Is there anything more spleen-twistingly, incisor-grindingly tedious than listening to other people recounting their dreams? I don’t think so. Which is why I won’t share how two nights ago I dreamt I was flying, but not really flying, more falling and desperately breaststroking though the air trying to gain traction, while being chased by a faceless swamp-thing. And wearing no underpants.

But this week I did share the dark side of my id with Australia’s leading dream coach Leon Nacson, who also runs Hayhouse Books. To see if pausing to understand the symbols and meanings in one’s dreams has any worth.

Back when we were all suppressing twisted oedipal urges, dreams were interpreted as a revelation of our subconscious (and often sexual) desires. A Jungian lens saw other people (and objects) as representing aspects of ourselves. So that swamp-thing? He’s some dank part of myself that’s holding me back from flying freely. Which makes surprising sense, actually. As does the fact he’s a masculine presence.

Newer theories say our dreams merely serve physiological purposes, such as keeping us asleep. That dream where you’re stuck in mud and can’t move…it’s stopping you from waking to go to the loo. Others say they’re a neurological dumping of superfluous data from the day, and help us solve problems. Einstein stumbled upon E=MC2 in a dream. The particular configurations of the benzene atom and Singer sewing machine were also discovered in dreams. We all know it works – you “sleep on an issue” and awake with a clear answer. In high school, I was obsessed with solving Lewis Carroll logic problems. It was a hobby of mine. The hoarier ones I’d nut out in my sleep. Ditto tricky quadratic equations.

Harvard research published late last year claims dreaming’s a parallel state of consciousness that’s continually running but is suppressed in waking life by our senses. Which begs: what’s our true state? Dreaming or waking?

So which approach provides the best answers and insights?  None of them and all of them. Leon explains that dreaming your teeth are falling out can simply be a note-to-self to see the dentist. Or it can be a red flag, alerting you that you’re not speaking cleanly, that you’re using too many words and not cutting to the chase.  Both can make sense. It depends on you.

But universal themes do emerge. Flying dreams, he says, represent a desire to get above the mad clutter of life and glean perspective. Leon, who’s analysed dreams for four decades for people worldwide, says this kind of dream is on the up and up, which is not surprising at all, right? Nor that dreams about feeling stuck (featuring spiderwebs, which signify the far more fear-inducing technological “web”) or empty or spiritually empty (winning the lotto but not feeling anything) are also trending right now.

But, and this is where it gets fun, you don’t have to be stuck with a grim dream diagnosis. Leon explains that emerging theories say it’s not what you dream, but how you react to what’s happening in the dream, while in your dream, that is of greatest import. He explains a falling dream is about feeling unsupported, which is quite victim-y. But where you fall, or what you do while falling, can reveal more inspiring things about yourself (do you just splat, or fight the fall?). All of which would not be that helpful, except that, as Leon explains, you can steer a desired reaction.  Leon suggests that when you wake from a falling dream where you’re not happy with your flaccid landing, use your “just woken up” semi-delirious state to imagine sewing a parachute. Or whatever.

Leon also suggests using the feelings from dreams, rather than getting bogged down in the symbols and events, to guide you in “real” life. This week I got all Freud on myself and tried this out. On Tuesday night I asked my subconscious for insight into a life-steering decision I need to make. In the morning I woke, remembered the question, which triggered recollection of the dream I just had. Taking Leon’s cue, I focused on my reactions and immediately felt my answer. I’m not sure exactly where it came from, but it just did.

All of which would be hard to fathom, except that does anyone know where any answer comes from? As Leon says, “No one knows where in their brain their phone number is stored.” But this doesn’t stop them from accessing it.

**And for some extra fun, Salon has just assembled a slide show of the best dream sequences in movies.

Remember the 90s? Ah, yes, they were such earnest, toe-gazing, reflective times. Folk would Quick Unpick the Nike logos off their sportswear (making branded statements was so tawdry), and debate whether you could wear lipstick and still be regarded a feminist.

Gosh, we cared back then!

In the 90s we’d have D & Ms. Which are not the same as DMs. Indeed the latter (a 140-charcters-or-less “direct message” on Twitter) is the antithesis of the former. Which, for those who weren’t there for the fun, stood for “deep and meaningfuls”, referring to the kind of conversations we liked to have. We’d also say “deep”, as kids today might say “fetch” or “amazeballs” or “hectic”.

Deep was good. Deep had currency.

