Hey! Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness and congratulations on making it all the way to day seven. So many people start programs like this and stop shortly after. It can be tough to integrate a new habit into your life and to stick with something. The fact that you're listening now means you made it all the way through. And I just want to say, "Bravo!".

You're really starting to build a new habit and routine in your life. That's going to pay a lot of dividends over time. We've explored a lot of different strategies to work with stress in this series. But today, I want to share one that I think encapsulates all of them, that kind of integrates the whole thing and really serves as a nice transition into the deeper work we're doing when we're talking about mindfulness and meditation. The strategy is shifting your "What ifs?" to "What is?" Your "What ifs? to "What is?" I know for me, when I experience stress, my mind is caught up in the what ifs.

What if this happens? What if that happens? What if this doesn't go well? What if they don't like me? What if? And sometimes, the "What if?"-mind can be useful, helps us prepare for things and make decisions. But a lot of times, it's just extra neurotic mental chatter, disconnecting us from what's actually going on in our lives right now. So my encouragement to you, when you find yourself caught up in the "what if?"-mind, is to take that w"hat if?", and drop it into "what is", what is here right now? And you can do it in this moment. What is here? Is maybe what you can see, me on the screen, the space around you. Might notice a roof over your head if you're indoors.

Notice what you can feel when your body. Sensations, emotions. Notice what's going on in your minds. And even any sounds that you can perceive around you, in addition to my voice. When we start dropping into "what is", we connect to the fundamentals that create this moment.

And usually what we see is that, this moment is a little less of a catastrophe than our minds are making it out to be. Not always. Sometimes, the story our minds are telling us about this moment to accurately represent what is going on. But a lot of times, our mind is very good at compounding our stress, doubling, tripling, quadrupling it. And when we drop into what is actually here right now, it just simplifies things.

So as a way to punctuate these seven days together, I hope that can be one of your key takeaways. Now, when you do find yourself caught up in the stress, the noise, the mental chatter, you can drop back into what actually is here in this moment. This is at the heart of presence. And this is at the heart of mindfulness, which is the big thing that we're teaching here at Mindfulness.com. It's a big journey.

It's a lifelong journey and it's something that we're chipping away at each day. And we got to scratch the surface with the seven day series. I do hope that you'll continue on this journey because it's rich, it's full, and it's completely transformed my life. And I believe it can do the same for you. It's been a privilege to be here with you.

It's not over yet because we will have our meditation together. But I just want to say thank you. And thank you for your practice. It's not just for you, but for your community, your family and our world at large, I'll talk to you soon and as always, take care.