Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk to you about overcoming limiting beliefs. So there's an old story about this. A man was walking through the circus one day and as he was walking past the elephant camp, he suddenly stopped, really confused by what he was seeing in front of him. There were these huge, powerful creatures, these elephants and there were being held there in the camp by just a small rope, tied to their front leg connected to a little wooden stake in the ground.

No chains, no cages, no steel. It was completely obvious that these elephants could at any moment just break away from their bonds. But for some reason they didn't. And he was curious. So he saw a trainer standing nearby and he went up to him and asked him, "Excuse me, sir.

But can you tell me why these elephants are not going away when they clearly can?" "Well," the trainer said, "when they're very young and much smaller, we use the same rope and stake to tie them. And at that age it's enough to hold them. And then when they grow up, they are conditioned to believe that they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them. So they simply never try to break free." The man was amazed.

These animals could break free from their bonds at any moment, but simply because they believe they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were. And like the elephants in this story, we all tend to have ingrained stories about who we are and what we're capable of. Some of the stories are helpful. Some of the stories are really unhelpful. They limit our potential, block our passion for life, and they can really hurt our self esteem.

Much of our conditioning was formed a long time ago. Perhaps a parent, a teacher or a peer said something, or we had a particular experience that made us decide we're not very smart, we're not good at certain things, we're not attractive, we're not a create, creative person, whatever the stories are. And when the stories we tell ourselves are self-critical, self-doubting and limiting, we really end up tethered in place by our past conditioning. We stay in our comfort zones and repeat the same thinking and behaviors again and again. To find freedom of mind and unlock our potential, we need to really question and change our stories.

This really starts by challenging them. So we can do that by asking ourselves when these stories come up, where did this story come from? Is it entirely true? Is it helpful? Do I really want to keep buying into this story? Is it just some old conditioning? So by questioning or challenging our old beliefs, we can begin to soften them and let them go. So today I invite you to consider the beliefs and the conditioning you might be carrying that you might want to let go of. As you continue to question limiting beliefs slowly over time, you'll find more and more freedom of mind and create new landscapes of possibility and creativity in your life. So as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us and inviting you now to settle in for today's meditation.