This rather lengthy account describes what I perceive to be the main sources and events that have influenced me leading up to the publication of “My Living Manual” made available for free download in November 2022. The text of this “story” was originally written for the self-publishing of my first book, “Ways to Identity, Purpose and Meaning” in 2012. Here, the text has been adapted and extended to introduce, “My Living Manual”.
The Wave of Joy.
This project is partly about journey stories, and this series of books culminating in “My Living Manual” has a journey itself that started in 1958. I was sitting in my grade four classroom with my “composition” book open in front of me at a clean page. My teacher explained that on that day, students could write about whatever topic they chose. What I can still remember is an absolute wave of joy that engulfed me as I sat there and thought about all the possibilities. I do not remember what I wrote about on that day, and I do not remember if the actual experience lived up to my expectations, but I certainly remember that feeling of delight in the possibility of being able to express myself in writing. This book, and my previous compositions were born in that wave of joy.
Helping Myself.
Around three years later, in 1961 when I was a thirteen-year-old secondary student exploring the library at Bendigo High School, I discovered a book entitled, “The Philosopher’s Scrap Book” by Australian radio presenter, Russ Tyson. Tyson had collected a varied mixture of poems, quotes, and short stories expressing a simple “common man’s philosophy” and examples of practical wisdom for living. I particularly enjoyed two entries: a little collection of strategies for living entitled, “Just For Today” – also known as the prayer for the Alcoholics Anonymous organization, and the now famous statement known as the “Desiderata”. Tyson’s book so absorbed me that I would return to it repeatedly, and it started me off on over half a century of collecting wise, practical advice for living and reading “self-help” books. “My Living Manual” is essentially a compilation of practical strategies for living, and I have been collecting them since reading Tyson’s book in 1961.
God’s Practical Wisdom for Living – The Bible.
My interest in practical wisdom may well have been influenced by my exposure to, and subsequent attendance at the Bendigo Baptist Church during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Members of the Baptist church regularly attended my home to kindly support and minister to my older brother, Colin – a decade older than me – who had been confined to a wheelchair since the age of four. The Baptists would come and pray, sing choruses, and read the Bible to Colin, and since I was usually hanging around in the background, I was invited to attend the Baptist Sunday School – which I did. If you know anything about Baptists, you will know that they are certainly “Bible believing Christians” and at the Baptist church, I was encouraged to read the Bible every day during those formative teenage years. I even chose to attend, “Christian Endeavour” meetings on Sunday afternoons and was there, thoroughly trained in God’s practical wisdom for living as presented in “God’s Book”. I don’t ever remember rejecting these lessons as one might expect an active young teenager to do, so I became fairly familiar with, and actually enjoyed reading about Bible wisdom and stories in books such as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Jesus’ parables and St. Paul’s advice to the young growing churches. I now see a lot of that Bible wisdom as providing a fundamental ethical layer for the whole of Western society, and much Bible wisdom is to be found in these pages.
A Love of Instruction Manuals.
When I was fourteen, in the early sixties, my love of advice books took another turn. I received my first tape recorder and I clearly remember the first instruction book I received with the device, and my pleasure in reading through systematic instructions! Of course, I did not tell anyone about this pleasure at the time, so I was never told to “get a life!” However, ever since, I have particularly enjoyed reading the dozens of manuals and instruction books that have been delivered with the appliances and equipment I have purchased over the years. When computers came along, I could not get enough of software manuals and guidebooks – I must confess I still read them as bedtime reading on occasions. Over the years, I have also tried my hand at writing manuals. In the early 1970s, I started to write a guitar playing instruction manual. In the mid-1970s, I wrote the first of many editions of curriculum and teacher handbooks for the school where I worked. In the late 1970s, I wrote the introductory chapter of a mediaeval history textbook, but the project was shelved when I started teaching in other subject pathways. This particular manual has emerged out of my love for instruction manuals in general.
The Beatles and C.S. Lewis.
In 1964, like thousands of other young people my age, I became besotted by the music of the Beatles and started to learn guitar with the intention of playing in bands just like John, Paul, George and Ringo. At the same time, my brother Colin was starting up his own entertainment agency in Bendigo, so he encouraged me to start playing guitar in local dance bands. By the end of 1964, I was lead guitarist in my first band, “The Imperials” – not to be confused with the American band of the same name – and Colin was able to get us some local gigs. Of course, being part of the booming pop music scene didn’t sit all that comfortably with what I was studying at the Baptist church in my Christian Endeavour group. I certainly wasn’t into “sex, drugs and rock-n-roll” at the time – well I did like the rock-n-roll music bit – but I started to wonder whether some of the practical advice in the Bible was maybe just a little out-of-date, and didn’t make allowances for how great the Mersey bands really were! I started to feel little niggles when my Christian Endeavour leaders would claim that every problem in life could be solved by checking a chapter and verse in the Bible. At this time, my English teacher at school, Miss Woodman, introduced me to the writings of C.S. Lewis. Lewis was an Oxford don famous for his “Chronicles of Narnia” series, but also for his thought provoking books on Christian beliefs and lifestyle. Whilst they were quite orthodox in their underlying belief structure, Lewis’s books tackled the problems of daily living in a fresh and accessible way without labouring clichéd quotations from the Bible. I consumed every book by Lewis I could find – his Chronicles of Narnia series, his science fiction novels, his books on Christian living and even his volumes on English Literature. Lewis’s ideas added further stimulus to my interest in thinking about how human beings should live their lives without his writing sounding “too preachy”. Lewis shaped a lot of my teenage thinking and many of his profound insights have stayed with me and found their way into the pages of my “Living Manual”.
