"Ours is the only species that lights up its biological night, that overrides its own rhythms, crosses times zones, and works and sleeps at times that run counter to its internal clocks. We ignore what our clocks remember at our own peril."Jennifer Ackerman, Sex Eat Sleep Drink Dream
The evidence is clear. There is little more foundational to our effectiveness (that is, our capacity to do, skilfully, what matters to us), and our well-being, than sufficient sleep.The more I read about this, and the more I experience it in my own life, the more convinced I am that we are in the midst of a profound sleep crisis that shapes our society, education system, health, politics, and capacity to do what matters - and that at the heart of it is our equally profound forgetting of what sleep is and what it is to be awake.Each of us has a powerful physiological mechanism, the sleep homeostat, that functions to regulate the daily amount of sleep we have by influencing our tendency to feel drowsy. If we allow the process to work as it should, we get enough sleep simply by responding to the drowsiness we experience - going to bed earlier, taking an afternoon nap, sleeping-in longer, or otherwise arranging to rest sufficiently.But we live in a culture that teaches us to disregard our own bodies, to pursue ever more (possessions, productivity, status, experiences), and to deny our physical limits. We have unprecedented access to technology to support us in this project - electric lighting to illuminate our nights, devices we carry that remind us of our responsibilities and of what we're missing out on, and that allow us to be reached at any moment. And because of this, sleep is one of the very first of life's basic necessities we're prepared to give up in our pursuit of more.It's a huge mistake.As we resist our bodies' call to sleep, and as the effect of the sleep homeostat becomes more apparent, we become more and more drowsy, and more and more cognitively, emotionally, and physically compromised. And the effect is cumulative. Every hour of missed sleep is carried in our bodies which is why, after a working week in which you've missed two hours of sleep a night, you need ten hours of additional sleep to restore yourself. Two weekend morning lie-ins of a couple of hours which leave you feeling just as tired are a sure sign you're carrying a significant sleep deficit.The frightening thing about this is that in contemporary culture, we've mostly forgotten what it feels like to be sufficiently rested. We think that boredom, or a stuffy room, or a long drive, or a report to write make us feel tired - without realising that we're experiencing the effects of our sleep deficit. We keep going because we can't stand the drowsiness that slowing down visits upon us.We are a society that barely knows the clarity and crispness and aliveness of being fully awake.There is compelling evidence that the lack of sleep that the majority of us suffer from has profound effects on our creativity, capacity to solve problems, irritability, propensity to become ill, tendency to make errors, and on our safety behind the wheel. And yet we wear our busyness and tiredness as badges of honour, imagining that our capacity to (apparently) conquer our limited physical bodies is not only required but a sure sign of our personal dedication and success.We imagine that pushing longer, harder, doing more will eventually solve our suffering, even while we visit enormous suffering and damage upon ourselves and others. And we ask this not just of ourselves but teach this to our children by asking more and more of them too - more activities, more homework assignments, more progress that we think will get them ahead, at the expense of the basic sleep that would be so life-giving for them.Isn't it time we gave up the madness and suffering of sleep deprived lives and a sleep deprived society, and taught ourselves again the wisdom that our split-off-from-ourselves bodies know so deeply, and so well?
It's easy to feel sure that who I am is the inner experience I have of myself. To imagine that I am my thoughts, my values, my opinions, what I believe to be true, what I care about. And, consequently, that to change who I am - to grow, or develop, or address my difficulties - I only need to change my mind.It makes intuitive sense to think this way, firstly because of course we are each uniquely privileged observers of this particular, own-most inner aspect of ourselves that we call mind. And, secondly, we've been conditioned by our culture and its strong background of 
Here are some projects to which it's possible to turn your innate capacity for imagination.All of these are meanings already given to us: handed to us by our families and culture, and made up - constructed - by other human beings.Which means you, and I, and all of us, have as much possibility to imagine and declare new meanings and stories for each of these as anyone who has yet lived so far.Close in
In one way we human beings are masterful at repeating what we've already learned. It's our capacity to make sense of what we encounter, starting from a very young age, and to respond to what we find by developing skilful ways of coping, that makes it possible for us to navigate the already existing world in which we find ourselves.Without our capacity to become familiar with whatever world we're born into, so much would be impossible for us. Every new development in culture, language and technology would be so confusing to us. Imagine what it would be like if all of us were to wake up each and every morning unfamiliar with beds, shoes, doors, speaking, phones, cars, social custom, police officers, government, tables, computers, schools, forks... It's our very capacity to develop a kind of background, habitual understanding of everything that makes the development of new culture and new ideas a possibility for us at all.But our habitual familiarity is also a constraint for us, because we so easily keep on trying to cope with a world that has changed, long after it's changed. We repeat, for example, the roles and actions that we learned in childhood long into our adulthood - trying to get the approval we sought from the adults around us, or nursing old wounds, or replaying with our friends, colleagues and partners the roles we took up around our parents and siblings in our family of origin.Which is why a vital counterpoint to our familiarity with the world is our capacity to imagine. We are not fixed, however often it might seem that way. Neither are we doomed to play out reactive, repetitive patterns throughout our lives. We can imagine bigger worlds, and bigger possibilities, and new stories for ourselves and others.And when we find new stories - with more expansive roles for ourselves and those around us - and bring them to life by living them in our language and practice, with artistry and creativity, we can actually change the world... at least the world for us and for those nearby. And that is, always, the only place to start.Such acts of imagination are necessary for all of us. And they, like so many forms of creativity and generosity, can be learned and practiced over time.And it can be one of the most exquisite gifts of a human life to imagine and bring the new possibilities we see to other people's lives, as well as to ourselves.
