Meditation, Solved: Is It Actually Worth It?

0:00 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 cultlike cash grabs with fleets of Rolls-Royces. I'm actually not making any of those things up, but we will get

0:46 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 short of six-pack abs and a winning lottery ticket, which sucks cuz 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 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

1:31 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 are 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 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

2:17 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,

3:04 what if the problem isn't that meditation doesn't work, but more like you've been trying to use a skillbuilding 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 Bernie, 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. >> Is that how we're starting this?

3:49 >> Oh, just with some big ass. >> 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 twominut summary of my 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

4:35 someone who struggled with ADHD, I found meditation to be very therapeutic or or medicative in many ways. It 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, um who was not Christian, discovering Buddhism felt like finding water in a desert. And it it became a big part of my identity when I was in university. Uh 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

5:21 from it. So actually, if you look at my early writing, 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 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 um 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 this episode. >> And then by the time >> uh I got into my 30s, >> it became a very sporadic practice for me. It became almost like a you know

6:07 break in case of emergency type situation. >> So two three years don't meditate at all and then like life goes to [ __ ] and I'm like oh I need to like get back on the mat and start meditating again. >> Very much like church for >> 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 >> the 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.

6:52 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 the 15 years since uh a lot more data has come in, a lot more research has been done and it turns out that the meditation's efficacy as a intervention is spotty. >> Yes. >> Let's say it's it's uneven and uh not not so clear-cut. One of the reasons like we I wanted to do the this episode this way was because when I started talking to people about, you know, meditation, do they meditate? 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. I mean, we're in the self-help industry, right? Like this is a

7:37 >> 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 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. Okay. And we'll kind of go through the finer points of each one of those. And yeah, that's that's kind of how I want to approach this. 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

8:24 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 like fixed their relationships. All of these things, right? All of these claims came as stress relief, productivity enhancement, emotional healing, leadership development, creativity boost, even just like the manifestations and the spiritual awakenings and enlightenment and all these. >> It's literally a magic pill. >> When Yes. When you now when you say that this one thing fixes everything. >> Mhm. >> The rational response is skepticism there right? >> You would think. It's funny because I distinctly recall there being mainstream articles back in the 2000s. I think one of them was literally called meditation

9:10 why everyone should do it. I wrote an article called why you should meditate. I think of our generation of like that era right >> 2000s up through like maybe 2012 2015 >> it was just a conventional wisdom. It's like this is not just an eastern spirituality thing. Everybody should be doing it. >> 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, as we'll see, >> a lot of these claims, yes, they are

9:57 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 basically, right? >> But really what the more careful research has kind of shown is that it's more of a skill and that that's a theme that's going to come up a lot. >> It's a trainable skill and with skills, you know, outcomes are usually very gradual, 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. There's a lot of individual variation around it. >> That checks out with my experience. I

10:42 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 gained that skill and I have it right. Like >> so for example in my 20s >> 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 this is like so

11:27 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 that 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. >> Uh and meditation is just a tool for mindfulness, right? Being more mindful. So what you're saying is I've learned how to be mindful in my life, >> right? >> Throughout like just in 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

12:14 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 as we'll see, meditation is not the only way to achieve that. Meditation as a skill gives you all these other skills. And once you have those, you can apply those in your life over and over again. And that's a practice in and of itself, too, right? 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. 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-flung 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

13:01 that was amplified as well. So that's where the 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 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 and studying all these teachers and gurus and all this stuff and and I started to realize that like pretty much all of them are just a mess, right? like like like Shogram Trumpa was like a raging alcoholic and physically abusive to his followers. Alan Watts was an alcoholic. There's 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

13:46 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 [ __ ] 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 great. >> It can't be that great. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's not a fixall for shitty personality. That's for sure. I mean, as we'll see. Yeah, >> shining the light on it through information technology was definitely part of his downfall as well. But there there's I think there is a middle ground