So you can probably guess where all this is heading. As a paid up Gen Xer, I take great delight in signs that we might be harking back to “my day”. Or that the way we used to do things, I’ll have you know, was better. So of course I’m going to share with you news that deep is back. And that, better still, a new University of Arizona study shows deep conversations make you happier than small talk. The study highlights that humans are meant to delve deep – we’re programmed to find and create meaning in life and we’re driven to connect with each other.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to say that the past 10-15 years have seen the art of deep conversation shoved aside, along with the Reality Bites-style brown suede jackets and floral peasant dresses we all once wore. It’s been partly a time thing (we often don’t have enough of it to go beyond pleasantries), partly a technology thing (social media’s currency is short and sharp) and partly because “deep” has been deemed a downer in an era drenched in happiness doctrine and “let’s just move on” positive psychology. Many of my mates stopped reading news analysis because it “got them depressed”, which itself depressed me no end. Current affairs shows turned into gossip fests and magazines shortened their articles.

But I’m witnessing a shift. Here’s a litany of proof: The UK’s Sunday Times ran a feature recently declaring “Brainy is suddenly chic”, citing the up and up of learning groups (book clubs that are more Kierkegaard than Larsson). Everyone I know is glued to TED.com, the achingly cerebral portal featuring the best thinkers in the world speaking for under 18 minutes on a deep topic. And when they’re not, they’re going to “in conversation with” evenings on a Tuesday night at their local pub. I’ve been to two in the past month. Indeed, thinkers have become sexy. Intellect Stephen Fry is one of the most influential people on Twitter right now. Philosopher Alain de Botton is not far behind.

So this week I, of course, set out to have more D&Ms, and to see if doing so is a better option than the chat-lite diet of recent years. This entailed creating space and time; you can’t get deep on the fly or with 2010-style distractions. So, as I’ve preached here before, I created my own parameters. I turned down a party to have a quiet dinner with my friend Bill. I switched a catch-up with my friend Matt from a busy restaurant to his couch. And I took time to read the opinion pages of the Guardian, rather than just skim my igoogle homepage.

I didn’t so much worry about what was talked about; I think there are deep angles to be taken on Katie Price’s newfound interest in cage fighting, to be honest. Also, deep needn’t be dark and morose. The point is to penetrate, to peel off layers. To keep asking why, and then why again. But also to develop your own opinions, as opposed to witty soundbites and truisms (or worse, retweeting someone else’s witty soundbites and truisms).

In the process of doing so I noticed two things. First, talking deeply extends you. It’s like a game where you see what happens when you go out further on the limb. Which is not only fun (!), it also sees you reaching other people in ways you might not with an idle chat. Out on a vulnerable limb, or deep in conversation, you’re careful and mindful of what you say and give. Which creates intimacy.

Second, deep talk crowds out nasty, dangerous gossip. It’s like when you eat a hearty plate of osso bucco, it leaves no ream for fairy floss. Which is certainly a richer experience, if not a happier one.

Do you feel the same need as me to talk deeply at the moment? Got the shits with chats that are too impatient or don’t get to the heart of something, or cut corners? I hate it when chats round off with cliches, like a tabloid current affairs show. It leaves me screaming…but there’s more in my heart!!! There’s more in ALL our hearts that’s crying out to be shared!!! Don’t stop there because you’ve run out of time!!!

On this bumpy road to a “better life” that I ride week to week, this much has become abundantly clear: it’s very hard to make self-discipline sexy. As I read on some blog or other recently, you don’t get excited about a party because you’ve been told all the self-disciplined people will be there. Now, do you.

Although over the past 12 months writing this column I’ve given it a good crack. At making self-discipline sexy, that is. At parties I hold court by the buffet and impart fascinating productivity stories to captivated friends, while sipping on my one glass of pinot gris for the evening and urging myself not to grab another handful of Burger Rings.

My favourite is the one about Ray Bradbury. Ray was a broke freelance writer. Unable to afford an office, he’d go to the public library to write, where he’d queue to hire a typewriter in the basement for 30 minutes at a time.  It cost a dime a pop; he had to get value for money (and time). So he’d write in efficient bursts. He’d wait his turn again, then another 30-minute burst, and so on. The result was the classic novel Fahrenheit 451, written in some ludicrously efficient, self-disciplined record time.

I generally have my audience at Ray. I like to take advantage of this and tell them this kind of discipline enabled the writer to access “flow”. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (which I generally blurt-mumble out like a rooky SBS news reader) pioneered this concept back in the early 90s and showed that some of life’s greatest contributions occurred when their creators were in flow (or “the zone”), that is they were so completely focused on the task at hand that time stopped, distractions ceased and much got done.  It’s a sweet, sweet sensation, which I experience surfing and putting together IKEA furniture.

Csikszentmihalyi’s schtick was this: when we engage in something fully we activate so many neurological functions at once that our brains get bamboozled and shut down the part that makes us aware of what we’re doing and how much time has passed.  Ergo, flow.

