Welcome to episode 2976 of the Daily Meditation Podcast.

I'm Mary Mechley and I welcome you to day 4, we are midweek in our series.

This week the theme we're exploring has to do with you doing less better.

You're doing less but actually getting more done because when you're really focused and you're calm,

you have more energy and this allows you to get more done.

And we're following along with insight and inspiration from Marcus Aurelius who wrote the book of meditations.

And this was a book that was more or less his diary that was discovered many years after his death.

But this book of meditations is so thoughtful and so reflective and he endured many challenges as he was the Emperor of Rome.

And he applied this stoicism to his life, he walked his talk.

So I'm sharing with you in each episode a challenge he faced.

So you can see how occupied and consumed he was with all that was happening around him as he was Emperor of Rome.

He dealt with pandemics, he dealt with wars, he dealt with massive betrayal, people were always trying to assassinate him.

Yet he wrote this thoughtful, reflective book during his reign as Emperor of Rome and you would have thought he was among living secluded away somewhere.

But he wasn't, he was in the midst of dealing with these challenges as ruler of Rome when the Roman Empire was considered to be the most powerful empire in the world at that time.

So as always I'll share with you some insight which I'm doing now and then you'll be guided in a meditation.

So Marcus Aurelius faced incredible economic strain, financing the military campaigns that fought off the Germanic tribes to the north and also dealing with the aftermath of the Antonin plague.

This placed severe economic strain on the Roman Empire and Marcus Aurelius had to manage the financial challenges to ensure stability and support for the empire's infrastructure.

So think about when the world came out of the pandemic.

Well he was coming out of the pandemic and he was dealing with wars and trying to rebuild Rome's infrastructure and yet he wrote this quote.

Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself in your way of thinking. So he's writing chapters and chapters on how to live a happy life while he is ruling during such tenuous times.

So if he could do this you can do this today with whatever is going on in your life. You can focus on what makes you happy and to help conform your thoughts to the happiness you want in your life.

To help you do this every day for I share with you a Moudra, a Moudra is a way you position your hands and this is considered to stimulate a corresponding region of your brain.

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