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

I don't know if you ever get this, I don't get it a lot, but a lot of people have spoken

to me about this idea of an earworm.

It's normally in the context of meditation, but it's often more than that.

The idea that we might listen to a piece of music, it could be a jingle on a commercial,

it could be the favourite piece of music or just something that we hear when we go into

our local shop, but it somehow finds its place in the mind, and it lodges itself there,

and it creates a groove which gets deeper and deeper throughout the day, perhaps throughout

the week, almost as though it's just on repeat, and we don't really know how to let go

of it.

And so normally the question is, what do I do?

And it's an interesting question, because normally, whether it's a piece of music or a jingle

in that context, or whether it's a storyline, a thought that keeps appearing in the mind,

the reason that it keeps playing is because there is some level of resistance.

It doesn't have to be that way to begin with, but over time, as the resistance built,

it almost creates enough tension for it to keep playing, as though that tension keeps

spinning that same record.

Somehow we have to find a way to let go of our resistance to it.

Now, ordinarily, we think it's a distraction because we're trying to focus on something

else, so we might be trying to write something, and that song just keeps kind of playing,

or that same thought, that same inner dialogue, just keeps playing, and so we think it's getting

in the way, and what I always advise people to do is, in that moment, rather than be

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