Meditation, Solved: Is It Actually Worth It?

Welcome to Solved. I am Mark Manson and today we are talking about meditation and is it actually worth it? Have you ever had that moment when you're lying in bed at night, brain running like a browser with 47 tabs open, half of them playing audio and you think to yourself, maybe I should try that meditation thing. And then somehow that thought alone stresses you out even more? Here's the thing that nobody tells you about meditation. The people who swear by it the most are often the worst advertisements for it. I spent years studying Eastern philosophy, reading every guru I could find, and then slowly realized that most of those gurus were raging alcoholics, serial abusers, and running cult-like cash grabs with fleets of Rolls Royces. I'm actually not making any of those things up, but we will get into that in a minute. These were not exactly the poster children for inner peace. And yet meditation kept getting sold to us as a magic pill. Less stress, more focus, emotional healing, spiritual awakening, permanent calm, basically everything. Everything short of six-pack abs and a winning lottery ticket. Which sucks because the only thing I actually need are six-pack abs and a winning lottery ticket. God damn it, meditation. So here's the thing. When you meditate for a while that you eventually discover, you don't suck at meditation because something's wrong with you or you don't have enough willpower or stamina. You suck at meditation because you've been given the wrong definition of what good meditation actually is. You think the goal is to empty your mind and find some pure, peaceful consciousness hiding underneath, all the mental clutter. When the actual point is to see the clutter clearly for the first time and realize that you were never in control of it in the first place. Nope. In fact, it's clutter all the way down. So in this episode of Solved, we're going to talk about why the early research on meditation was so wildly overhyped and what the more careful recent science actually says it can and can't do for you. We're going to talk about the three specific benefits of meditation that are genuinely validated and why none of them are the ones that actually work. None of them are the ones that you've been promised by all the gurus. We'll discuss why the most common instruction that people get about meditation, which is sit quietly and think about nothing, is actually terrible advice that is pretty much guaranteed to fail. We'll discuss the invisible reason why so many people resist meditation that has nothing to do with time, patience, or discipline and everything to do with what they're afraid to find out. We'll get into why the people who meditated for decades and were supposed to have it all figured out turned out to be some of the worst human beings imaginable. And what that tells us about what meditation can and can't do for us. We'll discuss treating meditation as an intervention versus treating it as a skill. And why confusing those two things is actually responsible for almost all of the disappointment around it. We'll get into why you're racing chaotic monkey mind is not the obstacle of meditation, it's actually the first real sign that it's working. We'll touch on the one form of meditation that most people have never tried that is actually backed by research, requires zero stillness, and you can still do it while cleaning your house. And why the real reason to meditate has nothing to do with happiness, productivity, or stress. So what if the problem isn't that meditation doesn't work, but more like you've been trying to use a skill-building practice as a miracle cure this entire time? Because once you stop expecting meditation to fix things and start seeing it for what it actually is, a process for better understanding your own mind, it stops feeling like another thing you're failing at, it stops feeling like spiritual homework. And it starts feeling like something that might have been worth your time all along. I am three-time number one New York Times bestselling author Mark Manson, and this is Drew Birney, my co-host, producer, lead researcher, and the only man to be formally uninvited to two silent meditation retreats. You get formally uninvited to a lot of things, Drew. Om. Is that how we're starting this? Om. Just with some big ass om's? Oh my god, here we go. Oh my god. And this is Solved, the most comprehensive podcast in the world, where every episode we aim to solve one burning question in your life once and for all. It might be useful first for me to just kind of give a two-minute summary of my journey and my experience with meditation. So I discovered meditation as a teenager. Like most teenagers do. I was a weird teenager. I got really into Eastern spirituality and philosophy. I started reading a lot of Buddhist texts. I think in hindsight, as someone who struggled with ADHD, I found meditation to be very therapeutic or meditative in many ways. I found it helpful to help me manage my own impulses and attention or at least become more aware of them. So I got really, really into it. And as somebody who grew up in the Bible Belt, in a very Christian household, in a very Christian environment, who was not Christian, discovering Buddhism felt like finding water in a desert. And it became a big part of my identity when I was in university. I went to Buddhist centers. I went on retreats. I meditated every day for multiple years. It was a very big part of my life and a very big part of my identity. And it was very important to me for a long time. As I got older, I started drifting away from it. So actually, if you look at my early writing, I talk about meditation. I talk about meditation quite a bit. Like way back when I started writing online, like 2008 through 2012, meditation would come up in a lot of articles and a lot of what I talked about. And then it slowly started disappearing and you kind of stopped mentioning it. And that is just because in my personal life, I started to drift away from it. The older I got, the less consistent I was with it, the less I felt called to do it. There are a lot of reasons for that. I'm sure we'll talk about them in a second. And then by the time I got into my 30s, it became a very sporadic practice for me. It became almost like a, you know, break in case of emergency type situation. So two, three years, don't meditate at all. And then like life goes to shit. And I'm like, oh, I need to like get back on the mat and start meditating again. Very much like church for some people, right? Ironically, yes. Yeah, right. So that leads me to today where I'm like, I don't, I like, I've maybe meditated. I could probably count on two hands how many times I've meditated in the last five years. And I don't feel particularly compelled to meditate frequently. What's interesting in all that time is that when I started meditating, and this is, so this is the second surprise. When I started meditating, when I was very into meditation in the 2000s and early 2010s, the early research on meditation was phenomenal. People were raving about it. Psychologists were extremely excited about it. You started to see it get integrated in all sorts of. Therapeutic modalities. People were teaching it everywhere. Interestingly, in the 15 years since, a lot more data has come in. A lot more research has been done. And it turns out that the meditation's efficacy as an intervention is spotty. Yes. Let's say. It's uneven and not so clear cut. One of the reasons like we, I wanted to do this episode this way was because when I started talking to people about, you know, meditation, do they? What do they think of meditation? Especially like people on the team. A lot of them were like, I'm not sure I get it. You know, I was surprised by that. Yeah. I mean, we're in the self-help industry, right? Like this is a big thing, right? This is a self-improvement podcast. I kind of figured everybody on the team would have at least done it before, or at least tried it or, or aspired to do it. A lot of skepticism, a lot of people on the team were like, yeah, I don't get it. I never understood why I never liked it. Yeah. So this is going to be a little bit of a, kind of a response to the skeptics of, of. Uh, meditation and you're going to see, there's just a lot of nuance. There's kind of three big buckets that I've found that people are skeptical around and we'll kind of go through the finer points of each one of those. And yeah, that's, that's kind of how we're going to approach this. So that's all right. Should we get into it? Let's get into it. Let's do it. All right. This first bucket of, uh, skepticism, I think you could call it is that meditation is overhyped. You already mentioned like that early research that came out. There was a lot of hype there. There was a lot of hype. It was like, oh, a study would come out and it was like, oh my God, it, it fixed this for this person or it, it made them less anxious, less depressed. It made the, like fix their relationships, all of these things, right? All of these claims came as stress, relief, productivity, enhancement, emotional healing, leadership, development, creativity boost, even this, like the manifestations and the spiritual awakenings and enlightenment and all of these literally a magic pill when, yes, when you, when you say that this one thing. Fixes. Fixes everything, the rational response is skepticism there, right? You would think it's funny because I distinctly recall there being mainstream articles back in the two thousands. I think one of them was literally called meditation. Why everyone should do it. I wrote an article called why you should meditate. I think of our generation of like that era, right? Two thousands up through like maybe 2012, 2015. It was just the conventional wisdom, right? It's like, this is not just an Eastern spirituality thing. Everybody should be doing. Yeah. Everyone should do it and it will fix everything. Every problem you might have, it can do something for you at least, right? And then there were just, just common marketing claims. Like you're going to have, you know, permanent happiness, permanent calm, enlightenment, confidence. These aren't, these aren't really like clinical or medical or even like psychological endpoints. You can't reliably produce these through standard meditation interventions when you like really do careful studies and all this. Well, as we'll see a lot of these claims. Yes. They are definitely overhyped. There's a little bit of a category error going on here because people it was marketed as a treatment uh for any life problem everything basically right but really what the more careful research has kind of shown is that it's more of a skill