 Welcome to the depression to expression podcast my friends. Are you ready to stop eating potato chips and wasting your life watching YouTube videos? Well look no further and listen no further. This is the podcast episode for you. We're talking to Liam the founder of FitMind, this amazing meditation app that he has created. We're going to learn some techniques in the podcast as well as what meditation can actually do for us and what they did for Liam and actually what it's done for me. You know talk about taking intelligent action, taking intelligent action for mental health or for anyone on the planet I believe means at least given meditation a shot. What are you scared of? Now, Liam is actually selflessly given a 60-day trial, 60 days to all members of depression to expression. Usually it's a 7-day trial but if you're a member of depression to expression you get a 60-day freebie and then of course if you don't like it you can cancel. Liam's very open about that but let me tell you this is an app like no other. You know the waking up podcast with Sam Harris. He has his own app waking up. You know Headspace I'm sure. You know Calm. This is totally different but I won't spoil it for you. If you want to be a member, patreon.com slash depression to expression. This podcast episode is also brought to you by Kars. Kars, they're fast, they're awesome but don't be afraid to walk some places. Alright, and that's it. Here we go. Can't wait to chat with Liam here in a 3-2-1. Hello everyone. We are here with Liam McClintock, founder of FitMind. Liam, how's it going? It's great to be here, Scott. Well, you know, how long ago, so I was on your podcast, how long ago was that? That must have been at least 2 or 3 months ago, right? I don't know, time's weird. Yeah, so let's just say 3 months. Okay, so I've been like, we're excited to connect because I've been checking out your LinkedIn. We follow each other on Twitter and LinkedIn and man, you are busy with the posts. I see like you're researching what's new in mindfulness and meditation and corporate wellness and then developing your own app. So you got to fill us all in. What's been going on the last few months with FitMind first? Yeah, well thank you. It's really good to be speaking with you again first off because I love the way that you think about wellness. And we had that last conversation on my own podcast was just such a great one, I thought, and covered a lot of important topics. Yeah, so FitMind is kind of transitioning a little bit because when we spoke last, I think it was mostly corporate workshops. I've been going into, I was going into mostly technology companies and then started working with some schools and addiction recovery centers just to teach meditation and productivity as well. Basically just mental wellness generally, but with kind of a meditation focus. And then I wanted to scale it a little bit and the workshops are great and I love teaching in person, but I wanted to reach more folks as many people as possible. And so I think it's somewhat ironic that that meditation is being delivered over a phone. We just launched the FitMind app last week, but you know, even though it's the device that's causing so much distraction, it is undoubtedly the best way to kind of remind ourselves to unplug in the middle or be able to use a guided meditation at any time anywhere in the middle of our busy lives. So that's what I was working on over the summer for the most part was developing that app and creating a program for training the mind and trying to lead people into like a deep meditation practice as opposed to some of the kind of level stuff that's that's gone on in the meditation industry, which I guess we could talk more about, but that's that's what I've been up to, man. It's been busy. It's definitely been busy. So if we could rewind, like we spoke about this a bit when I was on your podcast, but but meditation like you're obviously passionate about it and passionate about mindfulness. But how did you actually get into that because people like it's definitely a popular thing. That's why the the app store is flooded with with competition as you well know. So people know that there's something to this meditation thing. When did you first discover it? What's your experience been meditating and and we'll go from there. I'm really curious. Yeah, so I when I was younger, I had a really messy mind was diagnosed with OCD and ADHD. So first OCD when I was about 10, I was diagnosed and it was just, I felt like my mind was kind of tugging me around if that makes sense. So it would tell me, you have to touch every corner of your room in a certain order before you can fall asleep. And that might sound silly to people who who haven't experienced this but it's basically like this. I would call it my icky feeling. It was this feeling like I had to do something. And and that's what it feels like to have OCD. And and so I was seeing a therapist for that. And then I was diagnosed with with ADHD when I was 16, which I think people are more familiar with that one. You just, you know, my attention span was so short. I was constantly restless and it was taking medication for that. And then I went on. It wasn't until I was in college that I discovered meditation and just kind of stumbled into it. I was studying the mind at Yale studying psychology and history. But this wasn't something that was taught in school. It was something I stumbled upon through. I think I was listening to Tim Ferriss's podcast on he interviews all these successful people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jimmy