Predict Your Success: Simple Strategies

By Ola-Yimika

Do you believe that success is not pure luck or good fortune, but a skill that can be learned? Would you like to connect to your inner self, unleash your creativity, and add value to the world?  

 

In Predict Your Success, you will learn how to break free from limitations, reach your full potential, and fulfil your dreams.

 

Predict Your Success is a how-to guide, with simple and easy-to-read, applicable principles that can help you generate success. It is garnished with beautifully told exciting stories and draws on a wide variety of approaches and techniques from medical science, motivational philosophies, traditional wisdom, and entrepreneurial habits.  

 

This book will help you:  

DISCOVER YOUR IDENTITY – One that is separate from external expectations and authentic to your values. 
UNDERSTAND YOUR POTENTIAL – Unearth your inner diamond and use them to fuel your purpose and calling. 
TRAIN YOUR MIND TO WORK IN YOUR FAVOUR – Learn how to collaborate with your natural supercomputer. 
ANTICIPATE AND ADAPT TO CHANGE QUICKLY – Unlearn habits that no longer serve you and learn how to incorporate change into your perennial success plan. 
LEARN FROM YOUR FAILURES AND SUCCESSES – How to use previous experience to boost courage and attain tremendous success.
AND MUCH MORE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398447783

Ola-Yimika

Ola-Yimika is an author with a cause. His mission is to write highly insightful materials filled with proven strategies that motivate others to discover their purpose, find their perennial success, maximise their productivity and fulfil their potential in life. He believes in the core values of self-discipline, diligence, integrity and a value-added mentality.

Book preview

About the Author

Ola-Yimika is an author with a cause. His mission is to write highly insightful materials filled with proven strategies that motivate others to discover their purpose, find their perennial success, maximise their productivity and fulfil their potential in life. He believes in the core values of self-discipline, diligence, integrity and a value-added mentality.

Copyright Information ©

Ola-Yimika 2024

The right of Ola-Yimika to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398447776 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398447783 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Introduction

Awise man once said, Every major moment in life happens only once. Therefore, the next Bill Gates won’t necessarily build an operating system, the next Marie Curie won’t discover radioactivity, and the next Michael Jordan won’t shoot basketballs. Simply copying these individuals in an attempt to replicate their results will not be genuinely learning from them. However, applying the fundamental principles that underlie their success to our own unique potentials ‘is’ what will create the solutions the world truly needs.

Every human being is born with unlimited potential with which they can achieve tremendous results. However, this potential requires discovery, development, and cultivation. We all desire success. It is a common human instinct, but only a few of us eventually do succeed. The idea of conquering one’s challenges, having abundant resources, reaching the zenith of a career, mastering a skill, or fulfilling a goal is a noble, common human desire. The desire to succeed may be a shared one, but the approach and the eventual result is vastly different from person to person.

For generations, successful people have traded these unique secrets. This book provides you with a collection of these not-so-secret secrets. If you read this book and apply its principles, you will, without a doubt, become successful. That is almost certainly predictable. You may have heard the quote, Judge a tree by its fruit. The same applies to success. Success is very predictable, as is failure. The actions you perform today, where you go, or how you spend your time, can accurately predict your future success. Students who achieve s usually know they will get high marks based on their knowledge of the subject and their investment in preparation. You don’t stumble onto a first class at a university or accidentally produce a musical masterpiece. Success requires the investment of time, sweat, energy, study, repetitive practice, improvement, and continuous development.

Regardless of whether you are a professional sports athlete, tailor, researcher, accountant, or in a completely different field, the principles described in this book are universal, and they will work whenever correctly applied. Whatever stage in life you may be at, success is not out of your reach. Instead, success is a practical product of cause and effect.

How to Use This Book

This book consists of twenty chapters broken down into three areas. We begin the journey with ‘Discovery’ – focusing on the discovery of one’s self, potential, purpose, and the understanding of foundational principles essential for success. Part II – ‘Succeed’ – focuses on the how-to and the mindset required for actualising success. And lastly, ‘Perennial Success’ focuses on the skills and habits that create meaningful, durable success. With this book, I hope to help you predict and maximise your success.