By now I have the crowd totally turned on to self-discipline, eating out of my paper plate of quiche wedges. So I’ll throw in, “Oh, yes, the 30-minute spurt thing is interesting”. How so, my audience will chorus. Well, many efficiency experts have arrived at the same conclusion. Which then leads me to the Pomodoro Technique.

Developed in the 90s by an Italian efficiency enthusiast, it’s recently experienced a surge of popularity. It’s stupidly simple. You pick a task and take one of those kitschly 90s red tomato kitchen timers and set it to 25 minutes. Next, churn through your task, ignoring distractions, not stopping to make tea or stare at the ceiling. Rest for 5 minutes and repeat the cycle three more times, after which you rest for a good half hour and grab lunch or read emails. The aim is to work to these 30-minute cycles daily, building up the self-discipline muscle.

If I’d written this column before my hypothetical party, I’d tell my symposium I’ve tried the technique myself, while writing this very column, actually. Hey, it works. I couldn’t bring myself to use an actual ticking tomato (too twee), so I used focusboosterapp, a customised online timer replete with ticking.

The ticking, which Pomodoro proponents say is key, certainly instilled a sense of urgency. I churned, and refrained from editing, to keep the flow and do as I’m told. And I did get in a flow. The time flew and I staid completely into the writing, no toggling, no lack of clarity and perspective. In my five-minute breaks, I walked around the block, which cleared my head. Then back to it, as instructed.

In the longer break at the end I contemplated why my brain got so sucked in by a virtual ticking clock as to behave itself so extraordinarily, not darting off to play silly buggers on Facebook or to lead my appetite astray to the fridge. I concluded it’s because our brains are simple little things that like boundaries. And external motivators, however kitsch they might be. They’re also easily bamboozled and fooled into flow.

The good news, however, is we can control this and dupe our brains to our advantage.

As a postscript: I’ve used this technique now for well over a week. It does work. It really does. Give it a crack and tell me what you think….

Hands up if you’re a godparent. Leave your hand up if you’re a good (as in, functioning) godparent. You know, you impart upon your respective godchildren sage spiritual wisdoms from time to time, send a card on their birthday…heck, you even know their birthday!

Hmmm, thought so.

I’m godmother to Jamie. Jamie is a great kid. Actually he’s a fully-fledged adult now. I know what he’s up to because he friended me on Facebook and I read his updates. This is mostly how I know he’s an adult now. In one of his wall photos he’s drinking beer. And has a moustache. I’d feel worse about my godmotherly failings except James’ dad is my godfather. And let’s just say, well, we know each other is still alive.

Godparents are like meringue wedding dresses: a largely uncomfortable nod to a bygone Christian tradition. Well, at least they have been for the past five or six decades. But it would appear their role is being resurrected. While in New York this week I met with Bruce Feiler, author of The Council of Dads, a book currently doing the talkshow circuit over here. His tale: In 2008 he was diagnosed with a very rare malignant tumor. His twin daughters were three and it hit him that if he were to die they’d have no representation of him to guide them through life (as he’d like them guided). So he approached his six closest male friends and asked them to form a council of Dads. Like a posse of godfathers. Only more engaged.

I like Feiler’s council because it brings us all closer. Anything that brings us closer and gets us more engaged is good in my book. Hillary Clinton wasn’t the first person to say it takes a village to raise a child. But in the past century or so, as women withdrew from the communal village workforce, childrearing has occurred privately, one mother at a time, behind picket fences. Which goes some way in explaining why we’re bad godparents today – childrearing’s a private affair that’s awkward to penetrate. Feiler agrees: “When we had our girls, we thought friends would chip in. Quite the opposite – they disappeared.”

I also agree. I don’t have kids, but many of my friends do; a number of them raise them alone. And – oh dear, I’m cringing as I type this – I admit I have a horribly arms-length relationship with most of their kids. I think in part it’s because I don’t have children, so I don’t get invited to kid events. I’m kept out of the park, so to speak. But it’s also because I lead a starkly contrasted selfish childless person’s life and fail to create the space or the time to shift gears into kid mode.

I’m not alone. A vast chasm exists among my generation between the reproductive haves and have nots, in turn breeding resentment and misunderstanding.  Which I’ve always found really very sad.  Especially given, more than ever – with single-parent and too-stretched, dual-income families being the norm – we need a village approach to raising our kids.

A century ago, childless men and women had a clear role in kids’ lives. They were the eccentric, well-read aunt who shared bluestocking rants, the avuncular bachelor you visited during school holidays. Godparenting played a vital role. In medieveal times “God Siblings”, or “godsibs”, described the intimate relationship between parents and godparents. In fact, here’s an interesting factoid: the word “gossip” stems from this particularly close engagement.  There you go.