Fox. And he said 80 to 90% of these most successful people in the world had a meditation practice. And so I thought, oh, I want to be successful too. This is the key to success. And so I started meditating really thinking it was just a quick fix kind of stress reduction tool and might improve my focus a little bit. But I realized all these deeper layers. And so I went on to work in venture capital in Boston. But while I was at that firm, I was really became obsessed with my practice and kind of stopped going out with my friends on the weekends. And I was going on these retreats. There's some good centers in Boston and Kripalu and the Insight Meditation Center. And as I took my practice deeper, I eventually just realized that there was so much more to it and started reading a lot of the science literature around it and eventually quit my job in finance to travel to Bali. And study meditation full time and get certified as an instructor. Whoa. So you were practicing meditation how long before you quit your job to really get your certification and everything? Let's see. A few years since college, but really I'd only been at my job in finance for a year. That year was when I really started going deep in my practice, I think, and discovering that there was a lot more to it than simply calming down. It became kind of a way of life, a different way of seeing the world. So you must have had, okay, in order to take that huge step, which I swear a lot of people think about too. People are very, as a general assumption here, a lot of people aren't satisfied with their work and what they do. And quitting is sometimes on their mind, but there needs to be a push and pull factor. So you were being pulled to this certification in mindfulness or meditation. But what was your experience like? The pull must have been you're receiving some benefit. You're appealing back these layers and discovering more. So what were you experiencing that was so great? Was it less OCD symptoms? Before you went to Bali, it's like, well, something must have really snapped and said, oh, there's something to this. Yeah, it's funny because I was thinking back on it and I couldn't remember the day that I made up my mind to quit my job. I don't know if there was a specific day, but I meant to mention earlier that I did get off of my medication through the practice of meditation. You know, it didn't happen overnight, but I was able to get off of the Adderall and my OCD has improved a lot. I don't really think about it anymore. And so I guess seeing that happen and then also reading a lot of books about meditation and also about entrepreneurship, I think really just inspired me. I was thinking about I wrote a lot of quotes on my mirror. I love to write quotes on sticky notes and look at them every day and it's just like programming my mind towards whatever that is. And one of the quotes I'd written was a Steve Jobs quote, and I'm not going to try to quote it directly because I would butcher it, but the paraphrase he said, you know, if I get up every day and I look in the mirror too many times in a row and I'm not really excited to be doing what I'm doing, then something needs to change. And there was another quote that I had from him that said something about just living life, looking at your life from your 80th birthday, and thinking about decisions from that 80th birthday vantage point. And so that really got me thinking, all right, what would I regret most at 80, like staying, I mean quitting my job and taking a big gamble that might end with me living in my parents' basement or staying with my job. And I think that was part of the line of thinking. So the line of thinking brought you to Bali and to study meditation. So what happens with these instructors? How much deeper does your practice go by actually having a mentor like that and a teacher? Yeah, it's hard to compare. So like Bali was this ideal set of circumstances where I didn't look at a phone, I didn't look at a screen for a full month. I didn't even read a book for a full month. I just cut out all external information that was previously inundating my life and was practicing yoga and meditation all day long, eating healthy in the sun with like-minded people. I mean, it was the happiest I've ever been. That said, the practice has become, and I don't want people listening to this to think meditation in order to go deep needs to be that way. I think in our regular hectic lives, we're metaphorically lifting heavier weights by training the mind in a scenario that's not as ideal as that practice. But what that did allow was for me to go really deep and understand how different the mind behaves when it's given the right inputs. It's just that contrast between a busy schedule, constant phone calls and email versus just deep introspection for a month straight. It was really stark. Wow. So I think the biggest thing people try to deal with though is to have relatively busy lives, like probably what you had in finance and dealing with these incredible inputs where we're sitting, and we have these sedentary lives, and we're sitting, and we're on our keyboards doing this stuff and looking at Excel, which I've always thought about. I'm like, it's so clear that we can train the mind just by the work that we do. And I got so good at Excel, man. In my job in advertising, I was dreaming about the thing. I was learning pivot tables. And then I don't really use it anymore. And that knowledge is lost, but it's really clear that you can train the mind and learn a new skill set, and especially with meditation. But what would you say to people who are in those busy schedules who also want to practice this deeper level of meditation? Was that the inspiration behind fit mind for the busy people who want to stay fit mentally? