Living in North Yorkshire is a beautiful lady who has been a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger since she was a teenager (don’t know why she married me!). Booking front row seats and a full meet and greet with the man himself seemed a great seventeenth anniversary present.

Sitting listening to Arnie (now 67) recant tales and offer up advice made for an inspiring evening.

The power of modelling a hero is underrated by society and not something I am ashamed to do even at the grand old age of 38.

This Austrian farm hand became the world’s number one bodybuilder, then the world’s number one actor and finally the governor of the eighth largest economy in the world. You don’t need to be a fan to grasp that Schwarzenegger has a success record which shows he has some qualities worth emulating.

Not listening to “nay sayers” was one good piece of advice. But it was when Arnold talked about his weight lifting I noticed he described his painful and muscle ripping work outs as a pleasure. Why are they such a pleasure?

Because “I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to become, every work-out was a pleasure, every lift was a pleasure, every pain was a pleasure because it took me one step closer to that vision of what I wanted to become”.