Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today, I'm going to talk

about playful curiosity.

Eckhart Tolle once said, "Life is not as

serious as the mind makes it out to be."

And that is true.

When we we're children, most

of us kind of knew this, right?

We never took ourselves

or our life too seriously.

We had this innate curiosity about

everything, playfulness towards life.

We approached life with very

little fear or self-consciousness.

What mattered, a lot of the time,

was just exploring, discovering, and

just having fun moment by moment.

As we get older, things seem to change.

We tend to lose all of that and we do

start to take life really seriously, and

a kind of heaviness can set into the mind.

And we can bring that heaviness into

our mindfulness practice too, and

into our personal growth journey.

And while it's true, on the one

hand, that looking deeply within and

understanding ourselves is a serious

thing in the sense that our ability

to be happy and live in harmony with

the world and with others really

does depend on having a healthy mind.

But on the other hand, if we

approach mindfulness too seriously,

it just becomes really difficult.

If we can bring back into our lives

that attitude of playful curiosity, if

we can bring that especially into our

practice and into our approach to watching

the mind, then things start to shift.

Because if we can smile at the

mind and be playful and friendly

towards it, we can relax more and

not take things too personally.

Bringing in more light hearted

energy really helps us to get

a bit of space and perspective.

When I teach retreats, I often

invite people to take the attitude

of an explorer or an adventure.

Almost, I say to them, it's almost like

being a wildlife photographer, tracking

some fascinating creature when we watch

the mind, to have this attitude of kind

of sitting back and just watching the

antics of the mind and not getting too

worried about it or caught up in it.

Just being curious, open and observing.

Also being open to playing with the mind

to see how our mindfulness skills can

potentially change or affects things.

And, you know, when we practice

that skill, really being

curious about the effect.

So trying different things out

in the laboratory of your life.

I like the term the monkey

mind that people use sometimes.

It reminds us to kind of almost view

the mind as this innocent, naughty

creature that doesn't really know any

better and just needs a bit of training.

It's kind of like, you know, having this

attitude of, oh my gosh, what is the

monkey mind getting up to in there today?

And just of kind of smiling at the

mind and then lovingly using our

mindfulness skills to train it to be

healthier, more balanced and happy.

So if we can have this light,

easygoing relationship with the mind,

then mindfulness becomes a lot more

joyful, uplifting and nourishing.

So my invitation for today.

Bring an attitude of playful

curiosity into your mindfulness

practice and into your life.

And then see what effect that

has on you and on your practice.

We'll be playing with this a little

bit more in today's meditation.

So I invite you to settle in for that.

And as always, thank

you for your practice.