Every time I pass through an airport, I'm confronted with an enormous wave of mindfulness - on the bookshops' shelves, everything else is mindlessness compressed into the confines of a departure lounge... great entertainment! But, those bookshelves, are increasingly being taken over by books on mindfulness: The Little Book of Mindfulness, Mindfulness for Dummies - you name it, mindfulness is everywhere. And, yet, the kind of mindfulness that makes a real difference is almost nowhere to be seen.

I know people who meditate each morning and spend the rest of the day going backwards - a little like an observation of a friend who spend his adolescence in Belfast at the height of the so-called Troubles: "I see people go to mass in the morning and murder in the afternoon... they simply didn't connect one with the other".

Mindfulness needs a connection to the fabric, cut and thrust of your everyday life - if there's no connection you'd be better off being mindless because, in mindlessness, at least your programmed to make it through the day without doing too much damage to yourself or others. Unconnected mindfulness will do you damage - and you won't notice it because you're too focused on being mindful.

It's a paradox, but those who develop mindfulness without that connection see nothing other than the perception that they are calm. Indeed, perhaps, it's not a paradox at all, given the extent to which we know that we only perceive what we expect to perceive - and achieve in the same manner. And therein lies the key to connecting mindfulness to the cut and thrust of your daily life. Mindfulness is a state of mind, yes - but it is, in practical terms, a tool that you can bring to bear on each moment of your daily life. Mindfulness is deployed as the most powerful, effective and effortless means of bringing about what you expect out of the cut and thrust of life... it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Thursday June 11th, 2015 - Dublin

I'm constantly rattling on about the need to have goals and objectives and that they should not be constrained by normally-minded group think or social conformity. In other words, your goals should be big and exciting - the key attributes that focus the mind. But they should not be constantly moving targets. The old adage, that it is more difficult to hit a moving target underemphasises the problem - a constantly redirected mind is as useful as a GPS where you keep changing the coordinates... you'll end up driving around in circles and, eventually, running out of fuel.

So it has been with one of the most entertaining families of normal crazy people that have graced this column over the last six years. Longtime readers may well remember the mother who wanted her son to be a tennis star, rock legend, stand-up comedian, downhill gold medal ski champion, world's number one DJ (still can't figure this one out) and adviser to Barack Obama... all before the age of nineteen. (None of this is either made up nor exaggerated).

The son in question has now got his degree and works, like his father did, in an investment bank. The mother has run out of steam and found solace in wine... no laughing matter. Both parents pursued their dreams vicariously through their son - a not uncommon problem - and have ended up running around in ever decreasing circles.

My point? There are three actually: your goals need to be carefully thought through; there needs to be a degree of constancy and you can't dream for other people.