Literature, Shakespeare, and Themes.
In my last three years of secondary schooling, I was fortunate to have the same English teacher – the “Miss Woodman” mentioned above. “Woody” as she was known affectionately, heightened my interest in English Literature by introducing me to the process of discovering themes in the works of Shakespeare, in novels and poetry. Suddenly, the classics that had seemed so dull and stuffy to an ignorant teenager came alive with running themes, images, and symbols. These discoveries prompted many stimulating classroom discussions about “how to live”, and Woody periodically invited a group of interested students around to her home to study these issues of living further. What a joy those sessions were, and what a gift to those of us who participated! I had never been pushed to think as much as I did in those tutorials, and my interest in literary and psychological themes, along with my love of Shakespeare have stayed with me through my life and also find expression in this project.
Philosophy.
After High school, in 1967, I attended the very first year of La Trobe University in Bundoora, a suburb of Melbourne, and that year introduced me to a formal study of Philosophy. I went on to complete major studies in ethics and aesthetics in my second and third years, and it was during my study of aesthetics that I first explored the concept of wholeness as a way of explaining “beauty”. The study of ethics furthered my interest in asking philosophical questions about who we are as human beings, and how we should live our lives, and the subject encouraged a healthy scepticism of easy answers and the need for reasonable evidence. It also provided some checks and balances to the sometimes-mindless positivity of some “self-help” programs and claims in the mid-sixties. Being positive and seeking happiness are useful strategies on the road to wholeness and fulfillment, but being realistic and sceptical on occasions is also part of the journey. All of these themes have found their way into these pages.
Education, Curriculum Design and More Themes.
By the time I was training to be a teacher in 1970, my interest in “how we should live our lives” made a connection with theories on how to structure a school curriculum. I started to think in earnest about what schools should be teaching to help prepare young people for the decisions they would need to make in life. At that time, I was concerned that schools taught many things that had very little direct relation to how people lived their lives. They taught about history, but not how we can learn from the mistakes of history. They taught about mathematics, but not how to manage money effectively. They taught physical education, but not how to set up and follow a personal exercise program. They taught students how to describe the plots of plays and novels but not how to identify the story patterns in their own life. They even taught religious education, but not how to develop a sense of purpose and meaning in living. In the following year, during my very first teaching appointment in a small High School in the Victorian Mallee region, I was given an opportunity to put some of my ideas into practice. I arrived at the school to find that there were no courses available in my subject pathways (English, Humanities and Music) and no subject co-ordinators to suggest what could be taught. What an opportunity! When I was offered the job of becoming both the English and Music Co-ordinators in my first year out of University, I was glad to accept. The job produced a crazy workload, but I certainly enjoyed thinking through the themes, skills, texts, and extracts that I believed would be of most benefit to the life pathways of my students. The process of course design also forced me to research and apply the latest theories on the way people learn, so out came the texts on learning theory that had been lightly skimmed during my year of teacher training, and their ideas were incorporated into the courses. As a result, my interest in curriculum design was high when I noticed a position available as a curriculum co-ordinator at a new Christian school in central Victoria, the “Christian Community College”. The other lure of central Victoria was that the Bendigo music scene was still thriving, and I could hopefully get to play again with Bendigo rock bands. So, I knew I just had to accept the “call”! I moved to Maryborough with my small family in January of 1975 and, with a team of colleagues, immediately set about designing a complete curriculum for Australia’s and maybe the world’s first Ecumenical Christian Secondary school. This challenging task forced me to ask myself two key questions: “What do young people really need to know to be good Christian citizens in the last quarter of the twentieth century?” and “How can we best impart this knowledge, these skills and these attitudes to our students?” In the mid-1970s, Australian independent schools had a fair degree of freedom to shape the curriculum as they wished, so our school was able to introduce a lot of topics that came under the “how to live” heading. We even developed a subject entitled, “Lifestyle Studies” as a vehicle for this content. As well as developing the content of the curriculum, I used the concept of common themes to bind the curriculum together – every subject pathway at each level had a common set of themes to follow throughout the year. “My Living Manual” is partly an expression of ideas that started to develop in those fulfilling years of curriculum design.
Systems.
