<img class="alignright" title="Mindfulness--in space!" src="http://biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/mindfulness.jpg" alt="Mindfulness--in space!" width="250" height="250" />If I was to define one particular theme for me this year, this would be the year of mindfulness. <!--more-->I first encountered the concept when my workplace offered a 5-week course entitled "Defrag Your Brain," which, I thought, I absolutely had to take, for at the time, my brain felt mushier than usual. As it turned out, defragging my brain meant learning about the art of mindfulness and its basic practices.

Around the same time, while in the middle of a 10-week physical fitness program, I was reintroduced to the concept of mindfulness--in particular, mindful eating. Then after listening to <a title="David Rock" href="http://blog.davidrock.net/">David Rock</a> give a talk at my workplace about <a title="Your Brain At Work" href="http://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Work-Strategies-Distraction/dp/0061771295">Your Brain At Work</a>, I read his book and, lo and behold, the core of his philosophy/research is mindfulness. And when I tuned into a series of <a title="TED Talks" href="http://www.ted.com/talks">TED Talks</a> called "Life Hacks," <a title="Shawn Achor" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Achor">Shawn Achor</a> revealed five daily actions that are the "happy secret to better work." One of those five actions is. . . you guessed it . . practicing mindfulness.

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