We're running with a series of videos, between now and the New Year, on how to set and achieve your goals. Based on a sound and scientific understanding of how the brain manages (or mismanages) our lives, we are exploring how best to go about getting what we want out of life. This is the third week in the series - you'll find the first two weeks' Ezines via the following links:

It's fashionable to be busy. The busier we are, the more important we feel - heaven forbid that others might think we're not pulling our weight. But a lot of what we do is irrelevant in the context of what we want to achieve - sometimes what we waste our energy on actually holds us back. Last week we talked about knowing what your priorities are. But, before you can even know that, you need to know what your goals are - otherwise, how can you prioritize anything?

As you go about formulating your big goals, you need to give your brain the space and time to sift the ideas, information, feelings and desires into a comprehensible format. That format is, essentially, emotional - in the best sense of that word.

To do this, I would suggest, that you take time out - a half-day at least, ideally two days "off site" by yourself. Let your mind wander - not in the aimless way that your ordinary thoughts will drag you down an alley and mug you, but in a way that you can begin to imagine what it would be like to "have it all"... something that later videos will explain in more detail.

The entire thrust of these current Ezines - about setting goals, "planning" to achieve them and then doing the necessary - is predicated on a psychological understanding that there is a part of our brain that instinctively knows what's best for us. Obviously, this is not a part of the brain that we normally encounter in the course of our ordinary everyday life for, during the cut-and-thrust of daily living, we tend to encounter pretty much nothing at all, doing everything, as we do, on autopilot.

Deep down in the older evolved sub cortical brain reside key neural components that, together, comprise what you and I might can our "gut instinct". The amygdala and insula are capable of parallel processing enormous amounts of data - and coming up with the "best" answer for us. This contrasts sharply with our higher cognitive functions which can only serially process smaller amounts of data. The latter is what we use to analyze a potential opportunity or decision to death. The former is where we make our best decisions. Recent research has proved this conclusively, stating that our best decisions are made having "slept on it".

The problem is that, as ordinary-minded people, we rarely "hear" our gut instinct. We often think we hear it - when we encounter an opportunity that feels right (because other people are doing it) or when our ego is massaged. But, in the ordinary course of events, such apparent "feeling right" is not gut instinct, it is simply conventional wisdom masquarading as gut instinct. And we all know that those words, conventional wisdom, actually don't go together!

Gut instinct is something that comes from "left field" - its always "outside the box" although it often evokes the "why didn't I think of that before now" response. Gut instinct is what you wake up with after a deep night's sleep, what becomes apparent whilst walking along a beach or something that sounds "too wonderful for me" in a lucid holiday moment. It is the stuff we're meant to do - what's best for us.

But you might never find yourself stroling barefoot along that beach, perhaps you never get that deep night's sleep. How are you going to hear what your gut instinct is telling you? Well, you've got to clear your mind, free your mind from the 70,000 pieces of noise that are currently whizzing through it. You've got to come to your senses in order to make sense of your life. And the only way you can do that deliberately, is to train yourself... by meditating. But, you knew I was going to say that, didn't you!