This year I woke up in my wooden bed at the Dhamma Mandala Meditation Centre high up on the hills of Mandalay and the first words I read was “Good Year”, but my first thought was this….
“By the end of this year, I’m going to be a millionaire”
I don’t know what made me think that thought. It came from my stomach and not from my head. In fact, it was a feeling more than a thought.
And while some may roll their eyes or smirk or even sneer at that statement, I smile contently in the comfort of faith.
Because while I know it may not materialise itself in exactly the way I think it will, mark my words, that thought will become a reality.
I’d never wanted to be a millionaire before now. I’d always said to myself I wanted to be a hundred-thousandaire. Millions scared me.
Power and control of anything above Board level was never an appealing route. I thought the top rungs of most ladders were riddled with evil and greed and corruption – things I wanted to know nothing of.
And over the last year I’ve actually rebelled against money. I’ve spent seven out of the twelve months volunteering to avoid paychecks and commitment. I even went down to the very last penny several times over.
But when I woke up on the first of January this year, something inside me had changed.
And no, I don’t wish for evil or greed or corruption – or paychecks and commitment for that matter. In fact, I wish for quite the opposite.
I want to build my own businesses. More than one of them. Maybe two or three to start. I want them all to be made of out of goodness – you know, the things that really matter. And I want to make an impact.
Money will only ever be a by-product of everything I do. My heart will lead the way and my head will quickly follow suit.
As it turns out, when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur, it looks like I’m ticking all of the boxes I need to tick to get me there – and I know this because in 1908, richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie, commissioned Napoleon Hill to investigate the Law of Success.
When he first knocked on Carnegie’s door, Napoleon Hill was a reporter tasked with interviewing wealthy people. The two sat down together for hours and at the end of their meeting, Carnegie invited Napoleon to come and stay with him for three more days to continue the interview.
When those three days were up, he sat him down at the table and said:
“Napoleon, you’ve spent three days with me. You know now how I’ve accomplished what I’ve accomplished. I’m going to ask you a question and I want just a yes or no answer…..
Would you spend or invest the rest of your life on an idea for which you would probably receive no material compensation for at least 20 years?”
Carnegie knew that successful people make decisions very fast and change them very slow and so he hid a stopwatch under the table giving Napoleon only sixty seconds to answer.
And in twenty-five, he did.
It took thirty years to create, but the result was a book called Think & Grow Rich published by The Ralston Society in 1938.
It identifies 30 major causes of failure and 13 ideas that contribute to a person accumulating a fortune or enjoying real success.
Hill had interviewed the greatest minds that had ever lived – the likes of the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to get his answers. And through observation and questioning, he found out what had caused them to do many of the things that had led them to success.
He discovered their secret.
Hill found that big success is made up of a great number of little circumstances, each of which is so small and seemingly insignificant that most people pass it by as something not worthy of notice.
But a quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
And for me that’s exactly where I am – taking note of tiny circumstances that are full of meaning and opportunity. Winning and never quitting. Knowing that defeat is all we know of failure.
And witnessing every day more and more that mindset really is everything.
What started with a burning desire, a fire in my stomach to ‘do good stuff to be a better me’ has been driven by faith; non-stop resilience that made me keep tight hold of my dreams and never let go. And since the day it was lit, that fire has never gone out.
I’m starting to watch the seeds I planted grow. And with every bud that blossoms, the fire within me grows stronger. And with every day that passes, I’m getting closer and closer to making my thought become a reality.
Who wants to be a millionaire? I do.