Hey, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about how to step out of the story of our minds. Chances are even if that sounds a little unfamiliar to you, you're very much in touch with and aware of what the story of your mind is. These are the ideas, the judgments, the narratives we tell ourselves about how this moment is going, how our lives are going, where we're trying to get. All of this is the story.

And sometimes when the story is good, things seem to be going well. And other times when the story is not as good, it can lead to stressful experiences or painful experiences. And overall, when we're caught in the story of our minds, it can create a bit of a roller coaster. So I want to share a haiku with you. It's technically not a haiku when translated into English, but it's by the poet matsuo Basho.

And he says. "The old pond, a frog jumps in, plop." The old pond, a frog jumps in, plop. It doesn't seem like much right. It's just so simple. Well, that's why I love it.

The beauty is in the simplicity. There's no hyperbole, there's no exaggeration. It's not the story about the frog looking over the rock with trepidation, turning around, not sure of itself, then looking back and then jumping up and the sun's glimmering down, makes his heroic splash and the flamingos are clapping. None of that. It's just the raw experience.

The old pond, a frog jumps in, plop. I think there's something to trying to connect to that in our own day-to-day lives. So many of our experiences are quite ordinary. I mean, look at what's happening for you right now. You might be standing, sitting, but you're just listening.

You're just watching something. At least for me, I feel relatively well fed, calm in my body. But we can easily get caught up in a story in our minds of everything that's not going well right now, everything we should be doing, where we're trying to get, why we're not good enough for not being there already, et cetera, et cetera. And we all are mostly familiar with the tension that gets created from that. But when we drop into our, our moments with that kind of simplicity of the haiku, The old pond, a frog jumps in, plop, we often see that this moment is quite simple in its nature.

At least many more of our moments are than we realize. So maybe explore taking this haiku into your day-to-day life, where you could import your own experience into it. So for right now, it might be Cory, he's sitting, looking. For you it might be, the person, sitting in a car, driving. Or in bed, lying down, watching my thoughts.

Whatever it might be, you can take this idea and apply it to your moments, to really drop into the raw fundamental experience. And often what we see is that so much of our lives are not spent in what's actually going on, but it's spent in the story of what's happening. And again, sometimes the story can be fun and exciting. The story might be I'm a great mother. I'm always going to love my kids.

And I'm a hard worker. That's great. And it can inspire us to do more in the world and be more in the world. But at the same time, I think we want to hold it lightly because when we get too caught up in the story, well, then we're not responding to what's most alive in this moment. And I think there's something to be said for moving with the immediacy of what's actually here rather than preexisting ideas of what we should be doing or how this moment should go.

So as you go throughout your day, see what it's like to drop in to the present. The old pond, a frog jumps in, plop. See if you can value it that simplicity. We'll talk more about it in the meditation. Thank you for your practice and take care.