Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk about

self-improvement versus self-love.

So often in life, we become quite fixated

on the idea of improving ourselves.

Right?

And I think when people initially come to

mindfulness, they have the idea of that

that's what mindfulness is really about.

It's about improving ourselves.

But mindfulness is not so much

about improving ourselves, fixing

or changing ourselves in any way.

It's actually about knowing ourselves

and being ourselves more fully.

It's actually about unwinding from

the thoughts that tell us we're

not enough yet, we're not there

yet, we're not okay as we are.

And it teaches us to abide in a deeper

place within ourselves, a place of

wholeness, calm and contentment.

And I can tell you from firsthand

experience that it's such a

profound relief when we can learn

to simply accept ourselves as we

are and finally let ourselves be.

Now, this doesn't mean that we're never

going to do anything to improve our

life circumstances, we're not going

to give up on our morals or values.

Rather, it means just unwinding from

the stories that tell us we're not good

enough, that we're deficient and that we

need to be fixed so that we can live our

lives and make our choices from a place

of confidence, fullness and self-love.

So we do things in other words,

from mindset of love, rather

than the mindset of deficiency.

So the difference between

self-improvement and self-love is

summed up really beautifully in this

passage from a Bob Sharples book.

And the book is called,

Meditation: Calming the Mind.

So in it, he says, "Don't meditate

to fix yourself, to heal yourself, to

improve yourself, or to redeem yourself.

Rather do it as an act of love, of

deep, warm friendship to yourself.

And in this way, there's no longer

any need for the subtle aggression

of self-improvement, for the

endless guilt of not doing enough.

It actually offers a possibility

of an end to the ceaseless rounds

of trying so hard that wraps so

many people's lives in a knot.

Instead, now there's

meditation as an act of love.

How endlessly delightful and encouraging."

So today, here's my invitation.

Rather than trying to make yourself

into something else, see if you can

switch the focus today to just loving

and accepting yourself just as you

are, right now, no strings attached,

no ifs, no buts, no conditions.

And if the inner critic pipes up,

don't buy into those thoughts.

See if you can drop all of that self

prodding, smile at the mind's antics and

just bring the focus back to acceptance.

And when we stop trying to

change ourselves, we can then

learn to simply be ourselves.

And then we can touch down on

that endlessly, delightful and

encouraging place within ourselves.

And there you are.

There's the loving awareness and the

wholeness that you are seeking all along.

On that note, let's settle

in for today's meditation.

And as always thank you for your

practice and your presence here with us.