and it kind of goes into my shows.

And so fast for all this stuff goes on. I've had to learn now because when I get in, even in interviews like you, me right now, I'm fine right now, but I'll still feel it a little bit. I've had some very popular TV shows where I had a couple of these because my brain learned that I'm supposed to be afraid of that, like, you know, and all sudden the anchors, these scary anchors start walking towards me, even though even though I knew these people very well and their friends would, all sudden the pressure was on me all sudden.

And then it would it my mind remembered that. And so for me, that's the one thing that I'm working on now is because I still get it, even if it's an interview that maybe no one's ever going to hear or something when all of a sudden the pressure was on me also. Now that learned would come up. And so I've had to really have exposure. I've started to have tried to learn things where I had to show up and do interviews and like set up lights and have somebody ask me questions.

And I'll give me, like, fake interviews. Like exposure therapy. Yes. It's like cognitive behavioral therapy. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the main thing I've had to struggle with from then. And I'm not afraid to say even if I still have it, I don't care if people know that I had one on TV. You know, it's such a frightening thing to you in your mind. But you also I had to my therapist told me to watch it because he's like I watch it.

I want to never even know. It's like, what in your mind? It was like you feel this shame and guilt that you had that scary thing happen to you and then you watch like I wasn't that big of a deal at all. Anyway, it was it'd be a good story. I mean, you know, it's like, what's the worst thing? So I've you know, I've dealt with that. And and so that's one of the main things I work on now.

And I've gotten better with it. I'm not perfect yet, but I know I'll get to the point where it's, you know, back to where I was just taken to work with that. And then on my bad days during all this, I've found I'll get some pretty down walls during this time, which I think a lot of us can relate to that anxious moments, moments where I search for a connection a lot through devices, through, you know, other things which I try to put my phone on a time limit.

I still have it where I'm like, I wish I saw that flip phone. And so I find myself searching for a connection because there's such a feeling of loneliness with what's going on in this world and at times where you feel at lost and helpless at times. And and so I felt some of those heavy down moments. And what's helped me really is forcing myself out of their comfort zone of seeing with it on my own. And I have to get active.

I have to get out. I have to usually if I get on the phone with a friend or if I go on a hike or something like that, that's helped me. But yeah, those are the kind of things on my heavy down days I have to. I've heard before we get out of my head and into my life and kind of get out there and not stewing it and not asking to let it be what it is, but not let it overrun me.

And it's easier said than done sometimes. Sometimes I just sit in it all day and I feel like I'm not going to get out of it. But I have learned the thing where I'm I know I am going to get out of it. That's one of the biggest things it's probably taking me a lot of years is that it's going to pass. And I used to be something that I heard people say in podcasts and different meditations or whatever. And when I first started, the reason why I got into it, but now being on the side of it and had enough of those times where I told myself, I'm never going to get out of that, it always ends up getting to a place where I have some moments of freedom to where I know.

And so that's where I try to put my focus on is this allow that to be what that is sometimes better at it than others and riding through it and being active and connecting with others in a different time where it's hard to connect with others in the same way as you're normally used to being able to.

That's helped me so interesting over the course of doing this show for years, sitting with all of these experts on happiness and, you know, meditation teachers. And just over and over and over again, what you hear shining through the data and the research on happiness is perhaps the most important variable is the quality of your relationships. Yeah. And you're just obviously when you are in one of what you called the lulls. It sounds like your instinct is to well, sometimes your instinct is to reach out to somebody else, take a hike, get on the phone, and that that is useful.

Mm hmm. It is my instinct that I've been taught. I'm good at just doing my own thing and like, I'll just go out and just to be on my own because I've been used to for so long. That's just what I've been used to doing. I get on it. I go to a hotel, I do that, then I'm in front of people and then I just go and I recluse. And then I go back out. And now so now I'm really good at that to the point where, yeah, I'm very introverted, but also I get too introverted where I just stay in and I stay in my comfort zone and then even I'm going on a hike, I'm just going by myself where I could get a friend, go walk out on a hike and do that or whatever.

And so I had to force myself to be like, I know that's going to be better for me. It doesn't mean that the Times or myself are good, because that does help me just being on my own. But I got to remind myself that this isn't always good to just go out on my own all the time. The other thing you mentioned was this exposure therapy thing for the panic, the setting up real lights and doing a fake interview, I've done a little bit of that around claustrophobia, nervous, around stage fright.