As I got into the process of developing curricula, I became aware of my love of “systems”. Setting up a course of study was in effect setting up a system of learning in a particular subject pathway, and I distinctly remember reflecting on why I so enjoyed this process that other teachers had found so burdensome. It was the systems, and I realized that whenever I am given a repetitive task to complete, I move into “systems mode” and start thinking about ways I can streamline the process and make a system out of it. This series of books is also an expression of that love for systems since it is essentially a collection of systems for living.
Acronyms.
Along with my love for systems came a fascination with acronyms. Those years of teacher training and early years of teaching in the Mallee were also the years when I started to use acronyms as a teaching and motivation tool. As well as the classic music acronyms to teach the notes on the treble clef such as, “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit”, I set about developing my own acronyms for English grammar, writing short stories, and remembering historical facts. Some of these were more helpful than others, and students had a hard enough time remembering the acronym let alone the items represented by the letters! During those early years of teaching, my principal also asked me to write several applications for educational grants to acquire English, Music and audio-visual resources for the school and each application was, of course, developed around its own acronym. Once I moved to the Maryborough school as Curriculum Coordinator, I believed I had a licence to print acronyms! We developed the “CAVE” system (the Core And Vertical Elective program), students were each part of a “STING” (a Student Involvement Group), French students studied under the “EIFFEL” system, (Everyday Interactive French For Effective Learning) and there were dozens more. As you will discover, this manual is loaded with them. Apart from the acronyms attached to dozens of the strategies, the first letter of the twelve main chapters or pathways in each book forms the acronym, “SHALOM ADVICE” (Spiritual, Healthy Body, Affective, Learning, Organization, Money Management etc.), and within each of those pathways, the first letter of each main goal of the pathway forms an acronym e.g., the Organizational pathway’s acronym is “ORDER”. I do believe I must use acronyms because, after all, A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. (Acronyms Can Really Order Networks in Your Mind)! Sorry!
Shalom and Jim Punton.
On April 9th. 1977, in my third year at the Maryborough school, I attended a Scripture Union conference in Ballarat, Victoria. The keynote speaker was a trainer at the “Frontier Youth Trust” organization in Birmingham, England. His name was Rev. Jim Punton, and he introduced our group to the concept of “shalom”. Punton explained that whilst we usually associate “shalom” with words like “peace”, it is really an ordinary Hebrew word for “wholeness”. Ancient Hebrews understood the term “wholeness” as a process of “coming to fulfillment” in the four levels of human interaction, personal development, inter-personal relationships, interacting in society, and interacting with the cosmos. On the personal development level, this encompassed such concepts as spiritual awareness, emotional peace, physical health and well-being, and a sense of purpose and meaning in life. On the inter-personal relationships level, the Hebrews understood “shalom” as openness and honesty between people. On the community level, it meant justice and fairness in the marketplace. In addition, on the cosmic level, it meant harmony with the whole created order. To say “shalom” to someone was really to say that we are wishing them physical health, emotional peace and happiness, a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives, honesty, openness and unconditional love in their relationships, an experience of justice in society and a sense of harmony with the environment or “cosmic order”! That is such a comprehensive wish for someone and quite a greeting! I was blown away by this idea. I thought to myself, “What an amazingly rich concept upon which one could structure the goals of a school!” I took Punton’s vision back to my principal, and we had little trouble in convincing our school Board that this concept would provide a perfect structure for the school’s set of curriculum aims. A few years later, the College conceived a vision statement that expressed a desire that the school would “foster optimal growth of the whole individual” and the school mission stated that the school was committed to developing students who might “grow towards wholeness spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically, inter-personally with a social and environmental conscience”. The “shalom structure” expressed exactly what we wanted for our students and provided a clear path for them to grow to be effective, caring citizens of the twentieth century. If you look at the Pathways covered in this series of books, you will discover that they include those eight aspects of shalom mentioned in the school’s mission statement. I have since added four more Pathways to produce what I call, “The Twelve Pathways Towards Shalom”. One of the two pivotal ideas in this manual is the idea of shalom as developed during my time at the Christian Community College.
Journey Stories and Myths.
