Today we're going to cover the five biggest misconceptions of meditation, which is the title of a TED talk that I did 10 years ago. It got nearly a million views. And I thought it'd be helpful for you guys if we revisit that concept and update it. In case you're not familiar with my background, I've been on the front lines of teaching people how to meditate for over 20 years. I've worked with thousands of people all over the world. I've written several books on the subject. And I've been running a meditation-centric online community for years,

helping people become self-sufficient in the practice of meditation. And as popular as meditation

as these days, in the general public, it's still a very ambiguous practice for a lot of people.

And that's why there's still so much confusion. A lot of meditation

has become performative, sit up straight, think about your chakras, focus on your third eye

center and all of that, stuff that doesn't make any difference in the quality of your experience.

In fact, it'll work against you. And that's because there's no recognized criteria for

teaching or coaching or guiding meditation. So there's a lot of

the blind leading the blind. And that's how you end up with all of this confusion and so many

misconceptions. So we're going to go through each one of the misconceptions. I won't say that

these are even the biggest misconceptions. I'll just say that these are the most common misconceptions

that I've seen people have. And I'll explain

what to do instead. And the last one is I think one of the main misconceptions that keeps the

most people from benefiting from a consistent daily meditation practice. So if you get to the

end of the video, your understanding of what it means to meditate is going to be better than

literally 99% of the people who call themselves meditators.

And that's just by watching all the way to the end of this video.

All right, let's get right into it.

Misconception number one, I'm a bad meditator if I can't quiet my mind.

I would say this is the most common misconception is that meditation is synonymous with quieting your mind.

And it's not that you can't achieve a quiet mind in meditation. You absolutely can. But here's the

thing. If you try to quiet your mind, you're going to get the opposite experience. Your mind is

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