Over the years, human beings have tried to decipher life's questions and discover the depths of human thoughts. This has caused many DIYs to spring up, uncountable ‘how to-’ and numerous ‘tips to-’.

Then, there is me who sees it as a life-goal to cook up a success recipe for you. Am I here to give you some cooking tips? Well, maybe in the Nigerian parlence, Yes.

Whichever one you choose to follow and check out (although, I hope you check this out to the end), the end goal is self-actualization and success.

Greatness and success are not to be seen as a feat that is not achievable, rather, it should be made common and familiar to every individual.
To achieve greatness, greatness must be made simplified and attainable by you.
An important secret recipe which I'd love to share with you is STABILITY.

The word, which has its root in Latin as STABILITAS meaning steadfastness and firmness is a major characteristic of every successful person you meet out there.

It means they do not jump from one vocation or job to another, they don't jump from one motivational book to another without practising any, and they don't attend every social engagement they're invited to but rather, learn to make some go unattended. A stable person, although might be tagged as eccentric in today's world, is at a higher ground of succeeding than someone who tends to drift around.

Stability in success as a student, a worker or a career person helps one to stand strong in whatever one gets to do. It helps you abound in results when your gaze is fixed on a particular end goal. This brings to mind a Physics practical I was made to do in secondary school. I was to change the focal length of the pinhole camera until the light source being viewed was clear, which meant that at every point where the light source appeared blurry, I had to shift my pinhole camera till I got a clear and sharp image. Of course, that meant I had to have a singleness of vision and could not watch my friend who was reading an interesting novel because I had a goal I was hoping to achieve.

The same goes for the principles applying to life where we need to realise that just like my Physics practical, life is to be approached with singleness of mind and not to be tossed to and fro by whatever is happening around us. Amazingly, this ability to ensure stability all through one's life is well-pronounced in people who are runners, farmers and soldiers.

A little tip to achieve this sense of stability is for you to write your life's vision down, make it plain, let it be inscribed in your heart and run your life by it. That way, your heart remains fully on one cause.

Goodbye!
Culled:
https://www.theprosperityark.com.ng/2023/11/the-secret-recipe-for-success.html

Is it Worth It to be Alone Always?
Loneliness is a wretched companion. Left to navigate life's trials solo, frustrated by the pretence of care that fades into the distance. They ask for my presence in fleeting moments, then vanish into their own concerns, as rain slides off an umbrella onto the unsheltered. Genuine attention and companionship, that's all I seek, but I wonder if this is selfish, a yearning amidst others' struggles.
A life devoid of purpose feels hollow. The act of rising from the warmth of my bed, casting aside its comforting embrace, is reserved for those with a clear purpose. Loneliness tempts thoughts of escape, but life persists. Cruelly, purpose alone fuels existence, a fire that burns brighter with direction. Some find their calling amidst the motions, others remain consumed by purpose's flames, and some, even in death, are bereft of companionship.
A lonely soul flirts with despair, hovering on the edge of oblivion. Weightless, they sway to life's rhythm, moving with the world but disconnected. Those who deem themselves inconsequential seek solace in the void. But isn't this selfish? Every individual carries their burdens, their stories. Seeking attention, craving love and companionship, am I not self-absorbed? Until purpose dawns, perhaps I'll remain ensnared in this selfish longing.
Yet, amidst the melancholy, a spark emerges. Loneliness, though painful, can propel growth. The energy that fuels purpose ignites resilience. Like a lone tree weathering the storm, standing tall, I too can find strength. Loneliness moulds me and refines me, and as I emerge from this isolation, I shall carry a voice empowered by the echoes of my struggles.

Culled:
https://www.theprosperityark.com.ng/2023/08/down-road-lost-in-thoughts-alone.html

He wakes up, having slept by the roadside for days. He doesn't want to, but the continual growling of his empty stomach keeps ringing in his head. His hair is braided in no beautiful manner, by himself. The mirror he uses is plastic, and the only thing he can see from it is the blue hue of the plastic itself. He wears a tattered brown-black shirt and yellow shorts to match. The shorts have small and big holes that show his bare skin and white patches on them. The roundabout is his home. He treks a thousand miles and more in the day, while the roundabout bustles with so many people he regards as strangers, and he retires to enjoy its solace in the middle of the night, away from the prying eyes of the many strangers.

