Welcome,
My name is Carolyn Ann Budgell.
This meditation is designed to help you get really clear on how you're doing in your life right now and how to create more resilient responses in the face of all that life presents to us.
Make sure you're sitting comfortably and start to take a few deep,
Long breaths in and out.
Feel yourself relaxing further with each breath.
Feel yourself arriving here into this meditation,
If possible,
Releasing any expectation about the meditation.
And notice how you are right now.
In this moment,
How are you?
Is there anything that you're holding onto?
Is there anything that you're bringing into the meditation?
Continue relaxing physically and lean in gently to how you are right now.
Be honest with yourself.
One of the most fundamental pillars of this practice of Buddhism or simply,
You know,
Of self-help or becoming a more conscious human being is to become aware of how the world works and really of how we operate in the world and how we engage with ourselves and with others in the world.
Sometimes this process can feel uncomfortable if we realize that we've been acting or reacting in inauthentic ways or harmful ways.
But it's important to be real and to be honest with ourselves.
If we want to change,
This is an important step.
So as best you can,
Without judging yourself or without fighting against yourself,
Keep relaxing and just observe.
How am I?
What's been coming up for me lately?
What comes up when I sit here?
With gentleness,
Be with yourself.
It's been proven that the chemicals related to negative responses or negativity are much stronger than the chemicals that correlate with positive experiences.
So you might find that when you're sitting with whatever's coming up,
With whatever patterns are coming up,
Or you know,
Whatever challenges you're faced with right now in your life,
Your instincts might be to fight with yourself or to get down on yourself or to judge yourself or maybe even blame someone else.
These negative reactions,
They're ingrained in us.
This need to fight or overanalyze in a negative way.
It's extra challenging to implement positive reactions into the mind or a new positive way of dealing.
So let's start really small.
Let's keep it simple.
Choose one thing about yourself.
Choose one thing that you'd like to breathe into for today and assign one word with it just for today.
A positive word that will help it shift.
It could be soften.
It could be let go,
Relax.
I am enough.
Or any other word that you can greet this aspect of yourself with just for today.
The way your mind thinks will start to change and you might already feel the shifts right now from when you first sat down to meditate.
You might feel a little more empowered.
You might feel a little more able to cope with all that life throws at you or all that your own mind throws at you.
Creating more resilient responses is less about being perfect and more about returning to presence more quickly and quickly each time.
Use that little word or that little phrase whenever you can today.
Use relaxing breaths,
Cleansing breaths whenever you can.
Thank yourself for this time that you've taken to get clear with yourself and honest about how you show up in the world and about how you want to shift it.
One more deep breath.
Namaste.
