Your Thursday Three Things for May 7, 2026
Is mindfulness actually working? A former Buddhist monk's honest answer, and why a $2 billion wellness industry keeps missing the thing that actually changes people.
Mindfulness is everywhere. Apps, corporate programs, retreats, workplace wellness modules. A $2 billion industry. And when you look around, we’re burned out, disconnected, and more distracted than ever. Men’s mental health is worse, not better.
Jon opened this week’s episode with one question: is any of this actually working, or are we just buying calm-shaped merchandise?
This week on Men Talking Mindfulness, we sat down with Sean Fargo. Former Buddhist monk (2 years in a monastery in Thailand), founder of mindfulnessexercises.com, trauma-sensitive teacher, and the person whose program Jon went through to earn his mindfulness meditation teacher certification. Sean’s teaching has reached over 20 million people. He had a real answer to that opening question.
A few things from the conversation worth knowing:
Gabor Mate calls it the hole. Something inside is reaching for relief, and whatever’s available becomes the vehicle. The phone, the wine, the scroll, the work. Swap out the vehicle and another one shows up, because the hole is still there. Sean says most of us are moving faster than we ever have, and speed is its own kind of avoidance. We’ve lost the ability to just sit. And I don’t mean meditate. Just sit in a chair and breathe for a few minutes without reaching for anything. When we feel unsafe from uncertainty (and most of us are feeling that right now), the instinct is to control, move faster, brace. The thing that actually helps is the opposite of that instinct.
The seeking is doing damage. Jon said it plainly: we’re collecting connections on social media, on LinkedIn, on our phones, taking pride in how many we have, and the depth in most of them is nearly zero. And the seeking is actively breaking the relationships we actually need. He talked about sitting on one end of the couch, his wife on the other, kids watching a movie, both of them on their phones… something that happens in a lot of homes. Sean’s response was a question: what are we actually looking for when we seek connection? And can we offer some of that to ourselves?
He told a story from the time of the Buddha. Ananda (the Buddha’s attendant monk) had a woman who loved him and kept pushing him to leave the monastery and start a family. The Buddha asked her: what do you love about Ananda? She listed 5 qualities. Are those same qualities in you? They were, undeveloped, not fully lived. Tend to those in yourself, and the desperate grip loosens. Sean was clear: we need connection. But tending to your own qualities rather than outsourcing that work to someone else changes how you show up in every relationship you have.
External goals have one point of failure. Sean draws a line between inside purpose and outside purpose. Outside purpose is real and worth pursuing. The career, the business, the revenue, the life you’re building. But any single event outside your control can wipe it out. AI takes your job. A health crisis hits. The market turns. The partner walks. If the internal compass isn’t built, you lose yourself when you lose those things. The question Sean comes back to when the noise gets loud: what would I like for myself? Not what does everyone expect from me. What would I like for me. He says it always comes back to values. To how you want to be. To what matters when everything external is stripped away.
Men are carrying grief they haven’t touched. This was Sean’s final point, and probably the most unexpected. The grief of a purpose that shifted. An identity built over years that no longer fits. A version of life that didn’t materialize the way you thought it would. Men file all of this under “I’m fine” and keep moving, and then sit down to meditate and find themselves fidgety, restless, unable to settle. Something underneath keeps surfacing that they’re trying not to look at. Sean’s answer: meet it. Let it get messy. Let the energy come out without labeling it or judging it. Once it starts to move, the ability to just sit and breathe comes back. The grief was never the obstacle. Leaving it untouched was.
The newsletter this week has three practical tools from the conversation. Sean’s internal compass practice (the “What would I like for myself?” exercise done properly), the Ananda practice (a specific way to identify what you’re seeking from others and begin tending to those qualities in yourself), and the grief practice (honoring what’s been carried so it stops running the show).
******ANNOUNCEMENT!! ******
Our Awareness to Action course (A2A) starts May 27th. Head to focusnowtraining.com/a2a-course-interest to stay in the loop.
Find this week’s episode:
Audio: Available now on your favorite podcast platform. Search Men Talking Mindfulness or use this link: pod.fo/e/40d186
Video: Available Thursday on Spotify and on the Valor Media Network YouTube channel.
Full newsletter archive: newsletter.focusnowtraining.com or text MTM to 33777.
Sean Fargo: mindfulnessexercises.com
This week’s paid three resources:
