ONE OF the greatest realisations that people get from attending workshops is the realisation that they’re not alone. For most of our lives we keep our cards to ourselves like poker players; the energy compounds, and we feel worse about our ‘situation’. Just sitting in a room with other people, hearing the presenter say something that applies to you and that you realise applies to everyone else in the room already halves your worries. The guardedness you arrived with starts to fall away. If the process has rules that make it a safe environment, then people open up automatically.

I was in the presence last weekend of men sharing themselves authentically and it was a privileged place to be. ‘The future is now,’ is a phrase coined by the guru Jiddu Krishnamurti. It means that you bring ecstasy into the moment as soon as you live committed doing the thing that would make you ecstatic. In other words, it’s the journey of commitment that brings you the ecstasy, not reaching the destination. It came alive for me last weekend while presenting the first Authentic Success Program for Men: I saw that there is nothing else for me to be doing. This is it. This is my purpose and what gives my life meaning. There is no ambition for wealth or for some option out there that will make me happy. This is it.

What a place to be, and boy have I been lost and unhappy and searching for long periods of my life. To see other men find that space, or the possibility of that space, was humbling and awe-inspiring, and I look forward to doing it with thousands more around the world.