Hi! Welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. So I'm going to share a story with you, or a metaphor. Imagine that you're hosting a party, and the sounds of laughter and music are filling your home. And then you hear the doorbell ring. You go to the front door and you open it.

And it's this really annoying guy from your work, Doug. So, you find Doug to be quite rude and arrogant. You don't like him. And on top of that, he has bad personal hygiene and a really disheveled appearance. It's embarrassing that he's there and you certainly didn't invite him.

So, you say to Doug that he can't come in, he's not allowed in the party. You go back to your party, but then Doug starts ringing the doorbell again. And as you're talking to your guests, you keep hearing that doorbell ringing in the background. You try different ways to ignore the sound, to distract yourself, but it just keeps on ringing and getting more and more annoying. Now then, as another person tries to come into the party, Doug starts pushing through the door and you really don't want him to come in.

He's rude, frustrating, and embarrassing. You feel like he's just going to ruin the party. So you decided to stand there at the door and keep Doug out. So you're there pushing the door closed and trying to hold that door closed as much as you can, but Doug just keeps pushing back. In fact, it seems the more you push that door, the more you try to keep him out, the more he pushes back.

Now, while all this is happening, your friends are having a great time at the party. They're dancing, they're chatting, they're enjoying the day and having fun. But the unwelcome guest is at the door. So you decided to stay there and just keep pushing that door closed. You keep doing this for a while, but then you realize something —you're missing out on your own party.

So you make a decision to stop pushing the door and see what happens. Well, you're unwanted guest comes right in and just like you thought it would be, he's, he's annoying, he's rude, he smelly, he's arrogant. He goes right into the party and starts hanging out with your friends. And, at first, it's really uncomfortable. You don't know how to handle him being there.

But over time you start to relax and you notice that some of your guests actually seem to like him. They're laughing at his quirky sense of humor. And so you start to relax a little bit more and start to see him in a different light. He's still unpleasant, but you realize he's maybe not as awful as you thought. And you can even learn some things from him.

And the main thing is that now that you've let him in, you're free to relax and enjoy your party. So, this story, this metaphor, um, offers us an insight into new ways we can work with difficult feelings. So the unwanted guest in this story represents your difficult feelings, like anxiety, anger, fear, and negativity. When these unwelcome guests come to visit us, we usually try not to let them in. Sometimes we try to push them away or drown them out.

Sometimes we deny them or fight with them. We often do anything we can to not let them into our awareness. But when we do that, we often become so fixated at keeping those difficult feelings at bay. We miss out on the being present for the people, events and moments of our lives. We, we miss the party.

So in today's meditation, we'll train in putting the welcome mat out for all the guests. So we can soften the struggle inside ourselves and live a much more rich, full and meaningful life.