Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk

about taming our triggers.

So we all have things in life

that test and trigger us.

For example, maybe there's one person at

work or in your family that can always

say just the thing to get under your skin.

Sometimes what triggers us is

the traffic jam or the slow queue

or the computer malfunction.

Whatever it is when we're triggered,

we might lash out in anger, we

might shut down or withdraw passive

aggressively, we might try to now

stress by reaching for food or alcohol

or some other substance, or we might

bury ourselves in work or shopping.

We might even blame

things on everyone else.

We all have all of these somewhat

automatic reactions when we get triggered,

our own personal brand of trigger.

And here's the problem.

You know, many of these automatic

reactions are pretty unhelpful ways

of dealing with stressful situations

in the sense that they often only

make things worse, creating more

suffering, stress and conflict,

both for ourselves and for others.

So how can we then break free

from these automatic reactions?

How can we catch

ourselves before we react?

Well, basically, we just need to

bring awareness to our pattern of

reactivity before we act it out.

So in the beginning, if we can just

catch ourselves as we're being triggered

and note to ourselves when the feelings

of strong emotions are arising, you

know, just mentally note to ourselves,

okay, I'm being triggered right now.

That's a really great place to

start because awareness of what's

happening is the first step to change.

It starts to give us the mental space

to step back from what's happening

so that we can catch ourselves

before we play out the reaction.

So once we note, okay, I'm being

triggered, we can just become

present, maybe take a breath, and

from there, we have the possibility

to choose a different way forward.

We can respond instead of reacting.

Whatever you do from there, you

can choose a way forward with

awareness instead of automaticity.

And in this way, you gradually learn to

tame your triggers and respond to life

with awareness, clarity, and wisdom.

So that's the invitation for

today, to practice taming

your triggers as best you can.

As always, thank you for your practice

and your presence here with us.

And now let's settle in

for today's meditation.