Episode 33 - Meditation
Show Notes
Live with Matt Rad #33
Dec 22, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 30
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Meditation
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 33
Dec 22, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 30
Definition:
Meditation could be exercise, marathon running, walking your dog, body building.
Matt and Jon both practice mindfulness meditation.
They’re both big fans of Sam Harris’ Waking Up app.
A daily practice of increasing your awareness of the world.
They typically do 10-20 min of meditation a day.
Flow state can be meditative, but it’s not what they’re talking about.
Matt’s practice for the last 6-7 years has been daily 10 min session w/ a guide in the morning.
Naval recommends a 60min daily meditation. Matt is now doing this.
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It’s not that you don’t think of anything, it’s the process of sitting and focusing on honing your sense of attention.
When you realize that you’re distracted you come back to the center and re-focus.
Meditation has helped reduce Matt’s anxiety.
It’s a training in separating yourself from being led by your thoughts.
Mindfulness reduces the half-life of the thoughts that enter your mind. With practice they linger for less and less time.
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Jon started learning under Headspace app.
You can train your mind to be more meditative and open to flow state by meditating.
The practice allows Jon to detach from the aspects of his life that might otherwise upset his day.
Doing something consistent in the morning, whether you meditate or not, is highly beneficial. Building strong habits.
It makes you realize very quickly that you’re constantly running thought loops. The same things over and over.
Non-judgment of yourself while you meditate is a large part of it. It’s not always easy.
Matt has never completed a meditation and then said “Naaah. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Hour-long Meditation:
Matt has been doing it for the last 60 days.
He has started doing this on the recommendation of Naval.
Sitting for an hour every day for 60 days. Eyes closed.
Mostly it’s being distracted for the first few weeks.
Eventually you become aware of your thinking.
After 40-50 days you start to run out of things to think about. Your mental inbox has now been cleaned out.
To be able to do it for an hour you should really have a pre-existing base of having practiced ten minute sessions. Start it in stages.
It’s almost impossible to not be thinking. There are very few people who can sit for an hours and be pure awareness.
Once you get to the point where you can concentrate on specific aspects it allows you to expand the practice to the rest of your life.
At this point the meditation becomes like a warmup for the rest of your day.
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Meditation is the best antidote we have for technology or industry that is trying to constantly grab our attention.
A daily morning practice of mindfulness meditation.
Q: What are ways that having a practice has benefited you?
Matt:
Anxiety goes down
Focus goes up
More present w people in his life
He doesn’t stay angry as long as he used to.
Jon:
No road rage
Less impulsive/reactive
Matt still gets super anxious, but it’s far less than it used to.
It allows Matt to work longer, more focused, and more relaxed.
It allows Matt to relax his face muscles, which he wasn’t aware of.
It allows him to relax tension in his body.
Awareness of body and mind that there isn’t a parallel for.
The Creative Process:
It allows Jon to focus on the nuance of the sound he’s hearing.
“There’s little excuse to be lazy when you’re so aware.”
It allows Matt to retain more focus for longer.
Jon: Songs that are two minutes long. Jon wonders if shorter attention spans are the cause of this.
Matt thinks they may be the result of distribution mechanisms incentivizing shorter records.
Matt’s patience for everything has increased dramatically.
The feeling of needing to get something done or not having enough time is probably self-imposed.
“I’m an old man and I’ve known many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
A quote from Mark Twain
To dwell on your anxieties is a waste of time.
Once you can no longer control the outcome all you have is your own mind.
Q: Will Matt continue doing the hour a day? If so or if not, then how often will you do this practice?
Matt will continue to do the hour because it gets more interesting the longer you do it.
It keeps getting deeper, calmer, or more interesting.
Meditation is a great antidote to boredom.
Right now the big alternative we have is social media, which is the absolute worst. It’s like sugar for your mind.
To be able to sit by yourself doing nothing and just be interested is so much better than focusing on the lives of others on IG.
Somewhere, once you get into the 30-40 range your body and your brain gets settled in a different way.
It’s evened-out Matt’s energy levels. It’s reduced spikes. He can still go hard if he needs to, but he’s not at the whim of his energy levels.
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Matt would really like to go on a silent retreat for a week.
Doing 2-3 days doesn’t give you enough time to break through.
Q: What is Jon’s meditation chair?
The chair is a dedicated space for meditation only and is a no-phone zone.
Jon only uses it for this purpose.
It’s less about the chair and more about the space.
The sun comes in through the window where the chair is at.
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Matt and Jon have both had psychedelic experiences.
They don’t do them very often.
What it showed Matt was that different states of mind were possible.