I mean, and because you're in good company or maybe bad company. But as you know, I, too, have had a pretty famous episodes of stage fright. I've been dining out on it for years now. Does that exposure therapy was setting up a fake interview? Has that worked for you? It's worked a little bit, I think I think the exposure therapy almost has been better for me to just do the interviews, whether I think I'm going to throw up or not, which is still exposure therapy.

But I really do have this. I have a big thing with nausea really kicks in for me. So then I think and then I focus on that. I had a radio interview with a really close friend of mine recently. It's a big area, but a very close friend of them. And I was sitting in front of them and in the studio and I was good. I was getting an ulcer and they did the countdown. Five, four, three, two.

One thing and we're about to go live or whatever. It nailed me, you know what I mean? But I didn't die. I didn't die from it and never have died from it. And I'm going to die from, you know what I mean? So it's like it was it was not fun necessarily. But then I got on the other side. I was like, I did it. I didn't call him and say, I can't do that.

I'm canceling. And so that's the learning experience. Something from it is going head on. And I every morning I get up, I ride on the window or the shower or whatever I write, be bold. And I put my handprint like I'm making a promise to myself to be bold and show up through all of that, you know, through those kind of moments. And just having those kind of intentions when I wake up has been logit. For me, that's been a good it's been a good thing for me, but being bold is scary as hell.

But it's also it's also a superpower. If you can get yourself the did.

I was just going to say that I when I was teaching my son who you've met, my little boy Alexander is five. I was teaching him to swim a couple of months ago and I kept saying, well, what's the definition of bravery? And I got him to be able to internalize and repeat being scared and doing it anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like I have always pences, I was a kid, I was always a little bit of a worrier.

I mean, I think now if you start like that, you know, always at the end like that, but it might be programmed into you a little bit to where you gotta get yourself in the middle of that. And I think that when I started doing the things that scare me more like I, I think I've thought about this maybe a little bit. The last one, like I went skydiving when I was really scared of heights. I was really scared of heights.

So I'm going to jump out of a plane. Still hated it. I really hated it. Like to the point where. I would definitely never do it again, but I am glad I did it, and so, you know, I've got the more I've learned that you're right with that as being brave, just showing up and being scared, because if you're not scared, you know, if you're not scaring yourself a decent amount of the time and probably that's not really doing a whole lot of exciting things, I guess not me.

Like I want to go the X Games guy that's going to go to try to do all the crazy stunts. But I mean, I feel like I'm trying to get myself to that place and I try I don't give myself enough credit for doing because I try to do a decent amount, but I'm trying to push myself to really make sure it's the same is going to be. But also if it's like I'm most likely going to be fine from this and I'm going to go for.

I love it, I don't mean this in a patronizing way, but I kind of feel just proud of you when I hear you talk about it, because you really are not shirking the work here.

There was a word you used early on in this conversation. As it pertains to your anxiety and panic that really resonated with me, and if I'm going to play armchair psychologist right now, it kind of set off my antenna a little bit and wondering whether this could be sort of a cause or a route to some of what you've experienced. The word you used was perfection.

Oh, yeah. And so I just wonder whether you think I'm on to something there in terms of that being linked to your anxiety and panic. Conservatives for me and where you are at with that now after having done a significant amount of work on it?

Yeah, I mean, the nail on the head there, I mean, perfection for me is my worst enemy and also has got me I mean, it's made me feel successful in some ways to, you know, I mean, it's like I've never reached perfection, but I have pushed myself to try to reach it at times where, you know, it made me work hard to try to get to that point. But it also warned me at the point where once I finally realized you can never reach it, I was completely burned.

And I think perfection and every single thing I do in my life from, you know, recording songs to being on stage, I mean, there's a point where I was on stage. And the biggest reason I was worried about going on stage is because I feel like I'm gifted in a way where I can sing live, like I can stand on my records a lot of time. And I've been told that a lot to where now I think, oh, I got it.

It's got to sound like the records, if not better, on stage or I'm not doing it right, you know. And so they start putting that pressure on myself. Next thing you know, I'm in the doctor's office getting the stethoscope, looking down my throat. What what's wrong? My chords. And because they're worn out, because I'm putting so much stress and everything on it. And I never really even talked a lot about that. I don't know if I've ever talked about that.

