Hi, and welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the relationship between mindfulness and the future. Many people perceive being mindful as not caring about the past or not caring about the future. This is understandable as mindfulness does emphasize connecting to your present moment experience. And so we would perceive it as having less concern for things like the future of the past, or even dismissing them.

But being mindful is not about neglecting the future. It's about recognizing that any positive change to the future can only happen by taking care of the present. Personally, I believe it's really important for us to look at our inner and outer reality and then ask, what could be improved? How can we grow? What important changes need to be made? And then use this future orientation to inspire how we live in the present. And most mindfulness teachers I know will, will feel this way as well. This does get tricky, of course.

You know, you might ask questions like, well, how much do I, I think about where I'm going versus what I'm doing right now? And, you know, what's the balance between embracing the moment as it is, and using my dissatisfaction with the moment as fuel for growth? These kinds of questions are highly nuanced and would be a lot to address in one Daily Mindfulness. But to simplify the complexity, I'd say we can use our mindfulness practice to recognize that thoughts about the future are happening in the present moment. And we can switch between different strategies for using our mind. One could be imagining a potential future present moment that's different from what is currently here, that would be happening in the present moment. Another could be engaging in our present moment life in service of this inspiring future moment.

So still happening in the present moment. And another could be just embracing and being with our life right now, without any agenda, uh, trying to make it different. And of course this can, and often does catalyze change regardless. And so that's happening in the present moment. So there are so many ways to interact with your present moment experience.

And I believe having a number of different skillsets is deeply valuable for living a good life beyond just simply be in the moment. I've personally found mindfulness to be a powerful way for me to more clearly see the many layers of what is happening in any given moment. This can include different thoughts, emotions, deep beliefs, uh, another person's experience if I'm in conversation with them, different triggers, defensiveness that can arise. And then to use the awareness of these things, that heightened attunement to, to make more well-rounded and informed decisions for how to navigate my life. So I hope this helps you better understand how being in the present moment can inform your future aspirations and just how you interact with the world altogether.

Thank you for your practice and let's settle in for today's meditation.