Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to be talking about dropping one mental burden. So most of us are carrying around needless mental burdens that really do have a sense of weighing us down, such as rehashing a past mistake over and over again, worrying about one particular problem ceaselessly, ruminating about a kind of perfectionistic standard for your life that you've been unable to meet such as your weight, your finances, your achievements. Maybe you beat yourself up over a bad habit or an addiction or obsess over a feeling that you've been wronged or misunderstood by somebody. Perhaps you carry around a rigid set of rules and expectations for yourself and others.

So when we carry around all of these mental burdens with us all the time, it's a really like carrying extra weight on your shoulders. It's exhausting, it's stressful and it makes everything in life a bit harder. So what I'm not suggesting here is that we ignore the hard stuff in life, stop thinking about the future and solving problems. But it is harmful and detrimental to get stuck in kind of ruminative cycles and just repeating the same thing in our heads over and over again. It really doesn't help us.

It really does only hinder us. So today I'm going to invite you to drop just one mental burden that you've been carrying around. So just take a moment now to pick one thing that feels like it's been weighing you down a bit mentally. And as you bring this to mind, just considering what's actually been going through the mind that is useful to understand from this situation. You can take that on if it's useful.

And then also noticing what parts of the mental dialogue are just creating needless heartache, suffering, and anxiety. And really take a moment actually to feel the suffering or the stress that it creates inside you. How it fills you may be with anger or fear or insecurity or depression. So kind of seeing clearly here, the cost of continuing to carry this burden. And if it feels right to you now, just resolving to yourself to drop it.

Just giving yourself permission to set it down. Telling yourself it's okay to let it go. So resolving now to disengage from it, stop buying into it, to stop the continuing to get hijacked by it. And it's probably going to continue to come up in the background of your mind over the next coming days as a kind of habit, but simply making a decision to not keep picking up that mental load. And as you shed this one mental burden, just feeling the sense of ease and lightness that emerges.

And know that as you continue to cultivate this unburdened mind, you create more space for peace, freedom, and joy to grow. So as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.