14:32 we can kind of achieve though too. So, but you the science when it 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 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 and 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

15:17 though, there were a few things that came out 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 doesn't >> free 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 8week program though that it's fairly intense. Yeah. >> Uh it's highly structured. They have repeatable I I believe John Katzen 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 it's highly structured. They have like

16:03 very specific outcomes for them and they they they have careful controls when they've done all of this. That actually does work. Stress reduction, stress management. Again, it doesn't um eliminate the stress in your life 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 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 it's you know CBT talks about that gap between yes >> action reaction um and and how or

16:48 stimulus and response and I meditation is definitely a tool that widens that gap in your mind. You >> put 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 decentering 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 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 wandering >> when you're messing up. Yeah. >> And helps you to reorient back to whatever you were trying to focus on or

17:34 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 get 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 catchall practice that you can do and all of a sudden your life is going to be amazing, 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. >> It ultimately it is a Buddhist practice. It is an Eastern spiritual practice. And

18:20 when it came over, it was very much marketed 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 that's their whole thing. Uh >> 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

19:05 that what we should really be treating it like is like weight training or or or strength training in some way rather than like a 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 skill you can develop and it

19:51 has a very specific way that it can 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 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 and 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 he Okay. He's told me a million times. He's like, "Dude, I I meditate more than anybody I know." And he's

20:36 like, "I sit down and within 10 seconds my my brain's [ __ ] thinking about my cereal or like, you know, what was on TV last night, you know?" So, he 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 this next bucket. This episode is brought to you by Factor. If you're going to put in the work to build a meditation practice, you might as well stop sabotaging yourself with what you eat. It's really hard to show up for yourself mentally when you're running on garbage fuel. I used to be the guy who'd skip lunch, eat whatever was fastest, and then wonder why I couldn't focus in the afternoon. All those quote unquote power naps, it was cuz I was eating burritos when I should have been eating salad. But lately, I've been eating healthier and factor has helped me with that. Lately, I've been really into the

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22:08 So, if you're serious about taking better care of yourself, this is where I would start. So head to factormeals.com/solved202650 off. solve 2022650 off. That's all one word to get 50% off and a free breakfast for a year. That is one more time cuz you're going to need it. factormeals.com/solve 202650 off. This is not a trick. This is not a test. type the whole thing and make healthier eating easy with factor. >> So, what I want to do in this section is kind of go through some of these common claims that people or common objections I guess that people make

22:54 >> 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 and and Mark, as somebody with ADHD, I think you probably relate to this somewhat, but you meditated for a long time, too. So, you 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 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. >> And it was really [ __ ] annoying. >> That's so true. >> Cuz he was right. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it 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

23:39 disorders. >> It's hard >> uh intolerance to stillness sometimes too. It's just like boredom >> or just sitting there. It could feel unsafe for some people for sure. >> Dude, I will tell you it's >> it's one of the hardest things to do. >> Yes. I It's a 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 >> It was torture. It was absolute torture. It was like I was in 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. I It was just mental anguish. It was just like you're sitting there. I remember I had like a four or five hour stretch where I had a a commercial jingle stuck in my head. >> Oh no. >> And I was like, "Get out of my [ __ ]

24:26 head." Like for the love of God was was like, "Give me a break. give me a break. I would drive me insane. >> It was on level with I don't remember what it was, but it was it was something like that. And it was just like uh and I remember we had um everybody at the retreat had an hour a day with the Zen master or not an hour, like a 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, >> yeah, >> god damn it. >> But that's that's absolutely true. It's like the the the instruction to sit quietly and think about nothing. >> That is not meditation. No. And any any teacher who knows anything is not going to tell you to do that. That's a terrible instruction especially for

25:12 beginners. Yes. Okay. So, usually what you're do is you're giving your mind something to do and you're trying to, you know, keep on that. >> So, what happens 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 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 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'll be like chores, right? So it's like you can do uh some of the food prep or the cleanup um or you know sweeping the floor. And and the idea is that you're supposed to be mindful as you're doing that. >> Chop wood, carry water. Yeah. Well, that's exactly what I was going to say

