Nelson author Joan Posivy is releasing a new book today timed to coincide with United Nations International Youth Day on August 12.
In The Way Success Works, Posivy has collected stories of youth achievement around the world and tied them to her three-part formula for success.
“It’s a set of principles on how to build the best life,” she says, and it’s part of her new Global Youth Project.
Posivy has years of experience as a motivational speaker in several countries and has always been attracted to youth audiences.
“It is the perfect age when they have their whole life in front of them but they are their own decision makers now,” she says. “But not all of them have been offered a set of ideas that help them get where they want to go.”
That’s what she hopes How Success Works will do. The book sets out a system of developing a goal and allowing yourself to believe in it. The next step is to start and the book gives directions on how to do that.
“It is the start that stops most people,” she said. We wait and procrastinate, thinking we should be able to visualize the end result before we actually start. Instead, she says, we should take the advice of Martin Luther King: “Faith is taking the first step, even if you can’t yet see the whole staircase.”
The book’s practical advice is interspersed with stories about young people around the world who have accomplished extraordinary things, like Deep, a young man in India who developed an online platform on which people can register their name and blood type to be called if their blood is needed, in a country plagued by chronic blood shortages. His system is now being adopted across the country.
Or like Rachel, a young woman from Ontario who developed a marker with which you can draw an invisible picture on your skin before you apply sunscreen. Invisible, that is, until your sunscreen starts to wear off, and then your drawing becomes gradually visible. It’s currently in the regulatory testing stage and has been profiled on CBC television.
Another example is a local one. Posivy profiles Nick Waggoner, a Nelson adventurer and film-maker who heads Sweetgrass Productions.
The Way Success Works can be viewed or purchased online at thewaysuccessworks.com.