Sitting in a comfortable position,
Choosing a comfortable position,
Sitting on a chair,
With your back nice and straight,
If you're sitting on a cushion,
Your legs are folded,
That's fine,
That's great,
Your hands can be on your knees or in your lap.
And we're just going to drop the chin down,
Just dropping the chin,
Let's take in three beautiful deep breaths just to soothe our nervous system,
Breathing in through the nose,
Breathing in,
And slowly release out the nostrils,
Breathing in once again,
And slowly release,
And last breath in,
Breathing in,
And sigh the breath out the mouth.
Coming now to rest on a normal breath.
So we're going to play with a bit of creativity today,
Closing your eyes,
Going to explore visualization,
And I'm just going to take you through the story and you can just imagine it.
So we find ourselves on an island,
A beautiful island,
And this is the island of our values,
And we start our journey from here.
And on this island is a beautiful,
Beautiful big tree,
And on this tree are all the beautiful fruits,
And we gather these fruits,
And this fruit is the fruits of our work,
Of our life,
And we enjoy them,
And we gather seeds,
We collect the seeds from the fruit in a little bag,
And these are the seeds of our potential that we can take with us as we venture out into the wide open ocean on our journey.
We go down to the beach and we climb aboard a small boat,
And we hoist the sail,
And we leave the island.
And the sails represent our intention,
Or our vision,
And the gentle breeze that blows is our continued practice,
Our daily practice.
We sail past the island of abundance,
And here we recognize that we have all we need.
We have everything we need.
We are so fortunate,
There's no reason to feel lack or fixed in our mindset.
We can choose whatever food we like,
We can run hot water,
We have comfortable couches and beds,
We have nice clothing,
We have so much abundance in our life.
We enjoy the fruits of our work,
And we recognize abundance all around us.
We continue sailing past the island,
And we approach another island which we pass by,
We can see at shores from our boat.
This is the island of letting go.
We may have spent some time here letting go,
And we reflect on the things that hold us back.
It could be our limited identification with who we are,
And with what doesn't serve us.
And we leave that behind.
There are so many neural wiring patterns that blind us from our vision,
Patterns that don't serve us.
So through our mindfulness practice we have let a lot go,
And we sail past that island,
We see it now behind us,
We then approach the island of gratitude,
And we reflect on our daily practice of being grateful.
It's a wonderful island of motivation,
And a sense of gratitude that we've created and developed not just for what we have,
But for the people in our life,
And for who we are.
And that is very subtle,
To always remember yourself,
Your good qualities,
And to really feel a sense of joy for who you are.
And from this island of gratitude there's a sweet and warm breeze that always blows from the coastline,
And lifts our sails of intention and vision,
And always moves us forward.
In front of us is the island of mirrors,
And as we pass by we reflect that this is a place that challenges our fixed mindsets.
It's an island of vision for where we can see ourselves happy and growing in so many ways.
There's so many reflections of a life of promise that we cultivate by understanding how our brain works,
So many different ways of seeing ourselves and our future,
And to understand our potential to be whoever we want to be.
And finally we arrive and dock the island of legacy where we realize our dreams by following the right way,
The way of our personal values,
Of keeping our values,
Of abundant growth mindset,
Of letting go of gratitude and of personal vision.
Legacy is knowing that we can grow,
And we can grow others just as we have grown,
That the values we respect in others we can share too,
And be respected by our children,
Family,
Friends and colleagues.
We can plant our value seeds here,
And we can grow a beautiful tree on this island.
And this tree may grow so tall and so wide that it offers so many others shelter,
And it bears the most amazing fruit that others can enjoy.
And this is our legacy.
We don't just do it for ourselves,
But we're going to do it for everybody else as well.
There's so much joy in that.
And after being here for a while on this island,
We may decide to continue exploring,
Revisiting new values or going for another journey,
Spending time at each island again if we need to,
And then coming back to this legacy to continue feeding and planting more beautiful trees on this island,
This island of compassion and love.
Neuroscience tells us that neurons that fire together wire together.
And this little analogy that I've given you today,
Your neurons are like little islands,
Islands in your brain,
And all the paths that we travel between the neurons are synapses that we wire between neurons.
So as we practice our mindfulness practice every day,
We are rewiring our brain.
We are creating all the right connections in all the right places,
Rewired and reimagined for our brave new world.
Let's drop the chin to the chest.
And let's take in another deep inhalation through the nose and out the mouth,
Breathing in.
And fill those lungs and out the mouth,
Sigh the breath out.
Acknowledge the journey that you've been on in this life.
And we can build some enthusiasm and excitement for what is to come.
Lifting your chin and opening your eyes.