25:58 is that there's like meditation can take many forms. It's not just sitting. >> Yes. >> Uh and staring at the wall and trying to empty your mind. That's not what it is necessarily. That walking meditation though is a very well validated actually form of meditation. It's part of that mindfulness-based uh stress reduction. Actually, they they build that into it. It's part of John Kabat Zen helped develop that as well. And it's like this, 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, right? >> Yeah. I actually like >> I like it better because it's like you're supposed to focus on your feet and exactly where you place your feet 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. It's >> it's actually very nice. >> Yes. Distributed attention, right? Like

26:44 so it's attention on your movement, attention on bodily sensations, on the environment around you too. >> That's that's meditation. It's just it's it's mindfulness of being mindful of your environment, right? >> The studies on walking meditation, you have improved mood, uh reduced stress and anxiety and yummy get your steps in, right? As an added bonus, right? >> Um 9,548 >> if that works. Yeah. The other the other thing you said though too like the chores thing. Um I found this there's this book by it's this guy called named uh Shok Matsumoto. He was this Japanese monk and it's a a monk's guide to cleaning house and mind. And he actually argued his preferred form of meditation was cleaning. Uh and if you ever have been to like a monastery or read anything about monasteries like cleaning

27:30 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. Yeah. >> When they clean, in his book, he talks about how, you know, 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 you your your outer environment often reflects your inner environment right? >> And we talked about this on the focus episode that there actually is research that shows that a decluttered environment is is helpful for focus. Another benefit of it though too doing small tasks with full intention like you were talking about with the walking like yeah put your heel to toe heel to toe >> when you're cleaning too it's not just

28:16 you're just mindlessly trying to get things in order. It's like you are consciously these small tiny little tasks. >> He he encourages you to pay very very close attention and uh 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 and it's very small number of things >> but um you have a respect for these objects in your life as kind of these temporary companions and it reminds you that everything's >> 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

29:03 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 meditate. You can meditate >> in a crow on a crowded bus or in a in an airport. I've had to do this before because like you just sit there and >> it can be very therapeutic. It can it can absolutely be this whole stereotype of meditate meditating you know sitting cross-legged on a pillow or whatever that 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 >> I went to Bodgaya which is supposedly where the the tree is that the Buddha sat under and became enlightened for the first time the Bodhi tree

29:50 >> um and it's cool there's like a big temple there now and and actually a lot of monks do pilgrimages there and they'll sleep under the Modi tree the way the Buddha did. >> Uh so it's this like beautiful but the the town is tiny. It's in in the middle of nowhere. You have to you have to fly. It's kind of like northwest India. So you like fly to this town called Gaia 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 you know a couple roads and that's it. And so I got all the way out there and I I remember I ended up sharing a tuk tuk with this uh young English guy and um and he was so excited to be there and I was like, "Oh, cool. Are you a Buddhist?" And uh 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."

30:36 >> But I figured, how cool would it be to learn how to meditate under the Bodhi tree? And I 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 it's uh uh you could have just stayed at home, watched a video, and decided if you liked it first before you uh >> and gotten the same result out of it. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> There's definitely like that elevation of, you know, sacred places and stuff where it's like actually the most sacred of places is are the most mundane. You know what I mean? >> Well, and I think a big misconception that people have about meditation is that it it it literally can be done anywhere. Like yeah, 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 >> it is

31:21 >> simply the the practice of pure awareness and and directing your your attention towards something and that's it. >> Yeah. No, it is uh well, okay, that gets us into this next objection, which is my mind is too busy. I I just don't feel calm and so it's just not working right. Like I've tried to meditate, my mind's 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 [ __ ] crazy. Yes, >> that is meditation. That's like noticing that is actually actually probably the first and most important step. >> Many of the beginners just they implicitly believe that meditation means having fewer thoughts and that's not it.

