I’ll admit it: I used to think meditation was for people with too much free time or not enough real problems. A soft habit for soft people. But then I noticed something odd: the people in my life who meditated regularly weren’t just calmer. They were—how do I put this?—less of an a**hole. Less reactive. Less petty. Less likely to escalate a dumb argument or turn a bad day into everyone’s problem.
It wasn’t that meditation made them perfect saints. It’s that it made them better at being human. And if you, like me, have ever looked back at a moment and cringed at how you acted, then meditation might be the tool you didn’t know you needed.
Here’s how sitting quietly with your breath can chip away at the jerk within:
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It creates a pause between feeling and reacting
You know that split second where your partner says something annoying, or your coworker sends a passive-aggressive email, and you immediately want to fire back? Meditation stretches that space. It teaches your brain to sit with discomfort instead of compulsively escaping it. Over time, this pause becomes a superpower. You stop defaulting to defensiveness or spite. You start responding instead of reacting. And sometimes, you don’t respond at all—because not everything deserves your energy. -
It makes you less self-absorbed
Meditation trains you to notice your thoughts without attaching to them. You begin to see how often your brain spins stories about how everything relates to you. Suddenly, you realize: not every sideways glance is an insult. Not every silence is judgment. By loosening your grip on self-centered narratives, you free up space to actually listen to others, instead of waiting for your turn to talk. You become less obsessed with winning every interaction, and more curious about connection. -
It lowers your baseline irritation
Modern life is a sensory assault. Notifications, traffic, deadlines, news cycles designed to keep you perpetually enraged. Meditation is like hitting the mute button on the background noise. Studies show it reduces cortisol and strengthens the parts of the brain responsible for emotional regulation. Translation? You’re less likely to snap at the barista, honk at the guy who cut you off, or lose your mind over minor inconveniences. You start to see the absurdity in sweating the small stuff—and you stop making other people pay the price for your inner chaos. -
It helps you own your sh*t
When you spend time observing your mind, you can’t help but notice your patterns. Your jealousy. Your insecurities. Your tendency to catastrophize. Meditation doesn’t erase these flaws, but it shines a light on them. And once you see them clearly, you can’t keep blaming everyone else for your unhappiness. You start to take accountability, not out of shame, but out of honesty. Turns out, being aware of your own garbage makes you less likely to dump it on other people. -
It builds compassion—including for the parts of you that are an ahole**
Perhaps the most radical thing meditation offers is the ability to sit with your own messiness without flinching. To notice the anger, the envy, the pettiness—and meet it with curiosity instead of judgment. And from that self-compassion flows compassion for others. You start to see that everyone is carrying invisible burdens. That everyone is acting from their own pain, fear, and longing. And while you might still get annoyed, you’re less inclined to dehumanize or write people off as irredeemable.
Meditation won’t turn you into a monk. It won’t scrub away every ugly impulse. But it will make those impulses less automatic. Less dominant. It gives you a chance to choose—and in that choice lies freedom.
And in that freedom, you might just find yourself becoming someone kinder. Someone a little easier to love. Someone a little less of an a**hole.