Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, we're going to talk about filling the void inside. So as we go through life, many of us often have this pervasive sense in the background that something's missing or something's lacking. We feel like we're not enough yet. It's a little bit like there's a void inside us that doesn't seem to get filled.

Perceiving lack in this way, we unconsciously set about trying to fill ourselves up. But often we try to do this on the external level, by achieving more, getting more, doing more, changing our life circumstances, et cetera. And while we might get some momentary satisfaction from these things, they cannot really make us feel whole, complete and at peace in any lasting way. In Buddhism, they portray this cycle of always trying to fill the void on the external level in stories about what are known as the pretas or hungry ghosts. These are beings who are tormented by cravings that can never be sated.

And they're often portrayed with these tiny little mouths and the swollen bellies of the starving, meaning that they can never consume enough to ease the desire of their continuous hunger. Like those ghosts, we can end up in a cycle of constant craving. But what if all we needed to ever do was just to simply step out of that cycle by shifting our mindset. Greg McKeown says, "When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you already have. When you focus on what you have, you gain what you lacked." What does this mean? Well, the human mind is often fixating on what's wrong, fixating on what's good and what's not good enough, what's lacking.

And when we do this, we lose touch with the good we already have in that moment. You lose what you already have. For instance, if you focus on any given moment, let's say you're in a traffic jam, about how much you hate that traffic jam ,you lose touch with the fact that you like the music playing on the radio, that you're comfortable and safe. You don't notice those things anymore. You don't notice that it's a sunny day or that you have a family at home that loves you.

You forget all that. You lose what you already have. But when you focus on what you have, you gain what you were lacking. So as soon as you switch your mind to what's good, what's working, what there is to be grateful for your feelings of lack, transform into feelings of fullness, wholeness, gratitude, and joy. So the invitation for practice today is this.

Each time you catch yourself complaining or focusing on what's not good enough or what you don't have, whether verbally to someone or just in your head, immediately afterwards simply name one thing, you can do this mentally or out loud, that you have that's good, that you're grateful for. Maybe it's a person, a place or a situation. So you're not denying by the way that some things are not as you'd like them to be, but you're also training your mind to acknowledge and see clearly the full picture of what's already here, already good, already fulfilling. In this way, you shift your mindset from one of lack to one of presence, abundance and appreciation. As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here.

And let's settle in now for today's meditation.