I spend more time on my device or computer than I expect to in a session

Goosebumps exploded on my arm, the hair standing straight up. Moved here with my man, and we live in a lopsided steel-and-concrete house next to Elysian Park, a lemon tree growing by the front door. Writing for film and television, collaborating with directors and actors, spending feverish days and nights working on storylines and characters. This place is bubbling with new art and possibility, ancient stories and mythological creatures. It's still possible to be mean to myself, vicious even, about years wasted, not having kids, times I let people down, but I've gotten better at seeing through all that and jumping back to the jewel of the moment. Pitch meeting today in a glass-and-chrome conference room on the twenty-fourth floor, and my nerves are raw. I'm suddenly telling this room about a dreamy, strange, dark story. It's like sharing a secret. Other people share their own ideas, coughing up stuff they've engineered in private and putting it on the table for all to see. Then the conversation rises and splinters and reconnects as everyone takes the project into their hands to weigh it like a new baby, name it, talk about how they'd raise it, if they were to raise it. While the discussion evolves, I can't help gazing over the panoramic landscape, a zillion pale buildings, the palm trees, mountains in the distance, clouds that don't move. This means we will always need to combine data and information with judgement, observation, interpretation, logic and experience, suspicions, guesses and even gut responses to make sense and create meaning. In doing so, the data can be used to generate new ideas. To create change. To make progress. To imagine what doesn't yet exist. Great minds have always known this and, in order to thrive forever, we must all do the same. In order to increase our insight skills, we should consider adding the following tools and techniques to our repertoire: Learn to read the signs and look for patterns. Be aware of biases.

Sit on the other side of the argument. Regardless of whether we want to have children or not, there is always some project or person that needs our attention. Many of us have been socialized to take care of others' needs before our own. As a result, we have kept ourselves small, not spoken up about our feelings or needs, and learned to shift ourselves to make others feel okay. What's amazing about taking this step toward developing your own breathwork practice is that you not only get all the benefits of the practice itself but also engage in a revolutionary act that affirms that your needs matter. There are three postures that I recommend for breathwork: sitting up, standing, and lying down. In the Breathwork Practices section of this article, I discuss which posture is ideal for each practice. Sitting up is the most common posture for meditation, and it's great for breathwork as well. While seated practices are usually taught seated on the floor with legs crossed, I have found that sitting on a chair with feet firmly planted on the floor is the most ideal posture for a seated breathwork practice. This is especially true if you have tight hips, have difficulty sitting on the floor, or tend to feel ungrounded in your life. If you fall into one or more of these three categories, begin by sitting in a chair. My mare was a black Thoroughbred, once a race horse, and, judging from her papers, a successful one. She had been a sprinter--one whose races were mostly under a mile--and had won over two hundred fifty thousand dollars during her career--considerable for the late 1980s. Her neck still bore the semicircular scar of an operation to open her windpipe. Her registered name was Wee Salmon, but I called her Xanadu. The foal's sire, a dapple gray Connemara named Prospect's Callahan, lived on a breeding farm about thirty miles south in Knox County. I knelt to run my hands over the foal's back and neck. Hoping for a filly, I felt beneath the stump of a tail. It was a colt. The surest cure for disappointment, however, is activity.

