Only a fool would not start their day in the right state of mind - a clear, present and focused one. If you don't start your day by focusing your mind on the reality of the moment, you have pretty much no chance of being appropriately focused as the day progresses. But, even if you start as you mean to continue, all the fools around you (those who did not start their day off in the right state of mind) will do their best to drag you down to their level. So, you need to take deliberate steps during the day to stay focused. Here's one of those steps: right now, how do you feel? Asking yourself this question will result in you becoming aware, in the moment... the essence of mindful focus.

I've been on my travels again and can only marvel at how regular fliers completely ignore the rules on hand-baggage. I bring this up for two reasons. Firstly, Ryanair, Europe's biggest low-cost airline has been getting dog's abuse for trying to ensure that every passenger has a fair share of hand-baggage space. Secondly - well, in fact, much the same reason.

Many of my clients are frequent fliers. They tell me that when they fly with airlines who don't bother to enforce their own rules they like to be on the plane early, to ensure that they can get a space in the overhead bin before all the guys with the oversized wheelies, laptop bag and briefcase take up half the plane - these would be the guys (who don't give a toss about anyone else) who complain when airlines try to level the playing field for all their fellow travellers.

The best yet was last week's Dublin flight. One of the last people to board literally tossed someone's bag out of the overhead bin to accomodate his two oversize bags. The stewardess told the other passenger that she would put his bag in the hold as there was not enough room for hand-baggage!

I had a group workshop last week in Dublin with a number of clients who I've known for quite some time, people who I see fairly regularly, people who are serious and disciplined about making the very most of their lives. I'd like to pick up on a couple of key points that we agreed upon as the day progressed.

The first one is an obvious one. I mentioned Steve Jobs' famous Stanford Commencement Address not long after he went public on his cancer diagnosis. In that address he said that, when you realize you're going to die, there's no longer any fear, there's nothing to lose, you've gotta do, what you've gotta do... or words to that effect. Do you realize that you're going to die? Has it occurred to you that you're running out of time? Have you grasped the reality that this is not a rehearsal, that this is it?

It's terrible how many people that I've spoken to over the years who are waiting for something to happen before they take some momentous leap: retirement, the children growing up, waiting for 'the time to be right' - whatever that means. Granted, some people aren't even sure that they will be able to afford to retire but that's a side issue (at least for our purposes this morning). If there's something that you need to do, if you're one of the estimated 96% of people who are going through the motions of their daily life, moaning about this, bitching about that, wishing for this, wanting for a far-off greener hill, you're wasting you life, if that's what you call it.

Now is the time. Now is the only time that you have. It is the only place and time that you can be and your future depends, entirely, on what you do now. I don't even mean making big decisions - your future depends on whether you're doing something constructive (that could even include simply enjoying yourself) or wasting your energy (reading the, always bad, news, channel-hopping mindlessly, staring into the bottom of a beer glass... whatever). What you do in every now and how you do it makes you who you are.

And that leads me to the second point. Who you are, what you want to be, depends on your state of mind. If meditate, you'll make it. If you don't, you won't.