now that's a thing that's going to come up okay it's a trainable skill and with skills you know outcomes are usually very gradual yeah right they're also very sensitive to like the instruction quality that you get your teacher or the method or whatever you're using it's very sensitive to that any skill is highly variable across individuals right so some people are better at it some people aren't some people are natural naturally good at it some people really have to work at it right there's a lot of individual variation around it that checks out with my experience i think one of the reasons i have not felt very motivated to meditate in the last 10 years is i i do feel like i gain that skill and i have it right like so for example in my 20s yeah the first time i was able to look at one of my emotions and question the validity of it that was profound it was very it was like oh my god i've never done this before i've never actually considered that like i'm being irrational and i can't trust myself whereas like dude at 40 i do that's like a daily occurrence where i'm like i'm probably being irrational right now i probably shouldn't trust myself so much so it is there's a lot of stuff that the first time you do it or the first 10 times you do it it strikes you as like oh my god i can't believe this is like so huge this is massive but once you've learned how to do it you can kind of just call it like i don't need to go sit on a mat to sit like to really take a moment and think deeply about my impulses or my thought patterns or you know what are my motivations for pursuing this certain goal like are they are they actually genuine or am i kidding myself like those are things you you once you've learned how to do it you can kind of just summon it at will at any point i i think the point you're bringing up is going to be an important one that will come up repeatedly which is that mindfulness is really the goal here and meditation is just a tool for mindfulness yeah right being more mindful so what you're saying is i've learned how to be mindful in my life right throughout like just an ordinary everyday life that's kind of the goal and i i mean i would still say you could probably still get some benefit from meditation as a skill you need to do some maintenance on the skill right you still need to practice it but yeah the goal really is mindfulness as we'll see meditation is not the only way to achieve that meditation as a skill gives you all these other skills once you have them you're going to be able to do a lot of things and you're going to be able to do a lot of things and you're going to be able to do a lot of things once you have those you can apply those in your life over and over again and that's a practice in it of itself too right yeah okay meditation got more and more introduced to the west uh and by the like 90s 2000s 2010s it kind of reached a bit of a fever pitch at that point yeah and also at that same time like information technology was taking off and so you got all the marketing hype around it as well so apps came out or online courses or these retreats where you could reach people from far foreign places and so i think there was a little bit of a perfect storm there where the cultural moment hit this technological moment and all of that was amplified as well so that's where a lot of the hype came from too so i agree with everything you just said and i think part of the internet it it led the hype into a fever pitch but i think it ultimately was part of its undoing as well i remember there was a point uh in my 20s where i was like reading all these books and and studying all these teachers and gurus and all this stuff and and i sort of realized that like pretty much all of them are just a mess and i think that's where i'm at right now right like like okay yeah like shogrim trumpa was like a raging alcoholic and physically abusive to his followers alan watts was an alcoholic there was a guy named adida who like sexually abused his followers there's osho who like took all of his followers money and bought 40 rolls royces with it like it just there's like example after example after example of these like supposedly enlightened gurus who like came to the west to teach meditation and all of the the physical and psychological benefits of it and then it's like if you look closely at at the their character and their actions and their behavior they were fucking terrible people and total scumbags and so that it just like for me that just raised a lot of red flags i'm like okay if the dude who's literally meditating eight hours a day is like stealing people's money and and sexually harassing women who attend his ashram like it can't be that it can't be that great yeah yeah it's not a fix-all for uh shitty personality that's for sure yeah i mean as well yeah shining the light on it through information technology was definitely part of his downfall as well but there's i think there is a middle ground we can kind of achieve though too so but you know the science when they started to do more they started to do better studies on this definitely you know there was early on there were definitely people saying you know first of all the definitions you're using of meditation or mindfulness or whatever they're they're inconsistent they're weak they're they're wishy-washy you're not using proper controls or or you know you're comparing somebody to doing nothing when maybe what about comparing it to say therapy or exercise or you know all these other types of things does it do any better than that they weren't doing that publication bias too there was just a lot of excitement around it people you know you have a positive finding it's probably going to get published whereas the negative ones weren't all of these things were going on and um once they started to do better studies though there were a few things that came out and like okay yeah it actually does do some good around certain areas okay so legit benefits legit benefits are stress reduction and management not stress elimination it isn't for you of all stress in your life or anything like that it basically though uh meditation programs especially like the meditation-based stress reduction programs that are like specifically for stress reduction um they are typically it's like an eight-week program though it's fairly intense yeah it's highly structured they have repeatable i believe john cabot zinn was actually who was an early um proponent in the west of meditation i believe he was very instrumental in developing these programs um but it's highly structured they have like very specific outcomes for them they they they have careful controls when they've done all this that actually does work stress reduction stress management again it doesn't um eliminate the stress in your life's life but you have reduced reactivity better physiological recovery too you know we talked in the resilience episode about like heart rate variability and that kind of stuff it definitely helps with that so stress reduction yes sure that can definitely help with that uh similarly along those same lines emotional regulation as well it's not like suppression of your emotions obviously it's more about noticing them and uncoupling from them you've talked a lot about this unfusing from your emotions it's you know cbt talks about that gap between yes action reaction um and and how or stimulus and response and i meditation is definitely a tool that widens that gap in your mind right it's a little wedge right in there you start to see like oh i do get to choose how i behave in this situation the whole de-centering thing around like unfusing from your emotions seeing seeing emotions as experiences yeah uh rather than like identity i think is a real big one that was for me anyway yeah um and this has been replicated over and over again in in studies and then finally to like attentional control um so it does and we just did this whole thing on focus right and it it's not like it gives you like this laser focus forever it basically though it makes you aware of when your mind is wondering you're messing up yeah and helps you to reorient back to whatever you were trying to focus on or anchor on or whatever it is yeah so like meditation is just kind of that that is a huge part of the practice oh my mind's wondering come back to the breath or come back to the bodily sensations or the mantra or whatever i was aiming to do during this meditation session just kind of gets you those like reps and then you can apply that to uh when you're trying to do that so yeah i think that's a really good point i think that's a really something done you know and focus on something there are benefits and they're they are validated it's just that it's not like this cure-all catch-all practice that you can do and all of a sudden your life is going to be amazing yeah right i think most people kind of understand that on some level but there's still that hype out there i think a lot of that is a residue of the religious background of meditation right because it's when it yeah yeah it ultimately it is a buddhist practice it is an eastern spiritual practice and when it came over it was very much marked as a spiritual practice and generally speaking spiritual practices are they do kind of promise salvation and and a cure-all like that's kind of what right that's their whole thing so there there just seems to be kind of an awkward transition into the actual psychological literature where it's like okay this is a useful tool it's helpful at the margins in a number of different ways um some people will probably get a lot of benefit out of it a lot of people won't get benefit out of it like pretty much everything else in psychology that sits very awkwardly with the religious and spiritual heritage of the practice yeah we'll get a little bit more into the spiritual stuff a little bit later but there's a lot of researchers who say that what we should really be treating it like is like weight training or or strength training in some way rather than like a treatment okay so it's again it's a skill and it's a practice that you have to kind of keep up on there's kind of a dose dependency to it too you have to be consistent with it you you have to have good instruction for it which is why i usually encourage people to either go to like a meditation uh center or get an app or you know find some sort of structure don't just jump into it like that and like you said too the person has to fit the practice as well i think the main framing here is that like you treat it as a skill not as like this it's not a replacement for therapy it's not a replacement for health other healthy behaviors by any means yeah it's it's a it can't help you it's not not