Ayo Arowolo: Dream your million naira into existence

It was exactly 7 a.m. that Saturday morning, a week to my monthly appointment with my Mentor. I was preparing to go for my weekly jogging exercise around the MKO Abiola Gardens, when his dispatch rider walked into my sitting room with a parcel from him.

Inside the parcel were six audio-cassettes encased with the title Dream Seeds, by Mike Murdock. Also included were two tiny books, one with the same title as the audio-cassettes, also by Mike Murdock while the other book is entitled Strong Desires, written by Pastor Sam Adeyemi.

There was also a note written as usual in long hand thus: My dear Ayo, try to listen to these tapes and read the accompanying books before our next appointment. By the way, I will meet you on Sunday by 4 p.m. next week, and not Saturday. Please enjoy your weekend.

Wealth starts from your mind. I got to my Mentor’s house at about 3.50 p.m. and met him outside the gate watering flowers. I offered to help, but he declined. He simply dropped the water can and accompanied me upstairs into a room he calls, “The Wisdom Room.”

“Just look around and observe, I will be back shortly,” he said as he stepped out of the room and shut the door behind him.

Frankly speaking, I did not understand what he wanted me to observe, for there was nothing in the room other than a small table and a chair. The only other thing I noticed was that there were so many photographs hung on the wall. I saw photographs and posters of different makes of automobiles, from Lincoln Navigator to Mercedes Benz Jeep. I also saw photographs of different designs of houses, ships and maps of countries.

I was still pacing up and down the room when he walked in. “Did they make sense to you?” He asked. “Not exactly,” was my reply. He simply beckoned to me to follow him. He first took me to his garage where I saw about six different cars similar to some of the ones I saw on the wall of his ‘Wisdom Room.’ He took me to several other rooms in the house where he allowed me to observe some of his possessions. He did not say anything but only asked me to observe and take mental notes of what I saw. I was quite inspired.

Shortly after the guided tour, we both went to his study. Once seated, he stretched his hand to me as if asking to collect something. “Where is the assignment?” He asked, when he noticed that I did not respond.

I pulled out from my bag the exercise book which contained the assignment he had given me the previous month. He studied the note slowly for about five minutes, reading it line by line and making notes with a red marker.

“My friend, I can see a serious case of financial illiteracy here, we need to work on your financial intelligence. By the way, I also saw that you chose N10 million as your ten-year exit income. My definition of a millionaire is one whose net worth is worth not less than $1m (N118million).

“Won’t that be unrealistic given what my present income is.…?” I reasoned as I noticed that he paused for my answers.

If you can’t picture it, you can’t have it. “My friend,” he began, “nothing is unrealistic, and everything depends on how much work you have done on your inside. By the way, that brings us to the topic for today which I have titled Dream Your Million Naira into Existence.

“I will teach you all the tools you need to make good money, at the appropriate time, but the foundation starts from what I will be teaching you in the next few lessons. And that is why I scheduled this meeting for Sunday, to underscore the spiritual aspect of our discussion. We need to work on your inside before we can begin to talk of material possessions. It is first within and then without as one of my friends would put it. Without laying this spiritual foundation, you would be building your financial future on sand. It is a matter of time before it collapses like a pack of cards.

Money has wings and can fly away if abused. “Money is a spirit and it walks in the direction of those who have a strong desire for it, not those who need it. Wealthy people understand this universal spiritual principle and put it to good use in their wealth-creation endeavours. The principle is this: you can command any material thing into existence if only you can picture and turn it into a dominant dream in your heart. As the Bible says, God will grant the desires of your heart. Big dreams attract big provisions while small dreams attract small provisions.

“Many people make the mistake of letting the circumstances around them determine the magnitude of what they desire. The material things we see around us are an insignificant part of what we can command from the spiritual realm. You don’t have a dream until your dream scares you. God formed the world from nothing and if only we knew that we are also gods, we wouldn’t put a limit on the material things we desire!”

There is a thin line between dream and reality. “Anything, I repeat, anything you want in life –life of abundance and infinite wealth, sound health, a good wife, a good husband, a good job, a paid vacation abroad can be dreamt into existence. Did you notice a connection between the photographs of the automobiles you saw in the study and the ones you saw in the garage? I learnt this spiritual principle about twelve years ago and I have used it with dramatic results. When I wanted the Lincoln Navigator, all I did was to cut the photograph of the exact make I liked from an auto magazine and posted it on the wall. On a daily basis, I kept dreaming about it, sketching about it and working on plans to have it. Any time I saw a similar car being driven, I would say to myself, ‘this is my car; you will become mine one day.’ I allowed the photograph to be ingrained into my spirit to the extent that I could almost not differentiate between whether I was imagining or actually having it. Five years ago, the same type of car I wanted was delivered to my garage, fully paid for. Every single item you have seen in the house today and the ones you may not know about yet became mine by using the same principle. You can use the same principle. Everybody can use the same principle. Think about it, every good thing you see around first existed as a thought in somebody’s mind, but by working on their thoughts to the point that they became dominant dreams, they were able to bring those things into existence. The car you drove to this place did not drop from heaven; it first existed in somebody’s mind.”

Your dream must be turned into a consuming passion for it to become real. “To turn your dream into reality, you have to turn it into a dominant passion. You must respect it, plan strategies on how to achieve it and acquire the necessary skills to turn it into reality. As one of my favourite authors put it, “desire is like a fire, you can fuel it, you can subdue it, and you can kill it completely. It is up to you.”

“Is it not amusing to you, for instance, that some people want to become millionaires yet they don’t read the books millionaires have written? They don’t attend seminars on personal finance management and investment. They don’t sit at the feet of millionaires to know how they made their money. In the real sense they want to be rich, but they do not desire to be wealthy. There is a world of difference! Once you desire wealth with all your heart, the universe will cheerfully welcome you and toss to your path everything you desire. It is as simple as that. “Enough for today.”

I must confess that his teaching greatly inflamed my spirit and I felt highly stimulated to try more things boldly. We both went to the sitting room to have lunch.

Catch ya next week