So what am I going to do about our modern conundrum? I can’t form a Council of Mums. I don’t really have the mandate. But I can engage more. And offer my services to friends. In the meantime, I can also share some council-forming tips. Feiler suggests giving each “parent” a defined role, according to their strengths.

One might be Travel Dad, another the Emotional Issues Dad. “This means sitting down with your friend and telling them what they mean to you, why their strengths matter to you, and your child.” When do we ever get to do such a beautiful thing? Perhaps on our deathbeds? But Feiler argues you don’t have to face death to form a council. “The process of forming a council of mums or dads is about engaging in friendship,” he says.

I can see that. It creates a forum for vulnerability, which in turn opens everyone up to a new kind of dialogue. Which really is beautiful.

(You might want to play this while you read!)

My Friday went like this: ensconced in a blunt, jet-lagged haze I wound my way through Manhattan’s Central Park to the Museum of Modern Art on 53^rd. , whereupon I queued for five hours to sit opposite performance artist Marina Abramović. And stare at her.

This Friday marked Abramović’s 72^nd full day of sitting and staring at strangers, one at a time, not moving even to eat or wee. In total, 1500 New Yorkers have queued – most of them from 4am – for this peculiar experience. Including, yes, Bjork. Marina is the one in white, below. Stacks of people cried, by the way. It was a big, beautiful experience to be in the room.

Eventually I gave up on the staring queue and moved to another exhibit where two naked artists stood facing each other, 30cm apart. I joined another long queue to walk awkwardly between them. The sensation of fleshy boobs and flaccid testicles brushing my bare limbs as I squirmed past was wholly unsettling. As art, they say, should be.

Finally I hoofed over to the behemoth Wholefoods supermarket at Colombus, a veritable zoo of anthropological anomalies and confused American dietary backlash, and found – amid the organic sprouts and daikon – six emu eggs for sale.  I didn’t ask, “who the hell buys six emu eggs on a Friday?”. Because, hey, I was in New York.

Now, you might wonder how a trip to the busiest, noisiest ghetto of neurotic humanity in the western world fits into my weekly search for a better life. Well, you’d be surprised.

Let’s start with the emu eggs. There’s nothing you can’t buy in this town. As my friend Kersti says, “In New York you can order a warm cadaver”.  And, as Jay Z and Alicia sing, “There’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in Neeeew Yorrrk”. You can attend Mostly Vegan Cherry Blossom Bento Box making workshops ($US110) or build a bamboo bike ($US932).

I come to New York every 18 months for work and each time I cross paths with someone of note. It just happens here. Janeane Garofalo and I shared hair frizz tips in a West Village cafe once. I told a guy I’d been chatting to in a bar for an hour he looked like a short Cuba Gooding Jnr. “That’s because I am Cuba Gooding Jnr,” he replied.

But this is the thing: in spite of all the mind-boggling options, Manhattanites mostly derive pleasure from brazenly not attending to them. At least not all at once. New Yorker film critic David Denby this week wrote that in the Manhattan genre of film “not much happens”. I agree. This is the appeal of Woody Allen’s stuff. And the recent New York I Love You.

Ditto with TV’s Seinfeld. It’s the same in everyday life. There are emu eggs out there to buy, but the best stories happen over a pastrami sandwich in a daggy diner. Or on the subway. Or on your stoop. In essence, there’s a focused appreciation for the minutiae of life, for the real moments that happen between people. Options are narrowed (mostly because you have to, to survive the onslaught of choice) and intimate neighbourhoods form (mostly because everyone lives on top of each other, not spread out over suburbs).

This intimacy plays out in the press daily. Big news stories can be happening out there. But the most popular New York Times story of the day will be a 3000-word treatise on the dude who changes the light bulbs at Grand Central – what he eats for breakfast, how he spends weekends. In today’s paper there’s a feature story on two misfits who play ping-pong together. No exciting news angle. Just a quaint friendship dissected over 747 words. Bizarre. But it’s this kind of parochialism that sees me coming back.

But back to the queuing. Manhattanites are notorious for loving a queue. There are 18,696 eateries across the island, but locals queued for hours at the infamous Magnolia Bakery in West Village when it first opened. In the snow. For a damn cupcake. The queue for Shakespeare in the Park tickets each summer have become their own little subculture. People sit in a line all day, making friends and sharing their picnic with strangers, even though there are countless ways you can see live theatre in this city.

