Your Worst Thoughts Arrive Dressed as Your Best Ideas - Moments of Mood, 4.1
The MOOD Podcast
In this episode of The MOOD Podcast, host Matt Jacob argues that meditation is the most direct path to developing a unique photographic voic
Key takeaways
- Meditation trains awareness of thoughts without being controlled by them, which directly enhances photographic seeing.
- The mind wanders nearly half the time we're awake; meditation helps reclaim attention from habitual mental noise.
Main topics
- Meditation as a creative practice for photographers
- The neuroscience of mindfulness and brain changes from regular practice
Notable quotes
Meditation is the most direct route I have found to becoming a better artist.
Conclusion
Meditation isn't a shortcut to better photos—it's a way to return atten
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) What if the single best thing you could do for your photography has nothing to do with photography itself? No new camera, no course, no project, no feedback. I'm talking about learning to meditate. And I know how that sounds. Before you think we're going to get all woo-woo here, we're not. I also know it sounds like maybe I'm about to sell you an app or tell you to manifest your best portfolio. So let me just say it straight. I think meditation is the most direct route I have found to becoming a better artist. And I'd go further, the most reliable antidote to low-grade suffering that many of us are photographing our way around instead of actually addressing. Well, I'm not suffering, I hear you say. Well, if you have goals, desires, distraction, noisy minds, fears, worries, regrets, disappointments, grief, uncertainties, loneliness, etc., etc., you definitely are. Most of the people on this planet are suffering daily and we're all looking for a magic way to be happy, right? The next purchase, the car, the house, the job, the money, the status, the holiday, the drink, the cake, the next camera, whatever it is we subsume ourselves with daily is just a method to avoid suffering. But what if I told you there is a way to wake up from this dreamscape we think is normal life? to live with more equanimity, to make more meaningful art, to have better relationships. The list is endless. Still, there is often reticence for you and many others. I know there was for me. We would rather have quick relief from pain than a cure. A cure is too long, too hard, too expensive. Just get me out of suffering fast, whatever it takes. That's why we live in a world of abundance, created and consumed by us. Pills, alcohol, social media, TV, money, greed, status, power, etc. It's all a way to chase relief from suffering, to get the next fix. So where does it end? Well, I can tell you right now, if we continue along the path of constant desire, it doesn't. So in this episode, I want to make the full case. I'll tell you my own history with it because I came to this after years of trying almost everything else. I'll show you what the research... actually says happens to a brain that meditates, to stress, to focus, and the part almost nobody talks about, to creativity and to our ability as artists to make something profound and find real soulful meaning in our work. And I'll end with a line from a poet that, for me, ties the whole thing to why any of us picked up a camera in the first place. Speaker 1 (2:49) This is the Mood Podcast. I'm Matt Jacob, and this is the show that helps emerging photographers find their voice so that you can build a cohesive body of work, articulate what it's about, and get it in front of the right people. It's the only photography podcast that is itself a practice. Every week, I sit down with a guest or break down a single idea in a commentary like this one called Moments of Mood. Now, let me start with where I was because I don't want this to sound like it comes from someone naturally serene or enlightened. I've tried a lot of things over the years. From a young age, I struggled a lot with deep depression, anxiety, loneliness, and cancer. Different kinds of therapy, different frameworks, different teachers, and I mean this respectfully, some of it genuinely helped, but I never stuck with any of it for more than maybe a year or so. Something would work for a while. Life would shift, the thing would fall away, and I'd be back where I started, looking for the next thing and the next approach. I never felt like I had an accessible, immediate, and useful toolkit I could or wanted to turn to at any point, any time, in whatever state I was in. Not something that needed an appointment or a room or a therapist or money or just a good week. Something that would still be there at three in the morning in a hotel room on the other side of the world. or in the middle of a shoot that's falling apart and I don't know where to turn. Or just on an ordinary Tuesday when the mind is being unkind. Meditation turned