On this particular day, his body fails him, and he can't go out. He tries at dawn when he wakes, but his frail legs wobble and land him on the floor. The occasional few strangers of the morning pause and stare and walk away because they don't care. And so he lies, his head pounding, his stomach growling, and his skin hurting. He watches with his eyes open and closed. He watches the blue sedan tires screech with a loud noise that makes everyone pause and stare. The car halts, and the driver freezes. He feels a spark, a flash of excitement tingling in the front of his head, and he springs up unsteadily. With his wobbled gait, he walks, oblivious to the many staring faces, across the road to the young boy who is already crying profusely. The rim of the car is inches away from the boy's head. It doesn't hit him, but the speed at which the car comes and the loud noise its tires make when he slams the brake are what make him afraid. The madman picks up the boy in a loving father's embrace and sets out to cross the road back. He has found a companion. But it lasts for only a fraction of a second. Just as he carries him in his hands, he hears a scream. The mother of the child has also sprinted across the road from the other side, although a bit later than the madman.

More than a minute has passed, but those who hastened to work, and those who sold at stalls, and those who hawked the road no longer do. Everyone fixes their gaze at the brawl that is about to ensue. Although some motorists honk, many have switched off their engines, and wind the windows with protruding heads.

"Heyy, bring my child now" the woman screams again, this time around trying to carry the boy off the madman's hands. He mumbles and wriggles his head in disagreement. The brow on his head folds, his ears stand up, and his lips part, exposing his white-black-brown dentition, with slimy saliva pouring out. The only thought in his head is how not to lose his newfound friend. Eventually, more people gather around the duo. Now the woman is already livid. She loosens the scarf on her head, throws it to the floor, loosens and re-knots her wrapper tightly. She charges like a raging bull towards the madman. He swerves, dodging the woman, and in the process, sending her to the ground. The crowd that gathered around increases, the atmosphere tense with growing animosity. Suddenly, a thick short-bearded man lunges from the crowd and slaps the madman violently at the back of the head. And just as he turns in the direction of the slap, another slaps him again from behind. The animosity of the crowd now buoyed with excitement, with all and sundry wanting an opportunity to assault the madman. The madman, dazed by the slaps and frightened by the crowd that is now closing in on him, cries out loudly.

The baby's mother springs up from her feet and snatches the baby from him, careful not to let him fall. Now the madman is more scared than ever, and he thinks to escape. He throws himself into the crowd, squeezing himself in between a fat, chubby woman, clothed with pink, glossy aso oke, and a frail-looking man whose white shirt and black trousers are stained with grease. On the woman's shoulder hangs a black leather bag which she grips tightly.

The madman wriggles his way through, a bit easily as the crowd paves way, with many not running away from the filth and stench that emanate from him. He breaks free, runs across the road, and limps along the dark alley. Suddenly, the fat chubby woman screams again.

"Aaah, Gbese!" Amidst the hullabaloo, the handle of her bag has been slashed, and her phone is missing. Now the tired crowd, who were almost dispersing, saw another opportunity to gather. Shouts of "ole, ole" fill the air as they chase after the madman, who is limping more hastily as he hears the cries that ring from behind.

Ahead, away from the alley, is the neighbourhood police stop. On a normal day, the officers just laze around, sleeping, chatting, and sometimes even playing cards just to pass the time. But this is not one of such days. At first, the cries and shouts are faint, growing louder little by little. The police officers walk outside their office towards the big green gate of the station; the shouts are getting louder. Just as the oldest of the constables opens the gate to see the direction from which the noise is coming, the madman runs past, slamming the gate on the police officer's face. He falls to the ground, splashing dust in the air. As he stands up to recover, the faint shouts are now distinct. "Thief, Thief, he mustn't get away. Catch him!"

Ordinarily, he wouldn't have bothered with the chase, after all, what's the police business with catching petty thieves from whom they wouldn't get anything in return? But because of pride, his black rumpled trousers now clothed with splashes of clay powder from the floor, and the throbbing pain from the point at which the gate hit him, he springs up and joins the chase.

The gap is closing in. The madman is already tired and slowing down. Ahead is a large, inch-wide gutter. As the vociferous crowd grows, he turns his back to look at his pursuers. Unfortunately, as he looks back, dread, fear, and panic set in, and as he tries to force his body to increase his speed, he faces forward but it's too late. He uses his toe to hit the gutter margin, falls into it, and dashes his head on the gutter boundary. His skull cracks and splinters into many pieces. As the crowd gathers and halts, many gasping for breath, it's the pieces of bone and blood and dust from the madman that bathe them.

The police go on to search the madman and find nothing on him. Just as the fat woman is arriving at the scene of the death, a phone starts ringing. Its ringing tone is like those old Tecno-made phones. Everybody turns around, wondering whose it is. Shock is written on the woman's face; she pours the contents of her bag down, yet the phone continues ringing from her body. Eventually, she loosens the wrapper, and the phone falls to the floor. The police officer, sensing that the woman must be rich and looking for a way to compensate for all the unnecessary struggles he went through, goes on to cuff the woman.

"You have been arrested for intentionally misleading the public at the expense of the life of an innocent man. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say will be used against you in the court of law."

