Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today, I'm going to explore the question,

whose thoughts are you thinking?

So for most of us, as we live

day-to-day life, we tend to think

of ourselves in a certain way.

We think about life in a certain way.

So we have our beliefs, our

opinions, our judgments, our

viewpoints, and our fixed ideas.

And some of it, we may have

picked up from childhood.

Some ideas we carry around were picked

up from our culture, our time period

in history, some from our peers or

our particular place that we live in.

So how we dress, how we speak, the daily

choices we make and the goals we have,

so much of this can be shaped by the

people and the influences around us.

Now while it's totally natural for

us to have conditioning in the mind.

It's very useful to see that some of

that conditioning is helpful and some

of it can actually be really unhelpful.

And our task is to discern

the difference and then let go

of what no longer serves us.

For an example here, if your parents

expected you to be a doctor or a

lawyer, And you're carrying around

their thoughts, their expectations,

even though what you want to be as an

artist, then you might end up miserable.

If you picked up messages from mainstream

culture and you're carrying around

these ideas that you have to be a

huge success, be famous and wealthy

before you can feel like you're enough,

then you might always feel deficient.

If you're carrying around conditioned

thinking about your agenda, your

lifestyle, your body, your self worth,

about money or spirituality, or about

your identity, that you picked up long

ago that's actually holding you back from

being authentically you and authentically

happy, then it's useful to see clearly

what's not yours to carry anymore.

And we can become very invested

in maintaining the storylines and

conditioning in the mind because they

can really feel part of our identity.

So it's not always easy to let them

go, but our ability to live the life,

that's really true to us depends on our

willingness, our sense of courage to let

that go and put down the old storylines.

So today I invite you to notice as

much as you can, if any unhelpful

conditioning is playing out.

And asking yourself whose

thoughts am I thinking?

And if they don't feel helpful to

you, they don't truly belong to you.

So see if you can play with letting

them go and instead trusting

your own inner authority as the

ultimate guide for your life.

I hope you enjoy this practice.

It can be really quite

liberating and empowering.

And as always thank you for your

practice and your presence here with us.

And now inviting you to begin to

settle in for today's meditation.