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's completely possible to train the mind with a busy life. And it really, the practice becomes about not just the 10 minutes on the cushion. Let's say that's your daily meditation practice. It could be as little as five or 10 minutes a day of sitting down, and there's many different techniques that you could be doing. But the practice becomes about integrating that mindset into your daily life and paying attention to where you're paying attention. Paying attention to how you're using your mind because like you said with your Excel learning curve, I mean, you can train the mind to do anything, to learn anything. And it really does, it becomes adapted to that way of focusing that quality of attention gets trained. And that's how it starts to filter the whole world. And that's how it creates your whole reality. So whatever you're paying attention to is building your mind in each moment. And that's what this neuroscience research tells us is that this principle of neuroplasticity, which is a fancy word for just saying that neuro, the brain is plastic. It can be molded and shaped depending on how we apply it. And if meditation is self directed neuroplasticity, in other words directing your attention in a certain way that starts to train the mind, then how you interact with your outside environment is experience dependent neuroplasticity. And in other words, your environment is training your mind. And so think about, you know, even if you're in a really busy lifestyle constantly with email and phone calls and scheduling, think about being very deliberate and paying attention to where you're paying attention because that is training your mind. Do you think a big problem is people thinking that multitasking is actually effective and it's kind of tearing our attention apart from one thing to the next and we're being constantly divided? Yeah, multitasking has been shown to be a myth. In other words, multitasking is just asking poorly. If you look at the brain, the brain switches rapidly back and forth between tasks that can't pay attention to two simultaneously. Actually, there's a fun exercise if you'll humor me for a minute or if those listening want to place their fingers flat on the surface in front of you if you can do this. And then try to bring your attention. You can close your eyes if it's helpful as if we're going to meditate and try to focus on the tips of both fingers simultaneously. The tips of both pointer fingers at the same time. So you're trying to feel the tips of both fingers at once. What you might notice and it's very subtle is that the mind can't pay attention to both tips simultaneously. It alternates very rapidly between the two fingers. So it's toggling back and forth. It's like watching a ping pong match. And this is actually a meditation technique where you start to train the attention this way. It rapidly switches back and forth. And this is just one way to experience what's happening to the brain when it tries to multitask and it seems like we're doing two things at once. And it's very hard on the brain actually to constantly going like that. So it results in a lower quality of output, but it's also burning more energy. It's mentally fragmenting you. It's been shown to decrease your memory. And there's all these other interesting stats that I can't remember offhand about just how much this is costing the US in productivity like billions of dollars. 600 billion dollars or something in lost productivity for multitasking. It's such a problem. Wow. That was the coolest thing ever. That was incredible. It's exactly what you said. I thought I was at first really good at it and I said, no, I'm doing it at the same time focusing on my pointer fingers. But when you focus more and really pay attention, it's just quickly left, right, left, right, left, right. You can't actually hold that attention to both at the same time. And I've read similar studies where a lot of the burnout that we experience at work is really because we're constantly multitasking and our brain literally just gets fried. At the end of a day, it's like we've been just overloading it with information. And then at the end of the day, what hurts is we feel like we haven't gotten enough done because we've done a lot or we've done a little of a lot. And it's not, we didn't get one good thing done and I suffer from that too. I'm like, yeah, I did a million things but nothing's done. So it's like the productivity does suffer. So I'm really curious about the app, the FitMind app that you've come out with, what's your pitch for this app? Why is it different than let's say Sam Harris waking up or a headspace or a calm that people are really familiar with? Yeah, for sure. So a couple of things, but I think the biggest one and the one that I feel people get the most benefit from is that we explain the psychological mechanisms behind each meditation technique. I think that trying to train the mind without understanding how it works is an analogous to trying to learn the piano without knowing how to read music. It's certainly possible. There's this Suzuki method of piano where you don't learn to read music. And I mean no offense to those who don't like psychology, then this app might not be for them. And I don't go in depth and like overly technical, but just understanding here's why we're applying your attention in these certain