this magical pill i will point out that framing it as a skill i think that So I agree with that, but I also see how it derails people. One of my best friends is a meditation teacher. He's been meditating intensely his entire adult life. He goes on month-long retreats. It's like – it's what he does. And one of the things that he – I've heard him say multiple times is that like the most common objection that he hears from students is they say, oh, I'm not good at this. And his response is always nobody is good at this. You're not supposed to be good at this. Like it's not about getting good at – he's told me a million times. He's like, dude, I meditate more than anybody I know. And he's like, I sit down and within 10 seconds my brain is fucking thinking about my cereal or like what was on TV last night. So he said you never turn that off. He said what improves is your relationship with it. All right. That's a good caveat. That's a good framing and also leads us right into this next bucket. So what I want to do in this section is kind of – I want to go through some of these common claims that people – or common objections I guess that people make. And then we can kind of – I don't want to say dismantle them because some of them I think are very legit. The first one that I hear so a lot is just I can't sit still. All right. And Mark, as somebody with ADHD, I think you probably relate to this somewhat. But you meditated for a long time too. So you figured it out, right? Yeah. I went on multiple multi-day retreats. It's funny because as soon as you said that, it reminded me actually of a former teacher of mine who used to always – whenever you said something like that, whenever you're like, I can't sit still, he'd always interrupt you and say, you can, you choose not to. It was really fucking annoying. That's so true. Because he was right. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean it is a real thing. Like there are some people who just have a high baseline of arousal or restlessness, ADHD or other anxiety disorders. It's hard. Intolerance to stillness sometimes too. It's just like boredom or just sitting there. It can feel unsafe for some people for sure. Dude, I will tell you. It's one of the hardest things to do. Yes. It's like I did one three-day retreat. The second day of that retreat is like one of the most difficult days of my entire life. It was torture. It was absolute torture. I was physically in pain because when you sit for 14 hours a day and don't move, don't do anything, like your body starts cramping up and things get sore. I was in physical pain. It was just mental anguish. It was just like you're sitting there. I remember I had like a four. It was like a four or five-hour stretch where I had a commercial jingle stuck in my head. Oh, no. And I was like get out of my fucking head like for the love of God. Do you remember what it was? It was like give me a break. Give me a break. I would drive you insane. It was on level with – I don't remember what it was. But it was something like that and it was just like – and I remember we had – everybody at the retreat had an hour a day with the Zen master or not an hour, like half an hour or something like that. And so I remember I just walked in there and I was like I have this jingle in my head like please help me get it out. And of course he was like – he was like the more you resist it, the more it's going to stay. I'm like goddammit. But that's absolutely true. It's true. The instruction to sit quietly and think about nothing, that is not meditation. And any teacher who knows anything is not going to tell you that. That's a terrible instruction especially for beginners. Yes. OK. So usually what you do is you're giving your mind something to do and you're trying to – Yes. Keep on that. So what happens on most retreats is that there's an understanding that you need some variability. So like what will often happen is that you will go through – so you'll sit for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Obviously that starts to get painful for a lot of people. So then what they'll do is they'll do walking meditations for like 30 to 45 minutes. Then you'll come back and sit for another hour. Then you'll do like another walking. And then on some retreats what you'll do is there will be like chores, right? So it's like you can do – You can do some of the food prep or the cleanup or sweeping the floor. And the idea is that you're supposed to be mindful as you're doing that. Chop wood, carry water, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's exactly what I was going to say is that there's – like meditation can take many forms. It's not just sitting. Yes. And staring at the wall and trying to empty your mind. That's not what it is necessarily. Walking meditation though is a very well-validated actually form of meditation. It's part of that mindfulness-based stress reduction. Actually, they build that into it. It's part of – Jon Kabat-Zinn helped develop that as well. And it's like the movement really distributes your attention that way. So it's not all just like up here in your little head right behind your eyeballs. Yeah. I actually like it. It's throughout your body. I like it better because it's like you're supposed to focus on your feet and exactly where you place your feet. Yes. Yeah. And you're supposed to feel every part of the floor. So it's like when your heel touches, you feel your heel. And when the ball of your foot touches, you feel the ball of your foot. Yeah. It's actually very nice. Yeah. It's distributed attention, right? So it's attention on your movement, attention on bodily structure. It's attention on your sensations, on the environment around you too. That's meditation. It's mindfulness and being mindful of your environment, right? Studies on walking meditation. You have improved mood, reduced stress and anxiety, and you get your steps in, right? As an added bonus, right? 9,548. If that works, yeah. The other thing you said though too, like the chores thing. I found this – there's this book by – it's this guy called – named Shokei Matsumoto. He was a Japanese monk and it's A Monk's Guide to Cleaning House and Mind. And he actually argued his preferred form of meditation was cleaning. And if you ever have been to like a monastery, ever read anything about monasteries, like cleaning is a huge part of their daily routine. Like every single day, they spend hours cleaning. And they're supposed to do it very, very mindfully and get in a meditative state when they clean. In his book, he talks about how cleaning is a form of mindfulness because it's a practice. Yeah. And you don't see it as a chore necessarily. And then also like some of the other principles he talks about is like the outer – outer order supports kind of inner calm or inner clarity at least too. Like your outer environment often reflects your inner environment, right? We talked about this on the Focus episode that there actually is research that shows that a decluttered environment is helpful for focus. Another benefit of it too, doing small tasks with full intention. Like you were talking about with the walking. Like put your heel to toe, heel to toe. So when you're cleaning too, it's not just – you're just mindlessly trying to get things in order. It's like you are consciously – these small, tiny little tasks, he encourages you to pay very, very close attention and do them very, very intentionally. A respect for everyday objects as temporary companions too. I kind of like this is a little bit out there a little bit. But I did like this because, you know, monks, they have very, very few possessions and each one of the – I think he spends time in this book going through why he owns everything that he owns. That's a very small number of things. Mm-hmm. But – Mm-hmm. And you have a respect for these objects in your life as kind of these temporary companions and it reminds you that everything is temporary and impermanent, right? And you need to take care of these things. Then there's the routine aspect to it. One of the things he talks about too is care over perfection that I really like too. Cleaning, it's about caring for life as it is, not for like – not for – it's not self-improvement. It's just – it's something you just need to do. The whole point though is that you don't have to sit in a room quiet staring at the wall. You can – there's lots of different ways to do that. You can meditate in a – on a crowded bus or in an airport. I've had to do this before because I can just sit there and – It can be very therapeutic. It can. It can absolutely be. This whole stereotype of meditating, you know, sitting cross-legged on a pillow or whatever, no. You don't have to do it that way. To this point, I'll tell you a story. So the first time I went to India, I went to Bodh Gaya which is supposedly where the tree is that – that the Buddha sat under and became enlightened for the first time, the Bodhi tree. And it's cool. There's like a big temple there now and actually a lot of monks do pilgrimages there and they'll sleep under the Bodhi tree the way the Buddha did. So it's just like beautiful but the town is tiny. It's in the middle of nowhere. You have to fly. It's kind of like northwest India. So you like fly to this town called Gaya and then you have to take like – you have to drive a couple hours out there and then there's basically just a temple and a couple roads. That's it. And so I got all the way out there and I remember I ended up sharing a tuk-tuk with this young English guy and he was so excited to be there. And I was like, oh, cool. Are you a Buddhist? And he was like, no, but I'm really excited to meditate here. I was like, oh, that's cool. What's your meditation practice? And he was like, oh, I've never meditated before. But I figured how cool would it be to learn how to meditate under the Bodhi tree. And I just looked at him. I'm like, dude, you realize there's YouTube videos? Like you didn't have to come all the way out here. Like it's – you could have just stayed at home, watched a video and decided if you liked it first before you – And gotten the same result out of it. Yeah. There's definitely like that elevation of sacred places and stuff where it's like actually the most sacred of places are the most mundane. