Hey!

Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness.

How did it go yesterday?

Did you get to practice creating a little

more space for the experience of stress?

It doesn't always make the

stress completely go away.

But it does help us prevent

ourselves from compounding,

doubling, tripling, quadrupling.

In today's session, we're going to build

on that, but specifically work with our

thoughts and gaining a little bit of

freedom from the tyranny of our thoughts.

I'm sure you're already well

aware of this, but one of the

big things that create stress for

ourselves is the thinking mind.

The mind that gets caught up in

story or narratives of why me?

I have so much to do.

Not good enough.

What if this doesn't go well?

What if, if, what if?

And it can be tough when

we're caught in that loop.

And I think we're all familiar

with those thoughts and immediately

creating an emotional response and

a sense of tension in the body.

One of the first things that we can do

to work with those thoughts, is again

giving those thoughts specifically space.

But it'll be a little

different than yesterday.

And that we're going to be

taking the perspective of being

an observer to our thoughts.

So much of the time when it comes to

the thinking mind, we are just right

there in it, the thought comes up

and we're thinking those thoughts.

And we start ruminating about those

thoughts, fueling those thoughts,

and they just go on and on and on.

But there's a different

perspective we can take.

One where we're watching them

rather than being caught in them.

I like to think of it as being in

relationship to watching a river.

So if you imagine, a river

going down a mountain.

A lot of times, if that's how our life,

we're caught up in the river, smashing

into the wide water, banging into the

rocks, wherever the river goes, we go.

And that's kind of like what it's

like to be caught in our thoughts.

But there's a different way we can

be in relationship to the river.

We could be sitting on the bank.

And in that way, same you, same

river, different relationship,

different experience entirely.

So as you sit here, maybe just

start to notice what thoughts

are moving through your mind.

You can have the eyes open.

If you want to close your eyes,

you're welcome to as well.

And what's it like to start

to watch that inner narrative?

To watch the stream of thoughts

moving through your mind.

As if you were watching a river or

watching clouds pass through the sky.

As soon as we take that perspective

that we're observing our thoughts,

immediately presupposes that who we

are is different from our thoughts.

And I would argue who we are as

much bigger than our thoughts.

We have this dimension of

ourselves that can simply be aware.

And what we're doing in this practice is

connecting more to awareness itself rather

than being so consumed by the thoughts.

Now, this is an ongoing practice.

It's something you could

practice throughout the day.

But it's something we're going to

dive in more deeply in the meditation.

So be sure you stick around for

that meditation, cause that's

really where we get to put this

into practice in a deeper way.

But again, thank you for

continuing on this journey.

You're on day two, which means we're,

we're making some headway and you're

learning some new tips and strategies.

Each day is building on the other.

And we'll take what we learned

here and build on it tomorrow.

As always, thank you for your practice.

I'll talk to you soon and take care.