Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. You know, when I was a teenager, one of the darkest times in my own life was when I had an eating disorder. And during that time I experienced quite a lot of self hatred and suffering, but at some point I turned this corner and it was after I noticed a particular pattern. Here's what I noticed. When I would read beauty magazines with all of those images, with airbrushed picture perfect women and all the products I was encouraged to buy to be like them, I felt unworthy and depressed afterwards.

So I decided to throw out all of my magazines as an act of self-love. And in fact, I've never bought one since. So what I noticed is after I did this, I felt a little bit better. And so I started to get more and more proactive about protecting my mind in other ways. And what I came to see and experience directly very clearly, is that our diet is not only what we eat.

It's also what we watch, listen to, read and the people in places we hang around. It's not only that, it's also the thoughts we dwell on and the things, really everything that we subject to our body and mind to. What we expose ourselves to has huge effects often, much more than we are aware. So for instance, research has shown that watching violent media makes you more prone to aggressive behavior, as well as increasing fear and anxiety. Whereas watching someone perform an act of kindness makes us happier and makes us more likely to be kind as well.

Several studies suggest that the quality and patterns of our social relationships are linked not only to our levels of happiness and wellbeing, but also to a variety of health outcomes, like reducing heart disease. The advertising that we see can also influence us to consume more products because we feel we need to look a certain way or have certain things in order to be enough. So clearly all of these things have an influence. So here's an invitation. Like a caretaker of a garden might remove weeds and sow healthy seeds and trim and prune and tend the soil, see if you can take this attitude of being a loving caretaker of your own mind.

You know, be mindful of the things you put into your mind and body, and also be attuned to the effects of what you take in. Let your daily choices of what you expose yourself to be like little acts of self-love that's sow the seeds of happiness for yourself. So perhaps contemplating now, in what ways can you caretake your mind this week? And maybe it could be something really simple, like limiting your screen time or choosing it a little bit more carefully what you read and watch. Maybe you'd like to spend more time in nourishing things like nature or doing a hobby that you love. So protecting your mind in this way is a gift because when you take good care of yourself, you have more to give to others.

That light ripples out from you to the people around you and to the whole world. So thank you for your practice and for being here with us. And I look forward to, uh, nourishing our minds together in today's meditation.