The author says meditation is the solution and describes the effects it had on him. However, I didn't quite get the why (even if I ignore the how) - why did it work for him and will it work the same way for others? Besides, meditation itself is a habit and one that is the easiest to ignore as it doesn't bring immediate benefits (lacks instant gratification). This was great writing but for me it lacked the scientific rigor. It's great that it worked for the author. Kudos for that!
I inferred that meditation helped them to understand surface thoughts vs deep thoughts as generally surface thoughts are loud, immediate and what create bad habits.
By being able to discard those during meditation, they were able to work on deep thoughts and make enough time for those instead of getting occupied by the unnecessary(bad) habits.
> Besides, meditation itself is a habit and one that is the easiest to ignore as it doesn't bring immediate benefits (lacks instant gratification)
But thats the crux of building good habits, one needs to teach themselves to not run for instant gratification. Precisely, this article. Atomic Habits try to teach that you to by various habit building techniques in the book. It teaches you how to harness this instant gratification idea to build good habits slowly yet in a way that appeals that part of your brain.
The author is trying to refute this exact thing, that these all work for a while until it all comes crashing down and it becomes really difficult to break away from bad habits.
In my experience in order to build or break a habit you must be able to tie the action to its immediate results. It can be placebo but in your mind that association must settle in.
Meditation for a lot of people creates a state of calm afterwords. Mainly if you breathe at a lower that 6 breaths per minute.
The calmness likely leads to better decisions and helps that way.
It looked like the author has been overwhelmed with stresses of life. Meditation helped to apply breaks and steer the wheel.
