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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners

10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation

What is Meditation?

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Cory Muscara

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Clear the Weeds or Grow Flowers

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hey, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

Today, we're going to talk about two

strategies for cultivating happiness.

So if your happiness was a garden,

which of the following best represents

how you tend to that garden?

Clearing away the weeds in the garden?

Or growing flowers in the garden?

Now you may have an

immediate response to this.

Or you may also be thinking, what

the heck are you talking about, Cory?

Get to the point.

Okay.

I'll get to the point.

The point is, I think a lot of times we

take one of two approaches as it relates

to cultivating wellbeing in our lives.

The first is we try to get rid

of the things we don't want.

Clear away the people we don't like,

clear away the job we don't want,

clear away the debt we don't want.

The other is, we try to grow

more of what we do want.

Get that relationship, buy

that home, go on that vacation.

Both approaches are necessary for your

wellbeing, which is a basic premise

in the science of positive psychology.

However, we typically

favor one over the other.

And usually it's the former.

Let me get rid of all the things I

don't want and then I'll be happy.

And that's often a half-baked recipe

for deep well-being because if we

think about a flourishing garden, we

definitely need to do some weeding.

But if all we do is weeding, then all

we're left with is a pile of dirt.

So we also need to plant new flowers.

But if we just grew flowers and

never did any weeding, the flowers

will be overcome by the weeds.

So we need a healthy balance of both.

As you go throughout your day,

notice what your default tendency is.

Is your tendency to clear away the

weeds or is it to grow more flowers?

And if it's one or the other, see if

you can work on both so that there's

a balance and you can also cultivate

and nourish your garden of happiness.

Thank you for your time.

And thank you for your practice.

I'll talk to you soon, and take care.

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