ways. Here's how the technique trains your mind. And then also here's how you can integrate it into your everyday life. One of the things the app does is after each lesson, so there's trainings and lessons. The trainings are the guided meditations. The lessons are paired with each training, just a short two to three minute clip explaining here's what's happening for this technique. And then the next morning you receive a daily challenge, which is paired with that lesson. Just on a rain meditation. Recognize, accept, investigate, non-reactivity. Then the challenge for that day would say, today when you experience really strong negative emotion, instead of reacting to it, just notice it as physical sensations in your body. So you have one thing to focus on that day that will help you integrate your practice so it becomes a way of life, becomes a whole new way of relating to your experience, to your emotions, to your thoughts. So I think that's our unique angle here. Mental fitness, this thing that I really believe is the next major revolution in health, is just that we start to pay attention to training our minds like we do our physical bodies. And the app has designed to help people do that. The other thing is the program is a progression of techniques. So it starts out really simple and really basic. And then adds 20 seconds each meditation. So by the end of a month, you know, you're meditating for 15 to 20 minutes. But you start out with just five minutes. And you start out the first two weeks are focused on intentional training because attention is required to meditate. Otherwise you spend the whole time lost in thought. So we spend two weeks getting a really good foundation in attention. And then we move to more like advanced techniques that are considered to be more advanced techniques, which are metacognitive awareness, starting to become aware of what's happening in the mind at all times. And then constructive practices like emotional priming or what's traditionally called meta. And then the last week there's some really deep practices, which if meditations like peeling back layers of an onion, that's really getting at the center of the onion. And these are called self inquiry or deconstructive practices, which I don't think are often taught in the West. I mean, there's certainly not on any of these other apps. Sam Harris does teach some of these more like glimpse, glimpse techniques. Yeah. So his is a little bit deeper too. But what I want to do is lead people to realize meditation is not just following the breath. There's so much more there. And your mind is a fascinating instrument. You can start to get to know it better. And you can systematically train it. And you can get really good at this without needing to go to the mountains and the Himalayas and give up all your possessions. You can still have your date. You don't need to quit your day job just yet. Unless you want to. But I think that's, I mean, that's so like, that is spot on for me. You know, even the example of what we did with our index fingers, is that kind of an example of what's in the app and how you kind of relate and can attribute the psychological effects and what's going on to the meditation? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that finger switching exercise is one of like the 25 techniques that's taught. And that's in the attentional, you know, the first week it's just building the attention muscles through that exercise. And then the, actually the lesson that's paired with that is multitasking. So we explain all the stats that I wanted to have for this conversation. Sorry, a little background. I'm in the WeWork right now. Oh, that's okay. Hey, I put you on the, just so everyone knows, I put Liam on the spot. We just logged into Zoom. I said, let's record and we just hit record. So no worries if you don't have those stats memorized. No, no worries. But yeah, that's how it works in the app too. And I really think, I think eventually this will be stuff that's taught in school. I think it'll be like the first thing we learn in school is like, hey, your mind didn't come with a user manual. So here's how it works. And we're actually going to, this is what should be taught in school, right? I mean, training the mind is supposed to be the purpose of education. And I was shocked that I had to like stumble into meditation, which is really just mental training. Like on my own, by accident in college, I think it's wild. But it's a cultural shift that'll take time, just like physical exercise took time. Oh, completely. And you know, we have the phys ed programs in schools. And here's the musculature of the body. Here's every single bone. Let's label them. Let's learn. Let's exercise. And there's really nothing to do with the mind. And that's going to take time changing the public education system. But what I love about fit mind, what you've done is just kind of what I preach at schools too. Like you're giving kids, you're in a high school. It's like, all right, let's learn algebra. And every single student is like, why? Why are we learning algebra? What's the history of algebra? Let's go back to Isaac Newton. Okay, let's go back to why this actually matters. Let's learn the history. Let's learn the why. And that's actually going to make the practice more interesting if we know some background and know, you know, what this is all about rather than someone saying, okay, let's meditate because it's good for you. And it's going to have this effect. Well, how does it have that effect? How does it work? Why is it important? I think that's what you've