Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about confusing interpretation with reality. It was Wayne Dyer, who once said, "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." What is he talking about here? He's pointing to the fact that although our mind may try to convince us that it is reporting back an objective picture of things. In reality, the mind is attaching mental stories, interpretations, judgments, and opinions to everything we experience. And so we don't really view reality as it is in any given moment.

We view it through the mental filters that we overlay on top. So when those mental filters change, the things we see and experience change in our experience, in our direct experience. So as a result, events experienced in the mind's eye can end up differing massively from one person to another and from objective reality. For instance, two people can hear the same conversation and then interpret it in two completely different ways. Two people can see the same event, but tell totally different stories about what happened afterwards.

Likewise, one day when we might be in a bad mood, we see and experience situations and other people as maybe frustrating, upsetting. So we might react completely differently to things on that day. Another day when we're in a really great mood, we might encounter the exact same types of situations, peoples and things, but we experience it in a completely different way. We react to it in a completely different way. We've all probably experienced this from time to time.

So we can see how our mental filters can literally change how we experience and interpret and interact with the world around us. So the more we can be aware of this process of how the mind is interpreting reality, the more we are able to take a step back from it and see that our thoughts are actually not reality. So we can become less attached to our own viewpoints, opinions and storylines. And when we do that, we literally reclaim our ability to be non-reactive, at peace, and present in all situations. We start to see that it's not what's happening to us.

It's how we relate to it that makes the biggest difference in our quality of life. We can also notice that when any unhelpful interpretations might arise in the mind, we can actually choose to let that go or even change our perception. Let's say, for instance, the, you wake up one day and the mind says what a dreadful day it's raining. We can let go of that thought and then deliberately focus on how grateful we are for the rain nourishing, the crops we eat for, for instance. That can totally change our relationship to that day and that moment of our life.

Now, of course, there are going to be things that happen from time to time that are just unpleasant or painful. We don't want to deny that or pretend that's not happening. But it's also important to be attentive to the fact that a lot of the time it's our interpretation of things that can make us miserable instead of the actuality of things. Knowing this, we let go of suffering when we let go of the story and find peace again in the present moment. So today the invitation is to be aware of the difference between interpretation and reality.

As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And let's settle in for today's meditation.