This is episode 2,198 of the Daily Meditation Podcast.

I'm Mary Meggley and I welcome you to day five of our series this week where we're exploring simplicity.

This is in regard to simplicity in your interior life. You might organize every drawer in your home. You might have plans

scheduled throughout the entire year. You may feel as though you've pretty much organized your life as you

launched into a brand new year, but simplicity doesn't start until you manage your interior life.

That means finding ways to calm your mind and your body to to prevent yourself from getting caught up in the swirl of distraction,

especially these days as so much is happening in the world around us.

Your quest this week, every week you have a challenge or a quest you go on and it's a way for you to deepen your experience of the theme.

When you're exploring one theme every day for a week in your meditation ritual and you have

different meditation techniques as tools to support you, you do begin to find yourself living the way you are meant to live

with more peace, energy, and clarity.

So with your quest this week,

you're encouraged to do a media fast.

That means don't read or watch the news. These days the news seems to incite

anger, fear, self-doubt, uncertainty. And you may think that, well,

you need to watch the news because you need to know what's going on.

I think it's safe to say that you will know what's going on, because most people these days it seems are glued to the news.

So if there's something you need to know about, chances are you will hear about it quickly.

For yourself though, if you find yourself destabilized by the news,

especially as you launch into a new year. You want to make this a great year

for yourself. Whether or not we're going through a worldwide pandemic, you can still thrive. I've heard from many of you throughout

the course of the pandemic and also especially towards the end of the new year.

...