Here's what I'm learning this week:I need more sleep than I usually allow myself. Much more.Solitude really matters. I really need sufficient time away from people, projects, words - even from books. The longer I am alone, the more I am able to let go of all the ways I'm bracing myself, clinging on, holding back. The less obsessive I am. The more keenly alive. And I'm kinder - to myself and others - when I've had time to encounter myself more fully.There is little that is more opening than a wide sky - whether blue with high clouds or speckled with stars.And there is little that restores me to myself more than trees, silence, and the sea.
It's not generally or easily possible to shift into a different mood by declaration - saying "I'm happy", for example, doesn't generally have me be happy.It's my experience that moods are much more subtle than that, more complex and sophisticated, and not so amenable to my attempts to manipulate them. It's as if each mood is really its own complete intelligence or personality - and most moods are wise to my efforts to get my own way.But I do think the capacity for a wider range of moods can be cultivated over time, by how I pay attention, how I choose to use my time, who I am in relationship with, and the actions I take.Fascination or curiosity can, in my experience, be cultivated by taking on the study of something with sufficient regularity and sufficient openness - astronomy or cars, for example, or human personality, what happens in groups, mathematics, music, or the amazing animals and insects that live even in a small patch of the garden.Study something closely enough, for long enough and - crucially - keep going through the uncertainty and difficulty of getting going and soon, as the subject's depths are revealed, curiosity and fascination start to emerge as more readily available moods. And what's more, the practice of looking with wide open eyes, cultivated in one domain, opens up the depth and endless mystery of almost everything else. Even the contours of something as mundane as boredom can be fascinating when looked at in this way.Each mood has its own pathways of practice and observation.And if study is the path that cultivates curiosity, then appreciation is the pathway to gratitude, and generosity is the pathway to love.
Everything I wrote about 
There are parts of us we know well - those that are in close - and parts of ourselves we know less well - the more hidden, invisible parts. Sometimes, simply giving a part its appropriate name allows us to see it and to interact with it more skilfully. The inner critic is one such part. Seeing it, naming it, entering into a different kind of relationship and conversation with it - all of these can be powerful moves in having it take up a more helpful and life-giving place in the constellation of entities each of us calls 'I'.But there are also parts of each of us that we have disowned or split off and that we barely see as part of ourselves at all. These may be parts of ourselves that we dislike, or judge, or abhor. Or they can parts we long for, but do not feel are available or appropriate for us. But parts of us they are, and since we can't bear to identify our experience of them with ourselves, we readily project them into others.So often, when we find ourselves disliking other people, when we get irritated by them, feel judgment or scorn or disdain or even hate towards them, we're seeing in them what we most dislike or scorn or are irritated about in ourselves. A simple way of saying this is that what we encounter in them reminds us so strongly of what we're trying to get away from in ourselves, that we try get away from it in them too.The very same process can also be in play with those we are drawn to, admire, or put on a pedestal. In this case perhaps we're seeing in the other, first, a reminder of split-off parts of ourselves that we deeply long to be reunited with but do not consciously know as our own. We feel drawn to the other person, or good about ourselves around them, precisely because of the feeling of wholeness and re-unification it brings about it in us.Perhaps it becomes obvious when described this way that the work for us to do with people who irritate us is not to try to change them (which in any case does not address the primary source of our irritation or anger or frustration) but to find out what it is about ourselves that we dislike so much and work with some effort and diligence to understand, turn towards, and accept it.And with people we love and admire the inner work for us to do is much the same if we want to love and admire them for who they are rather than because a hole or an emptiness or a longing gets filled when we're around them.Then, we can find, it's more and more possible to be around a wider range of people with openness and warmth and genuine regard. And it's also more possible to be close and compassionate with those we love most, who are so often the very people with whom we have the most difficulty because it's in them we find parts of ourselves most readily reflected. 
In the end, nothing works out permanently.Even the biggest, most robust organisations pass and fade away over time. Life as we know it keeps on changing, despite our best efforts to stop that happening. And eventually, all of us die, leaving everything we’d accumulated and created behind us. Before long, all of that disappears too.So whatever you’re working on now, whatever glorious future plans and hopes you’re working towards, it would be worth checking that what you’re doing is also worth it for its own sake, regardless of how it turns out.Because in the end, that it mattered at the time might be all that’s left.