I'd rather be online than doing anything else when I'm at home

If I think of biting into a peeled lemon, really chomping on it, instantly my mouth starts to water. She gets the payback of blue sky, new friends with fascinating stories, and a spike in adrenaline. She sees new country, she tears through the hours. This is one of those instances where Jardine saw what a friend was up to and it swung a door wide open. Maybe she won't go shopping for a vintage Ducati tomorrow, but the seed is planted in the rich dirt of her imagination. So interesting to note how role models change over time, how new possibilities crystallize. Jardine pays attention these days to the acquaintances and neighbors and coworkers who sneak off and do crazy stuff, sniff out adventure, forge paths. We used to worry: What will we do if we don't drink anymore? We'll have no one to hang out with, we'll be bored and lonely, left out of the fun. But when we took off our blinders, there were people everywhere, hidden in plain sight, showing us stunning ideas. We just had to want to see them. Which is a prescient reminder that a large part of being creative and generating useful insight is an awareness of our own predilections and working hard to compensate for them, or at least not let them blind us to alternative possibilities. There is a wonderful scene in the classic BBC situation comedy Yes Prime Minister written by the very talented Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, in which two of the core characters, public service bureaucrats Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard, are speaking about a problematic opinion poll. So, they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one. The perfect balanced sample. So we just commission our own survey for the Ministry of Defence. See to it, Bernard. Like all great humour there is an incisive truth here. The writers of the show clearly understood that research is almost always incomplete, intrinsically flawed and rarely neutral. Now, this is not to say we shouldn't use research -- far from it.

In fact, we have relied pretty heavily on research (discussed in the appendices) generated by ourselves and others in preparing for and writing this article. Cultivating a home practice is one of the best things you can do for your self-care and development. It's not easy, but believe me, it's worth it. The first aspect of home practice is setting up your space. For some of my clients, this means a room or corner of a room that is their dedicated practice space. Others practice in their bedroom. They do it seated at the edge of their beds, lying down in bed, or in a chair in the room. The purpose of a dedicated practice space is that over time that particular place comes to hold a certain energy that your body immediately connects to when you begin your practice. It's also a nod to creating ritual around your practice, which is a key component that infuses your practice with meaning and a loose structure of support. Take a tour of your home with the intention of choosing a place to practice each day. If you're not sure where to begin, just pick a place and practice in it for a week. Foals, like children, have short attention spans and easily become bored with any one task. He was a tough one, more stubborn and willful than any other foal I had ever handled. I began to wonder whether I had taken on more than I could deal with and regretted breeding him in the first place. As the days passed, however, he began to establish his place in the barn and became a personality and presence on the farm. He would be a challenge, but I would learn from him. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how much one has to know in order to keep horses. The best material for stall floors is a layer of gravel underneath packed clay which can be covered with straw bedding. Oat straw is sometimes difficult to obtain, since soybeans and corn bring higher profits to farmers. Moldy straw, furthermore, can adversely affect a horse's respiratory tract.

Wood shavings are the bedding of choice for those with plenty of money. My face scrunches up, I have to swallow. This proved that thoughts don't have to be real for our bodies to react. My body automatically responds to the thought! If I think sad and depressing thoughts, I feel bad, and my body responds. If I think about good stuff. I remember so clearly at the time the two voices that were waging an internal war within me. I started to argue with myself. But there isn't any good in my life now. I've got a job I hate. My life is awful. Jardine's dear friend Justine has taught her many things--but this wisdom rises above the rest: an evening dress is more glamorous when torn from jumping a fence or stained from eating midnight cherries; In other words, imperfection is enchanting. Too much control and exactness can sterilize the love out of anything. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi is something that gains traction for us every year and has particular resonance in sobriety, as we accept (and even embrace) the spiritual cuts and bruises we might have gotten along the way. The concept is more complex than this, but at its core, wabi-sabi refers to a practice of seeing every object as beautiful not despite the fact that it is impermanent, but because of that. An illustration of that idea is kintsugi, the Japanese method of restoring a cracked vase, for example, with a seam of gold, so that the crack will always be visible and a reminder of transience. The break is not something to hide. It shows the passage of time, and it elevates the object. There are people who get sober with the primary goal of looking better.

We are not such people. Rather, we're simply taking Goethe's advice and being conscious of our bias towards our own filters, values and experience. One of the problems with traditional innovation workshops, or hackathons, is that many times we have the wrong people sitting around the table. Often we are asking the very people who benefit from the status quo to break that system and redesign something else. Unconsciously we are asking them to undermine their own sense of competence, survival and safety. All human beings, to a greater or lesser degree, are influenced by loss aversion. This means we are generally more afraid of losing what we have than we are excited by the prospect of gaining something better. It stops us stretching, keeps us where we are and can rob us of opportunity. This is one of the reasons we retitled our innovation workshops as `Risk Prototyping'. This, it turns out, is much easier for organisations to buy and a lot less risky for team members to engage with. Essentially, we get organisations and teams to imagine what might threaten their business model or replace them in the marketplace. Don't stress about this part: the important thing is to choose and begin; When you decide where you are going to practice, put an offering in that area that feels supportive to your practice. It can be a piece of artwork, a crystal, a feather, a flower, or a photograph of a teacher you admire. Think of this as the beginning of your altar, or place that holds your offerings. If you have time and interest, you can add several offerings to your altar. If only one offering feels right, that's great too. The point of the offering is to choose something that helps you drop into your practice and supports your overall intentions. Lastly, if there are things you need for your practice, like a blanket, cushion, or journal, be sure those items are in your practice area. I find that having those items in a specific place along with your offerings sets up a wonderful invitation to practice.

The idea is to make the space, whether it's an entire room or the corner of a shared area, a place where you want to practice. Sawdust is less expensive and easier to handle, but it's not as clean or safe: sawdust made from walnut or cherry trees can cause horses to founder, so it is necessary for the buyer to know what kinds of trees the lumber mill uses. My barn has a concrete floor because it originally housed cattle, sheep, and hogs, but bare concrete draws moisture from horse hooves, so I placed rubber mats on the floor and covered them with sawdust made from locust trees. Eventually a layer packed down by horse hooves provided a cushion for the dry bedding which I rake on top. This method seems to work as the stalls stay dry and the horses' feet are in good shape. I enjoy raking sawdust, smoothing it out so that the bedding lies evenly. The work provides an opportunity to meditate while I listen to the swallows in spring and summer, sparrows in autumn and winter. Owners can't just turn horses out into a pasture but need to know what kinds of grass they are eating. Lush early growth will fatten them up but can also cause laminitis, which often leads to the chronic, debilitating hoof condition called founder, so horses usually cannot be turned out all day in the spring. The new grasses of April and May change in their mineral composition, so the horses have to be allowed to readapt after a few weeks. My pasture is not lush but contains a good deal of sedge grass and clover, which horses do not like. You've got two arms and two legs. You are in shape. Something, some energy answered. I have a loveless, lousy marriage, and working midnight to seven is making me sick. You've done it before--been successful in starting your own trucking business. I lost everything! You had no control over the oilfield crashing. You've learned from it! You are still young!