Sitting in the staring queue this week I realized this is how New York makes life better.  Why do New Yorkers queue when there are countless other options to be experienced? Because queuing is about being a part of a something. Which is a reminder to us all that beyond the frenzy and excitement of life, mostly we all yearn for realness and intimacy and simplicity.

We all yearn to belong. I tend to find this comforting and exhilarating all at once.

* I got back from New York 2 weeks ago…yes, it takes a while for my column to get published and printed. So you know, I write the column “live”.

I call it the Un-Albumed Photo Problem. In households around the world, shoved at the back of some cupboard, is a box of old photos with negatives that have come loose from the packet. This box elicits much guilt. It probably hasn’t been touched in years; I mean, who gets photos printed these days? But rarely does a week go by when someone in said household doesn’t say to themselves, “I really should put those photos in albums”.  I had dinner this week with a frazzled TV executive toying with taking extended leave so she can regain control of her life. “If I could just get time to put the baby photos in albums,” she said. “That’s all I need.” The “baby”, by the way, is now 18.

It’s like the Un-Albumed Photo Problem is a barometer of our chaos and a measure of how long it’s gone on for. How many years have yours remained un-albumed? 18? 25? Wow, your life is seriously outta control!

Now your unfinished project might not be a flotsam of photos. Maybe it’s IKEA shelving that you’ve been “meaning to” wall-mount since last Christmas. Or a beef bourguignon you’ve been “meaning to” make – you’ve bought all the ingredients and they’ve been sitting in the freezer for three months. It haunts you with it’s unfinishedness. It makes you cringe when you think of it. And so it lingers longer.

I know this is a global problem because productivity and happiness experts around the world have suddenly taken an interest, frothing forth five-point fixes on blogs such as Unclutterer, GettingThingsDone and Zen Habits. To summarise for you, there are two schools of thought. The first says when confronted with a pesky unfinished task, just do it.  And get over it. Shut down distractions, set aside time, do the most hideous task first and don’t budge until the last screw has been allen-keyed into the wall. To date, this has been the predominant vibe: geeing up frazzled folk to get more done faster.

The other, more contemporary school, however, says, don’t do it. That is, strike the task off your to-do list once and for all. Advocates of this unfinished task annihilation encourage being mercenary and deleting one commitment every day. Doing so forces you to get clear on what actually needs to get done and what doesn’t. Often an unfinished task has become redundant.  We don’t realise this until we sit down with a red marker pen and think about it.

As I’m a neurotic doer, I work to a well-oiled to-do list. Each week I write a new one, transferring undone items from the last list to the new one.  Some items can carry over from list to list for six months, unexamined. I’ve also got a basket in my study of warranty certificates I haven’t filled in and bits of plastic that need to be araldited that instills panic in me every time I pass it. Which is ludicrous. How ludicrous?

Well this week I committed to striking one thing off my to-do list and from my little basket of guilt every day. This is what I uncovered: two warranties that had expired anyway, busted headphones I’d been “meaning to” send in for repair from an iphone I’d lost anyway, a reminder to follow up a business opportunity I realised – once I paused to reflect – I didn’t want to be a part of and a reminder to hand-make a get well card for Great Aunty Eileen. And this is the horrible bit: Aunty Eilleen died two weeks ago.

Unfinished task annihilation proved to be extremely productive for me. It freed me up to do the things that mattered, dump the stuff that didn’t and extinguished the paralysing guilt that stopped me being wise enough to know the difference and from being real. I didn’t have to hand-make a card; I could’ve just written a kind note to Aunty Eilleen, or called her. It also reminded me of the ironic productivity of doing nothing. When you do nothing, things mostly unfold as they need to. When you don’t follow up something, if it’s important enough it will track you down. Those photos? They can probably stay in a box until you find yourself wanting to peruse them. As many a Buddhist will tell you, a flower doesn’t have to remind itself to bloom, or find a more efficient way for it to do. It just happens.

Now here’s a thought: what if all those folk who take photos of their every meal and post them on their blog/Twitter/Facebook were actually onto something? I’m sure you’ve seen them about. I was at lunch recently and watched a table of six whip out their iphones as their food arrived, repositioning the Maldon salt pot artfully and angling the lighting all Petrina Tinsley-like.  In a flurry of thumbs they then tweeted the images on to their cyber followers replete, no doubt, with foodie-ese captions (“River Café-inspired mascarpone-stuffed chook with intriguing heirloom tomato smear”; “Well, if those toffee shards don’t take me straight back to 1992!”).

I’ve previously found such faddish behaviour bewildering. But this week I discerned a point to it all. Fastidiously honouring your food in this way is mindfulness in action. Pausing to reflect on what’s about to go down your gullet, appreciating the brininess of the bisque or the appropriateness of the enoki garnish, can create a respectful awareness. And is evidence of a new way of eating that’s – hallelujah! – blowing diets off the menu.

