Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, challenge with meditation, and that is actually disciplining ourselves to get it done on a regular basis. Because let's face it, on some days we wake up and, you know, we just feel like doing meditation. We feel like sitting for meditation. There's an ease about it.

And then there's other days when it's a bit of a struggle to get ourselves to do it. You know, maybe we tell ourselves we're too tired, we've got too much to do. We don't feel like it because maybe we're sad or stressed or anxious. And we don't want to sit with all of that stuff. But all of the excuses that come up in the mind really are just the mind telling us stories about why not to do the practice.

And if we can get used to just hearing those stories, but simply going and doing some meditation anyway, then I believe this will represent one of the biggest turning points you'll ever have in your practice. So often in life, we succumb to the stories in the mind. We get hijacked by emotions and they pull us off course. Whether we need to do some exercise, eat healthier, or spend more quality time with our loved ones, the mind very often talks us out of very nourishing and life affirming choices and lures as towards the path of least resistance. But when we make the deliberate choice to go and meditate, despite what the mind is saying or what we're feeling, we start building this capacity to live with more intentionality and more purpose.

Just that one daily decision can begin to change the course of your life. So even the choice to just practice no matter what can be a powerful mindfulness practice in and of itself. So the next time your mind is telling you why you should skip your meditation today, try taking a pause for a moment and just pondering, remembering why you do meditation, why it's important to you, what benefits you experience when you do practice, what qualities you're trying to cultivate in your life and why this really matters to you. Every time you connect with your own deepest intentions and purpose, you make it easier to make the choice to sit and practice and you build the mental muscle to choose to live life on your terms. So I'm going to guide you a little more today on this theme of intentional living in today's meditation.

So I invite you to settle in for that now. And as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.