Just as the police put the cuffs on the woman's hands, leading her towards the station, the crowd riots in revolt, threatening to lynch the police officer if he doesn't release the woman. The police officer, afraid for his life and not being able to command the crowd because of his shady lifestyle, releases the woman. She smirks a disingenuous smile; At last, she has finally fulfilled her long-age promise to kill her husband for divorcing her because she couldn't bear him a son.


Culled: https://www.theprosperityark.com.ng/2023/09/who-or-what-killed-madman-crowd-woman.html

"Girl, get off our faces, we can't pick you. A blown balloon flies and a giant tortoise crawls, pray tell, what's your use again? Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! A barrage of stomps, like the repeated bangs of an angry bassist. With each stomp, the creeping insects cringe, some unlucky to be trapped beneath your feet, and amid green grass, squirming and wriggling to escape your weighty grip that traumatizes the earth, pitting her surface. Eventually, like how the reso head rips, the ground splits open and swallows us. You don't want that for us, right? So, off the pitch fatty, and for once don't take an eternity."

Every day and everywhere it was the same, the mockery and the leper treatment. I hated myself and my mum but she didn't care. “My only child, my precious daughter,” she would chorus, repeatedly throughout my childhood, so much that she constantly kept my mouth busy with chocolates, my tongue protruding out, and wagging like a cow's tail to wipe off its smear from my lips. Now that I am older, my breast, thigh, and butt are swollen, and my tummy is pregnant, not with a child, but with greasy yellow fat. With each look in the mirror, I am reminded of who I am—a fatty leper who has no friends—and I get depressed. And it's not that I haven't tried, but like an ant drawn to sugar, I just can't get my hands off the cookie jar. It was always there, the first thing you saw on entering our duplex. “It’s for welcoming visitors,” my mum counters when I confront her but the look on her face, the same one a child caught with his hands in the pot wears, when I jumped on her pants down eating the visitors' meal, I could tell she was lying. She loved chocolate and was obese, but unlike me, she wasn't bullied, she had people to play with and so, she cared less. “Don't pay attention to them, they’re bullies,” she would console me, but I didn't want empathy. I wanted to mingle with my peers, and I needed to lose weight and fast. Till I entered college, I tried as much as I could, yet all efforts to stop my wanton eating were at best, fetching water into a basket. But far from home with no cookie jar in sight, I had my bull's eye shot at slimming down, all thanks to my roomie. She was the cheerleader of the school's football team and was one of the few who didn't consider me a leper. At first, when she offered to help, I was sceptical, wondering what she was going to do that I hadn't tried before. But she proved my fears wrong. Just a little tweaking, and boom, like a tire whose valve is let loose, I slimmed down sporadically.

“Your environment is key, redesign your environment such that you don't need the motivation to start, nor self-control to keep up with your habits,” she counselled. I sighed, my shoulders sagged and my hands hung aloof. I bit my lips unconsciously. She quickly noticed and responded, “Oh, you don't believe it! You think I am one of those black suit, red tie, Queen's English speakers singing soothing rhymes of perspire to acquire your desire on TV, no I’m not. And I’m going to show you.” Still, I was sceptical, but I ploughed on, happy that at least someone picked interest in me. “Okay, for starters, hand over your ATM card, at least no more temptation to empty your account on candy. No money, no more flying bikes, welcome to the Leg-ge-denz benz club, trekking is our lifestyle. Also, stop the morning runs, and hey, don't fuss about it. Don't you miss it nine out of ten times? Just tag along with me to training. The warm-up exercises should suffice for now, at least till when everyone is comfortable with you being on the school’s team. That's all. That's enough.” And that's how it started. Today, I am in my finals and I’m the school's cheerleader and an ‘environment redesign’ advocate for starting and breaking habits.


Habits, good or bad, are a function of a person in his environment. Like insects, habits metamorphose through the cue, craving, response, and reward phases. You’re hungry, it's a need you have to meet. The thought of the brown buns dancing excitedly in hot oil down the street entices you. Oh the aroma, so tempting. It's just a stone's throw, barely a five-minute walk, and you set out to buy. Wow, so succulent and tasty, you eat it and are satisfied. The cycle is completed and stored, a mental shortcut that fires up when next you are hungry— a simplistic show of how habits work. On the contrary, if you didn't see the buns, you can't crave them. As such, an environment with multiple cues, conspicuous like how bright light is to a moth, that triggers cravings, is tempting, easy to respond to, and rewarding is best for building good habits while one whose cues are like shadows in grotesque darkness, cravings, response, and reward are like the smell and taste of armpit sweat is best for breaking bad habits. So redesign your environment to take perfect control of your life today.

Culled: https://www.theprosperityark.com.ng/2023/03/motivation-and-willpower-grossly.html