A few years ago I was the keynote speaker at an event for high-flying business leaders that included a large number of C-suite executives who represented a sizeable chunk of the Fortune 500 list. It was literally a packed room of elite-level entrepreneurs (we're talking 8 and 9 figure incomes), best-selling authors, speakers and financial advisors who had come to hear me speak about 'peak performance'.

I guess they expected me to lead with the usual 'you've achieved so much yet you have a lot more potential in you that's untapped so here's my top 10 tips to 10x your productivity and profits' kind of thing. You know, the kind of talk from the kind of presenter that pretty much ALL of these leadership seminars seem to churn out.

Different people from different places but essentially the same talk, the same polite applause at the end and the same handshake pictures and cheesy-grin photos with the speaker at the end along with all kinds of praise about how impactful the talk was and all kinds of promises about how much they're going to change things when they get back to work.

So far, so good.

It was time to turn up the heat a little.

I next asked them to remain standing if they were willing to DEMONSTRATE their courage, integrity and trustworthiness right there, right then in that room.

A few worried faces but barring a few timid souls pretty much EVERYONE remained standing.

It was time to turn up the heat again so I asked a very non-politically correct question that you're told you should NEVER ask people and especially when in company... "What is your net worth?" then proceeded to 'eliminate' people by financial strata.

Short story?

Not one person sat down at the one million mark. Nor the five million mark either. Then in dribs and drabs we had people sitting down at ten million, 15 million and well beyond including some who went into triple-figures before the entire room was seated.

Then I asked everyone in the room worth over 5 million (in other words, everyone) to stand up again and asked the BIG question that I'd been building up to all along...

"Remain Standing ONLY If You Have A Life You LOVE Waking Up To"

You could have heard a pin drop.

People started looking around the room and trying to figure out what others were going to do.

They were frozen and unsure whether to stop playing the game or to lean in to the discomfort caused by the cognitive dissonance of literally just having said that they were courageous, truthful and possessing integrity yet desperately wanting to take comfort in something that they knew was a lie yet would help them to keep up the story of success they'd been telling for a VERY long time.

And then a courageous and truthful soul in the middle of the front row acted with integrity... and sat down.

Then someone else.

Then it was like one of those domino-rally things where one toppled the next and before I knew it, more than three quarters of the room were sitting down with looks on their faces ranging from relieved to bemused to worried to... SHELLSHOCKED!

I couldn't blame them really.

Within about 3 minutes of my taking the stage they'd gone from a room of high-flying living embodiments of success to admitting that despite all their wealth, all their position, all their accolades and all the 'stuff' that marked them out as successful...

...That They Were Living Lives That Felt Anything BUT Successful 

Like I said, VERY different to what they'd expected.

But the EXACT question they needed to be asked in order to wake them up to the reality of their lives.

And perhaps the exact same question that YOU need right now too?

So, do YOU wake up every day to a life YOU love?

If you do, no need to go any further.

But if you don't, I invite you to click the button and continue the journey and see where it takes you...