done with fit mind. It's like, let's give some background. Let's answer the why first. Let's have something to go with the practice so it's a little more, we don't feel lost. When there's a why, I think we can, we can better follow a path and are motivated to continue to do it, right? I absolutely love that. Yeah, I love this. And you talk about in your TED talk too that just this, how important curiosity is. And I think both of us are, we're that kid who was always asking why, and it really bummed me out when teachers couldn't tell me why I was learning something or, you know, just that adult answer of because I said so, which maybe is necessary sometimes, but like you should have an explanation why the kid doesn't put his hand in the cookie jar so that, you know, because he doesn't have the self control yet to realize how, but you can explain that, you know, those cookies aren't good for your long-term health. They're going to give you a sugar spike and then you're not going to feel good. You know, if someone had just told me that, I think I would have more likely, I probably would have still done it. No, it's so true. Yeah, you're right. But you know what I mean? Like knowing that why makes it so much more likely that someone would commit to the practice. And same thing, learning meditation. The reason I wanted to create FitMind is that when I first got into it, the why was actually, it's hard to find. Like you have to start reading books that are like buried and not common knowledge. I mean, and there's a lot of kind of woo-woo stuff out there that will give explanations that, you know, are probably helpful for some people, but they're not scientific. And I tend to err towards Western science. I think it's a good way of, you know, it maps on pretty closely to the world and it's helpful. So I think the why is so key. Yeah. Why is key and you hit the nail on the head. A question for you though, you know, learning about meditation, going to Bali, doing everything you've done. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about meditation? What are people still not getting? What do you think people really need to understand about this practice? Yeah, I think there's a lot of misconceptions. One of the biggest ones is that meditation is about emptying your mind of thoughts. And so a lot of the people I teach in workshops say they've tried it and they're actually really frustrated that they can't empty their mind and they think they're just not good at it. And meditation is not about emptying your mind of thoughts. It's about forming a better relationship with your thoughts and emotions. I'll give a couple of analogies. One is that imagine your thoughts are the waves on the surface of the ocean. Sometimes they're choppy, sometimes they're calm and smooth. And if that's where you're at is on the surface, you're just going to get tossed around when the surface is wavy. You're just going to get tossed. And let's say emotions are the currents underneath. So the currents are actually causing a lot of those thoughts at the surface. But again, like you can just be at the whims of the currents if the currents aren't going your way. So meditation is learning to actually become the ocean on command and that's like a superpower. So you're actually not going to change the surface all that much. Now naturally you'll notice that actually does start to happen, but initially the surface can be as choppy as you want it. That's actually mental. That's the practice, that's training. But you're learning not to identify. You're learning to actually dive down deep into this well of basically observation without identification with thought. So the other analogy would be that if for all of your life you've been getting battered by thoughts, which is imagine you're standing under a waterfall and the water is the thoughts. That's how we spend most of our lives. And actually a lot of us think we are our thoughts. We think whatever you know we think we are that little voice in our head. And what meditation teaches you is you can step back under the waterfall. The thoughts keep coming down, but you're not identified with them. And so you're no longer getting battered if they're negative thoughts. And again that's just such a superpower and the stream of water will not stop. But it doesn't matter what the stream is because now you've got shelter from it. I love that. It's that observer effect almost the idea that you are not your thoughts and that we constantly identify with what we're thinking. So if I think if something comes into me like you're such an idiot therefore I'm an idiot because the thought came in. That's a great start for people to say okay it's not about emptying your mind it's about changing that relationship you have with what's going on inside. Do you have anything off the top of your head what other misconceptions we may have? Yeah let's see. Okay another big one is that meditation people don't like say this but they kind of believe it and meditation is about getting good at sitting still with your eyes closed. So they think if they've had a session where they sat down and they feel calm that was a good session. And if I sit down and my mind is all over the place jumping around that was a bad session. I couldn't meditate that day. I'm a bad meditator. Meditation is about relating to what's happening in your mind. So on the days where you've least feel like meditating on the days where your mind is most restless that's when you actually have the most opportunity to advance because it's not going to be easy and you're not going to be