Meditation, Solved: Is It Actually Worth It?
3/18/20261 hr 28 min
Meditation has been sold to us as a magic pill for so long that the backlash is almost as overblown as the hype. I spent years deep in Buddhist practice, went on retreats, meditated daily — and then slowly discovered that half the gurus evangelizing it were alcoholics, abusers, or running Rolls-Royce-funded cults. Here's what the more careful research actually shows: there are three things meditation does reliably well, and they’re probably not what you've been promised. More importantly, almost everything you've been told about how to do it is wrong — starting with the idea that the goal is to qui...
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First 90 secondsMark Manson· Host0:00
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Mark Manson· Host0:29
Welcome to Solved. I am Mark Manson, and today we are talking about meditation [laughs] 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 [laughs] 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. [laughs] 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,