Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, we're going to talk about ending the war on yourself. Now we live in a world that very much promotes competitive, individualistic, and materialistic values. So we often find ourselves in situations where we're very, very encouraged to compete. And whether we're competing to be the most attractive, hustling to get ahead and get that job or a pay rise, competing to be more special, more successful or better in some way than others, modern culture, especially Western culture, really encourages this kind of way of thinking and living and relating.

And so this conditioning for most of us runs very, very deep. And we actually take this kind of competitive and kind of aggressive relationship into the way we relate to ourselves. Some of us have a name for this, we call it the inner critic. Many of us live under quite a burden actually of constant hustling and hassling from that inner critic. For some of us, it's very conscious.

Like we have this sense of there's a voice in their head saying all kinds of unhelpful things to us. And for others, it's more of a vague sense in the background that you have to make it, you have to be special, you have to push harder and get ahead. So there's this feeling that you have to push yourself to be enough, even if it costs you your health and happiness. So from a young age, we start to pick up this conditioning that we should be more special than others, we should stand out, and that we should be kind of flawless. We pick up this message that if we have any weaknesses, flaws, or we're average, God forbid, then we're inadequate and unworthy.

It's almost as though we're damaged goods that are forever in need of a repair. So then begins the lifelong quest for perfection, for completion. We're constantly relating to ourselves in this way where we're trying to fix ourselves. We're constantly having that inner voice telling us where deficient, we're not good enough. And we respond to this in a voice often by trying to whip ourselves into shape.

We end up treating ourselves almost as if we're a problem to be solved. Now, of course, it's totally natural to want to grow and evolve as a person, to want to improve the conditions of your life. But if we're pushing ourselves because of a fundamental belief that we are deficient and unworthy as a person, then none of what we achieve is going to bring us fulfillment. And the truth is that our quirks, our vices and our flaws are all part of what makes us human. We all have them.

They're part of the rich tapestry of qualities that makes us who we are, and we don't need to compete or be better than someone else to feel whole. What brings us wholeness is learning to quiet that judgmental inner voice and replace it with compassion, acceptance, and kindness. By doing so, we end the war with ourselves and we learned to finally love and accept ourselves just as we are. So we're going to continue to explore this theme in today's meditation. So I invite you to settle in for that now.

And as always, really genuinely I mean this, thank you for your practice and for your presence here in this community.