Hey there. Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the idea of living the dream. In my experience, the amount of people who are living the dream seems to be highly correlated with the amount of people trying to get out of the dream. Have you ever met someone that seems to have it all, all the things that you think you want, and yet they're still frustrated? They have the house, they have the car, they have the money, and they're in that relationship, and yet, like they're trying to get out of it.

So to take that example of the relationship. I see so many people suffer because they, they want to be in a relationship, or they want to have a family and they're frustrated that they haven't yet. And I totally get the allure and the pressure. And as always, I just want to play devil's advocate. I think we tend to wed ourselves to some vision for how our life should be.

And the romantic idea in this case of spending our life with another person is culturally ingrained into us. So as we navigate teenage years, twenties and thirties and beyond, there's often this sense that at some point I will, or I should get in a relationship. And perhaps it's what we think we really want. But as time goes on without this happening, the pressure to fulfill that dream builds and the feeling of needing it to happen in order to be happy strengthens. So if you're in this situation, I'd ask you this.

Have you been able to experience any sense of joy in the last five years or even the last day, week for that matter? And did that joy involve anything other than the romantic idea of a relationship? Were you even able to experience prolonged periods of happiness during this time period where life just seemed good and it didn't involve a relationship? If so, isn't it possible that you could continue life in that way, nurturing and developing those moments and live a happy and fulfilled life? There are many ways to have a good life. And if you've been able to experience happiness, independent of your big life vision, then I would argue it's possible you can have a life of happiness that might just take a different shape. And guess what? The grass is always greener. The amount of people living that dream, once they're there, they end up wanting something else or a different dream or different relationship. It's just kind of how it works.

And the Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert just shows us through his research we're terrible at predicting what will make us happy. So by all means date people, fall in love, get the house, sign up for Tinder, not necessarily in that order. But if you've been able to experience happiness at any point without this dream, then maybe soften around the pressure to make it happen. It's not like the pressure is accelerating the process. And, if it does, it will probably push you to settle for something that's not what you most need.

Let things unfold as they will. See if you can trust the process, take the moments as they come. Thanks for your practice. I'll talk in the meditation and take care.