After all the misery of portion control, and the grim failure of calorie counting, there’s mindfulness. Mindfulness is the Buddhist practice of being aware, moment-to-moment. It’s sitting with yourself, instead of reaching for an external stimulus or fix. Mindful eating, then, is eating this Tupperware container of leftover beetroot risotto and being wholly conscious of doing so. It’s being aware of every texture (“I am now biting into a slippery beet chunk”) and every flavour burst (“Hello, salty goats cheese topping!”), while not typing this column at the same time. When you’re mindful, you don’t overeat, you take care to eat good food prepared with care and you’re satiated – emotionally and otherwise. You don’t have to try, you just be mindful.

Bizarrely, a recovering anorexic got me onto mindful eating. Back when I hosted a small show called MasterChef, one of the Top 50 contestants, Sarah, told me about a Eating Disorders Victoria program that taught her to eat with 100 per cent awareness. Over time it helped her appreciate food again. The reason most of the Western world has disordered eating and more than one billion people are obese is we’ve lost the ability to listen to our bodies. From a young age we defer to external cues – eating at set hours, eating set amounts. Then we’re bombarded with competing messages for several decades. Before finally trying to remedy things handing our appetites over to the Jenny’s and the Aitkins to control.

Mindful eating does the opposite. It brings control home to us.

Me, I can be a shockingly mindless eater. Mostly I eat well. But I’m also an emotional over-eater. When I get anxious I shove food down my gob as a way of squashing and silencing the fluttery self-doubt in my gut. I also love food. I cry, sometimes, when I eat something really good. That’s how much I love food. So I get rather threatened by the idea of having to change my ways.

But on Thursday I got bold and tried out EDV’s program. This involved a number of gentle rituals that bring me into my body. Before eating, I take five deep breaths and acknowledge what I’m about to eat. I say it out loud, like old-school grace. I then look at the food. Name it. Note the colour, the texture. In my mouth, I note whether it’s salty or sweet. I chew slowly. I put down my fork between mouthfuls.

Mindful eating is on the up and up. Experts are emerging with fresh tricks and techniques. One advises learning from young kids, who are naturally mindful: when you think you’ve had enough, push your plate away (that is, take it to the sink; this creates “closure”). Another suggests lighting a candle and using lovely crockery as a way to access awareness. My favourite Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh publishes his book Savor early next year. He advises eating in silence for the first half of the meal, then talking only about food after that.

To be frank, this week I found this mindful eating caper bloody annoying. Mostly because I’m not good at it. But the EDV counselor I spoke to put it nicely: “You can’t do mindfulness well or not well.”

Indeed, that’s the beauty of mindfulness.  Once you’re aware of it, it kind of infiltrates. And soon enough you’re saying grace and sending photos of your oxtail risotto to your fans.

Ever been stuck in a toxic relationship rut? I mean really stuck.

Perhaps it was with a spouse, a partner, or your boss or neighbour.  An issue arises, they react aggressively, you react just as primitively to their reaction, and so on and on in a spiral of right versus wrong.  Soon, you’ve both sunk into a festering quagmire of codependent hurt. You might know better than to descend like this; perhaps you’ve had therapy. But each time the scab’s knocked off the wound, you retaliate like an old lizard. You’re that stuck.

It’s rotten, this quagmire. Blame and shame turn rancid very quickly. And the detritus of old pain gets awfully sticky and suck-holey. So it’s hard to leave, or to shift the energy in a new direction.

But what if there was another path? Controversially, American writer Laura Munson’s found one and this week she guided me along it. Laura is a publishing phenomenon. Last year she wrote a column in the New York Times‘ Modern Love section about how her husband woke one day to tell her he didn’t love her and was leaving. They were in a rut. Instead of reacting to his reptilian pain, she calmly said, “I don’t buy it”. He was having a crisis that had nothing to do with her. She had to be strong and save the marriage. The column (which also ran in this magazine last year) became the most read item online and has now become a book: This is Not the Story You Think It Is.

I like Laura. She’s calm and still. And she now sees the ordeal as a gift. She’s not a fraud; I hear the groundedness in her voice. Laura didn’t set out to keep her husband. Instead her aim was to end her suffering. “I remember asking myself, what if I don’t make it into a fight?” she says. Retaliating and being fixated with right and wrong, she reasoned, would only cause spiraling suffering. And she knew she had no control over his crisis, which was mostly about his career direction. He needed to work through it on his own. “I was faced with a choice: I was going to let this take me down, or I was going to learn to base my happiness on something that was within my control”.