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I think a big misconception that people have about meditation is that it literally can be done anywhere. Like you can do it on a bus. You can do it on a subway. You can do it on a taxi. You can do it on an airplane. Like it is simply the practice of pure awareness and directing your attention towards something and that's it. Yeah. No, it is. Well, OK. That gets us into this next objection which is my mind is too busy. I just don't feel calm and so it's just not working, right? Like I'm trying to meditate. My mind is just racing. It doesn't work. Like, you know, when actually – like that observation is usually the first accurate observation. That meditation produces for people. It's like, oh, my mind is fucking crazy. That is meditation. That's like noticing that is actually probably the first and most important step. Yeah. Many of the beginners just they implicitly believe that meditation means having fewer thoughts. And that's not it. Yeah. The misconception is that you're supposed to get rid of that craziness, whereas you're actually supposed to just observe the craziness and detach yourself from it. It's actually very interesting. I've seen a lot of people come into meditation groups for the first time, first time in their life they've meditated. In Buddhism, it's often called the monkey mind, right? It's like when you sit down and you try to focus on your breath and your brain starts thinking about, you know, like cheesecake and, you know, what your sister texted you last Wednesday and what flavor chocolate you want to buy on your way home. Like that, it's that's the monkey mind. It's just like this spontaneous, uncontrollable impulses of thought and whiffs of emotion. And it's just it happens to you like you. You realize that you're not actually in control of it. And so often meditation teachers like that, they always start out talking about the monkey mind. And if people are new, it's like, you know, observe the monkey mind. You're not you're not going to get it to stop. Your goal is to just be aware that it's there and watch it and try to like make peace with it. But it's interesting because a lot of people don't even get as far as realizing that like they're so identified with the monkey mind that they don't realize that it is a monkey mind. Right. So it's like they're so locked into. What cheesecake they like and what flavor chocolate they're going to buy on the way home and what their sister texted them that they don't even realize that they're out of control like that. That's not them. Right. It's it's that that's something you can observe in the first place. So it's like. There's so many layers to this stuff. I think one of the little mini breakthroughs I had with meditation, too, and most people do at some point, is that though, like those thoughts you're having, that racing mind you're having, all of that is really no different. Then a car passing in front of you on the street or somebody having a conversation with you and like those things are just happening to you. And so, yeah, that separation you get between those two things is really the point. And noticing that, yeah, I do have this monkey mind and it's probably never going to go away. It won't go away, actually. But just like having a different relationship with it is kind of a goal there. My my first Zen master used to compare it to watching clouds go by. Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do? And he said he's like some clouds are storming. Some clouds are stormy and rainy and some clouds are beautiful and some clouds look like something and some clouds look like nothing and they all come and go. And and he's like, it's silly to get attached to them. The other common metaphor, too, is if you're sitting under a bridge and the car's going, what are you going to do? Yeah. Some of them are big, loud trucks. Some of them are tiny, quiet little EVs, right? Or whatever. Yeah. It's just accepting. And it's useful because it's like sometimes. Sometimes. There is going to be a big rain cloud and a thunderstorm that's going to come over and you can either get really upset about it or just remember like, oh, it's just a cloud going to go by. The takeaway here, though, with this is that meditation, it doesn't reveal this calm mind that you have under all of this clutter. That's not it at all. It reveals the mind that you actually have. Right. It's like like like people think, oh, what I'm going to do is remove all of this clutter and I will find this very centered, peaceful mind, pure mind. Right. Just pure, pure consciousness. And I guess that is probably there. Sure. But that's not you're not revealing the mind that's there under all this clutter. You're revealing that your mind is cluttered. Yeah. And so if your mind feels too busy, if your mind if you don't feel calm during it. Yeah. That's that's kind of the point, especially early on. Yeah. It's just noticing that. Now. OK. Now this next one, this next objection I have a lot of sympathy for in some ways, I guess. Anyway, which is I don't have time. I don't have the time for it. I'm probably not the best person to argue against this one because like I don't have kids. I set my own schedule. Flexible schedule. That I have. I have plenty of time where I can fit in things like this throughout my day. Yeah. And so I don't struggle with this as much as some people. Yeah. Time scarcity is a thing. It's right. But the thing I do come back to is, OK, you don't have to sit for 20 minutes. You don't have to sit for 10 minutes. What about one minute? Yeah. Take one minute. You can find one minute and any part of your day where you can meditate. You could be driving and you could meditate. Like we just said, you can do it anywhere. You can do it while you're doing chores. You can. You can do it while you're taking a shower. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, a lot of people like a few people on team, I was talking to them like, well, you know, they say everybody like my therapist or whoever, they tell me that first thing in the morning, just get up and do, you know, 10 minutes or whatever. Like I wake up out of bed. I'm like, I'm thinking about 10 million different things. And I'm like checking emails already. I'm getting ready. I'm brushing my teeth. I'm like, I'm trying to get. Yes. Of course, it's hard. It's hard. I mean, again, I used to have a teacher who said that anytime you feel like you don't, don't have time to meditate means that, that you really need to meditate. Right. Because if, if, if, if your life was, was organized and, and you were actually in control of, of your day, you wouldn't feel like you didn't have time to meditate. So, so Xenia found a really good Xenia on the research team. She found a really good quote, which is everybody should probably meditate for about 20 minutes a day. If you're busy, it should be an hour. Yes. Yes. So that was like, yeah. Okay. So if you think you're too busy to meditate. You definitely should. Yeah. Which I think there's, there is wisdom in that. I definitely sympathize with it. I'm now speaking as somebody who feels like he doesn't have enough time to meditate each day, but I get the argument in that, like the, if you do start meditating, say 10, 15 minutes a day, you're probably going to have better awareness. You're going to be more efficient with your time, with everything. You're going to make better decisions. You're going to notice when you're, when you're wasting time doing something that you don't need to be doing. That would be the, the. Argument for it. Like if there's like a single mom working two jobs, multiple kids, all this craziness going on, I'm not going to sit here and say, well, you just need to meditate. Like I, I think so much of this comes down to what, what are your goals? So I'll say this. The only times that I feel like I need to meditate is when I'm really stressed and anxious, you know, and I, I just feel overwhelmed by my life at that moment. That is when I do feel like I need to go back to it a lot of times these days, what I see a lot is. Is that meditation is kind of prescribed for these like hardcore, super productive lock in bro. Right. We're going to work 12 hour days. That doesn't feel super necessary to me. That's to me, my, the benefits I've always gotten from meditation have been much more emotional. I would a hundred percent stress related. And actually like the, the, what the impetus for me starting back up last year with meditation was very much around that. I was just like a bit emotionally dysregulated and I was like, Oh, okay. I need to like, you know, I'm going to do this. I need to kind of chill, chill, get ahold of myself. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'll give you one more objection here. It's kind of a little bit of a bonus objection because I actually don't think people actually say this out loud, but it's an objection, which is if this works, I'm going to have to change some things, right? Increased awareness around things can be very, very uncomfortable. Right. And so first of all, okay. Yeah. Oh, I got this monkey mind. It's pretty crazy. All right. Once you get past that. Then you start realizing, Oh, my, maybe I'm not really super aligned with my values right now in my job or my relationships or unhealthy coping habits that I have. Yeah. This is a little bit more subtle. Like I said, nobody actually says this, I think, but I think there's this little bit of a subconscious fear of it. I think this, this is a resistance that people have towards a lot of things. Yes. Like I think, I think a lot of people don't go to therapy. Change in general. Because of this. I think a lot of people don't go to marriage counseling because of this. I think a lot of people. I don't want to know what thoughts are in there. Yeah. People don't. People don't journal because of this. Right. Because it's like, uh, I'd rather be unaware. Right. Right. Of what's going on. If this is the case, I mean, I'm not sure I can help you with that necessarily, but I, I think it's a good thing to be aware of is like, where are you, if you have this kind of like just vague resistance to it, that could be it. And that might be worth something examining as well. I think it's a very different statement. And again, this, this could be true for almost, almost any intervention, but I'll, I'll say it specifically for meditation. If I meet somebody who's never meditated in their life and they're like, not worth the trouble. Uh, I don't, I don't give that a lot of credit. Whereas if I meet somebody who has meditated quite a bit, who's tried it, who's taking like gone to classes, has downloaded an app or something, and maybe they've put in a good 10, 20 sessions and then they're like, doesn't seem worth it for me. I give that a lot of credit. Okay. You know, I'm like, okay, people know themselves. They know what works for them. They know what, how their particular brain works and what seems to help them. And I, I, I'm under no, like I said, these days I'm under no illusions that meditation is a great solution for everybody. I think it's a, it's one of many tools. And