Hello, and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Muscara, and in today's episode we're going to talk about a simple mindfulness practice called watching your own movie.

More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Okay, so I just want to give you a simple practice that you can apply to your life to enhance your mindfulness practice.

This is a practice called watching your own movie, and it's pretty simple.

You imagine that you are observing a movie, and this movie is your life. Whatever you're experiencing is the movie that you're watching.

But you're observing it in a way that you have to describe this movie to another person in as much detail as possible.

So it really requires paying careful attention and being very clear on what you're seeing, what you're hearing, what's coming through through the various scent stores.

But what I also like about it is you're watching it from this perspective, almost a more objective perspective so that you can describe it to someone else.

If you think of how it would be to watch a movie, you'd be immersed in a movie, but you'd also have this meta-awareness that is sort of knowing that you're watching the movie.

And you can see things from a less absorbed place.

Now of course we can allow ourselves to be absorbed and sometimes that's how we want to relate to the movie.

And other times it's helpful to be able to take a step back and watch it from this more observing place.

And so this exercise kind of gives you the opportunity to do both. You could be really in the movie and feeling what you're experiencing, what you're experiencing.

And you could just be watching it all coming at you. Again, what you're seeing, what you're hearing, what you're tasting, what you're smelling, what you're feeling, and what you're thinking, what's going on in the mind.

All through this perspective of, oh wow, look at what's happening now. Look at this scene. Let's observe what happens next so that I could describe this to someone later on.

You don't have to take the perspective of, I need to describe it to someone else, you could just take the perspective of, oh I'm watching a movie right now.

But I think you'll be surprised that just how much more vivid your life feels when you do take that perspective, how many more details you notice.

And also what it's like to just watch your life and experience your life as if it were a movie happening.

In a way I find that I'm more intimately involved with it without being as consumed in it.

So you could take a dedicated period of time to do this, you know, five minutes or maybe you walk outside and just try to imagine and experience everything as a movie, or you just take it as an intention throughout the day.

And then see how it impacts your experience.

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