I think I may have learned my lesson this time. Last week, I absent mindedly walked around the wrong side of a snake while hiking, took a short cut through spiny cactus and may have accidently signed up for the Chicago Bucktown Buck Naked Bike Race.

My mind and my body constantly seem to be at odds. As I make my way through the day, I notice that my physical presence is not always in sync with my thoughts. I may look like I am going for a leisurely walk or sitting quietly reading, but in actuality my brain is planning, scheduling and organizing days, weeks and months ahead.

I call this phenomenon brain bounce. As our minds race along each day, we take our eye off the ball (our current focus) and our psyche jumps on to another mental image and then another and we lose our rhythm.

Women are known for taking on the weight of the world. We can’t help ourselves; our lives seem to become intertwined with everyone and everything that crosses our path. Our family and friends are packed like sardines into our daily thoughts. Yet, we have this incredible ability to multitask the heck out of each day, then close our eyes each night and let the smoke flow out of our ears as our minds shut down for the night.

Human nerve cells are arranged in patterns that coordinate our brain functions. I imagine a woman’s pattern to be an intricate, elaborate multicolored design that swirls and twirls and men’s to be solid, black and white squares. While male neurons probably hum along at an even pace during the course of a day, I picture the female counterparts constantly sparking and spewing, as our control system processes information faster than the speed of light.

As I marvel that this amazing organ is only the size of a small head of cauliflower and my mind wanders to recipes with said veggie, I bring myself back around to the question at hand: how to live by our wits and relieve ourselves of the hop, skip and jump of our thought process.

Here are some exercises I’m working on:

• Focus on one thing at a time: this takes a bit of discipline, but I’m trying hard to concentrate and tune out everything else.
• Find the Zen: when you get lost in the rhythm of the task at hand, you experience a state of calm attentiveness.
• Avoid quick decisions: I need to remind myself to take that extra moment to analyze the possible outcome.

The ball is in my court; when I feel myself leaping before I look, it’s time for me to jog my memory before I am sprung from springing again.