I remember clearly when the wiring of my car was completely burnt out. No matter what I did to the car, it would not start. Eventually I called for help and had the whole car rewired. Sadly many of us experience being burnt out just like this car because of the stress we undergo. Burn out is to become inoperative as a result of acute stress. You are the pilot of your life and unless you take control and steer your life in the right direction, acute stress will take over.

I was with a group of friends celebrating an anniversary when suddenly we began to pick on each other. What a moment of excitement it was. As soon as they started on me, I felt my heart beat rising, my muscles became tense and I began to sweat immediately. It is likely that too much of this excitement would have killed me on the spot. As soon as I realised what was happening, I began to take control of the way I was thinking. My mind was telling my body, "We are under attack! There is a fire! The enemy is here! Get the guns and all the other weapons ready, because we must defend ourselves." As soon as I told myself, that this was only a game, my whole body began to react differently.

I returned with my good friend Delaney Brown on time. Peter was waiting for us with his friend Gill, another alcoholic like himself and also homeless, unemployed, depressed and with low self esteem. While we sat drinking tea and talking, I remembered that I was taking a group of delegates away on a SCHOLAR weekend training programme with two places left. I had received funding from some of the largest companies, banks and trusts to run courses on behalf of those who could not afford the full cost of the training we provided, e.g. Marks & Spencer, United Biscuits, Tudor Trust, Unisys, BP, Boots, Halifax, Bank of England, Barclays Bank, TSB, Shell, Van Leer, Mercers Charitable Foundation and the Princes Trust. In my excitement I said calmly, "How would the both of you like to go away for a weekend?" They both agreed and decided to meet me Friday at the same place.

My vision for bringing Peter and Gill on to the course was simply to give them a place for the weekend, plenty of food, a bed and warmth. Because of their alcoholic and mental state I did not believe that they could complete the intensive course. They ended up surprising everyone and participated in all of the twenty sessions. At times they were disruptive but we converted their disruption into learning. It was for me an enjoyable challenge that I would be willing to take on any time and anywhere in the world.

They attended the weekend and my personal assistant and I picked them up every Wednesday from Covent Garden in London. We did this for eight weeks and a Saturday and our hearts grieved inside us every time we had to put them back on the streets. During the twenty sessions they attended, they seemed to come to grips with their lives. We enabled them to become aware of how acute stress was causing havoc in their lives and destroying them. They were honest with themselves as we worked together to identify ways that they could control their time, their lives and the events in their lives. They received their certificate of completion from the mayor of the London Borough of Brent and former British Heavyweight Boxing Champion Gary Mason attended the graduation. It was a moving experience. Several weeks after the course finished, my personal assistant and I visited them in their new flat. They were now looking and feeling better. They were now taking control of their time, the events in their lives and moving in the right directions to master acute stress. Several weeks after visiting them, I was reading about Gill in the Evening Standard's magazine, how she had recovered from "acute stress" by attending the SCHOLAR programme.

"Big Gill McCabe had already spent 10 years sleeping rough in and around London when we first met in the summer of 1985. I remember Gill, then aged 24, as a hefty woman, heavy in the back and rump, who walked with a quick, intimidating swagger. She wore heavy boots and faded jeans. A couple of teeth were missing at the front and her dark eyes were ringed with purple. Looking again at those 1985 photographs, she evinces nothing so much as disarray; a shout for pity. She had arrived here through a combination of a bad beginning, her personal fallibilities and a political social culture that is expert in the production of can't and crocodile tears but not much else for her sort. Some people ride through bad times. They have the resources or the good fortune. Others like Gill McCabe, fizzle out. Unless miracles happen.

"At her new single-room council flat with her new boyfriend Essex-born Steve Tranter, she recounted how it happened. Soon after our last meeting she'd tried to beg from a group of black Christians who were evangelising in Covent Garden. They were from North West London teaching mission called SCHOLAR and their leader Errol Williams, spoke to Gill about the rat race and how to escape it. Soon she was enrolled on a SCHOLAR course that offered instruction in self awareness, positive thinking and social skills - some 20 sessions. Other enrollees paid for their instructions, Gill got hers free, Errol also bought Gill fresh clothes and drove her to classes. (She was still sleeping rough at the time.)

"It was a couple of weeks after the course started that her cancer was redefined as a cyst; homeopathic tablets she says have since virtually eliminated it. Then she met Steve, a former landscape gardener whose marriage and job had busted apart, so that, like Gill, he was sleeping rough in Lincoln's Inn Fields. They decided to reclaim her old flat and face what duffy had to offer. But the place was uninhabitable. That's when Camden Council moved Gill to her present block in King's Cross. She moved in as a sober woman.

"Gill McCabe is as amazing as anyone by the transformation in her life. 'It's brilliant, isn't it?' she says, as we sit together on the one item of furniture in her clean, freshly wall papered flat: a sofa bed. 'SCHOLAR gave me a certificate for finishing the course. You can see it if you like, I've got it here.'

Acute stress and I are not friends. I dislike acute stress and acute stress dislikes me. In fact we hate each other. Its job is to control and destroy my entire life and time. My job is to understand, fight and keep it far away from me. Acute stress will never be a part of my dream team. Do not let it join yours. Until you come to grips with acute stress you will never be able to experience total freedom and inner peace.

Be careful how you think about the tragedies in your life. If you allow your mind to do what it wants, it could result in you suffering from acute stress. Control acute stress by controlling the things you send into your mind and control the way you think about the things that you cannot stop from getting into your mind. Control your mind or it will control you and destroy your life.

Hear the famous words of King Solomon one of the wisest men that ever lived. "Please, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a person's whole body. 'Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.' Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil."

The single most important thing about minimising, controlling and eliminating acute stress, is to control the way you think. I find that when I control my thoughts, I automatically control the way I feel and act and the results I achieve. When I control my thinking, I feel at ease, comfortable, peaceful, loving and kind. The complete opposite to how you would feel, if you suffered from acute stress.