Are you present now? How do you feel now? When you stopped yourself to ask these questions, had you been doing something that matters? Were you doing it as if you meant it? Are you breathing in and out right now as if your life depended upon it (which it does, of course!)? If you're not focused now, when were you planning on being focused? And, worse, if you're not focused now, how had you planned on becoming focused when it mattered?

Over the last week, we've witnessed the atrocity of the beheading of James Foley - by somebody who did it... because he can. Psychology is littered with research examples of people doing terrible things to their fellow human beings because, somehow, they think they can - either peer pressure or herd mentality makes the unacceptable desireable. Is this propensity for badness in us all?

I mentioned last week that our youngest daughter, Sarah - she who originally came up with the name "Gurdy" - had a summer job as a « Hôtesse de Caisse »... funny how "Checkout Girl" sounds completely different in French! Given her observations of how married couples treat - or mistreat - each other in full view, I've been very much on alert when I've shopped in her shop over the Summer.

And what I've noticed is this: the two girls who are in charge of the Checkout Girls could run a bootcamp for ISIS... they don't even have a stripe on their uniform that distinguishes them from the lower orders... just a different coloured nametag. And boy do they know how to wield power! They abuse staff in front of customers, doing their very best to humuliate them. Why? Because they can.

The current state of your life is exactly how it is meant to be - it is the result of every act or omission on your part in every single moment of your life up to this one. There is no getting away from the fact that you are the author of your own life and experience. Obviously, this is not to say that you live in an isolated bubble - clearly you don't. But outside influences and events are what you think they are based on how you respond and react to them - and your reactions have been honed from what you learned in early life to the point that they are now automated.

What has gone before is gone. What is past is past. But what is now is future - for your future is created in this very moment, regardless of how important or unimportant this very moment seems to be. Your state of mind now dictates how you feel now. How you feel now determines how you will feel in the next now and so on. When you encounter a now in which you need to take appropriate action or be appropriately focused in the furtherance of your greater goals, what state are you going to be in if you're not in the right state now? Will you be up to the task when push comes to shove? How are you controlling your state of mind now?

As I have intimated, our reactions are automated - we live on autopilot... a psychological fact. The autopilot manages your state of mind and, through it, manages your reactions and responses. In this way, you've arrived at now. However, like every autopilot, you can disengage it, you can reprogram it, set new coordinates for yourself. To do that, you need to know how to take the controls - not just so you can fly through turbulent times but that you can, as last week's video suggested, enable your life to soar.

Your autopilot needs to be disengaged every morning, in preparation for each particular day's journey. You need to do your pre-flight checks every single morning before the day takes off - if you don't do them, don't be surprised if your day crashes and burns! Essentially, I am saying this: ensure that you're in the right state of mind at the beginning of the day because the state you are in in that now will dictate everything that follows.