If you've taken a few minutes to re-run the events of the day just ending - as suggested in last week's Ezine - your mind is not set for deep sleep: the kind of sleep in which your dreams can be both lucid and meaningful. Free from waking thought, your subconscious is at a high point as you sleep and is best placed to offer you answers to pressing questions or difficult problems. If you find yourself needing some answers - something that we all need sometimes - ask yourself, just as your head hits the pillow, what the answer might be. Ask an open question: the more vague the question, the more precise the following morning's answer. You will be surprised.

I'm fed up writing negative things about normal people! However, given the way we're wired, negative tends to be the norm.

But, let's look on life's bright side for a few moments today - a couple of things that I noticed on my travels to the West of Ireland last week: a smiling, helpful and friendly Ryanair hostess - no really, I did meet one!! And, in an age where children let their kids play chasing up and down the aircraft's aisle, some really nice well-behaved kids: I even witnessed a couple of little guys saying "Thank you very much" to their Dad when he gave them something to eat.

These are small things - but life is made up of small things: good, bad and, all too often, indifferent. The quality of the fabric of our life is made up of all the little threads that are woven into it.

We're most likely to have bright ideas when our mind is a blank canvas... most likely to find the solution to some pressing problem when we're thinking about something completely different. We all know this is true from personal anecdotal experience. However, research published last Autumn confirms the details: we're at our best when we're not thinking - we make our best decisions when we're distracted from the ruminative thought that we normally employ to think things through. As the research concludes, the "old adage that, before making a big decision, you should sleep on it" has been proven to be true.

Strangely enough - or, perhaps, not that strangely at all - it's not our higher cognitive functioning that makes the best decisions, it is older sub-cortical parts of the brain - components we share with mammals, reptiles and birds - that make our best decisions for us. How can this be? After all, all psychological research in the field of decision-making has always assumed that humans make rational and logical decisions. That last sentence alone should lead you to question the common sense of the average psychologist!!! You don't need to be a scientist to know that that is simply not true. If we all made logical and rational decisions life would take us just to where we wanted to go.

No - we make instinctive decisions based on what we think we want out of the situation or environment in which we find oureselves... very evolutionary! The only problem with this, in the modern age, is that we think to much about what we want, it keeps changing and we're never really sure. Add to that confusion that fact that we're never really focused and you will quickly come to the conclusion that, even though we posess highly refined decision-making equipment, its about as useful to us as the proverbial accountant looking out the back window of the car trying to give us directions!!

Our decision-making apparatus works best when our mind is clear - hence this morning's Practical Tip. The problem, of course, with having bright ideas whilst you sleep is that, being asleep, you may not notice! But, the more you develop a state of mindfulness, through daily meditation, nightly recapitulation and constant open-minded questioning, the more you will become aware of when you're being struck by inspiration. And, mark my words, it will change your life.