Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation - Cam Hashemi
I see Jerry as a no-nonsense personality, one who’s reached the pinnacle of success in a competitive field. So hearing him emphatically praise meditation perked my ears.
I started an on-and-off relationship with meditation around ten years ago. I’d heard of many benefits and I was hungry for tools that could help me reduce my suffering and maximize my potential.
I started by using the Headspace app, which resulted in about five minutes of daily meditation. It took about a year of irregular practice to see the benefits, but when they crystallized, I was impressed.
Most impressive was that a solid meditation daily practice would make my anxiety magically disappear. I could guess at how it worked, but even still, it really felt like magic. Whereas before I’d be prone to fall into vicious spirals of self-consciousness and unease, a streak of meditation would allow me to calmly, warmly, and directly engage with people. If an awkward moment arose, I wouldn’t feed my internal fire with negative self-talk, but rather look outwards with an internal smile, wait for the moment to pass, and find a clever prosocial solution. But again, that explanation understates the magic.
With this new tool at hand, my problem became complacency. A streak of meditation would temporarily cure my anxiety, but without its pain I’d feel less need to meditate. And with less meditation, my anxiety would inevitably return. After enough anxious episodes, my motivation would return, a streak would work its magic, and that’s how the cycle would continue for years.