Her husband spurted horrible, straight-for-the jugular stuff. Laura bit her tongue. He’d disappear on her and their two kids for days at a time, partying like he was 20, not 40.  She held her energy. She was about to lose everything. But chose to be calm and still. And it worked.

At this juncture I’m going to do something I’ve resisted since starting this column: drop in a poignant quote by a long-dead wise person. But it’s my favourite quote and is so wonderfully apt. It’s from the13^th Century philosopher Rumi:

“Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field – I’ll meet you there.”

It hits a spot, doesn’t it? It suggests that not being right (or wrong) is a place we can choose to go to. That it just exists, once we drop knee-jerk judgment, and is entirely accessible. If. We. Just. Choose. It.

Of course we all know to not get attached to other people’s crap. We’ve read the self-help books, downloaded the podcasts. But rarely do we live out such wisdom. Such considered detachment, I think, is the most challenging behaviour in the human repertoire. How did Laura do it?  “Every moment I simply committed to end my suffering,” she says. Which was an achievable goal because it was something she could control. Unlike committing to coaxing a wayward husband home. She also cooked and gardened. Which, I find, tends to work for women when they’re going through grand debacles. Nurturing sets a powerful, certain tone for us.

“Plus, I visualised,” she says. When her husband got nasty, she’d see it as the game it was. “Like a ball thrown at me. I could catch it and hurl it back. Or let it drop.”

Chatting to Laura had me reflecting this week on similar grand debacles I’ve faced in my rutted relationship career. I’ve been close to where she was with her husband. And, truth be known, I’m still a little attached (goddamn, I was in the “right”!). How would I do it differently now? I’d commit to ending my suffering, too. Which would mean dropping that “But I’m right” ball. And that “But it’s the principle of the thing” ball. And I’d visualise Rumi’s field, which is where I try to meet most people these days.

There’s this thing I do in cab queues at airports. I don’t find it weird. Although you might. When I get to the front of the queue I sing out to the crowd to ask if anyone would like to share a cab to Bondi (which is where I live). Or Downtown (when I visit New York). Or Rundle Mall (when I find myself that way). At first people are affronted by such an invasion of “stranger distance”. But then they soften. Especially when I offer to pay.

Of course, the practice is efficient (it shortens the cab queue for all concerned), and saves carbon emissions in it’s own modest way. But mostly I do it because it feels good. And a bit daring. And, golly, if this world doesn’t need an injection of daring from time to time!

Seth Godin does the same. Seth is one of the most prolific marketing experts in the world. He’s written 100-plus books, invented genius online businesses well ahead of the curve, has a blog following of 500,000 and is responsible for terms such as “permission marketing”, “idea viruses” and “purple cows”. And, truthfully, I think he’s the most authentically impressive person I’ve ever interviewed. And not just because he shares my penchant for cab queue bombing.

Anyway, on Tuesday night Seth tells me from New York that this odd cab queue behaviour is about creating art. And that it’s the new secret to success.

In his new book Linchpin (which can buy from my site…scroll to the right and down) Seth argues the workforce has changed radically and that it’s not enough to be a lemming employee any more. Lemmings are dispensable, as evidenced by the mass sackings of finance types across America in the past few years. Now, the only way to truly succeed and be remarkable is to create art. Not (necessarily) the pastels and parchment variety. Art, says Seth, is simply a gift that changes the recipient. It’s a generous act that sees you “lean into life”, like an aerial skier leans to travel further.

This is Seth

It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. Art is when a waiter gives great service. Because she cares. Art is not following the manual. It’s Susan Boyle ignoring the cynics and fronting up and singing. It’s smiling at the courier. It’s writing a book when there’s no guarantee of it being published.

A true gift is given without expectation of a reward. Although, they invariably become their own reward. Which is hard to fathom, so let me explain it with an anecdote. Last Saturday night, Seth attended the opening of Shepard Fairey’s art exhibition in Manhattan. Fairey created the now-iconic Obama Hope poster. He gave away 500,000 of the posters – at his own expense – during the US election campaign. He had no idea how it would be received. He just gave anyway. But as a result he’s become one of the most influential artists in America. Seth tells me a 4000-strong crowd attended the show and his work sells for $US30,000 a pop.

Fairey’s generosity made him remarkable. And, thus, indispensable. Any artist could’ve created that poster. The difference is Fairey fronted up, he gave, he leaned into life and took a risk. As Steve Jobs famously said, “Real Artists Ship”. That is, they deliver.

