One man’s burden is another man’s challenge – this is the way one-time sheerer, radio announcer and businessman Anthony North sees the world.

 

Trained in Transcendental Mediation and qualified in international- renowned Strategic Intervention Coaching, Anthony wants to help men cope with mental anguish and thoughts of suicide.

 

He is frustrated by the fact that many men will fail to seek traditional treatment options and is taking his one-man quest on the road to speak to clubs and organisations around the north of South Australia.

 

“Men are not coming to traditional options of treatment so I am going to them. I just want to get to as many people as I can,” he said. As he spoke, a magnificent sunset lit up the lake at his Still Earth retreat at Warnertown, near Port Pirie in the Mid North.

 

Anthony can provide one-on-one counselling and even arrange visits to his retreat while helping to lighten the load for men on the land, in daily jobs and business.

 

Close to his heart is the comment by the late Mother Teresa: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”

 

Anthony is a voice of experience, having endured his own mental anguish while struggling in business and failing to see plainly the love his family had for him.

 

As a survivor his knowledge is highly prized. “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” he says, adding that medication, much like meditation, does not change anything in your life, but simply changes the way you view it.

 

Anthony’s business success stares back at him – his face adorns the BOSS water tanks that he founded with his company – but he knows that is only part of the secret to happiness.

He plans to speak at clubs, agricultural bureaus, sports groups and other organisations in rural areas to spread the word and offer help through his program, Grinding Gears.

 

He writes his own guided meditations and affirmations based on the knowledge he has accumulated in life and through study.

“I am a rural boy, having grown up on the Eyre Peninsula, and I know what it is like being on the land. I speak the same language. I am rough around the edges, but this stands me in a good stead. I want to start men on a path back to their families and support them in gaining perspective on who can help them. I am not a particularly smart guys, but life has taught me much.”

Inspired by the world around him, Anthony north is embracing a new challenge to ease many burdens.