In the same way that we need to start the day in the right frame of mind, we need to ensure that we do exactly the same at day's end. And, as always, the right frame of mind is a clear one. So, before you get into bed tonight, sit yourself down in a quiet spot, close your eyes and rerun the day's events as if you were observing them indifferently as a casual passer by. See the events, yourself included, as reality TV. Don't judge the events, don't succumb to the temptation to pause the video to say to yourself "I wish I hadn't done that" or "I could have done that differently", just watch. And, when you're done, turn the imaginery TV off. Your mind will be clearer as you put your head on your pillow... you will get a better night's sleep.

It's twenty years since over 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda, less than twenty years since the break up of Yugoslavia and the accompanying ethnic cleansing and, as we speak, the unspeakable is taking place again in Mali and South Sudan. From a safe distance, we might take a certain comfort in our civilized approach to life - although this year has witnessed dozens of deaths on the city streets of a European capital, Kiev, and the parading of European observers as prisoners of war in Eastern Ukraine.

It's forty two years since the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment - a classic, if highly unethical, research example of how easy we, as mere mortals, find it to do unspeakable things to each other because we somehow think it's alright - because we're all doing it together. Our highly evolved sense of belonging to the herd - a mental construct that has got us to where we are as the pre-eminent species on Plant Earth - provides us with the opportunity to get into all kinds of trouble.

You might wonder why I raise such spectres this morning. But consider this: unless we manage what goes on between our ears, circumstance drives us to do things that, to say the very least, impede our ability to live happy and successful lives.

There's an old expression that suggests that a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind... or, if there isn't, there should be! Clutter, in whatever shape or form it comes, is the outward manifestation of an inner rot that corrodes our ability to focus and do what needs to be focused upon. A disorganized office is the sign of a disorganized mind, a messy car the sign of a messed up owner.

The clutter starts from within and, we must go easy on ourselves, it's only natural. Our minds evolved in a manner that enables us get through the day with the minimum of attention or focus. This automated psychological system also "enables" a constant stream of mental noise: UCLA's Laboratory of Neuroimaging estimates that 70,000 such pieces of mental noise, in the form of thoughts that randomly arise, occupy the average mind during each day's waking hours. This constant noise tempts us to do all kinds of things except what we should be doing, tempts us to think ill of ourselves when we least need the distraction. This ceaseless avalanche of noise is the root cause of all the clutter we experience in our lives for it comes from the stored knowledge, learned during our formative years, that, on the one hand, creates the illusion of who we think we are and, on the other, distances us from a closer understanding of the reality of the moment.

Thought, however, is nothing until you add your attention to the mix. And we're good at letting our attention drift to the next useless thought that pops into our head... because we are bad at paying attention to the reality of the moment, as a result of those thoughts... it's a vicious circle. But all vicious circles can be broken: in this case all it takes is a little self-discipline that demands that we spend a few minutes each day paying attention to reality. This is that advantage that meditation can give us.

However, with tens of thousands of years evolution sitting on our shoulders, we are involved in a constant war of attrition with our own thoughts. They even plague us whilst we sleep, in the form of random dreaming - a phenomenon markedly different from lucid dreaming. If we are to move forward in our ability to focus our minds in the here and now, we have to take every opportunity we can to declutter our minds... hence this morning's Practical Tip.