Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about the value of saying yes to what is. So when something unpleasant or unwanted arises in the flow of our lives, perhaps in the form of an unpleasant emotion, a setback, when something doesn't go the way that we expected it to, you know, we might resist it and wish things were different. But that's not that different to looking at an orange and wishing it was an apple. Wishing things to be different is not going to change an orange into an apple.

All it usually does is make us feel really irritated, upset, and discontented with the way things are. The human mind has an almost robot like habit to resist anything we perceive as unpleasant or unwanted. You know, something unpleasant arises and the mind creates a relationship with it that says, no, this is bad. This shouldn't be happening. Now pleasure and pain, pleasant and unpleasant come and go as a natural part of the flow of a human life.

So if each and every time, anything unpleasant arises in your life and the mind says, no, well we're really setting ourselves up to have a lot of tension and conflict within us and suffering. As Byron katie likes to say, you know, "When you argue with reality, you lose, but only a hundred percent of the time." So if we can learn how to shift our mindset from saying no in those moments to saying yes to life as it is, we wage peace with things and we let go of all that inner tension. Saying yes to 'what is' involves having an open, accepting, and kindly attitude towards the present moment. It's putting the welcome mat out, you could say, for whatever arises. So there you are at the train station and the announcement comes that your train is running 20 minutes late.

In that moment, you could say no to life. Right? And you get really angry about it. I can't believe this is happening. Stupid train system. I'm tired.

I don't want to be here. Or you can catch yourself and then just say to yourself mentally, yes, which is basically shorthand for, okay. I accept this moment as it is. It doesn't mean you have to like it. You wouldn't have chosen it.

But you simply accept it because you don't want to create extra suffering for yourself. Now, once you've said yes to what is, you can then act, if you need to. Now in this case, you might not need to do anything but wait for the train. But if you know a faster way home, you could do that, maybe catch a taxi. But you do it from a state of internal peace with what is instead of being at war with it.

So today, if something unpleasant or unwanted arises, see if you can have a play with this practice. Try just saying yes to what is, meeting the moment with acceptance, friendliness and presence, and reclaiming your freedom and peace of mind. As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And let's now settle in for today's meditation.