<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 more cluttered 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. In fact, there is an entire talk devoted to mindfulness).

So what is this mindfulness practice I keep running into? At its core, mindfulness is simply the act of being aware of the present moment. Sounds very zen, and if you refer to the <a title="Mindfulness" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness">Wikipedia article</a>, you'll find that the history of mindfulness has ancients roots in Buddhism. But what this means to us in the fast-paced, modern, multi-tasking world is to take a break for a couple of minutes, assess how you are feeling at that very moment--whether you're happy, sad, angry, or stressed out of your mind--acknowledge that feeling, reflect on it, then continue forward with your modern, multi-tasking life. In other words, it's a chance to anchor yourself in the overwhelming ocean of distractions we call life.

There are many ways to practice mindfulness, including mindful eating and mindful walking, but the most common form is meditation or, as I like to think of it, taking anywhere from 3-30 minutes to do absolutely nothing except relax, close your eyes, reflect on how your feeling, then focus on your breathing for the rest of time. Sounds simple, yet it's ridiculously hard for most of us. Try it, and you'll see why. Even without any external distractions, even in the dark and pleasant sphere of your own mind, you'll find your attention wandering almost immediately, usually to the next series of tasks you need to complete for the day, or to that annoying meeting you just had, or to what you want for lunch. . . in essence, anything other than what you are supposed to be doing.

And that's the point: In our modern, multi-tasking lives, our mind is probably doing something other than what we want it to be doing, whether it's coding an algorithm, meeting with a client, or writing a blog.

As I've discovered, modern psychology has taken the concept and <a title="Mindfulness in modern psychology" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_%28psychology%29">run with it</a>

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