Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about creating a friendship with yourself. Now, an interesting thing happens when you start to like yourself, you no longer need everything you thought you needed to be happy. Of course, there are still many things that we derive joy and fulfillment from ranging, from material things to relationships. So this is not to dismiss the role these things can play in bringing us fulfillment, but a lot of how we navigate life is subconsciously moving toward a sense of being whole complete, settled and at peace.

And most of the way we go about doing this is by trying to arrange our life in a way that gives us what we want. Now we typically don't identify this as a feeling of, Oh, now I'm whole, or now I'm complete. Instead it makes us think, well, when that happens, then I'll be able to relax. Or now I'm a little bit more at peace or now I'm happier. We have a blueprint in our mind of having arrived, what that will look like.

And when all of the puzzle pieces come together, then we'll have X, Y, or Z. And most of that simply reduces to feeling a little bit more okay with your life, a little bit more settled. And we can get that feeling by manipulating the external variables, but it tends to be a more transient satisfaction. There's a different sort of fulfillment that comes when we make peace with the many dimensions of who we are, thoughts, emotions, internal experiences, because this is what we take with us through all of our circumstances. And if we haven't trained an ability to actually like ourselves, it doesn't matter what's happening around us.

What I've found in my own practice is the more I've trained my mind to be with and relax into and appreciate the different aspects of who I am, my internal experience, it gives me the feeling that I think I'm going to get once I arrange all those puzzle pieces. And there's never been a time where I've got what I thought I wanted externally and then was perfectly contained. But I have found that I've significantly chipped away at a much more sustainable contentment by doing this inner work. And for me, it's reduced to befriending myself. So continue to do the things you're doing in the external world.

Have goals, make money, build good relationships, but remember to simultaneously develop your relationship with yourself. We'll talk more about this in the meditation. Um, As always, I just want to say thank you for your practice. You're doing great. And I'll talk to you soon.

Take care.