The decade of the 1970s was also the time when I developed a fascination for stories and myths and the importance of myth patterns in our lives. This interest prompted me to attend a workshop for Youth leaders on how to write and tell stories, and as part of the program, the organizers played an audio tape of Christian author, Clifford Warne talking about what was called, “The Short Story Outline”. Someone at the session made the claim that his formula for writing or telling exciting stories had once been valued at over $10,000 – which was quite a lot of money in the early 1970s. I have no idea how accurate that claim was, but the simple story formula certainly sparked an “aha!” experience in me. Ever since, I have made valuable use of this formula in my teaching, youth work, parenting and reflections about my life journey. As it was presented on the tape, exciting stories were said to contain five main elements:
-one main character so listeners or readers know who to barrack for
-a “disturbance” which affects the main character and starts the action of the story
-the disturbance leads the main character to develop a particular goal
-a “potential disaster” hangs over the head of the main character if they do not achieve this goal
-a variety of complications should be introduced to make it difficult for the main character to achieve their goal and heighten suspense in the story
At first, I simply used the formula as a way of shaping and telling stories to my students, young people in youth groups, and to my own children. However, I began to realize that the pattern had a more profound power that related to the stories occurring in the daily lives of all human beings. I started to read more about patterns in stories and soon found myself reading about the stages of the hero journey in the writings of Carl Jung. It was not long before I was directed to Joseph Campbell’s book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and I came face to face with the “monomyth” or “hero myth” in all its richness and glory. As I have discovered over the last forty years, hundreds of writers have explored the possibilities of this story pattern for a range of uses from plot templates in novels, movies, computer games and television commercials to the spiritual development and psychological growth of men (see the work of writers such as Robert Bly – “Iron John: A Book About Men”). Over the last fifteen years of my school teaching career, I developed and taught a religious education course to young adolescents based on this hero journey story pattern and much of that material has found its way into this volume. In the early stages of developing this manual, I tweaked the hero journey story idea a little and promoted the term, “wayfarer myth” instead of the idea of a “hero story”, although the concepts are essentially the same. My concerns at the time about using “hero” were due to the fact that so many of the superheroes we encounter in modern media and literature achieve their quests at the expense of mammoth collateral damage to the world and environment of the story. You will also notice that the original five elements of the story pattern have now grown to twelve based largely on Joseph Campbell’s model and some movie makers who developed Campbell’s ideas further. Those twelve story elements form the basis of the twelve big spiritual questions explored in the first section or Spiritual pathway of the manual, as well as the main components of a suggested system for problem solving that is promoted throughout the project.
Personality Typologies.
It was also during the 1970s and my readings of Carl Jung that I discovered personality typologies, and these have played a big part in the emergence of this manual. I was first introduced to the Myer’s Briggs Personality Typology at a local workshop on the topic and was quite intrigued by the results of the questionnaire I was asked to complete. The test organizes people into sixteen general character types based on our preferred ways of interacting with people, perceiving information, and evaluating information and I was impressed by the insights it provided into my own preferred ways of reacting. One particular insight was that I tend to collect and hoard information and keep it to myself. Interestingly, later in the decade I came across another personality typology called the Enneagram that suggested there were nine personality styles and, in that test, the very same insight emerged. One of the Enneagram books I read suggested that people with my character type (number five) need to make sure they share what they know. So, that is what I am doing! I am sharing what I know as a way of developing my own personality – well, you must admit it is a different excuse for writing a series of books! In the last few years, I have also become more familiar with the “Big 5” Personality theory, and believe it has much to offer as well. Its insights, along with those from the Myers Briggs Typology and the Enneagram are sprinkled throughout “My Living Manual”.
Non-traditional Christianity and Experimental Church.
The 1970’s and early 80’s was a time when I started to explore the Christian faith in non-traditional ways. At La Trobe University, there were three major Christian groups that met regularly: the Roman Catholic group, the Evangelical Union, which was fairly orthodox and evangelical in its beliefs, and S.C.M., the Student Christian Movement which aimed at pushing the traditional boundaries of Christian belief and practice. I joined the Evangelical Union and kept in touch with the members but spent more time with and actually became inaugural president of the Student Christian Movement. Our group hosted periodical seminars on radical Christianity, and at one of these, I was a little shocked but also intrigued when one of the University Chaplains said it wouldn’t surprize him if they found the actual body of Jesus in the Holy Lands someday. This was my first face to face encounter with non-traditional Christian beliefs. During 1971-4, I had my first teaching appointment in the Victorian Mallee region and attended the “United Church” – several years before the church officially became the “Uniting Church” Denomination in Australia. The minister at the time and I had many extremely enjoyable discussions around matters of non-traditional belief, and together we conducted a number of non-traditional, experimental church services. The clergyman who followed was also rather radical, so the message that seemed to be coming through to me was that the traditional ways of viewing church doctrine and practice were quickly fading away at the ministerial level. When I moved to Maryborough in 1975, this impression was confirmed by the clergy I encountered there, and it was with their blessing that a group of us eventually set up a completely alternative church structure to run alongside the traditional Church structure. The focus of our new structure was a weekly “Church in the Round” group that operated for the next decade. This was supplemented by weekly “Family clusters” which involved three or four families who would meet for a meal in mid-week, conduct an activity with the children of these families and have some honest discussion about how to live a good life. The third component was a monthly “family festival” that was meant to be a replacement for traditional Sunday School, and the final piece of the system was a “Monday Night Discussion” group that explored non-traditional theology with adults. Many of the ideas in “My Living Manual” were tossed around in one or more of these non-traditional church formats in Maryborough during the 70’s and 80’s.
Leadership Opportunities.
In 1986, I was appointed Principal of my school in Maryborough, now known as “Highview College”, and for the next twenty years had a key role to play in helping to shape and promote the vision of the school. As mentioned above, much of this vision shaping centred on the concept of “shalom” or “wholeness”. This became the major thrust of information evenings and open days for prospective families and students. I also made myself responsible for writing most of the school publicity material as well as staff and parent handbooks. The school’s desire to promote growth towards wholeness in our students was always at the forefront of these publications. Every week, I addressed the school at a full assembly, and I made a point of always sharing a story with students that illustrated or promoted this philosophy of the school and encouraged students to live a good life and help make our world a better place. Material from all of these functions has found its way into many pathways in this project.
