Okay,
You made it.
Welcome.
Let's,
Uh,
Let's go ahead and arrive all at once.
Let's just sort of make a decision to drop in here right away.
All the stuff that's coming at you later today or that you've already been through today to stress out about,
It's not going anywhere.
So,
For the next handful of minutes,
Let's just sort of drop in.
Give yourself permission to do that.
Now,
Let's sit up straight,
Comfortable,
But alert at the same time.
Let's sort of start with some deep,
Comfortable breathing.
Sort of breathing at your own pace.
You don't have to do anything special.
Just arriving and breathing.
And as we do that,
We might focus on the sensation of the rising and the falling of our chest as we breathe.
The rising and the falling of the chest.
Maybe hearing whatever sounds are going on around us.
Okay.
There you are.
You're here now.
So,
As you continue to breathe,
Listening to sounds,
I thought maybe we would start today with looking back on some of the previous challenges we've been through in our lives.
I think almost all of us have been through seasons of life that felt maybe brutal.
Maybe difficult and onerous.
Sort of that feeling of a season of our life of,
Man,
How am I going to get through this?
This is so hard.
Now,
All of us have been through a season like that.
And interestingly,
All of us have survived it.
If you're here now listening to this,
You survived it.
And I want you to take a moment to reflect on,
With a sense of warmth and equanimity,
Reflecting on how those previous difficult seasons of your life shaped you for the better.
Sort of reflecting on how those difficult periods in the long run shaped you for the better.
There's a pretty strong likelihood that you developed spiritually,
Psychologically,
As a result of that difficult period.
You probably learned some important things about yourself,
About the world,
About relationships,
About your own strength,
Your own resilience,
That brought you,
In the long run,
Again,
To a better place.
An example of this for me is,
When I was younger,
I moved overseas to go do a bachelor's degree,
And wouldn't you know it,
I started having panic attacks all the time.
I didn't really have any friends or family.
I had never really gone to school before,
And I was having panic attacks.
The thing that I learned from my period like that was to rely more on my spiritual development,
Because I didn't have anybody else to rely on at the time.
So maybe you've been through something like that in your life.
Breathing into that with a sense of warmth and gratitude for the you that you became as a result of those difficult times.
You made it.
You made it.
You're here.
Now,
Just in the next couple of minutes here before we end,
Let's shift our focus to today.
If you have the free time and attention to sit down for a meditation like this,
There's a high likelihood that you've got a handful of things in your life that could benefit from intentional focus and gratitude.
So what I like to do is with each inhalation and exhalation,
Think about one thing at a time.
Maybe we think about a home that we live in,
How fortunate we are to have that.
The luxuries that come with that so many other people might not have.
And then maybe sensing the possibility of gratitude for the relationships in your life.
The sweetness of that.
The opportunities today,
This week,
To really show up for the people that matter,
People that love you.
Breathing into a sense of warmth.
Gratitude.
Feeling a sense of how lucky am I?
And maybe lastly,
Breathing into a sense of opportunity.
All the different roads laid out ahead of you.
There's so much more life to be lived.
The ups and downs,
The adventures,
The trials and tribulations,
The high spots.
It's not over.
There is so much more ahead.
How fortunate.
Breathing into the possibility of all the good that is yet to come your way.
And we'll finish up with a final reflection here.
There is a high likelihood that someday,
Off into the future,
We will look back longingly at days like today when we're older.
It could be just a boring Monday,
Or like a Wednesday afternoon.
I'm just going to work,
I'm just raising my kids,
I'm just having these relationships,
I'm going to school.
Whatever the thing is.
Someday when we're older,
We are likely to look back on these seemingly trivial and mundane days.
Looking back longingly at days like today.
Don't miss out on it.
Alright,
Well,
I can't wait to see you next time.
I'll keep uploading meditations like this that I think might be helpful.
I think the main thing that I want to do is I want people to just turn up the volume of gratitude and presence in their life just a little bit.
So,
Thanks for stopping by.
I'll see you next time.
