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 Miscara, and in today's episode, I'm going to share some reflections on my 36th birthday.

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

Okay. So, as I mentioned, it is my birthday today, 36 years old. Since it's my birthday, I am trying to take some time off of work and spend more time with family and I'll be going out with friends tonight.

So this will be a shorter episode.

But I just wanted to use it to share some reflections because 36 really represents 15 years of me teaching now.

I started teaching mindfulness when I was in college at 21. I ran the

mind-body health and wellness club at Allegheny College, where we introduced meditation to

it was about 10% of the student body.

And from there, I went off, deepened my practice, lived in a monastery, and then started

teaching professionally at 23, which is, well, almost comical to reflect on

because most of the people that I was working with

were more than double my age.

And so if you're one of those people listening now

and were with me during the early days,

thank you for putting your faith in me.

And it is interesting to reflect on that,

and this being 15 years and what it was like

to start teaching at 23, because I look back on it

and in many ways I knew so little about life. I had hardly been in the real world. I was single.

I hadn't navigated some big relationship challenges yet. I wasn't married. I didn't have a kid.

And there were just so many real world things that I hadn't married, I didn't have a kid. And there were just so many, you know, real-world things that I hadn't been exposed to.

...