Welcome,
I'm so glad you're here.
You don't need to bring anything with you into this space.
You don't need to have the answers.
You don't need to be calm already or in a certain frame of mind.
You can just arrive exactly as you are,
Right here,
Right now.
Let's begin together.
Allow your body to settle,
Whatever that means to you.
You might be sitting or lying down.
Just let your weight be supported.
Feel the contact between you and the ground beneath you.
Let yourself be held.
Take a deep breath in and a long slow breath out.
There's no rush.
No need to get anywhere.
No outcome to achieve.
Just this moment.
Just this breath.
Let yourself notice what's here.
You might feel tension or tiredness.
You might feel busy inside or still.
You might feel numb or restless or a little unsure.
All of that is welcome.
There is no wrong way to show up.
Take another breath in,
Deep into the belly and exhale gently.
Sometimes without even realizing,
We carry a sense of urgency in our system.
The pressure to move faster,
To fix things,
To figure everything out,
To perform.
This meditation is a place where that urgency can gently dissolve.
If it helps,
You might imagine a hamster wheel always spinning,
Always running.
That is how the mind can feel,
Especially when life doesn't go the way we hoped.
When something goes wrong or differently than planned or just doesn't meet the picture we had in our heads,
The hamster wheel can speed up.
Thought racing,
Emotions building,
Pressure mounting.
You might recognize it.
The moments when disappointment arises.
Something didn't go the way you thought it would.
Maybe someone let you down.
Maybe it seems that you let yourself down.
Maybe life simply didn't meet the script your mind had already written.
Disappointment,
When it lands,
Can feel so heavy.
Like a subtle grief,
Not always loud but insistent.
A weight in the chest.
A constriction in the belly,
A sense of this wasn't how it was meant to be.
Just allow yourself to be with that for a moment.
No need to fix it.
Just be curious.
Gently notice where is disappointment showing up in the body.
Is it sharp or dull?
Still or shifting?
Is there a word or an image that arises with it?
Now take another one of those deep belly breaths and exhale.
This breath is a gesture of kindness towards whatever you found.
You're breathing not to change it,
But to acknowledge it.
To say,
I see you,
I'm here.
The mind often tells stories about how things should have gone.
It creates entire futures that never happened.
Versions of events that would have felt better,
Easier,
More fulfilling.
And when reality doesn't match that imagined version,
It hurts.
But here's something quietly powerful to consider.
What if discomfort isn't coming from the event itself,
But from your thinking about what should have happened?
Just consider that for a moment.
Not to blame yourself,
Not to suggest you've done something wrong,
But to open a little space between what happened and what the mind expected.
You see,
We live in thought-created realities.
Every moment the mind is generating stories,
Meanings,
Predictions.
It imagines outcomes and then measures our lives against those imagined outcomes.
When we believe those imagined futures were real,
Disappointment is inevitable.
We think something went wrong.
But what if the only thing that went wrong was the illusion that we knew what was meant to happen?
Just let that land gently.
Take a slow breath,
Let it move through your whole body.
You might notice that the pressure you feel to be somewhere else,
To be someone else,
To have life be different,
Isn't coming from life.
It's coming from inside the mind.
And that's okay.
The mind isn't bad.
It's just doing what it does.
It's generating thought.
But you are not those thoughts.
You are the one aware of them.
And as you take the next breath,
Can you settle back in to that place of awareness?
There's a simple truth in this.
When you stop feeding the fire of thought,
The heat begins to subside.
You don't have to fight the thoughts.
You don't have to stop them.
Just maybe stop adding to them.
Disappointment is like a wave.
It rises,
It peaks,
It passes.
But when we engage with the wave,
Analyse it,
Judge it,
Resist it,
It stays longer.
When we let it be,
It begins to settle.
Breathe here,
Gently,
In your own time.
It may seem counterintuitive,
But the wisest response to the feeling that you need to go faster is often to slow down.
Not because you're failing,
Not because you've given up,
But because peace isn't found by running,
It's revealed by resting,
By breathing,
By pausing.
Let your shoulders drop.
Soften your jaw.
Let go of any clenching or bracing in the belly.
Feel into this moment.
Not the one you thought you'd be in,
But this one,
Right now.
Let yourself arrive here,
In your body as it is,
In your breath as it is,
In your life just as it is.
If a thought comes,
You can notice it,
Like a cloud passing across the sky.
No need to follow it,
No need to push it away,
Just watching.
Thoughts are not instructions.
They are not truth.
They are passing energy.
And when you see that clearly,
They lose their power.
In this clarity,
There is space.
Space for something deeper to emerge.
For quiet,
For wisdom,
For a different kind of knowing.
It's from this place of stillness that life becomes lighter.
Not because of your circumstances changing,
But because you've remembered something important.
You don't need to carry the burden of expectation.
You don't need to hold everything together.
You don't need to control the outcome.
You can allow life to unfold.
You can let go of the should.
You are safe to rest.
Let yourself do that now.
Feel the breath as it enters and leaves.
Notice how your body is held.
You don't have to do the holding.
Gravity is doing it for you.
Life is holding you.
Let that be a metaphor.
You don't have to hold it all.
You don't have to keep striving.
You don't have to figure it all out.
You are allowed to stop.
You are allowed to be.
Let your next breath be a soft surrender.
Not giving up,
But letting go of what was never yours to control.
Take a moment now to bring to mind one recent experience where things didn't go the way you hoped.
Don't go into the story.
Just hold the image gently.
And ask,
What was I expecting?
Not to judge yourself.
Just to become aware.
What did I think would happen?
What did I think this moment would give me?
Now ask,
Who would I be without that expectation?
Not as a mental exercise,
But as a feeling.
Who would I be without the pressure to have it go a certain way?
Notice what shifts,
Even slightly.
When the expectation dissolves,
What remains?
Perhaps a little space.
Perhaps a little breath.
Perhaps a little peace.
Let that peace grow without effort.
Let it expand like a warm sunlight through the body.
There's nowhere else to be.
You're not behind.
You haven't failed.
You're not off track.
You are simply here,
In this moment,
And that is more than enough.
This is the truth that sits quietly beneath the noise.
You don't have to fix anything to be whole.
You don't have to earn peace.
It's already yours.
Even when the mind is noisy,
The stillness remains.
Even when disappointment arises,
You are not broken.
You are human,
And that is sacred.
So,
As we come to the close of this meditation,
Give yourself one final deep belly breath of compassion,
In deeply,
And out.
Let this be the breath that reminds you.
You are allowed to feel.
You are allowed to rest.
You are allowed to trust life again.
When the next wave of thought comes,
And it will,
Because you're human,
You can watch it rise and fall.
You can remember that you are the sky,
Not the weather.
The presence,
Not the passing thought.
And if nothing else today,
Let yourself carry this.
You are already okay.
Even when it doesn't feel that way,
Peace is always available.
It waits patiently beneath the noise.
Come back here any time that you need a reminder of this truth.
You are always welcome.
And you are always home.
