This video today was originally intended to be a review video. I know going into the new year, many
of you guys are probably looking to level up your meditation practice or maybe just get into one.
What better way to start than by downloading one of the hundreds of meditation apps on the market?
And (literally) there are hundreds of them, so originally I thought that it would be a
good idea for me to re-download Headspace and Calm and invest hours into assessing each one
to create a comprehensive review video for you —thinking that it would be helpful. And the more
time I invested into reviewing these apps, the more it became clear to me that we've gotten to
a point now where this industry —the meditation app industry— deserves some valid critiques.
I can name five reasons why (if you are serious about taking up meditation this
year) you shouldn't download one of the mainstream meditation apps on the market, because they could
potentially lead you astray. So I scrapped everything that I had scripted for my review
video and instead, what you're seeing here is the result of me going back to the drawing board. But
hear me out. I wouldn't have filmed this video if I didn't believe that it would be
legitimately useful to some people out there. After I share with you my five reasons for not
being a fan of mainstream meditation apps, I'm gonna recommend an app that I personally use
consistently, that I think bucks the wider trends. No, this video is not sponsored. I'm not being
paid for anything. Again, I'm simply trying to share information that I think would be
useful to some people out there. So if any of what I've just said resonates, clicks, sounds
interesting... keep watching and I'll see you on the other side of this transition. Maybe an ad.
The first issue that I have with mainstream meditation apps is that they focus too much
on self-improvement. And you might be thinking, "Well, what's wrong with that? Self-improvement is
a good thing." And that's the problem. Your ego likes the idea of self-improvement and product
developers know this. On so many of these apps, you'll find meditations for just about anything:
depression, self-esteem, relationships, improving your work, etc, etc. So you download the app,
it prompts you to focus on your breath, and after five minutes you're a lot calmer than
you were going in. And then the instructor might say a couple things about the theme of
the meditation pack that you chose and then you're off on your way, thinking that you've just done a
good thing for yourself. And honestly, as far as I'm concerned, you probably have. But then what
happens next is that you go back to your life, you go back to your normal habits, and before you know
it, you're back in the same mental condition you were in before you completed the meditation. This
doesn't mean that meditation doesn't work. It just means that meditating with an end goal in
mind is probably not the best way to go about it. This kind of attitude is going to prevent you from
experiencing the transformative effects that come from maintaining a long-term practice. Meditation
isn't about pursuing a version of yourself that is better equipped for changing your life
in the ways that you want. Rather, it is about looking at your life the way that it is without
the filter of your ego and accruing the wisdom that might emerge from that. For this reason,
I don't believe that meditation and an explicit appeal to our ego should go hand-in-hand —not
even in marketing. Those who are sold meditation as a means for advancing their ego-based needs
ultimately aren't being given a chance to give the practice a fair shake. The second issue that
I have with mainstream meditation apps is their promotion of spiritual materialism. This is a term
coined by the Tibetan Buddhist meditation guru, Chongyum Trungpa, to describe the phenomenon of
using spiritual pursuits to satisfy our ego-based needs. Spiritual materialism deceives us into
thinking that we are developing our spirituality when we are really just developing our ego and
I'll give you a blatant example of this on the Calm app. After you complete a guided meditation,
the app will prompt you to share a quote about something esoteric that was mentioned
in the meditation. Literally, the app will have a ready-made Instagrammable graphic for you
to directly share to your Instagram or Facebook or what-have-you. Another more subtle form of
spiritual materialism is the way that these apps use gamification. At first glance, it might seem
like it serves a useful purpose for helping you build a habit, but let me ask you this:
Say you just spent 22 consecutive days building a streak and you happen to forget to meditate
the following day. Your streak goes back down to zero. How would that make you feel? It's hard not
to be influenced by gamification because it's designed to do exactly that: to influence you
psychologically into taking on the behavioral traits that app developers want you to take on.
