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How to Reduce the Bad

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about not suffering before you need to. It was Mark Twain who said, "I've experienced some terrible things in my life. Some of them actually happened." I know I laughed the first time I read that because it's, well, it rings true, we could say. I've had a lot of different experiences that have been painful, but most of them have existed in my mind.

There have been plenty that have existed outside of my mind, but if I think of the amount of suffering I've done in my life, I'd say a large part of that has come from anticipating something that didn't actually happen. I'm curious if that resonates with you too. This is something that human beings seem to be very good at. We have this ability to prospect about the future, to imagine in a great life, something better, something different, something positive that can happen. And with that also comes the ability to imagine something negative that can happen, to construct an idea out of seemingly nothing.

And while sometimes that can lead to positive experiences and positive emotions. A lot of times it can lead to negative experiences and a lot of suffering before anything has actually happened. Sometimes that thinking about the future can help us prepare for potential negative outcome. But a lot of times it's unnecessary and creates extra stress when we really don't need to be stressing in the moment. So the takeaway here is that bad things will happen, but you don't need to suffer before they do.

See if you can notice when you get caught in this tendency, in your life and practice coming back to something simple, like the breath, your feet on the ground, or even asking the question, what's here now? We'll continue with this practice in today's meditation. As always, thank you for doing the work. Thank you for your practice and I'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Cory Muscara

4.8

How to Reduce the Bad

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Duration

Your default time is based on your progress and is changed automatically as you practice.

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about not suffering before you need to. It was Mark Twain who said, "I've experienced some terrible things in my life. Some of them actually happened." I know I laughed the first time I read that because it's, well, it rings true, we could say. I've had a lot of different experiences that have been painful, but most of them have existed in my mind.

There have been plenty that have existed outside of my mind, but if I think of the amount of suffering I've done in my life, I'd say a large part of that has come from anticipating something that didn't actually happen. I'm curious if that resonates with you too. This is something that human beings seem to be very good at. We have this ability to prospect about the future, to imagine in a great life, something better, something different, something positive that can happen. And with that also comes the ability to imagine something negative that can happen, to construct an idea out of seemingly nothing.

And while sometimes that can lead to positive experiences and positive emotions. A lot of times it can lead to negative experiences and a lot of suffering before anything has actually happened. Sometimes that thinking about the future can help us prepare for potential negative outcome. But a lot of times it's unnecessary and creates extra stress when we really don't need to be stressing in the moment. So the takeaway here is that bad things will happen, but you don't need to suffer before they do.

See if you can notice when you get caught in this tendency, in your life and practice coming back to something simple, like the breath, your feet on the ground, or even asking the question, what's here now? We'll continue with this practice in today's meditation. As always, thank you for doing the work. Thank you for your practice and I'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Cory Muscara

4.8

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