I encourage you to read the chapters in order, particularly Part I, as it deals with belief systems and sets the pace for other chapters. If you choose not to, perhaps because you want to dive into a specific chapter that speaks to you, that is also fine.

All the chapters have been carefully written in a straightforward, clear, and readable manner, portraying simple, applicable principles that can generate success. These principles are drawn from a wide variety of sources such as medical science, motivational philosophies, traditional wisdom, entrepreneurial habits, etc.

Each chapter is garnished with exciting and beautifully told stories from real-life people, as well as anecdotes, and they end with a realistic call to action to encourage you to use what you learn. Feel free to add more action points of your own. Finally, don’t hesitate to re-read this book as often as possible. Repetition is crucial when learning new skills and conditioning the mind.

Now, let’s get started!

Part I

Discovery

1

The Journey of Self-Discovery

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

– Aristotle

The great Greek philosopher Socrates was once asked to sum up all philosophical commandments and reduce them to one, and he replied, Know yourself. There is something intrinsically beautiful about knowing oneself. I believe any real attempt at achieving lasting success must begin with a journey of introspection into one’s self. You must become conscious of who you are. By this, I mean your identity, not what others have said about you, or what society has morphed you into, but rather who you are.

I have distilled the concept of the knowledge about self into three specific questions that I think are essential in understanding who we are. You should be able to answer these three questions truthfully without judgment, shame, or reproach.

As Shakespeare puts it, To thine own self, be true. The moment we can honestly confront these questions, we can begin to chart the course of success.

The three fundamental life questions are:

Who am I?

Where do I come from?

Where am I going?

Who Am I?

Imagine you are invited for an interview for your desired job that offers fantastic benefits. You spend days preparing yourself technically and mentally for those few hours that you think will determine the rest of your life.

You are anxious, yet cautiously confident that you’ll nail the interview. You get called in, and after all the pleasantries, the interviewer utters these words.

Tell us about yourself. Who are you?

You think to yourself, Really? Who am I?

You’re not going to ask me why I want the job or what I can bring to the table? You are interested in who I am?

Would you begin by telling them your name, height, race, and temperament?

I don’t think so!

Those are characteristics of your physicality, something for the ID card perhaps, to aid easy identification. Such features could potentially be used to describe any other object or thing in this world and beyond.

The answer to this first question isn’t as easy as it seems. It requires deep thought.

Who you are means ‘What do you stand for?’. What are your core values? What are your principles? What are your beliefs? What are your standards?

When we truly know ourselves, we can accept and love who we are.

Who you are is your story – your struggles, your uniqueness, and your differences! If you are like everyone else, what’s the fun in that? Why should other people take notice of you? Why should any of it matter? Knowing your singular identity creates more value in you as a person.

Don’t strip your story from your work, product, or service. Use it to garnish them, and it will improve you as a whole package. Your story makes it easier for others to connect with you because they will understand your actions and perspectives better.

Where Do I Come from?

Psychologists have found, based on scientific research done in the 1990s, that children who knew more about their family history demonstrated a stronger sense of control over their lives, typically had higher self-esteem, and believed their families functioned better. Hearing stories about their ancestors gave the children a sense of their history and a stronger bond with their heritage.

Other than the apparent biological answer to the question of ‘Where do I come from?’, there are several aspects to the answer to this seemingly benign question, which has to do with more than just nationality.

Let us consider the case of Maleek.

Maleek was tired at this point after moving his luggage to his room on the third floor of his college dormitory. He had looked forward to this day since being notified of his admission to his dream college. This is the first day of the best years of my life, he thought.

He began unpacking his things. His curly hair dripped with sweat, and his light brown skin was covered mostly in cardboard dust. He soon met two of his new roommates in the kitchen. They look pretty cool, he thought. He exchanged pleasantries with them and was about to head to his room for a much-needed rest when one of them asked him, Where are you from?

I’m French, the city of Lyon, to be precise.

Are you sure? The guy who asked the question looked surprised. I mean, where are you really from? Like where your parents are from?

Now Maleek was slightly perturbed. He knew the answer was not a straightforward one. How best do I explain to this guy that my dad emigrated from Sierra Leone to France as a young man and later married my mother, who was born in Rio de Janeiro, raised in Sicily and has lived most of her life with my dad in France? For the first time in