What's more, is that this kind of manipulation isn't so clear-cut because it's being done in the
name of spirituality. I just don't like that. I don't like it at all. The third reason why
I don't like mainstream meditation apps is that they tend to be venture-backed. I used to work
as a marketing director for an app so I think i have an idea of what goes on behind the scenes
for this type of thing. Calm and Headspace have each raised over 200 million dollars in
venture funding from eight venture rounds. This means that the primary aim of these companies
is to make the pie that represents "demand for meditation apps" as big as possible and to get
as big of a slice of that pie for themselves as possible. That is the name of the game. And hey,
I'm pro-capitalism. This is not what my critique is about. But the thing you should be weary of,
as a consumer, is that in some cases, greed on the part of the supplier does not necessarily
translate into a better product for you. Think of this in terms of incentives. Your incentive after
downloading these apps is to learn meditation and to learn it well. After you learn it well, you
want to be able to put down your phone and go off on your own. You know who doesn't want you to put
down your phone? Your meditation app. And yes, I know, sometimes it'll send you a push notification
to remind you to put your phone down —yes, it's super ironic. But at the end of the day,
these companies are incentivized to keep you going back for more and to keep you hooked for longer.
You might not mind this so much so long as you're getting what you want but how can we be so clear
about where the line for our incentives ends and where the line representing the company's
incentives begins? Or keeps going, rather. To be honest, I don't have an answer for this.
I just know that in principle (to me, at least anyway) the sign of a good meditation app is not
a measure of how sticky it is... but rather, it is a measure of how well I can do without it. I want
to share another point with you. Just to drive the nail into the coffin. Did you know that in 2019,
Calm achieved a valuation of over one billion dollars? Just think about how crazy that is,
because at the end of the day, Calm is just a content library. Yes, you can have Matthew
Mcconaughey read bedtime stories to you on the app... but at the end of the day, it's still
just a content library. How can a content library be worth over a billion dollars to investors...
if it weren't for the prospect that the company could wedge itself into a position where millions
of users all over the world could come to rely on it for something essential? Just think about that
for a second. The fourth reason why I don't like mainstream meditation apps is the pressure that
they've placed upon themselves to capture as much of the market as possible sometimes drives them
to do cringe-worthy things. And that is putting it nicely. In particular, I want to talk about the
way that these companies package meditation for consumption by vulnerable populations
without the evidence to back it up. Calm has a meditation course for those who are struggling
with depression. Headspace used to have a course for this as well until they had to rename it
"Handling Sadness" after they presumably got a ton of backlash. Name change aside, I think that this
kind of product marketing is downright unethical. The fact that somebody —a bunch of people — like
layers and layers of people— thought that this was a good idea and was able to roll it out to
millions of users is downright unethical. I've gone through depression multiple times in my
life and the worst of my depression led to a hospitalization, so trust me when I say that
I know what it's like to live with depression when it's at its very worse. And I promise you this: if
I'd taken one of those "meditation for depression" courses while I was depressed, it wouldn't have
worked for me. Maybe it would have worked for someone else and hey, if it works for you, power
to you. But just think about all of the people living with depression who might try these courses
and not get a single benefit from them. Do you think they would be more likely to walk away from
the course thinking, "Hmm... well this product just didn't work for me. Maybe I'll try something
else!" Or do you think they would be more likely to think, "See? There's another reason to affirm
the hopelessness of my condition." (Or something like that.) "I am hopeless. Why did I bother?"
And just imagine all of the negative affect that comes from thoughts like that. You can see how
carelessness can lead to a lot of harm. Anyway, the last reason why I don't like
mainstream meditation apps is that they tend to focus predominantly on one particular type of
meditation, which is "calming meditation." The other technique, generally speaking,
is called "insight meditation" or "vipassana," which is often translated as "insight." The aim
of calming meditation is to achieve tranquility by directing attention to an object of meditation
—usually the breath. And it's through this focus that the mental chatter of the mind is reduced.
