The concept of the "non-present mind" is alluded to in a couple of different ways in today's Ezine: today's Quick Tip suggests that, by reviewing the extent to which you might be allowing your mind play in the past, you may be better able to check yourself from now on; whilst today's video alludes to it in a far more fundamental way - the normal mind is rarely present and, therefore, not fit for purpose. This is not some fanciful notion, it is a matter of well-established scientific fact - facts already well covered on this website.

The problem with being "non-present" is that you are immediately disabled from being able to do anything - anything at all - about where you want to go today, this week, this year or long-term. For, even if you're planning for the future, that planning is done now. If you are performing some task that is directly related to your future objectives - and there's only a slim possibility that you could even be doing that - then that task is best done mindfully in the present moment.

Now is all you have. Now is the one place that the normal mind is not. We're all aware of how we worry about the future. We're all aware of how, from time to time, we dwell on the past - even if that past is simply an argument we had half-an-hour ago. What we're rarely aware of is the extent to which our subconscious mind is almost exclusively focused in the past. It uses the past's "stored knowledge" as a reference point for how we should behave and react to present circumstances, people and events. Asa result, we are, quite literally, disabled - we have little ability to act.

As I say, these are well-established facts. Our default modus-operandi - evolved over tens of thousands of years - has got us to where we are as the pre-eminent species on planet earth but, as long as you're prepared to let your mind run your life on autopilot, it really is a case of "thus far and no further": your evolution has stopped and has stopped you in your tracks.

Evolution is a slow-moving thing. It is unlikely that you or I will see a quantum leap in human evolution in our lifetime. But the fact that neuroscience has established that, by training your mind to be mindfully present in the here and now, you restructure your physical brain, there is no good reason why you or I shouldn't experience our own personal evolution in a very short period of time. The latest research suggests that could take as little as eight weeks - some of my clients have taken more like eight years... but it's still a lot less than thousands of years.

The point is, that you can bring your non-present mind into the present... effortlessly. When you do, nothing will ever be the same.

When I first met David, he was the National Sales Director of a life assurance company. As a motivator and leader he was superb... on a one-to-one basis. But put him in front of the Annual Sales Conference and you would sincerely hope that a big hole would open up in the floor under him and put everyone out of his misery!!

He'd been to all the Making Great Presentations seminars, bought all the books and was, by any measure, atrocious and getting no better.

One evening - after a long day's one-to-one - David told me how he remembered "as if it were yesterday" how, when he was about three years old, he'd been forced into singing his party-piece at a family gathering. Just as he paddled into the first few bars of "How Much is That Doggy in the Window!", the uncles in the corner started to fall around the place, laughing uncontrollably. David burst into tears, ran up to his bedroom and locked the door.

Years later, standing on the podium, looking out over the eager faces of the gathered troops, his subconscious mind - armed with its program of how to behave in front of large gatherings - triggers his deeply felt reaction... I want to burst into tears and run out of the room. That is how David's psychological autopilot works and it a salutory lesson to us all.

Of course, it doesn't work like that if your mind is focused in the present but, then again, I think you guessed that!!

PS... his uncles were laughing at a dirty joke - as uncles with a few beers do!!