Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about how we can break free of conditioning. So despite our deep desire to be happy and healthy and be our best selves, if we look at a lot of our thinking and behavior, we see these repeating patterns that actually cause quite a bit of suffering and stress and patterns that pull us away from happiness and wellbeing. So what's going on here? Why are so many of our actions out of alignment with our deepest desires? Well, this is because we're often playing out our old conditioning. So there are so many things, you know, that we do again and again, as we go through the motions of daily life.

There are so many unconscious habits that have built up over time. So we tend to think in the same patterns, go through the same daily routines, react in the same ways to the same things. We do. A lot of these things when we' re on autopilot mode. So we kind of don't really see what we're doing clearly.

And then in not seeing what we're doing, clearly, we often repeat those patterns. And in repeating those patterns, we often repeat the patterns of stress and suffering. So mindfulness offers us this incredible ability to bring greater awareness to what we're doing, to start to see clearly what we're thinking and doing as we're doing it. It makes us more aware, therefore, of our condition patterns and also the results of playing them out. So we start to see very clearly what is moving us towards wellbeing and happiness and what's pulling us away from that and into suffering and stress.

So we start to become, you could say, much more discerning, much more informed. And once something is brought into the light of awareness and the pattern is seen clearly, now we have a choice. Rather than repeating the same thing over and over again, we can choose to acknowledge it, let it go and be free from it. Then we can start to choose more life affirming, more empowering ways of thinking and living. So this is why it's so important that we try to bring as much awareness as we can to every moment of our day, so that we can have these opportunities to break free from living out of habit and reactivity, and instead living a more intentional and authentic life.

So today I invite you to see if you can bring awareness into the habits and conditioning that are playing out in your daily life. Because as the old saying goes, the seeing is freeing. So in any moment of clear seeing, you have this opportunity to acknowledge it, let it go, and then choose a more empowered way of being. Wishing you a wonderful day of practice with this. May it empower and inspire you.

And as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And let's settle in now for today's meditation.