To do this well we have to be fully engaged. I think that this is a natural skill for a child. Watch any family with young children in a pram shopping in a supermarket. The child is wide –eyed noticing the wonder of everything around him/her. In comparison the adults often appear in a daze or they have their shopping list, rushing around pushing stuff in their trolley and then making a beeline for the check out. They are “end gaining”. That is, trying to get it over with as quickly as possible so that they can get on and do something else.

Too much fixation on goals means that we don’t notice what’s going on right now. I think that we need to try to notice more things around us. Ask “why have I been shown this?” “What can I learn from this?” “What should I do differently now?” The world is full of meaning. But we have to open our eyes and hearts and notice it.

We can use a simple chart called a behaviour over time graph (BOTG) to track the behaviour pattern we are observing.

We can plot BOTGs with objective (hard) measurements, eg blood pressure, weight, or with subjective (softer) judgements eg how energetic do I feel on a subjective scale between 1 and 10.

Continuing to develop our "obesity" example below is a BOTG of the percentage of UK adults classified as obese by year (Source: http://www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/publications/opan09/OPAD%20Feb%202009%20final.pdf).