Hi, it's Andy here, and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday morning.

And not just any old Friday morning, this is our 100th episode, so thank you so much

if you've been listening to Radio Headspace all this time, or if you've been spreading

the word, I hope it has been in some way useful in your life.

On the note of appreciation and gratefulness, I think there is sometimes a tendency to get

so caught up in what we're doing in life that we don't always have the opportunity to

stop, to say thank you to the people.

We care about maybe sometimes the people we don't even know.

And I was recounting a story a few days back, as for a show we're making on something.

And I was asked to think back to a time where life had stopped to such an extent that

I was truly able to feel that sense of appreciation.

And I was talking about a time, weren't surprised you in the monastery, where I guess the conditions

there are such that you don't only slow down physically, but that the mind also slows

down.

We get to a point where there is room for these qualities in the mind, and personally

I feel they are ever present qualities and not something that we go and find and discover.

It's just in the absence of noise, in the absence of the thinking mind, we experience

more directly those qualities.

And one day for whatever reason, as I sat there, the mind went quiet.

And I experienced a level of appreciation that I had never experienced in my life.

It was nothing mystical about it.

It was appreciation.

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