Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about our habit of living on autopilot mode and how we can take back some control of our attention and steer our lives more deliberately. There's an old Zen story about this. A lady in a village saw a man on a horse suddenly come galloping through the streets at high speed. So it seemed as though this man had somewhere very important to go in a hurry.

So she shouted out to him, "Where are you going?" And the man on the horse replied, "I don't know, ask the horse." So this story is a metaphor for how we can all get kind of swept up in and swept along by our habit energy. The horse is like the momentum of our conditioning that just kind of pulls us along. And as it does pull us along, it often ends up driving us to rush and hurry and busy ourselves. So we're doing, doing, doing day after day. And we can kind of get caught up in this haze of habitual activity.

It's a really easy thing to get caught up in and hey, we all do this sometimes. But if we continue galloping through our lives without stopping every now and then to pause and take stop, it's pretty easy to end up with a sense that life is passing us by and we can end up in places we may not have wanted to go. So, you know, potentially we can end up with our health or lifestyle way off course, our relationships breaking down, or maybe we end up living that sense of just being out of alignment with our values. And despite all the activity and doing and rushing, it's not bringing us any closer to actual fulfillment. And this is part of the reason why it's so important to learn how to take back the reins of attention and take back the reins of our mind and steer our lives in a more deliberate way.

Now, of course, mindfulness meditation is the most effective way to train our attention and our minds to be present so we can live more deliberately in the long-term. But a simple invitation for today is, as you go about daily life, see if you can notice when you have that sense of just going through the motions, that sense of autopilot mode. It often has a bit of a dullness to it, or a bit of tension to it. And when you notice you're on autopilot mode, see if you can just pause, take a mindful breath. And in that moment, you can be present again and take back the reins of attention and then continue your day with more presence and intentionality.

If you can continue to bring lots of these little short moments of awareness and intention into your day, you can keep steering your life in the direction of wellbeing, joy, and genuine fulfillment. So as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation on intentional living.