The trick is to recognise what is special, weigh it up with what is going to be lost and, if it’s a bargain, take it. It is never easy knowing what is going to be special, none of us can see into the future and there are always risks. We must rely on our intuition and judgement and sometimes we must trust others. It is also difficult to judge the value of something until it’s gone, so the loss column requires careful thought as well.

The only certainty is that if you wait for something you want to come into your life without being prepared to give anything for it, you will wait forever. When something special passes by, you have to make room in your life for it and then go out and bring it in.

None of this is new, of course, all through history philosophers have told us the same thing and there are many well known sayings that reflect this, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ being one of the best known, and a more recent one ‘no pain, no gain’. It would be a strange person who suggested that the way to fulfilment is to take without giving. And the Bible, arguably the greatest literary work of all time, has many similar quotes. The book of Ecclesiastes reads: ‘To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven … a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together’.

When something special passes by, don’t miss it. But be aware that anything worth having has a cost and there is always going to be the risk that you will end up with less than you started with. But without taking risks we can never move forward and your biggest regrets in life will be the risks you never took.