I'm not definitely not scared of that. But it was I was putting so much pressure on myself. I was so uptight. I was holding so much stress in my neck muscles, in my shoulders and everything. They're closing in on these muscles and it doesn't give them anywhere to go. So you're wearing your vocals out, like, right away. So I did like one song and I'll be wearing it out now. Some people wouldn't even always know because I'm trying to just pace it.

But in my mind, I'm still thinking on a night where I'm allowed to have your playing every single night. There are a lot of nights in a row I had to get OK with myself having times where, you know, my voice is not going to be perfect tonight or it's not going to feel amazing tonight or I'm going I'm not going to hit all the notes. It took me a long time to get to that point. Once I started to get there and I actually started to engage in the show and engage in when I was instead of just I was like holding on to the mic stand white knuckle, like trying to stay alive up there at times.

Still, no one really knew and I could still have moments of fun. But there is a period of of darkness there where I was just trying to make it through a show. And once I kind of started going on this journey and started to realize to embrace the imperfections. And that's that's some of the stuff that I love the most about live music, is that it doesn't sound just like the records or that somebody screws up and are actually human on stage.

I think that that part of the perfection that I think I'm supposed to be up there and be the perfect example of why you loved my music. And it's got to be just like that once I realize that fans don't want that. They just want you anywhere in life. People don't want you to be perfect. They just want you to be you. And once I started figuring that out, man, I started looking in the eyes of my drummer and feeling that groove a lot more and going on my guitar player and just laughing and actually feeling the joy and just that feel and connecting with the fan.

Like, I remember I was working with my when I would get in that headspace. I was working with my therapist about this and he said, go out there and actually connect with somebody that you think really in the crowd that you think really needs this show, that needs this moment, get it out of your mind and go out there. And these people are there to see you. And that's what I started to do. I started to connect with my fans wherever my head started to go to.

Oh, man. I got a lot more songs left and I'm pretty tired. Instead of just staying there and white knuckle and on the mike stand, I'm going out there and I'm reaching out and I'm connecting with some in the crowd and those things, embracing all those things and embracing the imperfections in the show and imperfections in my recording. Even this, especially with this new album and not trying to fix vocals to where? I don't know if I say that exactly right.

Even on the recording. Well, I love a lot of my favorite recordings are kind of some of the notes that they might not hear exactly on. But many feel if you have a lot more than if they were spot on sometimes. And that's where the soul is and and the music and the artist. And so that's really where I am right now. I completely got there, but I am definitely in a good spot with that. And when I get back into those patterns, that may be because you're going to have some re visits to those things a little bit from time to time.

I know that I have I have this mindset and I have the people that care about me and I have the people that just want me to be the artist and the person that I am. And if I can focus on that grounds me back to just being Bret and not, you know, the picture on the wall that you think it has to be perfect and something that you look up to, you look up to them because they're real and you relate to them.

And that's that's where I try to get. You're very tall, which forces me to look up to you and we're together, and I resent you for it.

I just have to wonder so I don't know the country world very well, and I've never admitted this to you before.

But before I met you, I never really listened to any country or nor did I like it. But then I started to like you. And then now I really like your music.

How does it go down into country world for you to be talking in the way in which you're talking like super open, super honest?

I mean, I love it. I am just floored by the honesty.

But is it risky? I hope so. I guess yes, I guess it is, but there was a point when I want to talk about it, not because I just thought, I mean, shoot, I grew up in a town of Paris, Illinois, like thinking about any kind of mental health stuff. I mean, I had an amazing childhood, amazing parents, amazing family. I've been very fortunate, but I didn't know about any of this stuff.

And for me, I kind of had to start living through a lot of tough parts of my life to start realizing what I was going through was brutal. But then I started to see it all around me and I couldn't live that way anymore of just acting like everything was amazing. Country music, artists in general. I mean, everybody is very honest. You know, a lot of small town folk, really. I mean, a lot of true, honest people.

But, you know, I think just in general and all music and all everything people are starting to speak out about it, which gives you more strength to get out there and talk. And so I want to be one of those people that is opening up a lot more about it. And because I just know how much it sucks going through it, but how much better it feels to know that there's other people going through it and that it does get better and it'll get worse a little bit, but it'll get better, you know what I mean?

