I used to think meditation was just another wellness fad, but after tracking my anxiety levels daily for six weeks—half with a ten-minute morning routine and half without—the difference in my self-reported stress scores was shocking, dropping by nearly a third. Yet I've also seen friends who swear it does nothing for them, and the research on mindfulness is genuinely mixed, with some meta-analyses showing small effect sizes and high publication bias. So is this genuinely a tool that works for most people, or are we just seeing a placebo that happens to help the already disciplined? I'm leaning toward it being useful, but I can't help wondering if we've oversold it as a cure-all when it might just be one more coping strategy that fits some brains better than others.