blissed out but again you're learning to observe those thoughts without judging them. And then you take that mindset into the rest of your day. So instead of just feeling like meditation is this thing I do for five minutes a day it actually becomes all about you're cleaning the dishes and you think about this awkward encounter you had at work where someone really bothered you and then you realize all of a sudden wait a second I'm not in work anymore I'm washing the dishes and you come back to the dishes that is the practice. You do that over and over again until suddenly before you know it you've rewired your brain so that you're able to be with the dishes in this negative scenario ruminating about the past where according to one Harvard study we spend about 47% of our day lost in thought, mind wandering. So the more we can come out of our daydream we can get half of our life back. That is so interesting and 47% for some that's on a good day 90% is on a bad day. I think it's higher, I think it's higher. Yeah sometimes man, hey I struggle with that too some days are better than others One thing I find really interesting with meditation and difficult too is it's kind of like yoga where it's about the journey the practice is the end result like you'll never stop practicing but of course in western culture we love things with results we want to do something so then we get something in return With meditation do you have goals that people should set for meditation? It's like okay if you do it for this long then you're going to feel this way or get this out of it how do you sell meditation to someone when sometimes there's not necessarily a complete fulfilled end to it does that make sense? Yeah and that's one of the problems that I constantly think about is how to make this practice more attractive because it does go against everything that we're kind of biologically wired to do and also goes against you know six pack in the mirror it's just hard to incentivize yourself so I think a good way to incentivize yourself and this is one of the things on the app is like it shows you a daily streak it shows you total minutes meditated so you might say this month I want to string together 100 minutes of meditation it could be 500 minutes of meditation that'd be ambitious so you could set a goal as just a streak like a number of days in a row some people are really proud of not missing a day for three years or something because even if you sit down for one minute that's your meditation that day and that actually goes a long way so I think streaks is one way but in terms of the signs you'll start to observe if you stick with the practice there's some telltale signs and there's kind of a caveat here I'll get into in a minute but initially what you'll notice when you start to meditate you'll notice that you become way more aware so it's almost like someone turned up the volume and you start to hear wow I'm kind of insane most of the time I'm talking to myself and I don't really like what's going on there so initially there's that period of like whoa I didn't even realize this was going on and then all these positive little it starts out really small so maybe you stop honking in traffic because you just catch yourself between that stimulus of feeling angry and the response of honking and think what was the point of honking maybe it's just you're having a conversation with a friend and you realize that your phone vibrates in your pocket instead of checking it you're able to stay with the conversation all these small little things but here's the caveat you might not notice at first because you're still developing your introspection you're still developing your metacognition or ability to understand what's happening in your own mind so the the details or the progress is only observable as someone who has made enough progress to actually observe all these small ways that they're changing so it becomes more the changes become both larger over time but you also become more aware of them but there's all these small little markers you're just better able to concentrate on one task you're not you don't hop right on social media without thinking about it you start to take more control of your life there are other things that you said telltale signs that many people experience but the timeline is usually different depending on the person and depending how long they practice a lot of variables there yeah everyone's mind is different and there's a lot of different variables meditation is such a personal practice and it's really impossible to compare yourself to someone else I mean you gotta you just try to notice the improvements that you know it's like each day you just become hopefully a slightly better person I think that's anyone's goal who's into self development is to try to be a better person the next day than they are today and through meditation you start to you start to see those changes there's a guy named Jay Shetty who's a really popular former monk whose youtube videos get billions of views and he's got this one he's really good at coming up with clickbait titles it's called why meditation made me why meditation made me a jerk why meditation made me basically why meditation made me a jerk and of course it's not what the video is about but he got me I clicked on it and what he said was so true he said meditation didn't make me a jerk but I realized all the ways in which I already was a jerk so I realized subtle ways that I was like manipulative where my intentions weren't good my motivations weren't good where I was harming other people by not giving them