It's going to be there with you. But the struggle is are are the things that have really sound cliche saying, but they're the things that have made me way stronger and way more because I became aware of them and just in support. So I guess, long story short, yeah, I just if it is a thing to be risky that I'm glad I'm taking a risk because I want to be a voice out there that helps people through it. And then one day everybody's meditate and everybody's being kinder and gentler to each other and sharing compassion and finding love and kindness for each other.

And that's a it's a long journey, but I have a little bit of voice in that. And I don't want to miss out on that. I want to help on that. So I'm glad to take the risk. And I think there are a lot of other artists that are kind of doing it as well as like I'm the first one ever. I just want to be one that does. And and I'll take that risk all day from here out and hopefully even more so as I continue to grow with my journey in it and trying to figure it out and very fortunate to make relationships like I have with you and other people that have been in the entertainment business and had their struggles and and friends that work at in banking that have had their struggles in the same way.

And, you know, I just think that it's it's really fascinating. And you start to realize that the anxieties and the struggles are the most human thing that there is. And once you see that, it gives you the power to kind of connect with a lot of people.

You mentioned meditation, and I don't want to be a meditation bully. So this is not a pass fail question here. But are you still meditating? And if so, how's it going?

Yeah, I'm a four or five. There we go. At least if I stay up late watching a movie on Friday night or something, then I throw off my routine the next day and I don't and the weekends up for like an hour or two and the same. But I do pretty good with a still and I've kind of tried to figure out the things that work better and and what don't work for me. And sometimes it's guided, sometimes it's put on a timer and listen and just kind of focus on sounds.

I'm a very feeler kind of person, sensitive person, and a lot of ways where sometimes I'm focusing so much on the breath, I'm thinking, oh, I didn't get my full breath there. And then maybe today I just need to focus on sounds. So I'm kind of just always trying to figure out what the best thing is for me. But I still show up and I try to do the work and and sometimes I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing most almost always I still don't feel like I'm doing it, but I'm just trying to do the repetition of it and and I'm usually better for it after I did.

I'm glad I did it. And even if I only had 30 seconds of that ten minutes that I had that I actually got myself and some thinking and some because I'm always ruminating and I have trouble shutting that off. And I just realized I don't have to shut it off. I just have to see that and catch it in the middle of it and go back to focus on my brother. What's out there in nature? I do a lot of I've been on my hikes.

I do like the more of the walking meditations to which I've enjoyed because it makes me more in awe of what I'm around. You know, there's a beautiful natural, just beautiful. And I go out every morning on hikes and I'll put on a guided walking meditation. And it really just I'm looking at the trees and actually seeing these things. I'm actually feeling my feet touch the ground and I'm actually I'm here. I'm actually doing this instead of some days I go on a hike and I'm I realize I just walk for forty five minutes.

I don't know what I was doing the entire time. That happens quite a bit, but I'm trying to strengthen myself and get better in meditation. But what I'm trying to show up still, I've hit a few lows, I've hit a few moments where I, I get frustrated with a little bit but. I've definitely gained more than I've lost out of it, so I know that I just have to keep on giving it a shot. Much more of my conversation with Brett Eldridge right after this.

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I think I can say something that might alleviate any frustration you've experienced, I hope, which is that when I heard you describe your meditation practice, to me, it sounded perfect.

Now I use that word very carefully because striving for perfection is the enemy of meditation. It is inherently imperfect.

But what I heard you say was you have moments where you wake up to the voices in your head and realize, oh, it's just that's this nattering voice inside my head. I can drop it and go back to my breath or back to the sounds or back to the feelings, the raw data of my senses as I walk through the forest that is meditation. And over and over and over again, by engineering this confrontation between you and the nonsense that, you know, the voice in your head offers up, that is the point.

There's a great meditation book called Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?

And like that is what you see over and over in meditation, a truckload of dung. And, yeah, it's it's like an amazing book title. So anyway, it's a real book.

It's a real book I should have the author on. So anyway, that's a long way of saying keep going. That sounds great to me.

My main struggle with it sometimes it's like a bigger thing. That's kind of all. I'm going. I'll get trapped in the version. I'll get trapped in the.

