So as a way to begin tonight's talk, I'd like to ask you to close your eyes and let your

mind wander somewhere else. So this is a purposeful wandering. How often you get

those instructions, right? Yeah, so just take some moments, you know, a recent

experience maybe today, something that stood out our future plan and just

enter into that.

Okay, come on back and here's the deal. This is what modern science has now

confirmed, no matter what you were imagining and no matter where your mind went,

you will not be as happy in your daydreaming. You'll never be as happy in your

daydreaming as you will be if your present moment to moment for this talk or

for whatever you happen to be doing, including being present if you're in the

supermarket going down the aisle or being present if you're in the car in

traffic or being present washing the dishes are going from the metro to the

office or whatever it is. Probably a number of you've heard about some of

this happiness research. There's been a whole lot of it and it's really interesting

but one one batch of it, the New York Times reported this in the science

times. They monitored a lot of people on their iPhones, they would just

interrupt whatever they were doing and find out, you know, whether their minds

were wandering or whether they were present and they, you know, tens of

thousands of people. And what they found out was what meditation masters through

the centuries have been teaching, which is the wandering mind does not bring

happiness, that there's not a happiness when the mind is wandering, that

reality is more gratifying than virtual reality. And you might say, yeah, but what

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