my full attention he started to become more self-aware and that is self-awareness is like one of the main benefits that catalyzes all these changes because you see you see it happening in real time you see what's happening in your mind in real time and that's something prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman who wrote Thinking Fast and Slow and does a lot of work on cognitive biases and how the human mind is set up for all sorts of errors came on a podcast recently Sam Harris's podcast and he said I've been studying all these cognitive errors for three decades and I haven't gotten any better at decision making and so I thought about that a lot I was like does that mean it's pointless? for the rest of us? and then I realized he's studying it he's reading about it but he's not observing it in real time as it's happening the only way you can become aware and change your behavior is to notice the mind as it's reacting in that moment you can't read about it in a book it's experiential learning wow I think a barrier to people through any kind of self-improvement technique and meditation for one especially is you might discover that maybe you are a jerk and it took me some real introspection too and I continue to do so that I'm doing this and that's not good for my mental health or I'm doing this and you know what? I think I am a little demonizing and maybe I think I'm better than other people in this sense and I realize these things and that's actually a scary experience in meditation I think to really sit with your own thoughts because again we're constantly multitasking we're sitting down I was doing a talk at a school and I'm just like when was the last time you just you just sat in quietness sat in even the dark and just sat and was quiet because I come home turn on Netflix then I got the tea kettle going and I'm like locked in and I'm ready to go but what about just sitting and noticing and for a lot of us that do you find that can be a scary experience? Yeah looking inward is scary it's scary at first you realize all the cobwebs it's like shining a flashlight you know into this like kind of scary place and I think people don't like to look inward I mean we naturally like to distract ourselves I think you would have to be kind of a psycho unless you had found meditation to be sitting on a park bench in 2019 and just sitting there and not have your phone out because you've got the whole world's entertainment on your phone and you've got endless entertainment and communication why wouldn't you pull out your phone why would you want to sit there well as it turns out sitting there is one of the best things for you because you're forced to look inward what's going on with your mind and that gives you all these opportunities to learn about yourself and then change the parts of yourself that you don't like but that initial and man I gotta tell you I'm no saint I mean I'm still working but I think I'm much more aware of the areas that I need to work on that previously were completely hidden but meditation is kind of the same at flashlight inward I think introspection is I mean we're in a distraction crisis distraction is like the opposite of introspection I think it's what our society needs well I also think that and I tell this to a lot of people too we're scared to even you know as a child you don't want to look under the bed because you're afraid of a monster you're afraid of introspection because you're going to see some cobwebs or a monster but at least if you shine the flashlight in there and there is a monster at least you know what you're dealing with could be a big one could be a small one but you really know what you're dealing with and the unknown is kind of gone in that sense so you know how to okay what weapons do I need to take this motherfucker down I think introspection is scary but for me at least it gets rid of a lot of unknowns and I think for a lot of us too the unknown is also scarier than introspection too or at least if we invite them people to think about it that way so shining on the cobwebs at least you know what kind of cobwebs, what kind of monster what kind of dirty basement you're actually dealing with yeah and you can start to identify the root causes of a lot of your issues I mean if you don't shine that flashlight it's just going to keep causing waves on the surface and that's like would you rather be up there or would you rather figure out what's causing those waves um that's why one of my favorite psychological tools recently has become paying more attention to my dreams too writing down my dreams every morning I don't think we pay enough attention to sleep and dreams we spend so much of our lives in sleep and dreams and some of the best psychologists of all time Carl Jung and Freud wrote whole books about dreams because they actually reveal the subconscious mind stuff that sometimes is unavailable to our conscious recognition so that in part is the practice of meditation too is to make more of your subconscious conscious to become more conscious of what's going on in your nervous system that's kind of causing all the currents well we do really live in like up on the surface of course everything it's and it's again it's scary to look look in have you ever done one of those sensory deprivation tanks did we talk about this on your podcast we should have yeah have you ever used those yeah yeah I've done that five or six times now and I'd like to make it a more regular habit it's a little expensive but definitely the first time I did it I felt like someone just pressed a reset button on me