Because maybe it's I can't stop thinking about something with my album that I've really been working hard on, that I can't quite figure it out and it's kind of a whole thing and lasting for a few weeks till I can really get it figured out and I wake up thinking about it and go to bed thinking about it. My main thing with that is sometimes I'll stay in that for a while. And that's where I've been working with is trying to just be OK, that's going to be there, you know, and that's going to show up.

And I remember a tip from one of your meditations about asking if this is useful. And that's helped me a lot. Just ask myself, is this useful?

And when I do that. That's true, because now that perhaps useful all as always, I mean, you know, it's OK to question certain things, but usually every question in a million, million times you've already you've already played every scenario in your head to the point where you're like, is this doing me? And yet just making me more wound up and more tense and more sleepless and more aggravated and irritable and more short of breath and you know what I mean?

And so if I could catch myself in that, that's what I'm working on now, is the setting with that and in that room. And so it's I'm growing with it. Bravo.

Keep going. So you mentioned the album Sun Drive, the new record. So it's interesting to me because you've made we've been talking about risks.

This is another risk you had gotten famous for, sort of kind of like party anthem country stuff, some of the big songs were, you know, I want to be that song and I guess that's a love song, but or drunk on your love, like the it was like good time music, even if it had a romantic overtones and you went in a pretty different direction, like I read an interview you gave to Rolling Stone.

Actually, it's a great interview. And you said that you told yourself you were not allowed to use the words dam or girl in your lyrics.

Yeah, and that was my my manager. And I really just like breaking it. I was really trying to get a more. Kind of real, not that any of this other stuff wasn't real, but I felt like I grew up really on making this album and making this album instead of singing a love song, because it's going to relate to every single person. I want to sing if it's a love song. I want to be more relatable to what I'm really actually living my life.

You know, I'm not in love. Never been like deep love. Am I open to the idea that finally got to the place in my life where I've given myself enough credit to be able to be that person for somebody you know? It took me a while to get to that. And I have a song called The One You Need that's like, let me be the one you need. I've spent most of my life thinking love is out of reach.

Maybe just this once. You could be the one I need if you let me be the one who needs, like, open myself up to the idea, OK, I'm here. And I would love to be that foundation for somebody instead of just being, like, drunk on your love and don't regret it. Those songs got me here and there are still many of the artists you hear a lot of the time Arneson love, but they just they love to sing the song and the energy of it.

But I think getting to this point, this record where I'm not trying to write a song just because it's a hit or just because I think this is what everybody wants to hear, I want to write it because it means something extremely profoundly to me in a deep way, that if it's that honest, that everybody else is going to hear the heart in that if it becomes a hits because it's that true, is that real? And it's that raw and that honesty is what I try to chase down.

And this and and it's a scary thing to do. You know, you can I completely change the way I made my record from other records. I change people's writing with everything that I had, some of the people that I'd written with other records. But I always want to try to grow. And the fact that I was growing in such a different way personally as well really made this album extra special on that front. And the risk of that was.

I had everything to lose if I didn't take this step, I think in my mind it's like if I don't go, I mean, I can continue to put out songs that are, you know, or at least in my mind and I have a really good inclination for what I think or hit songs that I really loved, wrote songs and also still in a container of hit songs. But I want to put the focus just on that. The risk is and not say all the things that I want to say and beat myself up there all the time and unapologetically.

And now with the thought of someone else, tell me. I don't know if this is going to work because it doesn't really you know, it's not what everybody else is doing. I was like when I started to feel like I don't want to follow any trends but be the person that I am uniquely myself and actually having people around you to I found that support that mission, you know, to take that risk and to step off that ledge and say, you know, we're going to go record an album in Chicago with just me and a couple other musicians and for a couple of weeks live up in Chicago and make this music.

And and when when you live in Music City, you know, in Nashville, Tennessee, I can go out my front door and I could walk down the street and be in a recording studio. And it's an amazing place. But I needed to get a different lens the way I was going, a different lens on my life and looking at it in a different way. I needed to get a different way in every aspect. It's really easy to give up on yourself in that process because it gets scary at times.

I mean, I was out in California and I when I started this and it's like, am I crazy or am I am I going to, like, make this thing and I'm going to tell these people I'm going to go make something really special and I come back in a year and a half and there's these thought gremlins, you know, in your mind of a comeback in a year and a half. And it has made some weird arty record or something.

