I thought I'd tell you a little about my next book, which I've called Wake The F ** K Up - A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled.

It was only in the final chapters of my last book Sane New World did I begin to describe mindfulness and why it works. After it was published, mindfulness became the 'it' girl; the zeitgeist so I knew I was onto something. Maybe it was kismet or coincidence that I had just graduated but I thought, and clearly Penguin also thought, that my next book should be the quintessential manual on how to train your brain. In my book, I'll give you (and yet still approved by Mark Williams so you don't think I made it all up over the weekend) my six-week course on how to do mindfulness. I will always stick to my coda of keeping it funny because that's the greatest foreplay on earth. I've found scientific information is more easily swallowed when laughing. I mentioned neuroplasticity in the last book and no one even flinched. The brain is plastic, not set for life, it can change until just before you drop dead. MBCT trains you to intentionally re-wire your brain, by breaking those debilitating habits of thinking, "I'm a victim, I never do anything right, I'm too shy, etc."

In the book, I'll explain how to be mindful and yet still part this madness we call life; how to stay mindful at work when your boss throws a hissy fit. How to be mindful when your husband's driving and loses his direction for the 70th time, mindful when your kids tell you how boring you are and mindful when in the headlights of the on-coming school bully. I'll also give you my 'seven ages of man - mindfulness guide'. Exercises specifically for babies and their mothers, kids, teens, middle-aged, older aged and beyond. The brain is malleable right to the end of your life so you might as well learn to keep it serviced. Why not treat your brain as well as you do your car?

The point of mindfulness isn't to just sit in a tissue-lined box wrapped in self-obsession it's about learning to cool your engine before it burns you out. If you learn (it's mental training there is no magic pill) to be reflective rather than reactive it will have a hit on effect on everyone around you. We work like neural wifi; our state of mind is infectious it passes from you to the people around you, your family, your business, your community, your country and eventually the world.

You can tweet, blog, bitch and bore people senseless at dinner parties on how to improve the world but really in my opinion, what has to change first, is our thinking. The conflict is in our minds and we project onto the world as if something out there is making us feel demented. And without hammering the point, whatever's out there, we created, unless a meteorite hits then it's not our fault.

The only antidote for us to last into the future is to learn when to calm our minds down, even for a moment; to be able to put our fingers to sleep after an orgy of emailing. Consciously becoming aware that our brains need refuelling just as we know exactly when our car is on empty. If we try to drive with no petrol, in both cases the engine dies. Rather than using our brains to build yet another skyscraper, a flashier piece of software, a rocket to Neptune, we should take charge of our own mental technology. And that is exactly what my next book is about.

Wake The **** Up - A Mindfulness Guide For the Frazzled will be published in January 2016 by Penguin Random House

I'm talking about mindfulness at the St James' Theatre in London 2-14 March 2015. Hope to see you there.

I just returned from a silent retreat called Kimpala in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. You may ask why go so far to be silent? Answer: I couldn't stand the sound of my own voice anymore and my brain was starting to fry from ruminating on things that had no answers like a cat chasing its tail.

Mostly I went because one of the great meditation teachers called Jack Kornfield, was leading the course. Usually, when I get somewhere and I'm alone, the first thing I do is collect people to form my own gang. They're usually the spikier members; the bitchy, funny and cynical. If there is anyone gay I scoop him up. But when there's a no talking policy, there's no point mingling. Actually there are great benefits to shutting up, it gives you time to watch people; my favorite past-time, being a natural born voyeur. On arrival, I noticed something odd about everyone and couldn't put my finger on it.

I finally realized, most of the people had grey hair; they sat there looking unashamedly old. None of them seemed to care how they looked and in some cases it was terrifying; no bra so they swung like pendulums and earth shoes like Platypus feet. I felt sorry for them being so old but probably they were younger than me. There was a lot of hugging, which always creeps me out and makes me want to head for the hills. As long as I didn't have to hug I was fine. I actually grew to love the silence, the relief of not having to make small talk and die of boredom with the answers. If you don't talk there's no reason to make eye contact so you can sit surrounded by people with your own thoughts watching the snowfall on the evergreen trees in that American fantasy kind of way. The food was delicious and in silence you can really focus on the taste without interruption. I fell in love with a blueberry muffin. I ate it slowly, savouring every crumb, my head rolled back in ecstasy.

The mindfulness classes were amazing because of Kornfield's charisma and he is the 'real thing.' He's completely present, at peace with himself and yet razor sharp, funny and incredibly smart. He taught us an aspect of mindfulness I don't practice. I practice it to help me notice early warnings of an on-coming depression or starting to tip into burn out. I'm so used to pushing myself over the limit I need to keep my ear to the ground. Jack explained that we were going to learn how to do mindful compassion which is a form of meditation. My cynical hackles were up, ready to pounce. We could ask him questions so I raised my hand and said I found the concept of compassion too fluffy and I found it hard to locate the feeling most of the time. He looked at me with great patience and had us do some exercises- one of which wiped the smirk right off my face.

We had to pick a random partner and were told to stare into each other's eyes. He asked us to look deeply and imagine the other person as a child when he/she was laughing, in pain, experiencing something new and feeling safe. Then he had us imagine the other person now as an adult, experiencing their successes, their failures, difficulties and joy. I never met the woman who was my partner but I felt I knew her more than I know some of my friends. It was so intimate and yet felt safe. I stopped thinking about how she saw me, I just focused into her eyes which showed me every emotion under the sun. It felt like we were connected by an emotional bridge, rather than being two entities, our hearts and minds were joined. When we finished Jack said what we just experienced was compassion. He hit it on the head and I sat amazed.

At the end of the six days, though we never spoke, a kind of peace settled over everyone like the snow outside. There was a feeling of waking up from a bad dream because suddenly you can clearly hear sound, taste food, smell, see, feel everything as if for the first time. I felt I was who I really am under all the fear, competition and anxiety. Why have I been giving myself such a hard time in my life? What have I done so wrong? I didn't even know anyone's name but it was as if we were all in it together, all vulnerable, dealing with an unpredictable world where nothing is certain, everything ends and in spite of that we're all doing the best we can. We're all in flight, running from pain, grasping at security. Before I left I realized I loved all those grey headed, Earth Mothers in the Uggs and found myself hugging several of them. Thank God there are no photos allowed.

I'm on tour talking about mindfulness this Spring, starting at the St James' Theatre 2-14 March. Hope you see you there.