Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, we're going to explore what might be the most unnecessary burden in your life right now. So most of us do tend to carry some mental burdens with us as we go about daily life. Maybe we ruminate over and over again about how we've been wronged by somebody and we hold a grudge or a resentment. Perhaps we worry about the same issue again and again, even though there's nothing really helpful happening there to solve the situation.

You know, we're really just, you know, like a dog with a bone chewing on this problem in the mind. For some of us, it's that mental habit of really being hard on ourselves, beating ourselves up over and over again for a bad habit or a mistake we made in the past. It's just rehashing it. Or maybe, you know, you have perfectionistic standards that you haven't been able to meet such as your ideal weight or a particular achievement. So you're really hard on yourself.

Or maybe you carry around really a rigid set of rules and expectations for how you should be and how others should be or how things should be. So when we carry around a lot of mental baggage, it really is like dragging extra weight. It's like carrying the weight of a heavy suitcase that's exhausting. It's stressful. It makes everything harder.

So I invite you to just take a moment to ponder right now, what might be the most unnecessary mental burden that you've been carrying around? Something that like deep down you know it's not really helping you to keep carrying that extra weight. And as you bring this burden to mind, just take a moment to see that if actually there's anything helpful or life affirming that you might want to learn from this. So for instance, if you were beating yourself up for a mistake you made in the past, considering, well, okay. I can learn from this. I don't like it when I yell at my spouse or I'm untruthful.

So you can take away a lesson, if there is one, from this mental burden. Right? But also considering the parts of this mental dialogue that are really just creating needless heartache. Really taking a moment here to actually feel into the suffering and the stress that this creates inside of you. How it fills you maybe with anger or fear or insecurity or depression. So kind of really seeing clearly here the cost of continuing to carry this burden.

Yeah. And if it feels right to you now, just giving yourself permission to let these unnecessary burden go and just telling yourself it's okay to let this go. You don't need it anymore. And you're making a choice right now to lighten your load. Now, of course, the habit of mind, the habit of playing this thought pattern out will probably come up again in the background of your mind in the coming days, but just resolving in yourself right here and now that when it does, you simply won't buy into it anymore.

You know, when it arises, you just won't engage with it anymore. And as you let your most unnecessary burden go, you create the space for more presence, calm and freedom to grow in your mind and greater ease and joy in your life. So as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And let's now settle in for today's meditation.