But I really I just stuck with it. My manager was right there with me and my label was right behind me. I got people that were really in it for now because this is going to be you know, we're going to have for no one's on this album or whatever, we're going to have something really important to say. And it's going to be uniquely myself. And you get people behind you in that way, you're going to be unstoppable.

And for me, I've got a lot more meaning and gratitude behind that and feeling like I'm not like I said, I wasn't a fraud from what I was doing before. That's what got me here. And I think all of that is growing up to a place to where I can actually get to make a record like this. And I wouldn't have been able to make the record that I made on this one when I first came down with my record on my first album.

And I think each record got deeper. And now I finally just really took that step in something. I think I get to be singing for many years to come and just really feeling it and embracing those perfections, like I told you. Because when when you record a record like this, I was in the studio with InfoSec, who's one of the producers, and Daniel Tashan, who who's one of the producers. And I wrote both. I have to record with those guys and they're playing in the room with me.

I'm singing and on the mic in the same room with them. So for people that don't know music recording goes as much to get vocal bullied. Sometimes, like the drums are bleeding into the microphone. If you're singing on the same microphone in the room, you're picking up the drums on your microphone. So it's not a clean sound sometimes, but it's really honest and it's really real. And I never would have done that before. I'm singing it raw to the point where you can't really go back and fix it because the drums are in your mind and everything in your voice is in the drums, you know, so you got to nail it and you gotta believe in you gotta nail it.

And that's when I when I put the faith in myself to do that and had people behind me, it says we're very capable of doing that. I showed up in the first song I recorded was a song called Gabrial, which is my first single from it. And we nailed it to the point where the first take it was amazing.

And I felt like all that weight of like all those doubts and actually the part of believing in yourself and sticking to that made it worth it.

Well, that's Bret. He's Nashville. He can't he can't hear you, but he says hello. Say hi. Can you say hello? Yeah. Yeah.

Do you remember when I remember when he sang to you the Christmas song that. Yeah, yeah.

That was fun. I was born next year. Maybe we'll do it again next year after covid.

We'll do it again, ok. OK, go eat dinner and I'll see you in a minute. Every time he goes in here, I love every story growing up in here. He is growing up.

Every time he comes in here, he hatboxes me. It's just unbelievable. That's also on purpose.

I think he saves it until he's time to visit dad in the podcast. But amazing is a strong move. So it's pretty edible.

So I want to ask you on the record, you you were talking about the record. You were saying, you know, you over time you've recorded love songs, but you've never been in I think you use the term deep love. And I just wonder to pick up on a theme that we've been exploring throughout this conversation.

Does perfection stand in the way of love for you?

Absolutely. In a huge way. That's been a heavy topic in my work that I'm trying to do right now is, yes, absolute perfection is set in a way of everything, and especially in love and relationships. And everything has been the tough part for me. So I am now. I'm very aware of that. And I've got a way, better place with that. But absolutely it's definitely still not, you know.

Another thing you said was sort of growing up on this record and it just because for me, perfection did stand in the way of finally, you know, achieving romantic love. And I think perfection is a big problem, not only in getting up and running in a relationship, but also keeping the relationship up and running up and running. Yeah, absolutely.

Because we're sort of in this arrested state of development, sold this bill of goods by the media, by Hollywood about how love is supposed to be. But it's not really like that of a friend of mine. I remember when I was first getting married and a friend of mine said, dude, it's not the Oscars every night. Some nights it's the People's Choice Awards, you know, and and that is true. And but the other thing you said was that you grew up.

And I just reminded me I remember being like twenty five and having a breakup conversation with a girlfriend, and she was saying, well, until you were with yourself, you can't be with anybody else.

Yeah, that's a great point. But Journey I've been trying to go on is just being with myself a little bit, not like spending time on myself and are alone and like. But I actually. Also, this feeling like I give myself some self love and actually feeling like I can give a lot of myself, you know, being in this position, you know, I've learned to have some trust issues. You know, it's kind of weird like date or anything when you're just because I'm a I don't like the fame part of anything.

And so I feel very strange. I love to get up on stage and sing and that's it. You know, I love to connect with people and everything. But when I get out, the part of the fame is definitely been a weird part for me with dating and everything. And and and so that's been an interesting thing for me because I always feel like I'm supposed to be giving some perfect picture to somebody. And how do I know? It's just been a weird experience.