Don Cupitt
Also, in the mid 80’s, I saw a series of BBC documentary films on television entitled the “Sea of Faith”. The presenter, a Rev. Don Cupitt from Cambridge University explored the development of ideas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explained how traditional ideas of religious faith were being re-shaped by discoveries of science and modern philosophy. Given my experience in churches at the time, I was, of course, fascinated by the series and went on to read over twenty of Cupitt’s books which were released almost annually from 1977 to 2009. Cupitt’s initial theme was the philosophical idea that religion is a human creation, and that “God” is not “real” but still a necessary construct to assist people to live good lives. Cupitt’s approach became known as “non-realism”, and he suggested that a large proportion of clergy in the Anglian Church were non-realists. In later books, Cupitt also explored Post-modern philosophers like Wittgenstein who suggests that the language we use “creates” our world, and that we can give positive value to people and ideas through our language. From this philosophy, Cupitt developed his concept of “Solar Living” where individuals are encouraged to live a full life of service to humankind. Like the sun, we are to keep giving joyfully until we burn ourselves out. It was stirring stuff, but for someone who has to have practical examples, Cupitt’s early books seemed to be short on hints for putting positive solar living into practice. In response to these feelings, I started collecting some notes that might form a future book spelling out some of the logical and practical consequences of Cupitt’s philosophy. That particular book is sitting unfinished on my bookshelf, but many of the ideas and particularly the emphasis on adding positive value to the world with our language have been incorporated into the “Living Manual”.
Non-Realism.
By the mid 1980’s, with my experiences of non-traditional church and Cupitt’s writings fresh in my mind, I started to seriously re-think my belief system and my formal connection with the traditional church. I still felt strongly committed to the teachings of Jesus, and still wanted to identify as “Christian”, but I wondered whether I should more honestly identify as a “non-realist” like Cupitt. For the first time in my life, I started to consider the possibility that the universe was “un-enchanted”. I wondered, “Maybe there is no being or force “out there” that actually “cares” about human beings?” “Maybe Jesus was just an amazing human being ahead of his time, and maybe his remains are, in fact, buried somewhere in the Holy Land?” Of course, at the time, I had a Christian school to run, so tried to do exactly what C. S. Lewis had said one should do in these situations – pretend you are a “little Christ”, continue to try and “do good”, act as if God exists and press on believing that the “feelings” of belief will eventually return. Unfortunately, it was also around this time that a number of close friends who had been part of the non-traditional worship groups left the Maryborough area, and our family no longer enjoyed the support community that had been so valuable over the previous decade. I look back now and realize that this period was the typical “midlife spiritual crisis” period that many people suffer around the age of forty. They were difficult times, but having my busy role and regular schedule as a school principal certainly helped me to cope. What this period really brought home to me is that all human beings are fragile creatures who continually struggle to make sense of their world and their beliefs about their world at times, and an acknowledgement of that fragility is certainly present in the pages of “My Living Manual”.
The Human Brain.
In the early nineties, I became particularly interested in the growing body of research completed on how the human brain works. With equipment that enables researchers to study the brain as subjects are exposed to various kinds of stimuli, huge amounts of useful data have been collected on how the human brain learns, how it uses themes, how it compensates for injuries, how the two parts of the brain interact, how the primitive part of the human brain still makes its presence felt, and how people’s short and long-term memories work. This knowledge obviously had many applications in the fields of teaching and learning where I was working, but it also had and has significant implications for the way people deal with worries and setbacks, and how they motivate themselves to keep going when times are tough. Much of this new research has been incorporated into the strategies of “My Living Manual” and the previous versions and drafts of this book.
Tony Robbins.
In 2004, I was sitting having a cup of tea in the early hours of the morning reflecting on my future with the television running in the background. One of those “infomercials” came on for the “Get The Edge” program by Tony Robbins. I usually detest these sorts of programs and I do not usually warm to highly charged presenters with an American accent. However, the show intrigued me, and one hour later, I made the phone call to purchase the set of CDs! I must say that Tony does his job well. By the time I’d finished the first CD, I was well and truly ready for more! Mr Robbins poured on the encouragement by saying things like, “If you have listened this far, you have got further than 60% of people who buy this program, and if you put on the next CD, you will be in the top 20% etc.” Well, I listened to Tony’s complete program and to some of the CDs three or four times. Partly as a result, I made the decision to retire from my job as Principal and write a book containing strategies for making a positive impact on the world. I also started walking each morning in response to Robbins’ recommendation to start every day with an “hour of power” or “thirty minutes to thrive”, and I am glad to say I am still doing it now! The reader will find several strategies in these pages that owe their origins to Tony Robbins and his “Get the Edge” program.
Shaping the Project – The Wayfarer.
