Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about the waiting mind and why it's often the invisible thief of your happiness. So we human beings, we have this habit of living for tomorrow. So the thinking tends to have this basic story a lot of the time, I'll be happy one day, when... We believe that if we can just reach this goal, get this one thing, find this right person, get this problem solved, then we can be happy.

So it's a mindset of constantly waiting for fulfillment in the future and outside of ourselves. So there's what you might call large-scale waiting stories. We believe we'll be happy once the house is paid off, when we achieve a big goal at launching a business, when we finally get married or have kids. And you know, you've probably experienced this kind of thinking in your own life, if you have a normal human mind, So there's large scale waiting, and then there's small scale waiting. This is the mindset of thinking you'll be happy, you know, when the work day's over, when the kids go to bed, when the traffic will finally move so you can get where you're going.

Just waiting for the next thing, your lunch break, or a person to arrive. And in those moments, there's a basic feeling of dissatisfaction with the present moment and looking for fulfillment again in the future, not in the now. But whether it's large scale or small scale waiting, the basic mindset is the same. We're putting off being fully present in the now because we're waiting to get there. It's a kind of limbo state because we inhabit this strange space between this moment and a moment that doesn't actually exist except in our imagination.

And we're thinking that if we can just get to this imagined, you know, image of the, or story of the future. Then at that point, everything will be great. So in this limbo state of waiting, we're basically putting off living. We're not fully present in this moment. But the moment we step out of the story, the moment we let go of thinking that the imagined future's going to fulfill us, it's a bit like breaking a hypnosis.

And we finally inhabit ourselves and our lives more fully. Suddenly we experienced the fullness, the vibrancy and the richness that's been here waiting for us all along. So the invitation for practice today is to see if you can let go of the waiting mind as much as possible. Make your focus seeing the fullness and aliveness all around you. In this way, you grow fulfillment within, instead of chasing it without.

And as James Oppenheimer once said, "The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise man grows it under his feet." So this is the practice. And as always, thank you for doing this work within yourself and in the world. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.