Aspects of mindfulness • London, 2009

To focus is to be mindful, to stay on task without getting distracted. Mindfulness indicates being careful, taking care.  It is the opposite of being careless.  There is a difference between being careless and carefree.  When we are carefree, the general sense is that there is no danger in the environment and so you we can relax and do as we like without coming to any harm.  However, in most of the situations in life you have to be a bit care-full.

James Low, talk to psychotherapy trainees, London 2009
Transcribed by Sarah Allen
Edited by James Low
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Extract

Some of you may remember Star Wars.  In one film there was a return to the early days of Anakin Skywalker.  He is a little boy and a slave yet he calmly flies a home-made aeroplane.  As he prepares for a critical race in which his freedom is at stake, the advice he gets from the Jedi Knight is simply: “Focus”.