Ordinarily, your mind is content to be almost anywhere other than where you actually are. Your efforts at regular meditation (I assume you're making regular efforts) are changing this - nevertheless, you need to be constantly on your guard to ensure that you remain as alert as is humanly possible.

So, after reading this, set the alarm on your mobile or cell 'phone. Choose a time a couple of hours from now. When that alarm sounds, test yourself: to see how you're feeling, to evaluate how relevant your thoughts are to what you're doing and to evaluate how relevant what you're doing is to what you could best be doing now, in the context of the greater scheme of things.

I am often asked how we can protect ourselves against what Lisa, my wife, describes as the 'energy vampires' - people who you'd prefer to avoid! Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I'm qualified to give advice on this!

Some of you may recollect a particular family, here in France, that we met some years ago. Like most children, their two sonsare the apple of their parents' eye. However, unlike most parents, they drive their children relentlessly in wildly all-over-the-place directions as props in their at-least-on-of-us-must-be-famous soap opera.

Hence, their sons were, at various stages, going to be pro tennis players (with the necessary performance enhancing drugs laid on); downhill ski champions ("We're very disappointed that he'll never win the downhill gold medal!"); leading political figures ("He's just been offered a job in the Obama Administration"... at 17!); rock stars (thousands of dollars worth of Fender guitars and Marshall amplifiers laid on)... the list is both endless and subject to weekly change!

They keep inviting us to their home. Evenings always end with a rock concert and skiing or tennis videos. Originally, we used to be one of a number of invitees. At our first New Years' Eve party in their house, other guests, whom we had never met, pleaded with us to invite them to our house, on anywhere in fact, the following year! Nowadays, we're the only people who appear to have been unable to say no.

It's not for the want of trying. Last Christmas I dispatched an email explaining that we couldn't see them - anytime over an entire two weeks. The email wasn't rude... but only just! Three weeks later we were in their home for another extravaganza. The following day, we got an email: "Great night last night - should do it again... are you free next Saturday?"

As I say, I'm not qualified to provide advice on how to avoid normal crazy people!

Psychology tells us that the prefrontal cortex of our brain is the centre for executive functions - where we take the executive decisions that ensure that we are, right now, fully focused on doing just what we need to do to move us towards the achievement of our goals and objectives. Unfortunately, this description of highly selective and focused action doesn't really sound like an accurate description of how we ordinarily spend large parts of our day... or our life, for that matter. Don't be surprised at this - psychology also tells us that, as adults, our prefrontal cortex is very rarely, or almost never, engaged - it tends only to be engaged in the early stages of learning complex tasks such as driving a car.

The psychological definition of mind is that "mind is what the brain does" - for every aspect or behaviour of mind there is a corresponding activity in the brain. It isn't that your brain is not involved and engaged, it's just that the wrong parts are automatically doing the wrong things. In other words, your brain is actively involved evaluating the present by reference to your stored knowledge and 'enabling' you react accordingly. This, unfortunately, sounds like a far more accurate discription of the ordinary daily life which tends to go round in circles.

However, it is fair to say that, for you, as an ordinary adult, the piece of your brain that you most need to be engaged is AWOL. Your Number One Priority should be to re-engage this vital area of your brain - the part that pays undivided attention - in every aspect of your daily live.

Meditation activates the prefrontal cortex - there's plenty of research that proves this dating back over the last couple of years. Regular engagement of the prefrontal cortex makes it larger or thicker. As a result, your prefrontal cortex will become effortlessly involved in your daily life - you will become focused but in a very special way - you will become focused so as to ensure that, in the ordinary course of your daily life, you will, more likely than not, do what needs to be done, in a focused way, to get you to where you want to go in life.

The only question is: do you think that you're worth a few minutes daily investment in engaging your prefrontal cortex?