Ordinary-minded people - that's most people - are constantly on the hunt for others' attention: we all like to be liked or even noticed. Ordinary-minded people like to involve you in their little dramas... like to get the monkey of their back or, at the very least, share the load. Life can be a big enough pain in the ass without other people's problems. Don't get involved in stuff that will only further distract you from the main event: living your life to the full. I'm not saying the you should turn a blind eye to, for example, people in need but, when others are itching for you to get involved in their sideshow, don't scratch that itch.

One of my workshop discussions turned to the subject covered in today's Practical Tip - one of the participants recounted the following story:

His daugher had a chest infection, her mother wrote a note to her teacher to excuse her from a mid-winter swimming class. The teacher, however, wasn't inclined to believe what she saw as an "excuse" to get out of class and made the girl sit poolside, in freezing conditions, for the hour's class.

Fair enough, you might say, at least she didn't have to shower, change, get on a bus, in the freezing cold, half-wet. But the teacher didn't stop there. "If you're too sick to swim, you're too sick to go on the school outing to the theatre next week" the teacher said, baning the child from the trip.

And, whilst his wife wanted my client to bawl the teacher out of it - and he would be more than capable - he decided that he wasn't going to rise to the bait: he told his daughter that there are plenty of horrible people in this world - she better get used to it. "I'm wouldn't scratch that teacher's itch" he said.

Today's Ezine explores one of life's great challenges... how to avoid being sucked into other people's sad little lives. You may take exception with that statement but the ordinary mind, seeing the world through the veil of out-of-date stored knowledge, really does experience a "sad little life" by comparison to what is possible.

I used to think that it was an Irish thing but it's pretty universal or, at the very least, European: the manner in which people, in conversation, compete with other as to who can recount the worst hard luck story. I shouldn't be surprised, decades of research tells us that the ordinary mind is negatively predisposed - evolutionary psychology, in clutching at straws, suggests that we learn more from being negative than positive. Whatever the explanation, we are our own worst enemies: whilst today's video explores the extent to which other people impinge on our energy, they'd never get a chance to muddy our waters if we were alert and clear-minded enough, in the first place, to see them coming and stop them in their tracks.

The point I'm making is that people crap in your pool because they think it's OK... becuase they saw you crapping in it first! If you're not alert enough to behave yourself, not only do you actively - albeit automatically - encourage other people, you simply cannot cope with their inappropriate behaviour - the kettle is really not entitled to call the pot black!

All good things in life start with a clear mind, a mind so clear that it can evaluate, moment-to-moment, whether or not, first of all, whether I am behaving appropropriately, doing the right thing and, secondly, whether or not other people are likely to encroach on my clearmindedness. It sounds like this requires complex mental gymnastics whereas, in fact, the exact opposite is the case. In the ordinary course of our ordinary everyday lives we tie ourselves in knots - clearmindedness amounts to effortless plain sailing by comparison.

Behaving yourself starts the moment you get out of bed in the morning - it starts with a few minutes of ensuring that, before anyone else even comes into your line of vision, you've started the day clearmindedly. A good start is half the work - five or ten minutes meditation first thing each morning won't guarantee that you'll have a crap-free day, but it will ably equip you to better deal with the crap - internal and external - that is inevitably waiting for us all each day.