I fed the other horses to keep them busy while I worked with the foal, kneeling over him and running my hands over all parts of his body, keeping my head well away from his since newborn foals throw their heads up involuntarily. The time has come for the greatest idea in the world to take possession of your consciousness. It is a simple idea, but when you open up your mind and let it in, you'll never be the same again. This is why I had been fired from a job that almost killed me. There was a better place for me than that factory job. I hadn't forgotten any of it; My brain, now fired and working fast, flashed me back to the memory of reading these same articles during lunch. A new co-worker about my mother's age that I was training--we will call her Janet--had just left the lunch group of hateful girls and had walked back to our area. Lighting a cigarette, then blowing smoke at me, knowing I was deathly allergic to it, she looked at article, laughed, and shook her perfectly coiffed, bleached-blonde, mother-beehive-styled head. I challenged. Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, roll of the eyes, shake of the head. It's frightening to be up here, suspended in an unknown place. This is exactly when I feel that electricity, the wildness, the freedom. This is when I remember in the cells of my body what it was to be a girl on the foaming falling sparkling crest of a wave, to be part of the ocean--not at all fearless, not sure of anything, just rapturously alive. I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps I stand on the brink of a great discovery . In the past, New Year's Day for us was often obscured by the long, tall shadow of New Year's Eve. There was a broke-down glory to all this. It's an American legacy, to be destroyed on the first day of the brand-new year. And we believe, to some degree, in the destruction of one's self so that a new self can rise into the pale winter sky, like a phoenix.

Ain't there another way? Seek to understand (not just analyse). Make meaning from the information you have gathered. Clearly we're not talking about reading tea leaves (although human curiosity about the future may make fortune-telling a Forever Skill too, regardless of scepticism from some quarters). In this instance, however, what we are talking about is the capacity to recognise the signposts that are available to all of us if we would just pay enough attention. Digital futurist and founder of Innovation Labs Singapore Scott Bales considers insight one of the key skills he uses in his business and work. He told us that three things drive insight: Learning to recognise patterns. Connecting the dots or looking for what links that which seems to be disconnected. Seeking to cross-pollinate from one area to another (more on this later when we talk about the skill of conversion in article 3). All of these are ways in which we can improve our ability to read the cues and clues that are all around us, to be more observant and catch the connections that will assist us in developing greater understanding. If you're an experienced meditator or yogi and prefer to sit directly on the floor or on a meditation bench or yoga block, please feel free. If you require extra support, place a pillow behind your low back so that your spine can be tall. Notice if your head is leaning forward, and if so, draw it back to align just over your shoulders. This takes extra weight off your spine and makes it easier to sit up tall. Place your feet on the floor hip distance apart. Let your arms rest on your thighs, palms of the hands down if you're cold and up if you're warm. Alternatively, you can rest one hand on top of the other on your lap, palms facing up. ON THE FLOOR: Sit directly on the floor or on a meditation cushion with legs crossed. Notice if your head is leaning forward, and if so, draw it back to align just over your shoulders.

Rest your hands on your knees, palms face down if you're cold and up if you're warm. I also anointed his umbilical cord and the bottoms of his hooves with iodine to prevent infection. Imprinting is the process of handling the foal in order to prepare it to accept human beings. I inserted my fingers into the back of his mouth to simulate a bit, held him around his barrel tightly where a girth will go, and clapped my hands against all four of his hooves to acquaint him with the farrier's trimming and pounding. He did not accept all this attention willingly but struggled against each procedure, at one point even throwing me against the wall and overturning the water bucket. By noon my overalls were soaked and covered with dirt. We went through the entire process eight times with me persisting until his expression changed. I also groomed him, fitted the halter on, and taught him to lead, turn, back, and lift one foot at a time. Part of their training involves acquainting foals with noise so that they will not shy at scary but harmless sounds such as those they might encounter at fairs, horse shows, or race tracks, so I clanged the water buckets together and pounded on the aluminum stall gate with a hammer. A foal's arrival means a busy day. First I found the placenta for the veterinarian to examine for abnormalities and then forked the straw out of the foaling stall. Chris, you're not special. Startled, her mean words hit me. Did you really just say that? Flicking her cigarette ashes at me, she pointed to my article. Every day I see you reading those articles thinking that they'll help you get out of here, but you won't. You're just like all of us, and thirty years from now you'll still be here. I opened another article I'd studied, Charles Haanel's Master Key System. Janet, this article was written in the forties, and the same principle is used in every article on success, including the Bible. It's a scientific fact that our bodies are made up of atoms, and our thoughts affect--