At the grand old age of 30, when my son was born, I decided to study for a professional management accountancy examination in England, my country of birth. I knew it would be tough, and spread over between two and a half, and five years; five stages of examinations, totalling 18 in all. Each exam had to be passed in a stage to get through to the next stage, and history showed that you needed to be in the top 35% to pass each one.

I knew would be competing against mostly young graduates, fresh out of university and in peak learning mode. As for me, I had never been to university, had never been an academic success, and had got low grades in most subjects at school. How on earth could I not only compete with, but beat, about 2000 out of 3000 other students; not just once, but 18 consecutive times? On the surface, it all seemed unlikely.

With my history, it would have been difficult enough just to scrape through each examination, and my immediate reaction was just that: scrape through. However, I soon realised that was the wrong way to approach it. After all, I was older and wiser now, than when I was a teenage student. I quickly shifted my mind into positive thinking mode. Maybe it was even more than that: ultra positive thinking mode.

I decided I was not going to