Hi. Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the transformative power of truth. So, I'd like to first share a quote with you. It's anonymous, and it's short.

And it says, "You can't change the truth, but the truth can change you." "You can't change the truth, but the truth can change you." So let that one marinate for a moment. I'm sure you've had experiences in your life where what was true was really difficult to accept. In fact, other parts of you, perhaps your ego, your sense of self, was really fighting that truth, wanting something else to be true than what was true. And perhaps you've had experiences where you dismissed that, where you suppressed it and said, you know, this is too painful to actually acknowledge. But maybe you've also had experiences where you let that truth in, and you listened to it, and something in your life shifted, internally or externally.

I remember this in college for me. It's one of my first vivid examples of it where I really had a change in my life direction. I was studying business at the time. Always thought I wanted to go into business. And it just felt like a part of my identity.

I was the person that was interested in business. But as I was going through my liberal arts education, something in me started to change. And I started reading different books, getting interested in philosophy. And I found myself getting less interested in the thing that I was spending all of this time and money to study. And I was two and a half years into my college education already, had a lot of debt that I was accumulating, was mostly through my business major, and yet something in me was changing in a significant way.

Now, in many ways, this is like a first world problem. I'm in college, I'm getting to study something I like, and something in me is shifting. But still, it felt significant at the time, and it felt like there was a lot of pressure from external sources to continue following the truth that was there, but is no longer here. And what was arising was this deep interest in what is well-being? What does it mean to live a good life? I didn't feel like I actually understood that. And so there was this wrestle for a period of time, continue doing what I'm doing, which makes sense.

Everyone says I should be doing that. I'm far enough in my college education, might as well just get that degree or listen to something, something new, this new truth that's arising. And fortunately I had good support to do that. I can't take full credit for doing that all myself. I did have good support in my family and other sources.

But it was still hard, but I continued to listen to it and it's the reason I'm here now. It took me on a journey to Burma where I lived as a monk. It took me into new studies around positive psychology and wellbeing, and there was a period of limbo. I didn't know how things were going to pan out. I didn't know how I might make money.

I didn't know what my new life would look like. But I did know there was a changing truth in me. So it can be frighteningly easy to ignore these whispers of truth that move through us on a daily basis. And perhaps our biggest work in the world is learning to listen to these whispers beckoning us into a fuller expression of ourselves, and to trust this above all else to be the guiding force for our lives. Just something to consider.

Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.