I first heard about about Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) from the woman of my life. I'm slightly biased, of course, and she crazy about horses. Even so, it sounded great. What stirred my interest, nay, peaked my ears, was the clarity and enthusiasm with which Sandy described EAP for me. Plus, if I didn't go for it, I'd be a complete ass - among horses :-) So we decided to develop this EAP thing together. "Working with horses" holds great promise in both our work - psychiatry, behavioral science, and marriage and family therapy for Sandy, and helping people with recovery and personal growth for me. We are excited at the prospect of spreading the benefits of working with horses all the way to Atlanta and, possibly, Switzerland. In the meantime, EAP is still an insider secret. Let's get started with information about it.

EAP  brings horses and humans together, so we can quickly learn its not about the horse. Instead, by adding a horse to the therapy session, we are lovingly confronted by 1,200 pounds of pure honesty. Horses don't lie. If a horse is interested in us, or likes what we are doing, he may point his ears towards us in curiosity or walk over and stand beside us. If a horse feels threatened or displeased with us he may pin his ears back, indicating we should exercise caution. His communication is clear and congruent. Being around horses can help us learn to read non-verbal behavior, both animal and human. Since much of our communication is non-verbal, this is an important skill. As is honesty. The more we hang out with horses the more clear and congruent we become and the more likely we are to recognize a lack or absence of congruence in others.

For more information about EAP and what it's all about, check out these videos:

HorseSense, www.HorseSense.co.il, an Israeli based company, uses the many ways horses can facilitate growth and development for participants to achieve greater self-awareness, collaboration, and communication, i.e. for becoming more effective leaders and managers.

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Inward Bound uses horses for counseling and team building for couples, corporate teams, and children.

Among the things they don't teach at school is how to tell fact from fiction.

The more you depend for your information on hearsay - teevee, magazines, papers and, increasingly, the internet - the more fact and fiction become literally indistinguishable. While a majority of hearsay is honest and well intended, other times - quite often - the information conveyed is manipulated.

Governments, corporations, religions, news outlets and con artists engage in self-serving and deceptive strategies, hide or distort, and present fiction as fact. For having been a cigarette smoker for many years, and a tax payer for all my life, I know what I'm talking about.

The ability to tell fact from fiction is important because in it's absence you risk to adopt false beliefs, and false beliefs in turn can seriously impede your growth as a human being. It's been said that a hundred-foot tall oak tree, if it had a human mind, would only grow ten feet tall. While it's of course impossible to proof, most people immediately sense there's truth in it.

The ability to tell fact from fiction is dependent upon the ability to be completely honest and objective with yourselves and to see the world as it really is, not as you wished it were. It's the most important quality of leadership and allows you to deal with the facts exactly as they are, before attempting to solve a problem or make a decision.

Telling fact from fiction deals with reality and the truth, which doesn't make it easy. After all, 99 % of reality is invisible. Sometimes it's merely an illusion, other times it isn't all you imagine it to be. Reality is not always the most likely outcome, but it always has a way of intruding. Even though it is not the most comfortable of rides, I encourage you to go for it all the more so. For one thing, a love which cannot bear to be faced with reality is not a real love, so even you're ability to love yourself depends on it. On the plus side, if you love yourself and are in touch with reality, you are never disappointed. When you swap your illusions for reality, when you drop what could or should be for what is, life becomes meaningful. It's way worth the prize. Give it  try. Just do it.

Success comes in many forms and shapes. The word "success" means different things to different people. Here it's defined as happy, joyful and lasting - you're always either moving towards it, or away from it.

Here are some tell-tale signs that you’re headed in the wrong direction? (Right direction tell-tale signs will be covered in an another post ).

You know you're headed the wrong way when ...

1. You're in denial. Or, as insiders would say, "in the Nile."
2. You're recycling the infantile belief that things come into existence when you open your eyes and go away when you close them.
3. You hear and see selectively, what you want to hear and see.
4. You know the difference between right and wrong, and choose to do wrong anyway (the mark of fools the world over).
5. You believe you can get away with “it,” whatever “it” might be.
6. You can rationalize and explain everything.
7. You feel you’re entitled, that life owes you.
8. You don’t journal.
9. You have a victim mentality.
10. You have an endless supply of couldhaves and shouldhaves.
11. Ashamed of your own actions, you keep secrets. You walk in the shadows.
12. You’re alone. Even among family and friends.
13. You lie. In your self-talk, too. Each time your lips move, others know you just lied.
14. In your own eyes, you’re “the man” (or woman).
15. You don’t know you're moving in the wrong direction, away from happiness, toward despair. You reject the notion that it's happening to you. It's insidious when you’re in the Nile …

Do you know of any other "Wrong Way!" tell-tale signs? Let's hear it.