I'm following up on the Quick Tips in Ezine 454 and Ezine 455... hope you've been letting your mind run riot on how experiencing a "perfect moment" would look, feel, sound, smell and taste. Now that you've let your mind work its way around your imagined experience of the desired outcome, take fifteen or twenty minutes to write about how that experience feels, sounds, looks, smells and tastes in flowing graphic prose... handwrite it - it's how the subconscious mind begins to believe that that is what you are truly going to achieve.

I want to warn you off what might be described as pure mindfulness as an end in itself. Pure mindfulness is the art of being clear and calm in the present moment, fully experiencing the present moment. It is the means by which we train our minds to focus. But it is a tool, it is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Pure mindfulness provides us with the mental fitness we need to be fully focused when we need it most and we all need to develop this pure mindfulness because, without "mindfulness training" we will exist in our natural state of automated mindlessness... scientific fact!

But, as I say - and I can't say it often enough - pure mindfulness on its own is dangerous: you could become wonderfully calm to the point that your life can come crashing down around you whilst you blissfully feel wonderfully calm! Pure mindfulness is like a hammer - a tool that makes putting hard mental nails into wood and plaster pretty effortless. But, if you don't know what to do with a hammer, you could end us seriously injuring both yourself and those around you!

You need to know what you want to do with the newly developed mental state of mindfulness. In other words, there needs to be purpose in what you're doing moment to moment. I'm not talking about some great awe-inspiring life purpose (although I could!) - I'm talking about what you want out of the interview you're doing (a job), what you want out of the meeting you're having (new business), what you want out of the Team Meeting your chairing (a coordinated Team all pulling effortlessly in the same direction towards common goals) or the beer you're having with your friends (a good time!).

Every moment in our lives needs purpose... and that's why I keep banging on about "purposeful mindfulness"!