When I was 41 years old, I fell in love with a Welsh goat farmer. I left my previous life as a San Francisco city girl and radio talk show host behind, and came to live with Rich on his self-sustaining goat farm overlooking the sea, a journey I can't wait to share with you in my book Secrets from Chuckling Goat.

In the years that followed, I learned many things: how to cope with the harsh realities of farm life, how to milk a goat, how to make goatsmilk soap and skin cream that healed my son’s eczema, and how to make a powerful probiotic called kefir. When my husband Rich was stricken down with a life-threatening antibiotic-resistant MRSA infection, I was luckily able to use the things I had learned on the farm to save his life.

But everything I really needed to know … I learned from my goats!

Everything I really needed to know … I learned from my goats!

1.   What IS – not what if.

Goats don’t sit around worrying about how they’re going to pay the mortgage, or what might happen tomorrow. They are absolutely in the moment. And staying in the moment means that you’re not creating suffering for yourself. When my husband was desperately ill, and I had to run the farm on my own, I took it one breath at a time. This moment is not so bad – and the next moment is ok, too. It’s only when I looked out over my imaginings of what the next week might bring that I crumpled with despair. I looked at my goats, lying calmly on the grass, firmly in the moment, and tried to be like them. Moment by moment, one breath at a time. Experience what IS right this second – not your frightened imaginings about what might be around the corner.

2.   Just ask.

When a goat kid is born, she almost immediately staggers to her feet and bangs her head hard into her mother’s udder. This causes the nanny goat to release an abundant whoosh of milk to nurture the kid. Nature works on a call and response system – the kid asks, the mother delivers. Okay, being banged in the udder is not the way I would like to be asked for nurturance – but it works for the female goat. Think call and response. Nature is poised to release all of Her abundance for you – whatever you need is on offer, waiting for you. But first, you have to ask!

3.   Nature knows.

Our goats are free-ranging, and they wander through the hillsides, browsing from the wonderful buffet that Nature has on offer for them. When they are ill, they self-medicate by seeking out and nibbling willow bark and ivy, both of which are used by herbalists as medical supplements. How do they know this? Instinct. When Rich was ill, and doctors couldn’t help us, I allowed my instincts to guide me to the natural remedies that would help him. And it worked – we saved his life! Your brain is a great little calculator – but even more powerful is your Personal Center, that location just over your sternum where your instinct is centred. Put your hand over your PC, close your eyes and ask any question – and then listen carefully to the response. Nature knows the answer to every question – and you are a natural creature, attached to Nature by your own instincts. Trust them!

Editor's note: Secrets from Chuckling Goat by Shann Nix Jones will be published by Hay House on February 2nd 2015.