If you have an important encounter today (it could be a meeting, a presentation, family dinner with your kids this evening or it could be that you will meet someone who has the potential to change your life if you are present enough to pay attention at that moment) take a couple of deep breaths to clear your mind to focus your mind for the task in hand - the encounter of the moment.

What do you want out of life? What are your big and grand goals? What would it feel like to have achieved them? Can you imagine how it would be? Can you see yourself having climbed the mountain, admiring the view, feeling the rush of excitement and satisfaction? Or are you, like so many of us, not really sure what you want? Or, like some, are you afraid (yes, I’ve heard more than a couple of people say this) to have big goals? Perhaps you don’t think you should or could!

You won’t achieve anything if you don’t want it or, in psychological terms, you will not achieve anything that you don’t expect to achieve. Our lives are ruled by our expectations – they colour or perspective, numb our senses. Our expectations were set when we were little children – as young as even one or two years old – by the little negatives that the adults around us would not have even noticed, so closed is the adult mind, so open the child’s.

And, now, as an adult, you’re stuck with your expectations! Nothing you can do about them… good luck with that! This is, sadly, the truth of the matter – your subconscious expectations, known as “stored knowledge” are just that – well and truly stored. What you have to do is learn to not pay those old expectations any more subconscious attention and, at the same time, give yourself new ones.

Firstly, pay attention to the here and now – the essence of mindfulness – train yourself every day to do it every day. That way, you’ll stop paying attention to the nonsense in your head. Secondly, give yourself new expectations – write (handwrite) how it will feel when you have achieved one, two, thirty of your goals. Write what you’ll see, feel, hear, smell and taste as if you’re already there – set your mind.

Take charge of what’s going on in your own head – changing your mind changes your life.

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