Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk about letting

go of limiting thoughts and beliefs.

So I'm going to invite you to

consider a metaphor for this.

Have you ever had the experience

of someone coming to your front

door to sell you something?

It, maybe some of you who are younger

won't have experienced this, but for those

who grew up pre-internet days, and I might

be showing my age here, people used to

come knocking at the door, selling things.

Maybe they'd sell encyclopedias

or vacuum or some makeup.

So somebody would come to

your front door and they would

start their sales pitch, right?

Could I interest you

in this vacuum cleaner?

How's your normal one operating?

You could probably upgrade it and

your floors will look amazing.

So, now, I never bought anything

from a door to door salesman.

I would just really simply and

politely say, no, thanks and

just wish them well on their way.

And in some ways this offers a really

nice metaphor for how our minds generate

these ideas and beliefs trying to

kind of get us to buy into something.

These thoughts come knocking at the

door of our awareness and try to kind

of give us their sales pitches of

beliefs and judgments and opinions.

Now if a door to door salesman came

with his vacuum and he started his

sales pitch to you, it's really

unlikely that you would just yell,

take my money I'm in without actually

listening to the rest of his pitch.

But this is often what we do with

limiting beliefs and thoughts.

We just buy into them immediately

without much consideration.

So with our minds, when they come to

the door of our awareness, you know,

we can hear that sales pitch and

just kind of politely say, no, thanks

mind, and just leave it at that.

Now I don't mean to say that we should try

and push the thought away or block it out.

What I'm saying is that we can

just know that our mind is a

thought generating machine.

It's constantly chatting away and

pitching us all kinds of things.

It wants us to believe in.

But we don't have to buy them.

That's a choice we have.

If we do buy into everything, we

might end up with a mental house

full of junk and clutter that

weighs us down and makes us suffer.

So we can become a little

bit more discerning with what

beliefs and thoughts we buy into.

And when we hear one that's not

helpful, we can simply smile kind

of at the mind politely and just

mentally say no, thanks mind.

So to be clear again, we don't

have to get rid of the thought.

We simply don't buy into it.

So today, as you go about your day, just

remembering, you don't have to buy into

everything the mind tries to sell you.

May be a good sales pitch, but if

you don't find it useful, you can

just kind of mentally smile to

yourself and say, no, thanks mind.

And then just put your attention

back onto something more nourishing.

In this way, you have a clearer,

lighter mind and heart and more ease

and awareness throughout the day.

So as always thank you for your

practice and your presence here

and just inviting you now to

settle in for today's meditation.