I think for some people it's a, it's a very high leverage tool. And I think for other people, it's a very low leverage tool, but yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of like people who have never gone to therapy who are like, what's the point of therapy, right? It's like, well, you should go before you make that decision. Yes, right. Um, and I think it's the same with meditation. Like you should at least do it before you discount it and decide it's not worth the time or effort. Yeah, no, for sure. And all those objections I just went over, I mean, they're, they're, they're common objections. They're ones I think that have a, there's a rebuttal to them and there's a, there's a, a good case to be made against them. But that does bring us to, there are probably some people like you just mentioned, maybe they shouldn't be meditating. There's a few, there's a few things, some newer research has come out that actually meditation can, in some cases, few cases, but in some cases can be harmful. Yeah. Um, it can increase anxiety more. It can make you ruminate more. Um, there's, you know, certain people, people who already have a calm demeanor, you know, and are good with solitude and, and introspective. Yeah. Okay. You're, you're pretty prime for, uh, meditation and it's probably, you're going to get something out of it and you're going to enjoy it probably too. On the other hand, you know, people have experienced, especially people who've experienced like trauma in their past. I would tread very carefully around this because again, that cold, like sitting in silence that I think for some people, your mind is probably going to go straight to a lot of that trauma response that you have, where there's conscious or just like a trauma response that you have, uh, in your body even too. There's, there's research to suggest that this can lead to some dysregulation, even dissociation at some point. Right. Or even re-experiencing some of that trauma. Yeah. So if you do have a history of trauma, I would say, and you want to do, and you still want to do meditation. Okay. So maybe you do, you just don't. But if that's the case, it needs to be supervised and it needs to be highly structured. Yeah. And you need to go to somebody who knows what the hell they're doing. Not just, don't just hop on YouTube and find like, oh, here's a trauma, uh, meditation. Don't do that. Yeah. This needs to be supervised and it needs to be, um, highly structured if you're going to do it at all. Did you find any numbers around like what percentage of people have some sort of negative reaction or, cause I've seen, I've seen that this is something that is becoming more noted. Uh, but I, I haven't seen like, I haven't seen any reliable numbers come up. Um, but they're like, there's definitely, uh, in the more recent responses and critiques of the meditation of the past meditation research, there's been several researchers who have pointed out they're like, you guys are, are under-reporting the negative effects on this for sure. So we don't actually know exactly what the percentages are. Yeah. But it's definitely being under-reported. There's some interesting, I mean, if you Google around, there's some interesting substacks and articles that have been written by people who found meditation to actually be very harmful to them. Yeah. Um, it's some interesting accounts out there. So they're definitely out there. They definitely do exist. I, it seems like it's a very small minority of people, but. Yes. Yeah. I think it is. But yeah, anybody with like a trauma background, um, necessarily if you're high in anxiety too, and especially if you have an anxiety disorder, like generalized anxiety or even OCD, while yes, uh, you know, meditation can help with those things. Again, that needs to be supervised and, and highly structured too. Probably depends on the person. That's a, I think that's a big, um, point we need to drive home too, is just that person practice fit. Yeah. It has to be there. And especially in these cases where you're dealing with mental health issues. Well, it's funny because I don't think there's anything. I don't think there's any intervention. That is other than maybe exercise. Right. That is, that is, that is just universally positive. I think almost every, like, cause even therapy, one of the things that never gets broadcast about therapy is that five to 10% of people who go to therapy actually report feeling worse. Um, and it's, so there's, there is really is nothing that is, that works for everybody. I would guess that meditation is probably about the same in five to 10% of people that could actively make them worse. Yeah. Yeah. Which obviously if it does stop doing it. Obviously. Right. Right. Okay. So that's it for that bucket of, uh, you know, the, the whole, it's not for me. Yeah. Okay. So again, some people it's not for them. That's true. I think though, finding ways to be more mindful in your life, I think that's probably just about for everybody. Uh, whether that's through meditation or not, that's that you can decide for yourself. I just feel like there's the, so one of the things that's, that is unique about meditation is that it's so easy to try. Yeah. Right. Right. The downsides are really, right. It takes five, 10 minutes. You could, to give it a whirl, right? Like you can, it's, there's so little upfront cost or there's so little barrier. It's not like therapy where it's, you've got to spend time finding a therapist and it costs hundreds of dollars and you need health insurance and you need all this shit. Like meditation, like you can literally just get online and find, you know, some audios or like an old Alan Watts meditation or something like it. There's so much stuff out there now for sure. For sure. Yeah. I'm biased. I think people should absolutely try it out. Like again, they'll find the fit that's for you if it's walking meditation or cleaning or whatever it is. Uh, and there's so many different styles. We're not going to go through all the styles of meditation. Um, I'm just partial to kind of like Zen and mindfulness, uh, meditation, but you know, there's lots of different styles like compassion, uh, caring and compassion, um, type stuff. Uh, many, many different mantras. There's chance. There's yeah. Also, yeah. Give it a try. Okay. So this last bucket of objections that we'll go over, this gets into one of your favorite topics, Mark, I think, I don't know the woo woo new agey pseudo religious. I'm not into that whole thing that, and which I totally get that. And there is this whole fully fair. Yes. Very, very fair. There's this whole packaging, at least in one wing of meditation where like you mentioned, it came out. Out of a lot of religious traditions. So there's a lot of a spirituality tied to it. Yeah. Um, and in the modern age where, you know, kind of this new age or new age adjacent, at least, uh, kind of mindsets grab onto something, then they take it maybe a little too far. So like some of the claims that come out of it, you know, their meditation helps you tap into this universal energy, whatever that means. Right. It's very vague. Of course. Uh, chakras are big, right. And then they treat them as like a literal anatomical or neurological phenomenon. Um, there's all these enlightenment and narratives that come around it. Like if you meditate, you can become enlightened. And that's always kind of a vague concept, a cosmic consciousness that you're tapping into all of these types of things, right. That really turns skeptical people off. You know, if you, especially if you're kind of like a more scientifically minded person, you'll point out, Hey, these claims aren't false falsifiable. You can't prove these right or wrong. You're presenting these like with chakras, you're presenting these like medical level advice or, or evidence. And it's not, there is just a general blurring of like empirical fact, with subjective experience a lot of times, which I, I think that's a valid, uh, criticism. It is. It's an interesting confluence of different philosophical schools. So it's interesting. If you look at the modern self-help movement, where are these ideas originated or like the new age movement, these things, these ideas about manifesting your future and the universe and a universal energy and a cosmic consciousness that we're all tapping into. One of this traces back to early 19th century America. There was a group of philosophers loosely known as the transcendentalist, the most prominent and probably respectable one was Emerson, but there was a whole group of them in, in the Northeast United States in the, in the 1800s. And it kind of became popularized during the time to the point that, uh, they were traveling around and giving lectures and it kind of became like a whole movement of, um, manifesting your future and asking the, the universe. They probably didn't use this exact language at the time, but it eventually transformed into a very populist version of trans transcendentalism known as new thought and new thought in the 1900s was just very much what we would recognize as classic new age self-help today. In fact, the genre self-help came from a book and I believe it was 1849 called self-help. This strain of thought has been, it's been around for centuries at this point and, and throughout American history, it keeps getting readopted and repackaged for the next generation in a new form. So in the early 20th century, there was a very popular book called as man think of, which was repackaged the same ideas for the new century. And then, uh, you get into the 1920s and the great depression and you get Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill. And then by the 1950s, you get the power of positive thinking. And it's just like on and on and on up until 2000, you get the secret. And it's just like this lineage of the same ideas being repackaged into new books and new formats and new seminars over and over and over again. And it's funny because like the, the strand, the DNA of this school of thought is kind of this unfalsifiable lofty generic, we are one with everything. And, uh, in you, we've lost touch with our nature, the natural order, and we need to do certain practices to get, to get back in touch with our nature. And if we do that, then, uh, we'll be really happy and get rich and everything will be great. It's interesting seeing the Eastern philosophy that arrived in the 1960s and seventies, because there are aspects of Buddhism and yoga, which is where the chakras come from that cohere perfectly with new thought or new age thinking, right? It's, you know, Buddhist philosophy is very explicit of like the self does not exist. That we are part of this, this kind of infinite