Don’t roll your eyes. Don’t say you haven’t got time for this mindset sort of stuff. I once said that too. Guess what? I was wrong. I was ignorant. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. The price I paid for this? Wasted effort. Wasted time. Wasted potential.

So if you are busy and someone who doesn’t like wasted effort then you are the person who needs to hear this.

You will also have a little light go on inside your head. Insight! That insight will lead to hope. That hope becomes optimism. The optimism leaks from you as ideas. You’ll turn those ideas into systems. Be you an individual or an organisation, those systems get you from A to B on whatever journey you are on. This is how you come to know and love and champion the cause of self discipline. Or should I say the little known process of self discipline. Why is that?

Why is the process of self discipline, something so useful and effective, seemingly unknown in a wider sense?

There...

There was once a hard working man named Yu. He worked a patch of land at the base of a big hill. The same patch he had worked for many years. Sting, sting, sting the sweat flooded his eyes. Drip, drip, drip the sweat fell from his nose. Dig, dig, dig his shovel groaned.

An old man passed by. What are you looking for he asked. My freedom replied Yu. You’re looking in the wrong place said the old man. It’s on the the other side of the hill. It’s in a cave. The treasure that you seek is always in the cave you fear to go said the old man. Come. I’ll show you how to get there.

Yu had never been to the top of the hill. He often wondered what it looked like. He had been told the view was very beautiful. What would he see? He rarely looked up at the hill for every time he did the sweat would drip drip drip into his eyes and he would have to quickly turn away and keep digging. 

You are wrong old man. You and stories of caves and treasure. You are a foolish old...

Drowning in purpose is a horrible way to die. 2016 I was dying, on the inside, slowly. No one knew. My frantic sucking gasps for direction and focus - the oxygen I need to get through every day - were heard only by me. I didn’t yell for help. I never do. Stoicism and stupidity are my specialties.

 A year earlier I read this statistic: if you are white, male or female, 45 to 65 years old and you live in a western country (in other words you are privileged) then you are in the fastest growing demographic most likely to commit suicide. This shocked me. It made no sense. It makes no sense today. 

I’m slap bang in the middle of that demographic and I feel such a sense of hope and optimism every day, even days I’m drowning in my purpose. So if the sun still shines even when I’m drowning then what do I know that that might be able to help my brothers and sisters out there for who the skies get so grey and dark that it snuffs out their lights. Once I had...

What's your role in your family?

Ever noticed that the older we get, the responsibility to be the font of all knowledge on family matters and the story archivist seems to naturally fall upon our shoulders.

I do and I’m only 55.

This is certainly the feeling I get when I go and talk to my wife’s parents - in their eighties - and they doubly feel the weight of this responsibility. I would talk to my own parents but they’ve both passed on now and sadly, so have many of the stories of my family that one day, yes one day, I was going write down for the great-grand-children I will never meet. It stings to say it but I failed.

You might just be luckier than that ... stay with me ...

My frustration made me put my thinking cap on.

I’ve found a simple way for families to stop their irreplaceable stories and history turning to dust.

My name is Julian Mather and if you have a few minutes I’d love to be able to share with you what I have discovered about saving...