I Wanted to Be the Best Meditator in the Room

I was sitting in a meditation retreat kitchen at 6 AM, washing dishes nobody asked me to wash.

The sun wasn't up yet. My hands were red from the hot water. And somewhere between the third pot and the fourth, I caught myself glancing at the door. Checking to see if someone would walk in and notice.

Look at him. The dedicated one. So committed he's cleaning before the bell.

Nobody came. The dishes got done. And I realized I'd been performing selflessness to an empty room.

The Exceptional Meditator

Here's a thing I never admitted out loud: I wanted to be the best meditator in the room.

Not the most peaceful. Not the most transformed. The best.

Whatever that means.

I wanted the teacher to notice my depth. I wanted other practitioners to sense something different about me. I wanted to be the one people whispered about: He really gets it, doesn't he?

I tracked my practice hours like someone training for the Olympics. Forty minutes a day became sixty. Sixty became ninety. Not because ninety was better than forty - I had no evidence of that - but because ninety sounded more impressive in my head.

Definitely not competing with anyone here. Just deeply committed to my spiritual growth.

That's the thing about the drive to be exceptional: it disguises itself perfectly. It wears humility's clothing. It speaks in selfless language. And it counts hours, achievements, and depth while insisting it's above such petty measurements.

"The need to be special is the loneliest performance you'll ever give."

Social comparison theory, first described by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954, suggests we evaluate ourselves by comparing to others - especially in areas without objective standards.¹ Spiritual development has no leaderboard. No rankings. No objective measures of depth.

Which makes it the perfect arena for endless, invisible competition.

Why "Ordinary" Feels Like Death

I know why I couldn't tolerate being ordinary.

Because ordinary meant invisible. And invisible meant I didn't matter.

Somewhere early - maybe everywhere early - I absorbed the message that being seen required being remarkable. Average people fade into backgrounds. Exceptional people get noticed, remembered, loved.

So I kept trying to build an identity around being the exception. The one who went deeper. The one who understood things others missed. The one whose insight made him worth keeping around.

That's not arrogance. That's just... dedicated practice. Very spiritually motivated.

Looking back, I'm genuinely curious how I kept that story running so long. It's impressive, really - the mental gymnastics required to pursue specialness while telling yourself you've transcended ego. Quite the feat.

The Day I Couldn't Fake It

The shift didn't come through insight. It came through exhaustion.

I was maybe forty-three. I'd been meditating for over a decade at that point, volunteering hundreds of hours, reading every book. And one Tuesday afternoon, sitting on my cushion, I felt nothing.

Not "peaceful nothing." Not "transcendent emptiness."

Just hollow.

Excellent progress. Very enlightened.

I'd spent years trying to be the best at something that wasn't a competition. Striving to win a race nobody else was running. Performing depth for an audience that existed mainly in my imagination.

And in that moment, tired to my bones, I thought: What if I just... stopped?

Not stopped meditating. Stopped trying to be exceptional at it.

What if I sat like someone who had nothing to prove? Thirty minutes, not ninety. No tracking. No comparing. No internal highlight reel.

What if I became - and this felt radical - just another person who meditates?

Who did you think you were, exactly? The chosen one?

The discomfort was immediate. Which told me everything I needed to know.

"What if ordinary isn't settling - but arriving?"

The Hidden Cost of Exceptional

Research on contingent self-worth - when your self-esteem depends on meeting certain standards - shows a clear pattern: the higher the stakes, the harder the fall.² When your value hinges on achievement, you get more anxiety, more instability, and paradoxically, less of the very identity you're trying to protect.

Here's what that looks like from the inside: every day is an exam. There are no weekends. No vacations. No moments where you're simply allowed to exist without proving something.

For me, the standard was "exceptional practitioner." If a retreat went well, I was someone. If I missed a session or felt distracted, I was nobody. The gap between those two states was about fifteen minutes of meditation.

The same pattern that made me chase "exceptional meditator" also made me the indispensable volunteer. Different stages, same performance.

My body had opinions about this arrangement. Tension before meeting with teachers - a tightness in my chest I'd learned to ignore. A low-grade anxiety that hummed in the background most days. And when problems arose, my mind would spin into overdrive, trying to think my way out. Overthinking as coping mechanism. It never helped, but I couldn't seem to stop.

So I kept performing. Pretending to be more enlightened than I was. Pretending the hours were about growth, not scorekeeping. Pretending I wasn't exhausted from the constant demonstration of my own significance.

The irony - and it took years to see this - is that the performance made genuine depth impossible. You can't both prove your progress and actually make it. The proving consumes all the oxygen.

But hey, at least people thought I was deep. That's almost as good as actually being deep, right?

