Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. So let's just take a moment to arrive here and become a little more present. So, if you care to, you might like to take a deep breath in. And out. So it's fairly easy to be present for a moment, as you just experienced.

But I think what most of us find more challenging is sustaining mindfulness throughout the day. And of course that's why regular meditation practice is so important because it really strengthens our capacity to remain present. Kind of like through repetition, we build muscle, um, mental muscle in the same way we build muscle at the gym. In that way we can sustain presence for longer. But another way of increasing our capacity for sustained mindfulness begins with identifying our strengths and also areas that we might need to work on.

So today I'm going to invite you to reflect on two questions. The first is, what kind of things in life help you stay connected to presence quite naturally. So here's a few examples of the things people commonly say on, uh, retreats or courses. They say the things that help them are things like slowing down, um, breathing deeply, being in nature, yoga, surfing, or other movement practices like Tai Chi, music, um, deeply listening to someone. So just take a moment to ponder this for yourself.

What naturally connects you to presence in your life? And the second question, what disconnects you from presence? What do you notice? You know, some people report things like, um, rushing is something that disconnects them from presence, wanting something more, feeling tired, being hungry, sick, or in pain, being worried about what other people think of them. Too much time, indoors, too much caffeine. So things like that. So just thinking about what disconnects you in your own life, what do you notice? So if I can share it on a personal note, one thing that I really notice in my life is that too much screen time and rushing are the two main things that trip me up. I call them my terrible two.

So I become really dull and disconnected with too much screen time. And I become more emotionally reactive and stressed when I rush. So if you think it could be helpful, uh, you could take some time today to make a list of each, what connects you and what disconnects you from presence, so you can kind of like keep that front of mind. Because the more familiar we are with the particular conditions that connect or disconnect us, the more we build self-awareness of what's helping or hindering us in mindful living. And of course that means we can take actions to minimize the things that are unhelpful and maximize the things that are really helpful.

So by nourishing our strengths in this way, we sustain presence longer. And over time we live more mindful, meaningful and fulfilling lives.