Smile... research shows that even holding a pen between your teeth (using the muscles you use to smile) has a positive effect on your neurotransmitters! And, when people misbehave today or when things go wrong... smile. Your decision to smile is one of those key decisions in your life that you must make, moment-to-moment, that will change your life... smile.

Today's Quick Tip suggests that you smile. Not only does the choice to smile constitute a positive decision to be present enough to choose to smile (don't think about it too much!) it leaves less of your energy available for scowling, being bad-humoured, rude and ignorant.

The point is, it actually takes energy to be rude or bad-tempered. And, every time we are rude or bad-tempered a little bit of us dies... not metaphorically, really - because, in doing so, we piddle our energy down the drain of destructive thought and action.

Being rude is the stuff of modern normal living: taking a 'phone call in the middle of a meeting, not bothering to reply to a genuine request for information or contact, trying to board the train before the other passengers get off, pushing and shoving on the street, being rude on social media.

All these are, granted, little things. But great oaks from little acorns grow... disregarding or disrespecting the other person leads to the stuff that makes our daily headlines across the globe.

We are tethered, straight-jacketed, trying to run in concrete boots - not the ideal apparel if we want our lives to soar! As things stand, your mind, left to its own devices, is quite content to dwell in the past. This is no idle obsession - it is the means by which you make sense of the here and now, the reference for all that you hold true about yourself and this world of ours. It isn't that we wallow in the past for the sake of wallowing, it serves a purpose, it enables us make it through the day.

Now the key question is: do you want to lie on your deathbed happy in the knowledge that you made it that far? Or do you want not just to leave a legacy, to have made a difference, but to have had a good time doing it... as we Irish would say, to have had a bit of craic along the way?

The concrete boots you're wearing fit so comfortably that you'd hardly know you're wearing them. But look at your life: Do you succeed effortlessly? Does it feel like you can turn your hand to anything and it will come good? Or, when things don't come good, do you find it easy to take your medicine, learn your lesson, move on and soar elsewhere? Or is life more or less the same from one day to the next... apart from the brief respite that holidays (sometimes!) provide?

Those snuggly fitting concrete boots - the ones that are not uncomfortable enough to encourage you to shed them - aren't real. Neither is the straigh-jacket. There are no ropes or tethers, nothing to hold us back but ourselves... but, boy, are we good at that! We're good at it because we've had a lifetime's practice at it. But where has it got us?

Of course, the bigger question is: are you happy where it's got you or would you like to go further, achieve your heart's desire? Would you like your life to truly soar? If the answer is "No" - to quote one of my clients "lie down and die now and stop breathing my air". But, if the answer is "Yes", then all it takes to liberate yourself is a daily few minutes in which you commune with reality. A few minutes meditation each day is the rocket fuel that enables your life reach lift-off... effortlessly. A few minutes in which you will realise: there are no boots!