32:07 >> Yeah. The 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, they 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 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 and and whisp of of emotion and um and it's just it happens to you like you realize that you're not actually in control of it.

32:53 >> 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 your the 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. >> Right. So it's like they're so locked into what cheesecake they like and what flavored 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.

33:39 >> I think one of the little mini breakthroughs I had with meditation, too, and and most people do at some point is that the like those thoughts you're having, that racing mind you're having, all of that is really no different than 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. Um, >> but just like having a different relationship with it is kind of the goal there. Yeah. >> My my first Zen master used to to compare it to watching clouds go by. >> Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do? And he he said he's like some clouds are stormy and rainy and some clouds are beautiful and some clouds look like

34:24 something and some clouds look like nothing and they all come and go and um and he's like it it's silly to get attached to them. >> The other common metaphor too is if you're sitting under a bridge and the cars 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. >> What are you going to do? >> Yeah. >> It's just accepting. And it's useful because it's like sometimes sometimes there is going to be a big raincloud 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 the cloud. It's 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. It's that's not it at all. It reveals the mind that you actually have. Right? It's like like like people

35:10 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. >> 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 is just noticing that. Now, okay. 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. Um, 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.

35:56 >> And so, I don't struggle with this as much as some people. >> Yeah. >> Time scarcity is a thing. It >> It's >> right. But the the thing I do come back to is okay, 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 at 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 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 thinking about 10 million different things and I I'm like checking emails already. I'm getting ready. I'm brushing my teeth. I'm like

36:42 I'm trying to get Yes. Of course it's hard. >> It's hard. I mean again I I I used to have a teacher who 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 your life was was organized and uh and you were actually in control of of your day uh you wouldn't feel like you didn't have time to meditate. >> So so uh Zena found a really good Zena on the research team she found a really good quote uh which is uh everybody should probably meditate for about 20 minutes a day. If you're busy, it should be an hour. >> Yes. Yes. >> Which I thought was like, yeah. Okay. So, if you think you're too busy to meditate, you definitely should meditate. >> Yeah. Which I think there's there is wisdom in that. Like I I I definitely sympathize with it. I'm now

37:28 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, >> yeah, >> 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 it 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

38:13 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 what I see a lot 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 100% 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 disregulated and I was like oh okay I need to like kind of >> chill >> chill. Yeah. >> Get a hold of myself. Yeah. >> Right. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So I'll give you one more objection here. here is kind of a little

38:59 bit of a bonus objection because I actually don't think people actually say this out loud. >> Okay, >> 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 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. Like I think I think a lot of people don't go to therapy >> change in general

39:44 >> because of this. I think a lot of people don't go to marriage counseling because of this. I think a lot of people Yeah. I don't want to know what thoughts are in there. >> Yeah. People don't journal because of this, right? Because it's like, uh, I'd rather be unaware of, >> 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 it kind of like just vague resistance to it, that could be it. And that might be worth something examining as well. I I think it's a very different statement and again this this could be true for almost almost any intervention but I 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

40:30 credit. Whereas if I meet somebody who has meditated quite a bit, who's tried it, who's taken 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, 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 ill. 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 lever 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've never gone to therapy who are like what's the point of

41:16 therapy, right? It's like well you should go before you make that decision, 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, there 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 who

42:02 already have a calm demeanor, you know, and are good with solitude and and introspective. Yeah. Okay. You're you're pretty primed 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 who have experienced especially people who have experienced like trauma in their past, I would tread very carefully around this. Okay? 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 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 at some point right >> or even reexperiencing some of that

42:48 trauma. So if if you do have a a history of trauma, I would say >> and you want to do it and and you still want to do meditation. Okay. So maybe 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. Yeah. >> This needs to be supervised and it needs to be um highly structured if you're going to do it at Did you find any numbers around like what percentage of people have some sort of negative reaction or because 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 there like there's definitely uh in in the more recent responses and

43:36 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 reportporting 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 reportported. >> 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. Yeah. >> Uh to them. >> Yeah. >> Um some interesting accounts out there. So that 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 an anxiety disorder like generalized an anxiety or even OCD.

