Of course Court system takes no account of value of your time as a litigant. If you are a senior manager involved for say 1,000 hours over a period of three years, your lost time may have been worth £50,000 - £100,000.

Stress free - Litigation is undoubtedly very stressful. Everyone finds a Court appearance stressful. It is not only day in Court itself but weeks of anticipation and worry beforehand. Mediation, by contrast, should be sufficiently formal to enable a constructive and satisfactory conclusion but, at same time, sufficiently informal to promote a friendly environment where parties can discuss their differences openly.

Confidentiality - only parties and mediator ever know what is happening, so mediation carries far less risk of damaging publicity. Your business can protect its reputation, its brand, and its technical secrets. On other hand what is said in court is on public record.

The combination of confidentiality and speed in a mediation enables you to keep secret very fact of a dispute. Once you have issued a writ (or had one issued against you) then your auditors, shareholders, and financial commentators will be on top of you for an explanation. Your accounts could be blighted for years. If you are a public company, your share price will be affected. In contrast, a mediation can be over in weeks. Only you even know you ever had a problem - and even you have half forgotten detail because it never interrupted your main purpose. The uncertainty represented by litigation simply does not exist.

Flexibility - Government lays down fixed court procedures. Because mediation is informal, more imaginative solutions can be considered. You can consider a settlement that might involve all sorts of solutions other than payment or receipt of money. It might be important to you or your dispute party to deal with timing, quality, future trading, certification - aspects where a court has no jurisdiction to help you.

So that is what it is all about!

I know game well.

I also know - and too often forget - "all or nothing" game is one big illusion. The reality is as author Richard Bach writes:

"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but mark of a fake messiah."

Further, words of Ralph Waldo Emerson suggest:

"No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way you will open door by which affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you."

To me, message is clear. Be myself. Completely. Always.

Speak my truth. Passionately. Authoritatively.

We get to "big game" only by giving our all in "little games." If we don't play "all out" when stakes are low, can we really believe we will when stakes are high?

General Electric CEO Jack Welch was recently asked by a Fairfield University Business School student what advice he could give regarding a successful business career in today's world. His reply, which he repeated 3 times, was simply: "be yourself."

Do you play? The "all or nothing" game - do you ever play it? Take a good, hard look at your life.

If so, these words - again from Richard Bach - are cause for contemplation:

"Every person, all events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."

See, what I believe is that each moment presents us with an opportunity. It's opportunity to authentically and passionately express totality of all that's within us. All that we've been created to be.

The Creator yearns for it. Begs for it. Waits for us to be all (s)he's created us to be. That's real game. The biggest game. Those are highest stakes. That's when we're most fulfilled. Most complete. Most abundant.

The world waits for it. Just as world waited for other great leaders. Leaders like Jesus Christ, The Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa and Winston Churchill to name a few.

The world is waiting for YOU. So, don't play "all or nothing" game. Be yourself. Always. Speak your truth. Passionately. Authoritatively.

Give all of who you are. In each moment.

It's Your Life! Make it Great.