Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today we're going to talk about one of the biggest obstacles to mindful living, and we're going to learn a simple practice from a Zen monk to help us overcome it. So one of the biggest obstacles to us being fully present is that we tend to get really caught up and really fixated on the idea of trying to find our fulfillment in the future, but kind of always trying to get somewhere else, become something more, have something more, get it, all done, fix it all and get it all together. And so easily our whole life can become a haze of rushing and striving and automaticity just kind of like trying to get there. And we kind of end up spending most of our days waiting to live.

Instead of living. And whether it's waiting until you're thin enough, waiting until the next holiday, waiting until the end of the day or the end of the week, waiting until all of your problems get worked out, you know, waiting until you're enlightened, or maybe waiting until you've finished this Daily Mindfulness. so you can get on with the rest of your day. There's often this subtle sense, this kind of like tension inside, a tension that comes from wanting to be there so we're not quite here. If we're sitting here waiting in some way, then it means we're looking to the future for our fulfillment.

We're wanting something different from now. So this is the basic habit. The mind is projecting into the future with these ideas of what we need to do to become happy. And so we just don't fully arrive here. But what if we learned how to really show up in our moments and our lives and really occupy our mind and now body and our life fully.

Zen monk, poet, and peace activists Thich Nhat Hahn often spoke about this tendency we have to not truly inhabit our moments. And he teaches a mantra that helps us drop that tendency and come back to the present moment. And the mantra is this: I have arrived, I am home. And this is something we can say to ourselves mentally anytime we get caught up in striving. So this is mindfulness really, it's about arriving right here in your own life.

It's training in being fully alive. And if you, if you think mindfulness is a self improvement project in some way, you've really missed the point. What mindfulness has always been about is about you living a more rich, full and meaningful life. And to do that, you need to be present for it. So as you go about the rest of your day today, and maybe the rest of your week, just remembering that if at any time you find yourself getting caught up in striving, you know, that tension of wanting to be there, you can always drop the striving and practice arriving by repeating the mantra, "I have arrived, I am home." So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.

And I invite us all now to just settle in for today's meditation.