If you find, today, that something or someone is annoying you, irritating, getting under your skin, causing you grief... let it pass.

Everything in life passes with just one exception - the constant, real you who is observing everything... it is even observing how the unreal you, your personality, is behaving (the one that is getting irritated or annoyed).

After all, can you recall what annoyed or irritated you this day last year?

We're hardwired to categorize and pigeonhole. This ability is one of our most effective psychological defence systems - at least it was when our minds evolved over 10,000 years ago. Nowadays, categorization is as much of a hindrance as it is help. It stops us experiencing and appreciating anything new as we swiftly and subconsciously box everything and everyone with gay abandon! Above all, we love boxing ourselves.

A whole industry has sprung up around telling people what kind of personality they are, what kind of leadeship style they have, what kind of career they'd best be suited to. All these apparently scientific tests - and many of them are not based on any science at all - measure an illusion.

Why would you get hung up on what kind of personality you have? Your personality is not you. Your personality is something that you learned during your formative years. Your personality is the sum total of what others did for you or to you when you were young and impressionable. Your personality may feel very real, but it is not.

Why, with a world of opportunity and synchronicity before your very eyes (assuming that you've opened them), would you box yourself? The only limitations on what we can achieve are the ones that we place upon ourselves... don't.

In the ongoing work that I do with many of my clients, I find that their main concern is to build on the journey that they have already travelled - nobody ever wants to re-cover any of the ground we might have originally covered together. The point I'm making is that, as fellow-travellers, we are all constantly moving forward... once one has opened one's mind there is no turning back. Indeed, once one has opened one's mind to reality and the possibilities it holds, there can be a degree of frustration when one finds that one has either stumbled or become lax in doing what I might describe as the necessary everyday mental preparation that we all need before the day gets going.

There are a couple of key points that I would make.

First of all, frustration or annoyance at one's lack of commitment are, in themselves, the kind of useless thoughts that we should be seeking to ignore. I use the word ignore very deliberately because the noise in our head does not abate - our ability to simply let it pass is the key to our continued forward motion.

Secondly, every moment spent in mental preparation, meditation or mental exercising - whatever you want to call it - is a moment not just well spent but one that builds inexorably on the work that has gone before. In other words, we never go backwards - if we feel that that is happening, again, this is just useless thought, the kind of useless thought in which we conspire with ourselves to question the value of operating with an open and clear mind.

Above all, your mindfulness is the product of every single step that you take - just like your current position in life is the product of every single choice, act or omission along your path up to this moment today. Even more importantly, however, is the fact that, each time we choose to use our minds in a manner that builds upon our mindfulness, we further enhance our mental prowess, our very brain-power, in becoming more and more focused and more ready to make the choices and take the action necessary to lead us to the place we want to be, the life we want to have... the one that's best for us.