How I Access Positive Feelings on Demand for Free
Self-help for $0, thanks Tasshin Fogleman!
In the past few months, I’ve found a simple, profound set of meditation resources that works for me. Using these meditations, I’ve become a much more effective person — I’ve gone from anxious to super happy, triggered at people to apologizing to them, and hating being an adult to actually getting shit done — within thirty minutes. It’s a rare resource that can produce these effects so quickly, and it’s completely free and on demand. This resource, Tasshin Fogleman’s metta meditations, have been game-changing for me. In this post, I’ll share exactly how I use them and why I think they work so well.
The Crazy Upside I Experienced
Meditation is one of those things everyone talks about but doesn’t necessarily do. Case in point: since college, I’ve gone on multiple meditation retreats, where I experienced much less anxiety and way more joy, but have found it close to impossible to sustain a habit in everyday life. Even MDMA-like feelings and spontaneous trauma-healing experiences while on retreat aren’t enough to overcome my inertia in everyday life. After all, I have a job, a social life, and a long list of angsts that “coincidentally” keep me occupied from experiencing the god-tier benefits from meditating multiple hours a day.
I can, however, attest to the benefits of Tasshin Fogleman’s 30 minute long metta meditations. If you’re unfamilar with him, Tasshin Fogleman is, in his own words, “an extremely online pilgrim wandering this precious world for the benefit of all beings.” He is certainly wandering to the benefit of this being: he has a bunch of guided metta meditations freely available, and I’ve benefitted from them.
Metta, or loving kindness, is a meditation technique where you intentionally cultivate feelings of unconditional love and care towards yourself and others. The high order bit here is that this meditation style is easier than others, and Tasshin’s meditations are built to withstand the chaotic, semi-distracted individual like me. Believe me, I’ve done the research. Back in April, I did his meditations once a day for two weeks straight. Almost every sit, I'd occasionally get distracted and scroll on Reddit before slinking back to my eyes and focusing, but I still got immense benefit from his video by the end of the first week.
Tasshin’s guided meditations (which are available via podcast, download, and live on Saturday nights) help me access my inner high-agency, productive self. Many days, I’d have a bunch of “adult” tasks I was putting off, like booking flights or doing laundry or sending difficult emails, and feel terrible, but by the end of the thirty minutes, I felt like a beast, both compassionate to myself and ready to conquer my life ahead of me.
They also help bring me out of triggers and make me a better person. Another time, I was helping my younger sister out with some of her work and getting super pissed off by what I perceived to be a lack of trying and a low skill level. I then spoke super harshly to her. After doing one of Tasshin’s meditation, I realized I had misstepped and immediately apologized to her.
A Video for All Occasions
Tasshin’s videos typically have very similar structure. For roughly the first fifteen minutes, he’ll give pretty similar instructions that serve as a warm up— such as sending love to an easy to love person, physically smiling, and naming things you’re grateful for. Then, for the last fifteen minutes he’ll go into a unique theme, such as sending love to a person you might feel triggered by (more traditionally called an enemy or a difficult-to-love person.)
I used to find the first half of his videos pretty dry, but after the first week, I found myself much more emotionally connected. For instance, I have bucket loads of things I feel grateful for, and when I consistently practice spending a few minutes dwelling on them rather than being dissociated, I have waves of gratitude and joy from all the good things already in my life. These first halves also are good foundations for feeling a lot chiller and happier before the second half, the meat of the videos.
Tasshin has a video for basically every occasion. Want to cultivate amazement at how amazing the world is? Want to deal with someone you feel hatred towards? Or what about just imagining you’re a dragon breathing flames of love to humanity? Our favorite internet meditation guy has got you covered. He puts out a new video almost every week, and it’s amazing how much ground he’s covered.
How I Milk Value out of Tasshin’s Videos to Access Positive Emotions on Demand
I’ve probably tried 20-30 of Tasshin’s meditation videos. Although I’ve found value from a bunch of them in different situations, here’s what I’ve settled on to help deal with my chronic unhappiness and negative thinking.
Tasshin’s Highest Available Thought Practice has simple instructions: for every thought, see if you can make it slightly more positive. Keep repeating until you’re ready to go to a new thought.
I think it’s super profound because it intentionally forces me to cultivate more positivity. I’ve spent basically my whole life unconsciously thinking the worst possible case about my life and my character. When I do this practice, I see that I AM capable of more positive thoughts that still seem true to me. Then I’m able to transcend the rabbit holes of awful thoughts.
For instance, I usually start the videos today like “I feel extremely frustrated with myself for wasting three hours earlier today. Other people wouldn’t have done that.” But then throughout the video I go, “I feel extremely frustrated with myself for wasting so much time, AND I still love myself, and still got a decent amount done” and then to “I feel frustrated with myself, but I got a lot done, and I’m still here doing this video, so I’m at least semi-disciplined and willing.” These reframes happen so quickly, maybe within a minute.
Tasshin’s videos also make me see that at least most of my anxiety, horror at the world, and extreme resistance to doing anything productive don’t have to be the norm. There’s low hanging fruit for me— just sit and do the meditation — to ease those feelings at least a little.
Intrigued? Well check out some of my hacks to make the videos hit harder:
Do it in nature: Trees calm me down, and I feel even more grounded and ready to practice gratitude and love (mostly for myself).
Say every thought out loud: This helps me feel even more connected to the meditation.
Is it okay for me to only send love to myself?
Most of my metta practice these days revolves sending love to myself. I need self-love so badly yet find it so hard to give. I used to feel a little guilty about this, but now, I feel a lot better first sending love to myself. After all, if traditionally metta is done for the benefit of myself and others, then sending good vibes to myself exclusively counts for now.
It’s my hope that as my metta practice deepens, I’ll find it easier to generate goodwill towards others and ultimately deepen my practice of other forms of meditation as well. But for now, I’m not there yet, and Tasshin’s meditations are a really great stepping stone.
Thanks to
for reading this over. A big thanks to Tasshin for reading over this post and making so many resources freely available. Tasshin has a larger collection of love-related resources, including a book, weekly live events (where the recordings happen), and more. His work is possible because of the generosity of others. If you’re interesting in supporting his work, you can contribute via Patreon, or make a donation using PayPal or Venmo (@tasshin).And thank you for reading! If you try out Tasshin’s meditations, let me know your thoughts in the comments below or DM me on Twitter. If you enjoyed this essay, check out two related essays: The Most Psychedelic Experience I’ve Had While Stone Cold Sober and A Former Self-Loather’s Guide to Actually Building Habits.