At the end of 2006, I retired as Principal and commenced work on writing a book of strategies for living. At that point, I saw the project as a way of bringing together many of the programs, strategies, and systems I’d been promoting for the previous twenty to thirty years as both a curriculum coordinator and Principal. By then I’d decided what the book would be about and in broad terms, how it would be arranged. It would be a manual of practical strategies for living based on the concepts of growing to wholeness, the idea of “solar living”, and the need to make this world a better place. It would also encourage readers to see their lives as a journey story with a quest of wholeness for themselves and our world. Along the way, the book would provide readers with many systems for living and acronyms to help them remember key lists. Possible titles that sprung to mind during these early drafts included:
-Life: The Missing Manual
-Everything Important You Need To Know About Everything Important
-Every Bloody Thing You Need to Know About Every Bloody Thing That is Important
-Wholeness: A Way Of Life
-Living Life In All Its Fullness
-Simple Systems for a Complex Life
-Systems To Simplify Living
-Ways To Wholeness
-Twelve Journeys to Fulfillment
-Acronyms for Life
-Strategies To Get Back On The Path
-1000 Strategies For Surviving the Twenty First Century
-Twelve Months To Completely Fix Your Life
-The Complete Moron’s Guide to Life
-Positive Living for Dummies
I started writing with these ideas in mind, but after a couple of complete re-writes, I realized that the concept lacked a unifying theme or motif, and that I was not clear about my audience or the purpose of the book. As I was developing my third version of the introduction, I started referring to the strategies as ways to maximize one’s positive impact on the world and and minimize one’s negative impact. In looking for a unifying symbol or motif to represent this idea, I stumbled across the concept of the “wayfarer” – an old word describing a traveller who usually made their journey by foot. After an internet search on the term that also produced a range of sunglasses, an early version of Windows, a sailboat and a famous painting, I became aware that the concept of the wayfarer could indeed represent someone who makes their way through this world with minimal negative impact and the opportunity for maximum positive impact. This seemed to be the unifying symbol I was looking for – the “wayfarer” could represent the kind of person who attempts to put into practice all the strategies outlined in this book. I immediately started to re-write every chapter with this concept in mind. I then developed a working title for the volume: “A Guidebook for the Twenty First Century Wayfarer”, and in my spare moments, I even developed a wayfarer logo for the project. However, whilst the wayfarer provided a unifying idea, I was still not clear about the book’s audience or the authority I had for writing it. I was dangling this idea out in front of everyone and virtually saying, “Hey folks! Look at this idea of the wayfarer. Should we not all try to be more like this?” I lived and continued re-writing with this uncertainty for almost two years until I visited Alain De Botton’s web site.
Alain De Botton.
I have enjoyed de Botton’s books and television series ever since I first saw his “Consolations of Philosophy” program in 2000. In early December 2009, I started exploring the internet for titles of any new de Botton books or DVD’s so I could give my children hints as to what they could buy me for Christmas! On de Botton’s official web site, I noticed a link entitled, “The School of Life” and soon discovered information about de Botton’s “school” in London where his staff members run courses on the topics that are not usually taught in schools – the topics that directly relate to the problems and challenges faced by people in everyday life. Whilst it may seem obvious to others, it only dawned on me then that my project is in fact a book of just such topics! During my thirty or so years as curriculum co-ordinator and principal at Highview College, I had argued for the inclusion of as many of these topics as possible in our courses. However, with increasing National Government control of school curriculums, the publication of school results, and the threat to link school funding to student performance in certain curriculum pathways, most of these “life focussed” topics had to give way to programs with approved government content and courses which promoted high academic results in the traditional subject pathways. Suddenly, I saw my book as a virtual curriculum of all those things that schools no longer had time to include. At the same time, I owned my position of authority as the writer of this series – I had been designing courses for, teaching in, and leading a school based around a life centred curriculum for over thirty years and this book is the result. Right there and then, as I was still looking at de Botton’s “School of Life” web page, I developed my first working subtitle for the book: “A Curriculum for Life”. This discovery also helped me to clarify my audience. Apart from bringing together strategies for my own life, the book is for everyone who has left school. This includes the “Generation Y’s” who graduated from secondary schools in the last decade. It also includes anyone else who has passed through a typical compulsory school system and missed those one thousand or so pieces of reliable, practical advice for living once taught to us by wise parents. With these realizations fresh in my mind, I printed out a complete draft edition of 770 A4 sized pages and entitled it, “A Guidebook for the Twenty-first Century Wayfarer – A Curriculum of Positive Living Strategies for All Who Have Left School.” I then set about looking for publishers.
“Ways To Identity”.