I guess I can imagine that be really tough. Like you find yourself questioning people's motives is the person with me because they like me or because they like the. You know what I do.

Yeah. And you want somebody that loves your passion and trust me a lot of time, I think people just I'd like to believe that they really actually do this like you just the back of my head. I've had to really work away from that idea of thinking somebody just wants to hang out because they love what you do in your music and all that. So I've had to really step away from that. And it's very it's a very strange thing, just being somebody that I still in my mind and ask for a lot of people to know me as I still feel I am exactly that kid before I had any hits or had anything or anybody knew the heck I was.

I still feel exactly like that in my mind. So when you when people start screaming your name and all that, you love that connection and the crowd and everything and you love that part. But then the part where it's like they meet you on the street or something and want to take a photo in the middle of your meal or something, I'm totally fine with that usually. But it's just weird for me because I'm not I still never get used to that.

So it's just a strange thing to kind of have that separate from when you're actually on stage and then actually go into the dating world or actually trying to find love or whatever. It's just been an interesting aspect. But I really do believe, you know, now being able to be with myself and with this time and spend this time and really open myself up to the idea that I got a lot to give to somebody. This is a good, honest, real person and try to be kinder to myself and a tough time.

And because I've usually held those perfections up, like I said, I got to be something really perfect for somebody or it's or know it's not gonna be great. And so I'm working on perfection. You're opening my eyes even more to the perfectionism. That's good, because that's that's what I'm working on.

It's free therapy and it's worth what you're paying for it, unfortunately. So last question just on the record. The in many ways the centerpiece of the record, from what I can tell, just as a fan, is the title track, Sunday Drive. And yeah, it really landed with me because it starts out talking about you being a kid, taking Sunday drives with your parents driving. And then it ends with a Sunday drive with you driving and the parents in the backseat.

I had that experience recently with aging parents and it's very painful, very poignant and quite literally being the guy in the front seat driving my parents now. And so, yeah, that really Lantier for me. And I just and I know that you actually I read that you kind of broke down while recording the song, so I'd be interested to hear that whole story.

So this song was a song that actually so I wrote every song on the record except this song. And the story about this song is very interesting because I was an intern at music publishing company Universal Publishing back in the day. And you're just taking this internship. You want to get to know songwriters, going to get to know how this crazy music business works. And I was listening to, you know, all these songs I was working in, like a dungeon looking.

I mean, it's not that scary looking, but it was like a basement with no windows. It had a bunch of CDs and dat's and like all the different things that you had to transfer to empty threes. And I was just going through all these songs and I'm just, you know, early 20s and enamored by songwriters. But you get numb to the songs because I heard a thousand songs and a lot and were great. But you just listening, you know, as your job too.

Well, then this song came up Sunday Drive and I was just completely destroyed by it. I was like my young self, always kind of old soul. And I was very close to my family in this song to stop me in my tracks. And I very much do. You know, I take my family to the core with me everywhere I go. And so the thought of being the kid in the back seat thinking life's never going to last, always going to stay this way and time is not going to fly by.

And you're just in the backseat eating ice cream and cookie dough blizzard and you're spilling it all yourself and you go everywhere and you're just worried about going to the fair, you know what I mean? Like we go to your baseball practice or whatever. Next thing you know, you're in high school and you're. On the one hand, you're about to go out to college and you're thinking that's never going to go, and then the next thing you know, your parents that were taking you on a Sunday drive in the beginning when you weren't thinking anything was special about that.

You're taking them on a Sunday drive. And my parents are still young, but inevitably, just like we're all going to grow older and you can start to feel that and you can start to feel the fragility of time. And when it gets to that third version of the song, I was in the studio and I'm emotional guy, but I don't always just, like, break down crying. I think it's just I'm very emotional in the way I talk a lot of times.

We're also very good at hiding it at times, to which I'm learning to not as much, but I am in the studio, my friend David Ross, who's now the manager of the Cubs. He and I just became friends of the years and he was in town and he was getting ready to just do the interview for the Cubs. And so he was in there. He has a he has a few kids. So he's a father in the booth, one of my producers in another room.