What Ordinary Actually Looks Like

Actually, let me be more honest than that last section suggests.

What came next wasn't a graceful pivot toward healthier practice. It was closer to collapse.

For three or four months, I didn't meditate at all. Not reduced practice, not "taking a break" - I simply stopped. The whole framework felt tainted. Every sitting reminded me of the performance, the counting, the invisible competition. I wanted nothing to do with it.

There were mornings I'd sit on the edge of the bed in my meditation clothes and then... not move. Ten minutes of staring at the floor, negotiating with myself, then checking email instead.

The problem was, I was still a meditation instructor during this time.

I'd guide others through practices I wasn't doing myself. Show up to sessions with students, say the right words, hold the right silences. And nobody noticed. That was the part that got to me most - not that I was faking it, but that the faking was so seamless. What did that say about the whole enterprise?

Very authentic. Teaching what you're actively avoiding.

The shame was specific: I was supposed to be the disciplined one. The one with a rigorous practice, a clear schedule, someone good at what he does. Worse - I was supposed to be an example. That's what instructors are, right? Models of what consistent practice produces.

Instead, I was a cautionary tale masquerading as a success story. And the guilt of that gap - between what I projected and what I was - sat heavy in my chest most mornings.

Slowly, through those obligated sessions with students, something shifted. The duty I resented became a door back in. I started sitting on my own again - but differently. No goals. No optimal duration. Some days thirty minutes, some days ten. Whatever I could manage, in my own way.

I stopped tracking hours. Stopped comparing my insights to others'. Stopped rehearsing what I'd say if someone asked how practice was going.

What I noticed, instead: I actually liked sitting. Not as achievement, not as identity-building, but as activity. Just a human sitting. Nothing special about it.

"Nobody gives prizes for breathing. And yet, here you are."

Something else happened too. I started being present in ways the exceptional meditator never managed. Conversations without mentally preparing my most profound contribution. Work without needing to be the smartest person in the meeting. Relationships without unconsciously calculating my impressiveness.

Ordinary, it turns out, has a lot more room in it.

The Uncomfortable Paradox

I should confess something: writing this essay is itself a little suspicious.

Here I am, someone who explicitly doesn't want fame, writing about the courage to be ordinary - in a public essay, on a public website, hoping people read it and find it valuable.

There's irony there. Maybe hypocrisy. I'm honestly not sure which.

What I can say: the drive to be special doesn't disappear. It transforms, mutates, finds new costumes. "I'm the person who's transcended the need to be special" is just another form of special.

The work isn't eliminating the drive - I'm not sure that's possible. The work is catching it. Smiling at it. Choosing not to follow it this time.

And then catching it again an hour later and repeating the process.

Very enlightened. Clearly the years of practice are paying off magnificently.

For You

If you've spent years building an identity around being exceptional - in spirituality, work, relationships, anything - I want you to know something:

You don't have to be remarkable to matter.

Your value isn't the residue left after your achievements are tallied. It was there before you did anything impressive and it will remain when the achievements fade.

I know this is harder to believe than it sounds. The performance has momentum. The fear of invisibility is real.

But here's what I'd ask you to consider: When you imagine being ordinary - truly ordinary, with no special status, no exceptional achievements, no distinguishing quality - what do you feel?

If it's discomfort, that's worth sitting with.

Not to fix it. Just to understand what ordinary has come to mean for you.

Because it might mean something different than you think.

A Toolkit for Stepping Off the Pedestal

These aren't steps to follow. They're questions that helped me notice what I was doing - and sometimes, noticing is enough.

Notice what you're counting. Hours, achievements, depth, contributions - what metrics are you secretly tracking? The counting reveals what your ego is using to justify itself.

Ask: "What would I do if nobody ever knew?" Would you still meditate ninety minutes if no one could be impressed by it? Still volunteer if there was no recognition? The honest answer shows what's practice versus performance.

Try being bad at something you care about. Not strategically bad - actually bad. Feel the discomfort of being average. Watch how much resistance arises. That resistance is data.

Separate contribution from identity. Let the value of what you do stand on its own. It doesn't need to double as your proof of existence.

Examine "special" stories with curiosity. When you catch yourself feeling exceptional - special insight, deeper understanding, higher development - get curious instead of proud. What need is that story meeting?

Continue Exploring

Why I Don't Want to Be Famous — The case for impact without spotlight, and what happens when you uncouple contribution from recognition.

The Authenticity Trap — When "being yourself" becomes another performance to optimize, and how to find ground without pretense.

Notes & References

¹ Festinger, L. (1954). "A theory of social comparison processes." Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140.

² Crocker, J., & Park, L. E. (2004). "The costly pursuit of self-esteem." Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 392-414.