nothingness in Buddha, in Buddhist philosophy, it's there's it's emptiness, but it is kind of this infinite oceanic existence that we all kind of float in, in various, various ways and forms. Um, there is this idea of kind of the shedding of self, the return to your true nature, um, the removing of illusions and attachments. And of course the, the, the power of thought. The power of focused attention and the power of directing, directing that focused attention towards things and the repercussions that that has in your life and so what you've seen is that you've seen a lot of this eastern spirituality and eastern thought just get merged and integrated into new age thinking wholesale like there's like nobody even batted an eye they're like oh yeah yeah uh the the universe wants you to be this way so yeah you should meditate and now they'll help you reveal your true self and shed your ego and then you'll be able to manifest your true nature that much sooner uh and it's kind of like it just fits in slots in nicely with kind of the gobbledygook that gets repeated often um it's stuff that feels good i think meditation slots in nicely too because it is we talked just a few minutes ago about how you and i the primary value that we find in is very much an emotional one right it helps us regulate our emotions it de-stresses us it calms us i think a lot of new age self-help is really just that it's kind of this elaborate intellectual structure that's not actually very coherent but it just it's coherent enough to get you to do certain things or think about certain things that calms you down and um and so it's it's really just like an elaborate cope um for an anxious or overwhelmed existence well so okay what's the what's the harm in it then mark if that's what it's we come back to this okay so much okay yeah what's what's the harm in it if that's the harm in it then mark if that's what it's we come back to this okay so much okay yeah that's what it's doing so what how do you get there well where i was going with this is that i think i think meditation is probably being unfairly implicated in a lot of the the same woo-woo nonsense that that we often stick our nose up at on this podcast and and make fun of sure it's been adopted by these people and yeah it does fit quite nicely into their framework or understanding of the world okay yeah but it didn't come from the same place like meditation actually has a a lineage going back three thousand years right right and um it actually has a very deep spiritual practice that has existed for a very long time and there are real phenomenal phenomenological and psychological implications and experiences that come with that spiritual practice so all this is to say is that i don't think people i get the aversion but i don't it's guilty by association it is at this point it is okay yeah that's that's definitely where i land on it i again i think we have a category problem here right which is you know meditation is often framed as like this pipeline to some cosmic uh order that we can tap into or whatever it is when really you know if you look at it from a more empirical uh lens it's just it's attention training it's right metacognitive awareness and skill building it's emotional regulation like we that's what it is and you don't have to complicate it any more than that yes and well i'll put i'll say this too a lot of the quote-unquote spiritual woo-woo stuff i i actually think buddhism is a more proper explanation for what they're trying to get at so i'll just give you a quick example or a quick primer like in buddhist thought the whole reason you meditate is to remove the illusion of self is to come to the realization that what you understand as drew is just this completely made-up arbitrary definition that you've cobbled together over 40 years of life experience and the same way you cobbled it together you can uncobble it and recobble it however you want and but the the point that buddhism makes is that however you choose to cobble that definition of self together it is going to cause suffering in whatever way right so um if you redefine yourself in such a way if you meditate enough and you like look at your thoughts and feelings and associations in buddhism it's it's often translated as attachment for me attachment i think is not a perfect english translation and my observation is that it seems to confuse people more than it actually helps them to me a more accurate way of describing it is an identification it's if you're angry anger is not necessarily a problem the problem is when you identify with your anger and you decide to do something about it and you decide to do something about it and you decide that that is like actually representative of who you are and and you see no separation between yourself and the anger it's um that there's a lack of that gap that we spoke about or um you know if i define myself as a podcaster you know like it's there needs to be some sort of awareness that these these identity markers are arbitrary and made up and selected and i'm opting into identifying with them or i can also opt out of identifying with them and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think the point that buddhism buddhism makes is that the more stuff you opt into identifying with the more you're going to cause yourself to suffer and so it's it's by holding all of these experiences loosely and understanding that they're all transitory and that they're all arbitrary and they they all uh both good and bad don't necessarily signify anything about who you are you're able to relieve yourself of of unnecessary suffering in in the world there's a lot of real value in that that's a deep spiritual thing you just said without being like supernatural yes going into the supernatural or or yeah at no point that i describe the universe or energy or uh it's incredibly practical but it's incredibly cosmic consciousness right and and part of that disidentification with everything is when you when you start is when that dissolution of identity begins to happen what happens is is that you actually paradoxically you start to feel very one with everything right because it turns out that by identifying with a certain experience or emotion or trait or aspect of yourself you're actually very much limiting your experience right like if i decide that the most important part of my identity is is being a podcaster everything i experience in my life is going to be about podcasting i'm going to see everything in terms of podcasting i'm going to feel everything in terms of podcasting i'm going to feel threatened in terms of my ability to podcast or not whereas when you let go and loosen up and you let you disidentify with everything you actually it actually frees you to experience everything more fully and so what you end up with is is kind of this the boundaries between yourself and the universe for lack of a better term or reality existence starts to to dissolve and and get more faint and so you people people who have meditated extremely intensely you also see this happen a lot with people who take a lot of psychedelics there is an ego dissolution that begins to happen and you you feel like the individual self or the consciousness that is you is no longer limited to your skull and it is now like pervades anything and everything that you're experiencing so i can see why that would be called a cosmic consciousness right yeah and so there's like there real there is a real phenomenon that that idea comes from it just tends to get very butchered yeah the john cabot zinn came up with the definition um which is something along the lines of what meditation actually is which i think fits in really well here which is uh it's paying attention on purpose in the present moment non-judgmentally i like that and so that like again all of those things can be very i guess for lack of a better word spiritual in their nature without being without appealing to supernatural forces or or cosmic uh overly cosmic explanations of things right yeah there doesn't have to be these spiritual claims it doesn't have to be these belief systems it's more like an instruction manual when you look at it like that and yet that's still very profound and very spiritual at the same time but i even when you're sitting here explaining like oh you're you're becoming one with the universe or reality or whatever it is that has that hint of kind of like this uh supernatural uh you know woo woo new energy type thing that will still even turn people off but well i think i think it's the definition of that word spiritual that you need to also hang on to very loosely right well and this is the challenge of this is that because if you think about it the act of trying to put word like what what are what are words right words are identifiers right like you're taking uh you're you're taking some arbitrary concept or experience and you're putting a boundary around it and you are like labeling that thing and so as soon as you do that that is completely antithetical to what you know like a deep eastern spiritual practice is trying to get you to do right so so by its very nature these experiences defy words because words are exactly contrary to what the experience is so as soon as you say like something like cosmic consciousness or one with everything ironically that's a very limiting way to describe it because it doesn't it's you're still putting a boundary around it and putting a label on top of it and saying this is see this thing that i'm holding in front of me this is this is what that is it defies labeling it defies identification it defies boundary which is paradoxical ken wilber used to call it uh non-dualism which is a fun little term to think about that he called what non-dualism like the whole it's non-dualism so it's like a non-dual consciousness oh okay okay so it's it's the lack of division if you ask freud about meditation i imagine that's the lack of what he would say is that you're exercising your superego. Like the superego in Freud's frame work you've got the id which is all the emotions and impulses you're unconscious you have the ego which is your identity like how you define yourself and then you have the super ego which is kind of observing your ego and i guess tries to observe your id but like can't really see it i think what freud would say is that you're exercising your super ego you're you're training the observer inside your own mind to get a more accurate picture of uh your ego who you are and then also like how it's responding to your id your impulses and emotions and desires and whatnot the better your understanding of your ego the more adaptable that ego becomes and probably the healthier you become that would probably be the freudian explanation but the funny thing is like when freud talked about spiritual experiences he actually saw it as like a infantile regression like a like when the ego dissolves you fall back into your id which is where you were when you were like a child and so your pure impulse and your pure lack of differentiation and your pure lack of identity ken wilber came along and he made the astute observation he said it's not infantile regression he said that's more like like what disassociation would be the spiritual experience of a non-dual awareness is actually you don't you don't lose the ego you transcend and include the ego so it's like when you're having this non-dual awareness you're still aware that this thing that you know as drew exists but you're just not attached to it you're like oh cool it's just another thing in the room that you can observe and play with and but you're not identified with you're not identified with it you're not attached to it okay okay yeah we talked a little bit about that in the ego episode i guess too where the point wasn't necessarily to get rid of your ego yes it was to have a healthy sense of ego and know when it's online and what it's doing yeah yeah and then the spiritual practice is to transcend the ego but not eliminate it okay okay interesting okay for all the skeptics who do want to stay away from that the the whole overly spiritual i guess or overly supernatural side of things i mean if you think about it like your mind really is it's just constantly generating bullshit thoughts yeah you call it thought i call it bullshit thoughts predictions interpretations simulations right i always say our brains are big comparison machines we're always generating these comparisons yeah really what meditation boils down to is that noticing of those thoughts and interpretations bullshit uh redirecting that attention being able to redirect it and as you just pointed out yeah disidentifying from all of that too that's what it comes down to that can be a very deeply spiritual thing for someone without getting into all of the problematic supernatural takes on it too i think a nice way to differentiate like you can you can experience meditation in both ways yeah there's a casual version of meditation which is is like almost like a hygienic practice right like it's just mental hygiene right lifting weights yeah and then there's a hardcore approach to meditation which is is really treating it you can call it spiritual you could you could call it um just like deep identity work like deeply therapeutic but i mean if you go super hard on meditation for a long period of time like you will start having very interesting experiences and observations around your ego and your identity and who you are and what you feel and what what matters and what doesn't matter like it that stuff is down there okay that isn't to say everybody should go there and it's it's also not to say that's the only way to get there gotcha okay yeah i would say i'm much more on the hygienic side of like how i use it anyway yeah um maybe at some point i'll get into the get way more deeper into it i don't know but yeah so far the hygienic side you can still get a lot of value out of it and it still feels even spiritual uh to some degree yeah the discipline part of it actually is very spiritual we we've discovered okay there's there's kind of two ways to approach it there's this ultra new ag woo woo way to do it or you can be a little more of an empiricist around it and there's still a spiritual side to it sure however okay as you've noted as we've noted several times already meditation came out of um a lot of ancient spiritual traditions a lot of ancient religions too so are we missing something when we separate it from that like are we are we when we divest it from that when we when we separate the two out because i there's there's part of me that sees you know when you do that then you can run a corporate retreat on meditation right and you can have calm good little well-behaved employees now right that meditate right okay yeah or you know you can get you can go all sorts of ways with it at that point there's people who will argue when it doesn't have that kind of moral uh and ethical backbone attached to it that you can start running into those sorts of problems where it can be used for the wrong reasons or become a caricature of itself i would say it's it's not it's not just the moral backbone it's it's the time horizon as well so i have i have multiple friends who are very serious buddhists and they measure the success of their meditation practice in decades right like you and i measure the success of our meditation practice in like minutes right yeah yeah well yeah was that good or bad what i just did did i do it this week or not right like that's pretty much where i'm at these days right and that's why i say it's more hygienic for me but yeah right like when i talked when i talked about like my very serious buddhist friends like it's you know one of my friends just got a new teacher and it was a very big deal for him and and he was telling me he was like yeah i just felt like after eight years with my last teacher like i wasn't really progressing anymore and i felt like it was time to kind of move on and try something different nobody talks about meditation in that way like everything you just described about corporate retreats and like morning routines and everything like it just it seems it seems almost a little pedantic i think there's something about the long-term commitment of the practice that is it might be one of those things where it's like it's it's less the practice itself and it's more just the fact that some people are committed over a long period of time to a single thing that is relatively healthy right and this kind of bleeds into like we keep teasing the audience that we're going to do an episode on religion at some point this kind of this kind of i'm i'm by the way i'm shocked how many people write in and say that they want it uh but this kind of people on the team too are like yes go for it like uh i don't know i kind of like to live for a little bit longer this kind of bleeds a little bit over into just my some of my perspectives on religion like what the value in religion is and i think a lot of the value is just you have people who have who have committed their lives to something that they feel is incredibly meaningful and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and it happens to also be something that has some some psychological and physical health benefits like in the purpose episode we talked about how it's it's almost secondary to like what you commit to versus just the fact that you have something and have some lifelong commitment to something and i i do think the value of religion a lot of the value of religion falls under that umbrella and i i imagine a long-term meditation practice does too it's funny too i like this question for you but like when i think about everybody i know who meditates or has meditated all of the casual people who who've meditated here and there like most of them will say some good things but most of them don't keep up with it it's not a regular part of their life it comes and goes it's a habit that they gain and lose and most of them if you talk to them about it it's like yeah it was very helpful or like yeah i was able to focus better or like i went through a tough time in my life and meditation was was yeah it was useful whereas when you talk to them about it it's like yeah it was very helpful or like yeah i was able to focus better or like yeah i was able to focus better or like yeah i was able to focus better or like yeah actually buddhist and actually in it uh it's everything for them right it's it's it's like talking to a very devout christian about church yeah or prayer or prayer yeah like they to them it's almost like unfathomable that they don't do it yeah i i mean i i don't know where i land on that i guess um but that that does make sense to me where if you're attaching it to like a you're attaching a practice to a larger system you're more likely to stay stick with it for one but also it means something completely different to you and i think that added context is probably what brings a lot of the benefits so this is the other thing you get you have your woo-woo people who right they do their little meditation retreats for a couple times a year and they they they go hire some specialty like i don't want to talk too much shit but like i had some friends out here in california who got really excited because they like went and found the quote-unquote best meditation teacher who was like five thousand dollars a year and they were like i don't want to talk too much shit but like i had some friends a day or something ridiculous like come to their heart in the wrong business yeah to like come to their house to teach them to meditate for a day and they they like invited me and i was like absolutely not like the actual buddhist teachers most of them don't charge anything yeah most of them don't even broadcast that they're they're like actual like lamas or what their rank is in the tibetan school or like whatever branch or denomination that they're part of and they'll just teach you over zoom like if you're serious they'll teach you over zoom and they won't ask for anything so there's like there is kind of this hidden third category of like if you do really want to take this seriously as a religious practice it's a completely different world and in existence and i was just going to say like one of one of my friends who's in that world i mean i've taught he's sat there and excitedly told me about like the lineage of his teacher like his teacher's teacher and his teacher's teacher's teacher and like how it goes back to tibet and how like how many centuries it goes back and how you you can actually trace where it branched off from like, one of the monasteries there and like so it's cool to to know that you're part of something that's thousands of years old and you're like part of the continuation of it yeah yeah that i totally get and there's like the tradition and the ritual and everything i like sometimes i'll get a little bit into that too just because it's kind of fun yeah i still don't know where i land on that because it it does feel you know you can get into the whole cultural appropriation and all that kind of stuff i do yoga too which is another you know it's a hindu um tradition that i do that i i'm not there's no spiritual fuck cultural appropriation like seriously with the stupidest fucking concept i agree stupidest fucking concept i agree you know what you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna go to china and i'm gonna start