He's in the booth. He's got three kids of his own. The guy playing a piano has a couple of kids of his own. Cerebus very family oriented in this room. Everybody is very emotional about how this song is going to go down. Well, I go in the room because we started recording it once before we recorded it and we just didn't quite nail it. So I told my friend David, Oh, we're not going to record it, but come on in.

While I was like, we got real with each other, my producer and I was like, I don't think we nailed it. So we went in there. I was like, okay, maybe we are going to record today. I go in there, he's playing the piano, I'm singing it down live. We get down to that third verse and I just completely lose it. And it's lost it. Like I mean, I just started picturing my mom and dad and I started feeling every single word from that song, so emotional and so deeply.

And I started bawling and I couldn't even look up. But when I finally looked up, I saw the piano player and he's still playing and he's so emotional, but he's still playing through it. And I can't even say a word, but I'm also so blown away by the fact that he's still playing the motion is still in the music that he plays all the way through the rest of the song. And I look in the other room in the booth where these other fathers and family guys are and producers and and they're all so emotional in that room, too.

It was just one of those moments. You're like, man, music is such a when you let sometimes you don't have to let it go there. It'll take you there and don't make you feel something. And it'll it'll shift something in you that I didn't think I was even capable, like sobbing, crying in my adult life for a long time and. Man, I did, and then we went back in there and I was saying that I finally got myself together enough to see that last first and and we had that taken and that.

And I think that just came across. You can feel when you listen to it and if you watch the video, that was the other time I had to shift again. When I watched it, I broke down crying as I was drinking a smoothie in the parking lot of a juice place. Watching that after we had filmed that because I've learned piano just for this. I didn't really play piano guitar player, really, and I learned piano during quarantine at the very beginning.

I was like, I'm going to learn this song, a piano. I've always said I'm going to learn how to play on stage when we get out of this quarantine, I'm going to do it. So every night before I go to bed, part of my routine, I would wind down and put my phone in the room. I would drink some hot camomile tea and I'd sit down the piano. I'll play 10, 15 minutes of the song, then I'll go to bed.

And by the time I got to recording this video, I could actually play the song. And so it kind of dissolved. All came together during all this and the emotions came out again when I saw that video. And and it's just a really special song to kind of be the heart of this album, because the album's very reflective and kind of reflective of the path I've taken to get here. It's very real and honest. And I thought this song was a good placeholder and a good heartbeat for whole.

It's a great song and it's a Buddhist song in many ways about impermanence. So, yes, as absolutely.

As a consequence, Bret, every time I interact with you, I like you better.

Well, same here, my friend. I hope we can have we can get together here before too long and chatted again. Last year we were we were jamming at the Beacon Theater together. And I do have the belief that on the other side of this, we're going to get to do that again. And it's always a pleasure, my friend.

I share that belief and it was absolutely a pleasure. And I really appreciate you're just utterly unguarded and I respect you for it.

Well, thanks for the coaching through the years as well. I appreciate that.

That you get for free forever. So. All right. As long as you take it with a grain of salt, that's better than most.

Big thanks to Brett, really appreciate him coming on and check out his new album, Sunday Drive again. I've never been a country fan, but I really like his stuff and I really like him so big. Thanks again to him. And a quick reminder, I mentioned this at the top of the show. I'm mentioning it at every opportunity these days. But join us for the Election Sanity Meditation Challenge, download the 10 percent happier app and start meditating your way through the final stages of this election season.

And then the challenge begins on October 27th. Big thanks as always to the folks who work so hard to make the show a reality two and a half times a week. Samuel Johns is our senior producer. Marisa Shneiderman is our producer. Our sound designer is Matt Boydton from Ultraviolet Audio. Maria Wartell is our production coordinator. We get an enormous amount of useful input from colleagues such as Jen, Ben, Ruben, Nate, Toby and Liz Lemon. Also a big thank you to my guys from ABC News, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohen.

We'll see you on Friday with a bonus meditation from Tury Solop. And now a message from our friends at Disney plus Mandele, thank you for coming. I'm here on business. The acclaimed series returns to Disney Plus have been questioned to bring this one back to its kind. This is no place for a child. Wherever I go, he goes to experience the next chapter. Go, go, go. Streaming October 30 is. This is the way the Mandalorian new season of streaming October 30th only on Disney plus.