Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today, I'm going to talk about integrating

more awareness into daily life.

So if you bump into a friend at the store

and you ask them how they're doing, the

answer would probably often be, busy.

And we really are these days, many of us.

Much of our daily life consists of

moving from task to task all day long.

So we're doing a lot of doing,

however, we usually don't bring

that much awareness to it.

Sometimes doing our

tasks does feel pleasant.

So we might be really enjoying a sense

of accomplishment, ease or fulfillment.

But a lot of the time our doing swings

between, I would say, three states.

Sometimes it feels like a drag,

we're just doing it because it needs

to be done, but with a kind of like

a subtle feeling of resentment.

Sometimes we feel stressed and

driven and kind of pushing,

hurrying through our tasks.

And other times we're barely there at all.

We're kind of just lost in a mental fog,

kind of numb to the world around us.

So if our tasks and making up the majority

of our lives, then if we can change the

way we do them, we can quite profoundly

change the quality of our day to day life.

So how can we shift our

relationship with doing?

So for me, the essence of the

answer to this is to do each

task with your whole self.

How do you do that?

See if you can reduce your focus down

to doing just one thing at a time

and bring your full awareness to it.

Seeing if you could bring the same

kind of moment to moment awareness

that you would have when you're doing

something like surfing or yoga or

listening to music or watching a sunrise.

And if you can bring that to your everyday

duties, like eating or brushing your

teeth, or being mindful of any sense of

resenting the task or rushing through it.

And if you notice that, try to take

a big breath, exhale slowly and

bring your focus back to the moment.

If you can do that over and over again,

with small tasks, staying present and

focused and calm, you bring more of that

mindful energy through your whole life.

Like I know one little trick that helps

me to stay more present in my doing is to

put calming music on in the background,

or sometimes I put a meditation timer

on when I'm doing something like the

dishes I find that really helpful.

And then after each task is completed,

it helps just to take a pause just

for three seconds or five seconds to

take in that feeling of completion

before moving onto the next thing.

So the invitation for practice

today is to really try to experience

this awareness as a way of living.

Infusing mindfulness into the small

things many times a day so that

you can feel more peace and more

fulfillment throughout your day.

As always, thank you for your practice.

I hope you enjoy this today.

And let's settle in now

for today's meditation.