Hi, my name is Andy and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Thursday morning.

So I'd like you to take a moment to try and think if you're somebody who applies more

effort in life or less effort in life. If you're not sure what that means, only use a meditation

idea. So in meditation typically we have a personality or a character trying harder

or trying a little bit less. If we are applying too much effort, we might sit there very

sort of tense, very tight, trying to control the meditation in some way. If we're applying

too little effort, then we might be sort of losing concentration a lot. We might be falling

asleep. There's a sweet spot in the middle. If you're not sure whether you're more of

an over effort or under effort kind of person, you could start to notice in everyday actions

as you're driving the car. Are you squeezing the steering wheel to death or your hands

place very lightly on the wheel when you cut a slice of bread, are you tearing it apart?

Or is it a little bit lighter than that? There's actually lots of clues throughout our day

where we start to see not just what's going on in the mind, but the level of effort that's

going into things. There's a great XZN story where a student goes to his teacher and says,

Master, you know, it's a martial arts teacher and this is Master, you know, I've long admired

your system of martial arts. I'd really like to learn and master it myself, you know, how long

is it going to take? A teacher looks at him and he says, about 10 years and the student really

impatient says, but no, no, no, you don't understand. I'm going to devote all of my time to this,

all of my energy. I'll never stop. I keep going. How long will it take me? And the teacher looks at

him and he says, hmm, maybe 20 years. And I think for all of us, we assume that the more effort we

apply, the more we're going to get out of something or the quicker it's going to be.

But sometimes, in fact, more often than not, life is just not like that. Life isn't asking us to

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