So how do we start giving gifts? How do we become remarkable? “The aim is to elevate connecting and sharing to the same level as breathing or eating lunch every day,” he says.  By which he means, we start giving and then give some more and eventually it becomes a way of life. Seth walks his talk. He makes money from public speaking and his books. Then he spends the rest of his time giving freely. He intentionally doesn’t monetise his blog or any online webinars he gives and he expends a lot of energy connecting and helping people. I can vouch for this personally.

And so Seth tells me to spend a day giving unconditional gifts. Which I do. On Thursday I gave a pair of shoes to my neighbour that I was going to sell on ebay (which would’ve cost me more than their worth in time). I told a stranger she looked hot. And I abandoned chasing the woman who sideswiped my car for a replacement rear-vision mirror (after all, she’d generously left a note admitting to it).

You know what? It felt free, and expansive. Leaning in, letting go and not caring about being reciprocated felt natural and in tune with the creative process. It also felt more than a little bit daring.

Actually, in the past two weeks I’ve seen a sum total of five psychics: Mitchell Coombes, the guy from TV series The One and author of Sensing Spirit (which made it to the top of the self-help bestseller list a few weeks back), Colette Baron-Reid, a prolific American “psychic to the stars” who’s conducted more than 50,000 readings over 22 years, this sweet woman up the road with a sandwich board out front offering 15 minute readings for 20 bucks (perfectly, she works from a card table draped in purple crushed velvet), Kristine Fry , the psychic all my friends’ friends seem to have on speed dial, and “Hope”, the 1800 soothsayer who said my career will either, um, stay the same or – wait for it – change direction in July. And that if I get pregnant next year, the baby will most likely “appear “at the end of the year, not the beginning. Um, Hope, that would be called a gestation period.

On the scale of all things woo-woo, I’m guessing many would rate psychics at about a seven, right? Surpassed, perhaps, by cryptozoologists and tea-leaf readers. So when writing about them a journalist will naturally test a good handful in the hope that such rigour will resemble sound scientific method. Although, of course, to write or talk about psychics, objective scientific thinking must be briefly suspended.

Leaving aside “Hope” and her despairing guestimating, the upshot of my little experiment is startling. Mitchell identifies my flat number, that my neighbour is not the full picnic set and that I shouldn’t move for a while (something I’d concluded myself just a few weeks ago). Speaking superfast and with his eyes shut, he also identifies the four book publishers I’ve been speaking to in the past month, and noted the three that weren’t right for me (again, bingo!).

Colette picks my exes’ very specific shortcomings (as well as, uncomfortably, my own pathos for sticking with them). And tells me I started my search for meaning at 13. Which is true. Indeed it started with ABC Radio’s The Search For Meaning series that I listened to while sick with glandular fever.  And apparently my future husband “ain’t pretty”. More of a rough diamond. Stay tuned on this one.

At this juncture I’ll step in and answer the lingering question: do psychics work? And can they help make life better? Hard to answer, but I’ll says this: the world is divided into those who believe in psychics, and those who don’t. Which sounds awfully like something Hope would say. Except that a Neilson poll has indeed found half of Australians believe in psychic powers.

And I’d argue those of us who believe are simply open to the possibility. We accept that our day-to-day perception of life is just that: a perception. We used to think the world was flat. Until our perception was shifted.  We also know quantum physics has proven matter doesn’t exist. And that, instead, you, me and that coffee cup are made up of a connected energy. And so we find it possible – fascinatingly so – that a psychic can tap into this common energy matrix, or vibration, and sense where we’re at.  Why not?

But here’s an interesting point: if you’re resistant to the whole psychic caper then you, necessarily, won’t get anything from it. Several of the psychics I chatted with are also mediums and endeavoured to communicate with my dead relatives. But I don’t really go for that kind of thing. I don’t have a need for it, and, to be honest, I’m a bit cynical and resistant to it. And so this aspect of the readings fell awkwardly flat.

So to this end, the real value of a psychic is that they simply hold a mirror up to wherever you’re at right now, to what you’re open to and to where you’re already heading. And if you doggedly cling to objective scientific method, then you’ll see the experience through that (limited) prism, I guess.

In my various readings, the most rewarding bit is when the psychic talks broadly about how to steer life. Kristine, who picks up on where my career is at and can sense a big shift in me toward kindness and calmness, counsels me in backing off, not trying so hard. “Get out of your own way,” she says.  “Stop trying to control the unfolding”. Yes, such advice could apply to many slightly neurotic 30-something women. But the point is it resonates perfectly with my perception of life in that moment. And makes for a rich, dynamic conversation that leaves me feeling connected. Kristine is astounding at this. “I’m just a feedback loop,” she tells me. “I allow a space for looking at where your own energy is moving. When we tune in to this we can be more graceful.”

Do psychics work? Do they make life better? I don’t know. It’s up to you.