In all probability, as you read this, you are, at best, semi-conscious. In his book Awareness, Tony deMello urges us to wake up... that, ordinarily, we sleepwalk our way through life.

So, stop what you're doing now... take a few deep breaths, feel what it's like to breathe in and out. Run your hand along the table or the keyboard... feel the real world under your fingers. Listen to the sounds that come and go around you - big sounds, little sounds... hear reality.

Stop letting your autopilot fly you blind through life, using only your childhood psychological snapshots for navigation. Reality is all around you... be part of it.

Although it may appear that all hell is breaking out around you, although your own mind may have you worried sick, thinking about things, investing your precious psychological energy in the things that you don't want to happen, despite all this apparent mayhem... all is well.

What were you worrying about this time, this day last year? All things pass - the bad stuff, the good stuff too. Everything passes, including this life. To paraphrase Steve Jobs: when you know you're going to die, you've nothing to lose, there is no fear, you are already naked.

The one thing that you and I have in common is that we both know that we are going to die... it's the only absolute certainty in life. Armed with that knowledge, you'd better get on with living.

No doubt, at some point along the way, you have had your personality assessed. Myers-Briggs - after nearly ninety years - still seems to be the hocus-pocus of choice although there are many young pretenders. On reading some recent research, which happened to be entitled "Discredited Personality Tests", I came across a quote from a leading psychologist who suggested that personality testing is akin to palm reading... although I would prefer not to offend any clairvoyants!

We were born with many predispositions - like a BlueTooth-ready car! We are predisposed to walking on two legs rather than on all fours. We are hardwired for face recognition and we learn habituation within the first post-natal days of life. We are born human, with a genetic legacy and possibly - but only possibly - some tendencies as regards temperament traits (the jury hasn't even started its deliberations on this one). We are not, however, born with a personality - that is something we learn from our formative relationships, sibllings, peers and socio-economic environment (to name just some of the key documented influences). So, to actually pay somebody to tell you that you belong to this box, or that your personality is that colour, begs a very important question: do you really want to get what you want out of life?

In my experience, people tend to believe that they are their personality - they are very attached to it and they love being told that their personality is this, that or the other. The love being boxed... as if the process of being boxed during their formative years wasn't already a big enough barrier to their success. I will admit that personality tests, at the very least, get people thinking about who they are - they afford people an initial insight into self-awareness. But, if you actually believe or settle for your assigned "personality type", that door to self-awareness is quickly slammed shut.

Our formative years boxed us. The psychological terminology is categorization - we were pigeonholed. But the box is an illusion, a compilation of memorable episodic snapshots that made enough of a subconscious impression upon us to stay with us for the rest of our lives. We're not aware, today as adults, of what makes us feel self-conscious, confident, awkward, inadequate, full of ourselves... but cognitive psychology tells us that these emotional states are triggered by those snapshots. And those snapshots are preventing you seeing the whole picture of the wonderful reality that is before your very eyes.

If you want to get everything you want out of life, you've got to stop looking at those snapshots, stop imagining that you're a Type-A personality or a blue personality. You've got to start seeing reality for what it is now... it's called mindfulness. Everything else is just mindlessness and ordinary mindlessness is wasting your life... one precious moment at a time.