I started locally and sent a copy of the contents to a small publisher in Bendigo who told me what I already suspected – the book was simply too big, and any publisher would need to be sure of selling a large run of copies before they would take it on – not all that likely for an unpublished author. In response, I decided to break the book up into a series of smaller books based on the original chapters of “the Guidebook”. This prompted another re-write and the tweaking of many pages to suit the idea of a series instead of one super book. In the process of the re-write, I realized the original suggested title would not work. By the time I had emphasized the actual content of each volume, the “Guidebook” title would be too long and cumbersome. My wife, Meryl, then suggested that each title could be a separate “journey” to some aspect of wholeness e.g. “A Journey to Identity, Purpose and Meaning”. The “Curriculum For Positive Living” idea could still be used as a reference to the series. I liked this suggestion, except that it meant the unifying symbol of the “wayfarer” would not be included in the title. To accommodate this, I decided to use the term “Ways” instead of “journey” so, for example, the suggested title for the first of the “series” volume became, “Ways to Identity, Purpose & Meaning – From the Curriculum For Positive Living Series”.
Web Sites.
One of my original plans for the project was to develop an accompanying web site, so in April 2010, I set about obtaining a domain name and host for the site. When I looked up “positiveliving” as a possibility for the domain, I discovered that such a domain already exists and is associated with a web site for Aids and HIV sufferers. I then tried “shalomliving” and it too existed and was also associated with Aids! After trying a couple of other ideas, I discovered that the domain, “wholeliving.com.au” was available in Australia, and even though there is an overseas site, “wholeliving.com”, I decided to purchase this domain name while I could. Both sites shared some similarities of purpose, and upon further reflection, “Curriculum for Whole Living” really did reflect the essence of this project. The word, “Curriculum” served as reminder of my educational roots. “Living” reminded me that my educational preferences had always been “life” focussed, and the word, “whole” reflected my links with the “Highview College” mission, and my assumption that the essential purpose of every life is to reach fulfillment or grow to wholeness. With the domain settled, the website established, and a reasonably priced printer discovered in the “Lulu” online company, I went ahead and self-published, “Ways to Identity, Purpose and Meaning” in April, 2012. We held a little book launch in Maryborough, and I started selling and distributing my one hundred or so copies. Then, it was just five more books to go!
Rotary.
In 2012, I started another journey, this time to become a Rotary District Governor in Rotary District 9780, and my writing project was shelved for a time – although I continued to reflect on and develop various aspects of the Curriculum. One of my realizations was that discovering meaning, purpose and passion in life is really the most important thing we can do as humans if we want to leave this planet a better place. I was convinced that this is vital if our planet is going to survive, and our grandchildren are going to be able to grow up in a world in which they and their brothers and sisters from all countries of the world can thrive. I also figured that 5 other books labouring through the 12 stages of the Road Clearing Way was unnecessary – the process was described in Book 1 and could easily be adapted to the other pathways of life. So, I decided to combine all the “Essential Wisdom” sections of the other books into one companion volume called a “Handbook for the Wayfarer”. This collection of tips and wise advice would represent the strategies I had been attempting to use to maximize my time on the life projects that are most important – which for me, was and still is the facilitation of “shalom” for fellow wayfarers. So, I decided that my new “Handbook” would be presented not as a book of advice from the experts in each of the 11 pathways of human development, but as a sharing of what I have found to work best for me, based on my reading and research of the experts. That project got underway in 2016.
Back to Teaching and Heroes.
Late in 2016, out of the blue, I was invited by the current principal of my old school to develop and run a program of spiritual development for the secondary students there. I couldn’t pass up such an opportunity to apply the “Spiritual Pathway” work from Book 1 to my old school setting, so I accepted. During 2017 and 2018, whilst teaching at the school, I adapted the 2012 book into 120 PowerPoint presentations complete with appropriate YouTube videos for school levels 7 to 10 (Ages 12 to 16). In the process, I had to simplify a number of the sections and expand others to develop a different program for each of the year levels. It was all a really valuable exercise to see how modern young people would “take” to the activities in my book. In this process, I decided that the concept of the “wayfarer” was a little too “limp” to engage young people, so I re-emphasized the hero journey idea and presented the program as a way for young people to live more heroic lives. I was in the midst of exploring YouTube videos for this program when I came across Jordan Peterson during 2017.
Jordan Peterson.
The first video I watched of Peterson was his “advertisement” for the Big 5 Personality test and I was interested, but not all that impressed. However, after watching some of Jordan’s talks on the hero journey, the importance of Carl Jung’s work, Peterson’s understanding of the “transcendent” and his challenge to “act as if God exists”, I was hooked. Over the last few years, I have watched well over a hundred YouTube videos by this man and others who interact with him such as Paul VanderKlay, Jonathan Haidt, Jonathan Pageau, and John Vervaeke, read his two bestselling books, attended a public lecture by him to over 5000 people in Melbourne, and would find it hard to deny that I was a Peterson “fanboy” in my 70’s. The Peterson videos heavily influenced the program I was developing for the school students and prompted me to change my approach to book writing projects. One of the exciting things about some of Peterson’s ideas is that they tied in beautifully with Jim Punton’s concept of Shalom – mentioned above. Peterson argues that, with the attitude of a hero, we need to take responsibility for fixing our world as individuals, and then start working on our family, and maybe then look at the wider community. Peterson warns that any attempt to “fix the wider world” is a bit presumptuous, and that we could well do more harm than good unless we are an acknowledged world expert in tackling the very complex problems facing our planet.