44:21 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 that is that is just universally positive. I think almost every like because even therapy one of the things that never gets broadcast about therapy is that 5 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

45:06 everybody. >> I would guess that meditation is probably about the same five to 10% of people it would 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 think >> I 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. It doesn't cost anything, >> right? The downsides are really Yeah. >> Right. It takes 5 10 minutes. you could

45:51 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 [ __ ] Like meditation like you can literally just get online and find, you know, some audios or you like an old Allen Watts meditation or something like it. There's so much stuff out there. >> Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I'm biased. I think people should absolutely try it out. Like >> again though, 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,

46:36 >> uh, caring and compassion um, type stuff. Many many >> mantras, there's chance, there's Yeah. All sorts. >> Yeah. Give it a try. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. If you've ever tried to meditate, you know the hardest part is not sitting still. It's dealing with everything your brain throws at you the second you get quiet. Before I wrote my book, before the podcast, before any of this stuff, there was a constant loop. What if nobody reads this? What if I'm not as good as I think I am? What if this whole thing is a giant public embarrassment? Sound familiar? Well, guess what? That voice does not go away. You don't beat it, you build something anyway. And it really helps when the thing you're building it with has your back. That's Shopify. Shopify is the commerce

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48:10 you've got something you've been sitting on, some idea you keep circling back to in the shower or laying awake at 2 in the morning, stop meditating on it and go build it. It's time to turn those whatifs into. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/solve. Go to shopify.com/solve. Everybody, that's shopify.com/solve. 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 newagy pseudo religious. >> I'm not into that whole thing that which >> I totally get that. And there is this

48:55 whole >> totally 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 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 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 there meditation helps you tap into this universal energy whatever that means right it's very vague of course >> uh chakras are big right and they treat them as like a literal anatomical or neurological phenomenon >> um there's all these enlightenment narratives that come around it like if you meditate you can become enlightened and that's always kind of a vague

49:41 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 especially if you're kind 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 these ideas originated for like the new age movement. Yeah. >> These things this these ideas about

50:27 manifesting your future and the universe and a universal energy and a cosmic consciousness that we're all tapping into. >> A lot of this traces back to early 19th century America. There was a group of philosophers loosely known as the transcendentalists. 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 univer 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

51:15 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 in 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 thinkketh 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

52:01 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 and you we've lost touch with our nature the natural order and we need to do certain practices 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 70s because there are aspects of

52:46 Buddhism and yoga which is where the chakras come from that cohhere 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

53:32 of focused attention and the power of directing directing that focused attention towards specific things and the 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 that that'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 gobbledegook that gets repeated often. Um it's stuff that feels good. I think meditation slots in nicely too because

54:20 it is we talked just a few minutes ago about how you and I the primary value that we find in meditation is very much an emotional one right it helps us regulate our emotions it distresses 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 if that's what it's >> We come back to this. Okay. >> So much. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What's what's the harm in it if if that's what it's doing?

55:06 >> So what how you get there? Well, what 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 woowoo 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 3,000 years, >> right? >> And um it actually has a very deep spiritual practice that has existed for a very long time. And there are real phenomen phenomenological and psychological

55:52 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 think people are being fair to meditation if they associate this with just more woowoo stuff >> right it's guilty by association it is at this point I 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 metacognitive awareness and skill building. It's emotional regulation. Like we talked about, that's what it is. And you don't have to complicate it any more than that.

56:38 >> Yes. And well, I'll I'll put I'll say this, too. A lot of the quote unquote spiritual woowoo stuff, I I actually think Buddhism is a more proper explanation for what they're trying to

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