lecturing chinese people about all the mcdonald's that they have over there how dare you steal our culture of course the american culture you're appropriating our culture our big macs right how dare you chinese people i think it's perfectly fine to go take the best parts of whatever culture you use them how you need to use them that's great i go like like i said i go to yoga and i don't attach any sort of like there are definitely people in there who are in the new age woo woo crowd that do this but i it's more for me it's actually meditative too for me as well there's there's a silent yoga i go to sometimes it's very meditative i'm more in the hygienic crowd like you were talking about and i still see a lot of benefit from that so i don't think i get it if you're turned off by that the whole kind of pseudo religious side of it absolutely a valid concern it doesn't have to be yeah i guess and that's not a huge breakthrough i know but yeah that's where i land on it's it is it is one of the few practices that uh it can meet you where you are yes right yes so if you just want a little boost in your morning it can do that if you want to give your whole life to a three thousand year old lineage of beautiful history and tradition you can do that yeah hey that's the other thing though too it's been around for so long there's there's something to it yeah at the very least there's something to it and not only it's not only eastern religions too like actually christianity actually has a meditative uh tradition yes and it too it just hasn't hasn't been highlighted for a few centuries but yeah i mean prayer is is a kind of meditation and yeah yeah so you pose this question at the top yeah is it worth the trouble is it worth the trouble is meditation worth the trouble as with almost every solved episode the answer is it depends sure yeah it depends what you're looking for what you need i think it is is worth everybody trying like i i really can't think of if you have never meditated before i cannot think of a good reason to not give it a a a genuine attempt and see what happens it's like eating broccoli you just try it eat your veggies just try it once you got to try it sure well all right it's the bro we'll go with broccoli okay yeah yeah i would absolutely agree with you on that i might go a step further and say i i think it is worth the trouble especially for the the kind of person who's probably listening to this who is a little bit skeptical either you either never tried it before or i've tried it and had mixed results at best um get some structure around it you know uh get it go to an instructor find the thing that fits for you you know whether it's the walking meditation or sitting in a room by yourself or doing group meditation too we didn't really get into that but going and making a social thing out of it uh cleaning your house mundane things sure go for it my thing is though is that i think people should do it but probably not for most of the reasons we've even been talking about so far which it's not it's not a health hack okay this is this is the this is the part that the hype i think has done the most damage is that oh it's going to fix all these problems this is what we opened up with it's not a health hack yeah um it's just it's not there might be some benefits of it sure but it's you're not you don't want to do it for those i don't think those that's the only thing that's the only thing that's the primary reason you should be doing it something i just thought of the irony of meditation is that if you're disciplined enough to actually do it regularly you're probably disciplined enough that you don't need it oh okay yeah yeah right i mean i i would actually encourage people to if you live in a major city go try to go find a group okay go find a group okay because it is first of all it's way easier to do it with other people like if you're sitting the act of sitting by yourself in a room for 10 minutes staring at a wall is like it's agonizing it's really rough yeah it's it a lot of people will not get through it but if you're in a room full of other people and there's kind of a ritual aspect to it um there's there's like a an agenda and a schedule and like you you just you have you're inside this framework you know what's happening and why it's happening uh it it does get a lot easier and it's nice because you there's about i don't know you you're you're you're experiencing meditation in the way that it was kind of intended to be experienced yeah yeah it really never was supposed to be you sitting in a room alone in silence or yeah unless you're a monk no yeah right right like nobody did that right yeah meditation for the people yeah we're talking for the people yeah yeah social meditation yes no i and but i think there is a um i think there needs to be a clarification around motivation still though too like i said don't not not for the health reasons don't do it because somebody said it's going to make you happy either which i think that is that's a that's actually a terrible motivation for it that could happen you could be happier because as a result of a good disciplined meditation practice over time sure for me anyway what meditation has become is i'm sitting down to like learn about my mind to to know my mind there's nothing else to do at that point to know the dark parts of your mind even too and how do we ugly parts of yourself and to look at it examine them see them for what they are and importantly like you've mentioned over and over to not identify necessarily with them right but to understand them okay it's not about happiness i mean fuck your happiness at that point right like what who cares about your happiness if you're able to train your attention on itself yeah and know what's going on in your mind know your own mind like to me that's the real value of it and that's not always easy it's not always fun it's not always helpful yeah too sometimes it yeah sometimes it does hurt yeah i mean well you know what's interesting that relates to all of this yeah is so when we were developing purpose like i did a lot of research on the meditation apps it's kind of like yeah just case study yeah and the two biggest ones most people have heard of uh is calm and headspace yeah and calm and headspace very much went after the casual user yes right it's like five minutes of meditation and then you're like oh my god i'm gonna do this in the morning de-stress a little bit help you relax mass market yeah mass market and it's interesting because both of those companies have have succumbed to massive amounts of churn like they really have trouble keeping people on their apps for long periods of time and then secondly both of those companies have pivoted very hard in the sleep just because it's probably a better business model and then interestingly the meditation apps that actually do have a lot of traction and do seem to have very sustainable business models are those smaller more focused kind of more intentional apps things like wake waking up or sam harris is waking up and then dan harris is uh ten percent happier yeah both of those apps have much more of a philosophical psychological focus in in their content um and they attract more serious meditators who actually do want to do the work that you're talking about and do want to like have a better understanding of their own consciousness and their their own um their own identities those apps have much smaller user bases but they're thriving and super profitable yeah yeah and people stick with them more yeah yeah dan harris is an interesting case study here so for people who don't know he was a uh news anchor uh abc news anchor he had a very public panic attack back in like the early 2000s i think or something like that and that's what led him to meditation it's interesting because he's very nuanced about it as well it's like it didn't save my life and maybe maybe ten percent happier yeah it's like as a ten percent improvement which i think that's probably that's probably about right for meditation yeah i get you ten percent and honestly i mean you and i talk about this all the time that like when if you are currently struggling say with anxiety or depression or whatever else there is this internal sense of like i need to do a full 180 i need to completely change i need to get rid of everything you probably need to be ten percent less anxious or ten percent happier one of the things i'll i'll end on here anyway is that what meditation also does is shows you how little control you have and that can be terrifying at first but it's also that's what gives you agency in a paradoxical way this is the thing i love about meditation too is that you're just forced to sit with all these paradoxes and i know you like this too like you're really big into paradoxes but one of one of the most useful ones for me anyway that meditation has showed you is like oh you don't like the thoughts that monkey mind you talked about you don't control that thing at all no you have zero control over that actually yeah and you need to somehow come to grips with that and that reality at some point and only then can you then actually have agency in your life yeah so yeah i love the fact and we talked about this before we started we went on air but uh just the whole question meditation is it worth it if is it worth the trouble yeah like looking at that title i was like i was like what what trouble what trouble like literally meditation is just literally doing nothing like you just it's all you have to do is just stop doing everything why is that so hard why why does that feel so difficult we go to the gym we like obsess over our diets and sleep routines and everything like that what is it about just sitting you've got doing nothing you've got 18 tabs open on your browser and you've read half of each of them like but there's just the idea of like sitting quietly for five minutes feels overwhelmingly difficult like it's such a funny there's a paradox for you yeah yeah yeah you you work out regularly is it worth the trouble of course it's worth the trouble absolutely it is and this is just sitting sitting there doing nothing and we're we have to do a whole like is it i don't know we're even calling it trouble right is it what's the trouble what is what is the trouble yeah i think that's a good place to end i think if you look at it that way you're going to come to the conclusion that i've come to which is yes it's worth the trouble yeah give it a shot could be all right well thank you everybody this was another episode of solved uh please check out the website for free pdf guides on each of the episodes that's at solvepodcast.com and drew and i will be back in a couple weeks good let's wrap you