You are the Number One person in your life - if you don't look after yourself first then you're damn all use to anybody else. Does this mean that you need to be selfish? Does it mean that you need to walk over others to get what you want? Does if mean that you come first to the detriment of others? No, no and no! It means that you need to do all in your power to look after your own state of mind - to control your emotions - so that you are suitably equipped to do what is right for all concerned, yourself included.

People sometimes tell me that they will endeavour to develop focus and purpose for the sake of their loved ones - "I'll do it for my wife and children" - I've heard it, probably, a thousand times at this stage. But that's a lie - you don't manage your own mind for someone else - you do it just for you. If you don't, you won't do it. And if you won't, then you're actually a danger to those "loved ones" - like every other halfwit on the planet, you'll go through the motions and nobody will be any the better for your passing this way.

And that is what you are doing - you and I are passing this way. We better do it right, do what's right and enjoy it while we can. If you're not fully engaged in your own life right here, right now, when were you planning on starting? As somebody said to me recently: "I'm fed up saying that 'I'll do this when...' or 'I'm looking forward to doing that' or 'I'll start doing that when I have more time' or, worse, 'when I retire'".

You need to start pleasing yourself - not gratuitously but in terms of always - always - putting your real self first. Your real self will always do what's best for you and those you love. Your real self will always do just what needs to be done to get you to where you and those who matter to you really want to go. And those who really matter to you are counting on your real self... you had better turn up.

Turn up to your own life by embracing the reality of just this moment - but not just this moment for the sake of being calm and at peace but this moment to do the right thing... because what you do now echoes throughout the rest of your life and the lives of those around you.

Thursday June 11th, 2015 - Dublin

People sometimes wonder whether or not I've actually met some of the people whose antics are reported here... they are all real life experiences - this one will be told, at least in part, at my expense!

In Dublin, we knew a couple who had the habit of turning up unannounced to their friends' homes. They'd do it at meal times, sometimes with their three children in tow. They'd stay for Sunday evenings, uninvited. They would drink and eat their "friends" out of house and home. We were one of their targets and, like everyone else, we gave out about them, but never told them, to their face, that their behaviour crossed a whole variety of red lines.

Late one Sunday afternoon, we got a 'phone call from another one of their friends to say that their home had just been "raided" and that the dreaded couple was heading our way. We hadn't time to get out so we hid, on the floor, in our bedroom - which happened to be on the ground floor at the front of the house. They arrived and, for the following fifteen minutes, knocked and banged on the door, shouting "We know you're in there!" We lay on the floor and laughed.

Many years later, a mutual acquaintance told us that the couple had told them: "We knew they were in there - we could actually see them." At just that moment we realized that, in all the intervening years, it had never dawned on us that we were, in fact, lying on the floor, hiding in front of... a mirror wardrobe!

As I said, I tell this story against myself!