The Heart of Mindfulness

Hey, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about a practice that really gets to the heart of mindfulness, and this is shifting our what ifs to what is. Chances are you're very familiar with the what if mind. What if this goes wrong? What if that goes wrong? What if they don't like me? What if I mess up? What if I fail? What if, what if, what if. Of course, sometimes the what if mine can be useful.

They can help us plan for something that can go wrong. It might be a reason why we try and get some sort of insurance. The what if mind can serve a useful purpose in our life. But if you're like me, a lot of times, the what if mind can just take us off into an infinite number of directions that have very little to do with anything going on right now and it ends up just causing extra stress and frustration, anger, sadness. So the suggestion, when you find yourself caught in those moments is to shift your what if to what is.

What is here right now? You could do it as you're listening. For me, my feet are on the ground. I can see a roof over my head. I feel relatively well fed and comfortable in my body. I hear a little bit of noise outside, but subtle.

And so, you know, this happens to be a pleasant moment when I tune into it and I step out of maybe the chaos of my mind, I do see that this moment is less of a catastrophe than my mind is making it out to be. Now there were other times in life that are a little bit more stressful and chaotic, but even then our mind has a tendency to experience that and then go, well, what if this lasts for a long time? What if this keeps going on? How long am I going to feel this pain that's in my knee right now? Right? What if mind in action. And what that does, is it doubles, triples, quadruples the stress that we're feeling in that moment. However, if we were to just come into what is here right now, might be an uncomfortable sensation, might be a little bit of noise, might be an upset stomach. Not necessarily pleasant, but at least we're not compounding the stress.

And so shifting our what if to what is, is a great way to attune ourselves more to the present moment and see how we tend to make extra stress out of a, a thought pattern that is often catastrophizing the moment. And as I said, you know, sometimes the mind is accurately thinking about what's going on, but more often than not, it is making the experience worse than it has to be. So when you find yourself caught up in that, my suggestion to you is shift the what if to what is, come back to what is here right now. And I think you'll to0 see that this moment is often less of a catastrophe than our mind is, is making it out to be. Thank you for your practice.

I'll talk to you soon and until then, take care.