On an evening when an Irish golfer needs to stay focused, some thoughts on  a key early practice in meditation. Being mindful means we work on our capacity to simply watch our thoughts and emotions, allowing them pass through a stable  field of awareness without disturbing it excessively. To do this we need to strengthen our capacity to let go of distractions and  the running after happiness  by creating  a calmness and constancy in the mind that observes good and bad with an equal ability to accept things as they are. This capacity to focus – to be one-pointed in our attention – is at the heart of our freedom from anxiety:

Concentration is the cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. You can think of concentration as the capacity of the mind to sustain an unwavering attention on one object of observation.…….. A calmness develops with concentration practice that has a remarkable stable quality to it.  It is steadfast, profound, hard to disturb, no matter what comes up. You can look deeply into something if you sustain your looking without being constantly thrown off  by distractions or the agitation of your own mind.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, there you are.