Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about the philosophy of no destination. So I think when many of us come to the practice of mindfulness, we have these idea, either consciously or unconsciously, of fixing or perfecting ourselves, like we're going to get to this destination where we're going to get it all together and everything will be perfect from them on. Of course, this is an idea that many of us also have in our general lives, too. Most of us spend actually an enormous amount of energy and time trying to be somebody better, trying to be something more, trying to fix ourselves or complete ourselves.

Really having this idea that when we get there, where whatever our version of there is, that's when we're going to be finally whole. But mindfulness does this kind of bait and switch thing on you, where you come to mindfulness thinking in the back of your head in some way that you're deficient and that you need fixing. And mindfulness says back, Hey, you're not broken. You don't need fixing. So let's change the focus from thinking there's something wrong with you that needs fixing to learning, to love and accept yourself and you're life, just as it is, just as you are right now.

So to be clear, what I'm not saying is that we should give up all our attempts to improve ourselves or our quality of life. It's wonderful to have this ability, for instance, to create goals and move towards them. But what I'm specifically talking about here is our mental dialogue and our way of relating to ourselves in general. So, you know, if we're always criticizing ourselves, pointing out our flaws, putting ourselves down, wishing that we were different or better, then when do we ever get to feel like we're enough just as we are? When do we ever get to stop waging battle with ourselves and allow ourselves to be in peace? You know, I've trained in mindfulness in a pretty intensive and dedicated way over the years, the decades. And I certainly haven't ended up in some kind of perfected state where I feel only pleasant emotions, and I have no difficulties in my life.

Not at all. Do I suffer in stress a lot less than I used to? Absolutely. Do I have a deeper sense of meaning, connection and peace in my life? A hundred percent. And I also still struggle sometimes and I deal with messy, painful things and not always gracefully. I still mess up.

I'm still learning so much and evolving. If anything, after all these years, what I see more clearly and accept now is that that's just not how human life works. There's no perfected state that we're going to reach where it all just comes together and nothing messy or hard ever happens. We're not going to live in bliss. There's no destination.

But if we can learn to unwind the idea of reaching some future perfected state and appreciate who we are in this moment, we really learned to feel much more at home within our own skin, within our own mind, and ultimately within the journey of our own lives. So today, if you care to, if this resonates with you, see if you can remember and hold close the philosophy of no destination. As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here. And let's settle in for today's meditation.