Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session we're going to talk about identifying your motivation for meditation practice. People engage in meditation and mindfulness for a variety of different reasons. The most common and understandable ones are to reduce stress and improve sleep. And if this is your motivation, that's great.

It's why I've started meditating. And we have so many resources at Mindfulness.com specifically to help you with these things. Most of my students come because they're primarily trying to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and improve sleep. So these are really good reasons to start. Interestingly though, over time through my meditation practice, I found that I developed enough internal resources to help keep me afloat during difficult experiences.

And I do believe I'll have access to most of these inner resources, even if I wasn't to continue to meditate. All to say, these days, I don't meditate to reduce stress or sleep medit, the better. I meditate to become a better, more useful human. The primary fuel for my practice is to be useful as a teacher, a human being and a member of the planet. When I practice, I can stay present to more of the world suffering without collapsing, and my heart feels more open and inclined to do something about it, which I really appreciate.

I feel less caught by selfish motivations and more inspired to help and serve. And I'm a more useful teacher for those who put their trust in me to help them navigate their minds and their hearts. Perhaps my motivations for practice will be different one day, but this is what currently inspires me. So I share all of this to reflect or to help you reflect on your own motivations for practice and to see that it can take a lot of different shapes and forms. As you go about your day to day, reflect on just what inspires you.

What is it about the promise of meditation that calls to you right now? And see if you can keep that in the forefront of your mind to sustain your motivation for practice, both your formal meditation practice, but also your informal practice, how you bring these practices into your day - in conversation, in your work, in whatever it is you do that's meaningful to you. So as always, thank you so much for your practice. You're doing great and let's settle in for today's meditation.