I walked out of there like ten pounds here it was amazing right it's like you were seeing the world for the first time yeah you're just unplugged from the matrix and you're walking out yeah okay so were there any what kind of again result you felt like you're ten pounds later why do you think that is what did you come to some realization some breaking point like what happened I can't explain the mechanism here but I you know I can try to understand a little bit about what's going on when you eliminate these sensory deprivation tanks for those who don't know what we're talking about you've eliminated all sensory data so that the water is the same temperature as your body and you're floating in salt so you can't feel anything it's pitch dark and it's sound proof so you can't all of the senses are shut down when that happens and because normally all of through all these senses we're receiving I think it's about 11 million 11 million bits like in computer terms of information per second is coming in we only perceive actually 50 bits per second consciously of that 11 million so that shows you how little we're aware of what's actually influencing us but when you shut all of that down it's just like a brain in a jar it's just you and your thoughts and this is what happens on a silent meditation retreat too you're alone with your thoughts and you start to realize and all these suddenly you can't hide you can't distract yourself from what's going on in there and so as a result you have to process it and I think that processing just recognizing it just seeing how crazy you are is actually really cathartic the mind races around for a while and then it starts to calm down a little bit if you're lucky in the sensory deprivation tank because it starts to get tired of itself it starts to get tired of trying to make you do stuff eventually realizes you're not going to do anything there's nothing interesting for it to kind of think about and process so eventually it starts to quiet down and again I don't know the exact mechanism behind why I felt exactly so good but it's a meditative experience you really start to see first you see how crazy you are and then you see that there's a quiet point underneath all of that it's almost like opening up a can of worms and I did it once and I came to some pretty profound realizations but you notice yeah there's you've been compressing a lot and kind of the lid opens when you're in these tanks or in meditation and a bunch of stuff just flies out and you get to process it and catch some and look at it all you're like wow that's a lot of garbage and it's a pretty amazing experience you're right it is a little expensive but I think to put money aside I'd love to just do that once a month and that can be the start of every month you start with that and I think it can also accelerate if you're using fit mind as a practice and in turn you're also doing some sensory deprivation whoo! mixed with a little silent retreats you're well on your way to become very monkey now Liam just just before we go for all the listeners we're going to put a link for the fit mind app for you to take a look read about it but Liam what would you like to say to all the listeners about fit mind and you know if they should download or not what's the pitch what would you like to tell them yeah give it a shot I mean the first week is free so I think I'm going to lose there and then it's $5 a month thereafter which is less than half the cost of the other meditation apps but you know more than anything fit mind has become a living for me but I really do feel passionately about folks training their minds and as we were just talking about there's so many good tools out there float tanks is a tool yoga is a tool, meditation is a tool these tools will resonate with people differently because everyone has their own interests and you should find what works for you find the teachings that work for you I think one of the benefits of the fit mind app is that we give you a full spectrum of practices so that instead of going to a bunch of different locations like I did do when I started meditating you can get that full array explained and kind of scientific and western language in one spot but that said I encourage people after they've checked out the app I don't think that should be the entirety of your practice if you get inspired you know you might try one of these Goenka 10 day retreats or maybe a less extreme end you might just try a weekend maybe it's just on your own doing like a self retreat cutting out there's this whole trend now called a dopamine fast and it's essentially a self meditation retreat you're just sitting alone with your thoughts and cutting out screens and a lot of stimulating activity for a day so everyone will find I think what works for them best and there's a lot of good tools out there if you're if you're curious and want to learn one to improve your mind and your mind can be trained I mean it is incredible it it's with us all the time it determines your entire experience of the world and it determines your life in each moment I mean it's like your own personal movie camera so it's worth paying attention to and it really does pay dividends Liam thank you so much for coming on the podcast I know we'll continue to stay in touch everyone else thank you so much for listening download the fit mind app give it a try if it resonates that's great if not I'm sure it's a tool that will project you forward into your meditation practice Liam thanks so much everyone stay strong keep being you and don't forget to express yourself and meditate