I’m not against meditation or any other method that promises to bring inner peace and mindfulness. The emptiness of worries and thoughts. Deep concentration. All good stuff. But I firmly believe that’s not what most people need right now.

We need a good chat with those rambling and often uncomfortable ideas in our heads that keep trying to get our attention without success. Why is it so difficult to listen and have those conversations? I believe we can say it’s a “plumbing” issue.

Too much too fast

The so-called modern world we live in has no precedent in history to the amount of information dumped into us every day. The data revolution has reached every sphere of life.

Societies have their economies in full transition to a reality where digital assets are worth more than traditional companies. In our personal lives, we are not supposed to be disconnected anymore, so we can keep the aforementioned digital businesses profitable.

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We are social creatures that thrive through collaboration. Collectively, we have created so much more than what is capable of by single individuals. However, our social reach was always limited to a few dozen people. Maybe a few hundred tops.

We can handle the amount of information, interactions, and gossip that flows around in a community of that size. Our millions of years of slow and steady genetic advancement didn’t move fast enough to catch up with the scale of interconnectivity and information that is present today.

Our thinking “pipes” can’t handle the flow, so we prioritize what goes through and what doesn’t. The internal thoughts most often get left behind for the external, which are much easier to handle than our problems, ideas, and concerns.

There's nothing new within

We believe that what we read today about human interactions, performance and self-improvement is novel and innovative. That is far from reality. Greek philosophers and Roman emperors were already masters of this trade and would have been top influencers on Instagram.

Imagine a podcast on the ancient Agora of Athens?! Joe Rogan would have had to step up his game. That’s because, at the core, we are still wired the same way. Our environment is what has dramatically changed.

Although we’re still trying to get to Mars, a new world is already here. It even has a name, The Metaverse, a live digital universe where individuals will have a sense of spatial awareness, social presence and contribute to an extensive virtual economy. We will come back to this guy in a later essay, but suffice to say that we all already took a one-way ticket ride to a significantly different world, and learning how to adapt to it is the new natural selection.

Research studies are continuously showing a significant reduction of the attention span of the average person. Some are even saying it’s down to 8 seconds for internet users, a second behind a Goldfish.

Regardless of the numbers, the fact is that the dopamine hit of instant gratification when jumping from one meme to another keeps us from hearing our own thoughts, be them good or bad, happy or sad. (I can’t help myself, here’s a link to keep reading while listening to Al Green)

Have a thinking budget

That’s where I believe meditation to achieve a blank mind — the emptiness of thought — is not what we need. We need to have a good zoom meeting with those fellows up there in our heads. Be a patient and good listener to them. Avoid at all instances pre-judgment, biases, and knee-jerk reactions.

Without facing those tough conversations, they will never go away. Increasing the volume of the noise around it will not help it. They will accumulate, start conspiring and eventually try to overthrow the government; after all, they’re not being listened right?

It’s the ultimate feedback session — one hundred percent accountability for the results after the conversation. There’s no one else to wait on to approve the actions. There’s no one to wait to do something for you. Whatever is agreed upon in this meeting, you will have full control to implement and reap the rewards.

Autopilot sounds pretty good for those moments stuck in traffic, but would you really like that for your life and your own mind?