'Welcome happiness, don't spend your life chasing it'

Coach, author and spiritual guru Lorena Bernal, who is married to Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, is determined to change women's lives with her secret to contentment

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The beauty queen who marries a footballer is something of a cliche, but with Lorena Bernal, that's where the resemblance to your classic WAG comes to a halt.

In fact, a conversation with Lorena, 44, a model, actress, life coach and spiritual coach, is constantly surprising.

She is intelligent (trilingual in Spanish, English and French), thoughtful and serious about her work to improve peoples sense of self-worth, helping them find, "peace, love and joy". And now she's distilled her philosophy into her first book It Starts With You: How to Find Lasting Peace and Happiness.

But forget daily affirmations or working towards the elusive goal of finding "happiness", Lorena wants us to focus on something else entirely: love.

"I don't mean how to love people but how to love everything - places, smells, sensations and even challenges," she says. "And, of course, how to love and care for others and also to let yourself be loved and cared for."

She adds that in order to love others, however, we must all learn to love ourselves. "It's simple but complicated and challenging," she admits.

These were lessons that Lorena, who was born in Argentina and grew up in San Sebastian, Spain, began to learn when she won a modelling competition at the age of seven.

As a child she was passionate about "entertainment, modelling, acting, stage, cameras and lights", but Lorena's other great interest was, "human beings and people. I was fascinated, I would observe, I would analyse people's emotions. I would start crying and instead of feeling sad, I'd look at myself and see how I'd express the crying and sadness in my face," she says.

She attended drama school when she was 11 and later won a San Sebastian beauty pageant, "The Most Beautiful Eyes of the North Coast", which led her to enter the 1999 Miss Spain contest, which she won at just 17.