Every time you catch yourself being distracted, you simply bring your attention back to the
breath, which is ultimately just a mental concept at the end of the day. And because you're just
focusing on a concept, you're not necessarily cultivating the kind of "seeing clearly" or
"open awareness" that the other technique of meditation, vipassana, promotes. I don't want my
words to be misconstrued as, "Well, you shouldn't bother with calming meditation at all..." because
that's not what I mean. In fact, you need to be able to achieve stillness of the mind before you
can receive insights. Calming meditation can be a stepping stone to insight meditation, but my
issue with mainstream meditation apps is that the instruction often ends after you've achieved your
calm. All I'm saying is that if you stop after achieving tranquility of the mind, you'd be
missing out on so much more. Things like having revelations about the nature of impermanence or
just how illusory the concept of the self really is. It's the direct experience of these insights
that are going to have a lasting impact on the way you navigate the rest of your days. To me, calming
meditation is a great place to start. Do not get me wrong. But if you just ended there, there'd be
an entire world that awaits you that you wouldn't be able to explore. Those were my five reasons for
not being a huge fan of mainstream meditation apps. When I say "mainstream," I simply mean,
you know, "popular in the sense of sheer volume of downloads across the board." There is an app that
I've been using for a while now and I believe that it is an exception to the broader themes
that we've discussed. This app that I'm about to share with you doesn't even crack the top 100
list of most popular meditation apps, but it is hands-down, the single best meditation app I have
ever used. The app is called Waking Up and it was launched in 2018 by neuroscientist, philosopher,
and best-selling author Sam Harris. Sam Harris's background is really interesting here. Few people
on the planet can say they have a background in philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and
meditation; having studied with gurus in the east for many years. Another interesting thing about
Sam Harris, as many of you guys might know, is that he's known for being an atheist. As a result,
you get a meditation app that yields a different quality of experience. This experience feels truer
to the traditional roots of meditation but, at the same time, it can be accessed and appreciated
through the lens of empiricism. Sam doesn't just tell you that something can be achieved through
practice. He guides you into experiencing it for yourself. Nothing about his style of teaching is
frivolous or vain and his instruction is precise. Like, surprisingly... like, I am impressed by the
level of precision of his teaching. This is just something you're going to have to experience for
yourself. The technique that he teaches beginners is vipassana and there's a 21-day introductory
course you can start with. Following that, you can move into the daily meditations. There are also
other meditations you can learn on the app, of course, so you can certainly dip your toes into
different styles of teaching. But one thing you might notice is that you're not nearly getting as
much content on this app in terms of sheer volume and at first glance this might lead you to believe
that you're not getting as much value. But I would like to challenge you on this notion a little bit,
because in my opinion, you don't need a different guided meditation for every variation of every
experience you might ever come across in your life. The ancient yogis even advised
their students to just pick one meditation technique that is suitable for their temperament
and to stick with it over and over again. With Waking Up, you can do exactly this if this is
what you so choose. It's through the daily meditations. This is what I do. Honestly,
I can say that it's changed my life. Some other things that I like about the app... there's a huge
section on theory for those who like to understand the "why's" of everything —the deeper intellectual
context of the thing that they are practicing. Unlike most other apps on the market, Waking Up
will give you a full month's trial to everything the app has to offer. Nothing is restricted to
you during this trial period. And if for whatever reason, you can't afford the monthly fee of $14.99
or the annual fee of $119.99 you can send an email to the Waking Up team and they will give you a
full year's access to the app. No questions asked. They can do this because they haven't gone through
multiple rounds of venture funding, which is why they haven't had millions of dollars to invest
in advertising to you, which is why you probably haven't heard of this app before. So of course,
I'm going to provide a link in the description box below to the app for you to get your free trial.
Again, nothing in this video is sponsored. I am simply sharing this information because I think it
would be legitimately helpful to you. That brings us to the end of our video. Thank you so much for
sitting with me through this longer video. I hope that the points raised... I don't know,
I don't have any hopes at this point. I shared the video, I created the video. It's
for you to judge and assess and leave comments if you so choose. And I will see you guys next week.