Re-enchantment of the World – Paul VanderKlay
As Peterson became famous on YouTube, through his public lectures and his books, many thought-provoking discussions appeared online, particularly on YouTube, about the value of Religion, the nature of God, renewed interest in the ideas of Carl Jung, new research on how human beings perceive reality, and the re-enchantment of the world after the significant effects of Post Modern thinking during the last few decades. Participants in these discussions included the people mentioned above, but I have particularly warmed to Dutch Reformed Church pastor, Paul VanderKlay living in Sacramento, California. Paul has commented on the rise of Peterson and this re-enchantment of the world through the hundreds of YouTube posts in his “little corner of the Internet” and his comments on the Substack platform. Whether it has been because of Peterson, or exposure to Paul VanderKlay’s commentary and discussions with people like Jonathan Pageau, or both, I have discovered that I am once again starting to “feel” that my universe is “enchanted” once again, and this universe no longer seems empty. As a consequence, my wife and I have recently been regular viewers of Paul’s “Rough Draft for Sunday” sermon each Sunday on YouTube. Maybe I’m starting to re-connect with “church” again? This new awareness of enchantment is at the heart of “My Living Manual”.
The “New” Book.
In early 2019, in the light of my teaching experience and exposure to Peterson’s ideas, I decided to recommence the “Handbook” envisaged in 2016, but I would also include the Spiritual pathway in a more concise form than in the 2012 book. I also reconfirmed my intention to make the book a “manual” of strategies for myself (since that is what I have always wanted). So, the emphasis would be on practical strategies or “tips” for living with a minimum of background explanation. The pitch of the book, in line with one of Jordan Peterson’s main messages would be that given the state of suffering and malevolence in our world, our planet needs all people, including me, to develop their heroic spirit and start fixing things at a personal level, and then with our close inter-personal relationships, and only then, the wider community. In that way, we may all move closer to a state of shalom (or the “Kingdom of God”). The book would argue that the goal of all heroic stories is in fact the state of shalom and the volume would provide practical advice to support me, and anyone who reads it, with some assistance to help facilitate such a state. The working title of this new book was set as, “The Wayfarer’s Living Manual – Systematic Strategies for Living a Good Life.” To save confusion with the title of the first book, I discarded my internet domain name and hosting service until I knew how this new project would develop.
James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”.
I continued to work on the “Manual” during the Covid Pandemic of 2020-2021 and as part of my research, read the best seller, “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. I was very impressed by Clear’s explanation of the value of good habits and toyed with the idea of turning all the 1200 plus strategies in the manual into habits. The “Creative Customs” that were already in the book were my term for “good habits” so it didn’t take all that long to do. But as I lived with the change for a while, I realized that the other two types of strategies – reminders and setting up strategies – were probably best left as they were. So, I reverted back to my original format. Still, I owe a debt to James Clear for his in-depth discussion of the value of habits and creative suggestions for developing effective habits for living.
My Living Manual – Eventually
In early, 2022, I started re-reading and tweaking the manual in readiness for some form of public release. I decided that the most cost-effective way of “releasing” the book would be to make it available as a PDF download on a public website. So, I started exploring web sites again. I tried the Xara, 123Site, Wix, and WordPress platforms and in the end decided that WordPress was the best option for what I wanted. By then, I knew the book would be a manual directed at me from a wiser version of myself, and I wanted it to be a “living” manual since it would be about practical strategies for living, but also “living” in the sense that it will never be completed whilst I am still alive and have my wits about me. As new insights come along, they will be incorporated into the manual and a new version will be uploaded to the website. I started searching for domain names and found that “livingmanual.com” was already taken for some form of household blinds! However, “mylivingmanual.com” was free, so I secured it on the spot.
A Major Revision in 2023-24
During 2023, I realized that the manual has been made more difficult to read due to the vast number of dot points in the text. I had used dot points to enable pages to be easily converted into PowerPoint presentations. However, that doesn’t happen very often, so I have converted every dot point that isn’t part of a list into paragraphs to improve readability.
I have also added a sub, sub-title if such a thing exists, and re-written much of the introduction to show where I am coming from, spiritually. That may not matter to many readers, but if it does, my position should now be clear. As mentioned elsewhere on this site, the Introduction to the manual is reproduced in the “About” section of this website.
Another Major Revision in 2024-25
Over the last two years I have, to use the terms now commonly used about such things, re-constructed many aspects of my Christian faith (after a period of de-construction), and I have re-written hundred of paragraphs and tweaked the sub-title of the book to reflect that change. I haven’t changed many of the steps for living, but I have tried to rephrase the approach towards and motivation behind the steps.
Thanks for wading through all of this. It was useful for me to write it. I hope you also gained something from this book’s journey and discover that “My Living Manual” might have some useful insights for your journey. Shalom!
Geoff James – February, 2025.
My Living Manual 