By Miriam O. Ezenwa, PhD, RN, FAAN

I once had a dream that I was in a private jet, flying over many miles of hills and valleys. The pilot navigated us over the various serenity gardens and the sweeping ocean, where the sounds of sea creatures splashing against the slow-rolling water caressed my heart. As I basked in the glory and majesty of God made manifest, a voice spoke from my left shoulder saying, “This land and its infinite resources are yours. And it is I, the devil, who prevents you from taking possession of what is yours.”

I awoke with a prayer on my lips. As a Christian, I claimed my possession in the name of Jesus. Then, I rebuked this voice so that its efforts would never go beyond a dream to become a reality.  

When I first had the dream, I interpreted the voice that spoke to me as the devil himself. However, with time, other alternative interpretations came to mind: the voice could represent the fear of the unknown, fear of failure, or lack of knowledge. It could also represent social constructions that place persons of different races, religions, sexual orientations, or disability in disadvantaged positions that jeopardize their success. It could further represent certain cultural codes that keep women in sexist bondage and stoke their perpetual servitude and poverty.

At the time, I had been divorced a year from my ex-husband of over eleven years and was in the second year of my faculty position as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I embarked on a research career that aims to address health disparities in pain management, especially in patients with chronic illnesses such as sickle cell disease or cancer, which involve frequent episodes of severe pain. I was a professional woman who had the potential to make a difference in the lives of my students as well as in those of my research participants. Once out of my jealous husband’s grips, a myriad of opportunities awaited me. I was free to lead my own life and, yet, I didn’t know where to begin. What I did know was that I didn’t want fear to stifle me any longer.

That was when I resolved that the evil voice in my dream did not actually matter. What mattered more was that I had a beautiful dream full of abundance and joy that needed to be manifested. Furthermore, God had blessed with me a warning about obstacles I would encounter on the way to achieving my success.

With this epiphany, I decided to focus on the positive and abundant aspects of the dream. One day, I relaxed into a meditative pose with my eyes closed. After taking several deep breaths, I asked God to show me who I was and to give me the grace to accept His revelations. I also asked Him to give me concrete signs or aura that would signal to me that the things I wanted were truly meant for me. For several days, I repeated this same activity.

At first, my mind wandered on tasks left undone, looming manuscripts, and grant deadlines. But, on day five, my mind began to focus on one event in my life after another:

I saw a seven-year-old child, sweeping the dirt ground of the dilapidated building my family lived in, just one of the many impoverished and unsafe areas of Nigeria. An announcement was made that our landlord was coming to inspect his property. Once he arrived, we bowed to him in greeting and trembled with respect at his presence. I vividly recalled saying, “I want to be a landlord so that I can also earn this kind of respect.”

I saw an eight-year-old girl running around the neighborhood with a bucket of water and bar soap to wash the blood off my playmates’ scraped knees and bandaging them with rags. I wanted to help, to heal.

I saw a nine-year-old girl, caring for my younger sisters and babysitting my neighbors’ children, wishing to one day have children of my own.

I saw a ten-year-old girl, meeting my granduncle who lived in the United States. When he spoke English with an American accent, he spoke through his nose. Then, I learned that he had a PhD. Though I wasn’t old enough to know what a PhD was, I wished that I too could go to America, get a PhD, and speak funny like my granduncle.

Each of these childhood images tickled my entire body. I smiled broadly as my heart felt unyielding peace. I came out of my meditative state and wept with tears of joy.

It dawned on me that many of my childhood wishes had already been granted and I just hadn’t acknowledged them. I was a homeowner and aspiring landlord. I was a nurse, a care provider who heals and helps. I had come to the United States through the diversity visa lottery and earned numerous degrees including a PhD in nursing and, now, when I speak English, my siblings in Nigeria make fun of my American accent. I was a mother.

God showed me that these were my dreams and mine alone. From the beginning, I was meant to be an independent, educated, self-made woman capable of becoming an accomplished landowner, entrepreneur, professor, researcher, mother, and philanthropist. I was meant to be blessed with abundance in health, relationships, and kindness in many aspects of my life. By showing me that dream of flying over His lush lands, God was only expanding the wishes He had already granted to me and was warning me to be watchful of evildoers who wanted to steal them away from me.

I promised myself that I would not relent until every one of my blessings became my reality, through His grace and my hard, persistent work.

Here is what I realized early on about dreams:

A true dream is illuminating.

A true dream is transformative.

A true dream must metamorphose first into a vision.

A true dream that was converted into a vision is supported by deliberate actions.

The clarity and specificity of the deliberate actions that are time-bound and persistence stoke endless possibilities for which many wish in this lifetime.

So, what is the most important thing you need to transform your dream into a vision? Gratitude.

Unceasing gratitude is the key that unlocks your spiritual path so that you attract recurrent blessings. I have often observed in others and myself that, as a people, we do not give adequate gratitude for what we have received. Rather, we focus on accumulating more stuff without acknowledging the creative source from which the formless became formed, from which the immaterial became tangible, and from which the limitations transform into infinities. 

True gratitude is a three-step approach. First, we must acknowledge and give thanks for that which we’ve received and strive for ways to pay forward those blessings to benefit the less privileged amongst us. Second, we must give thanks for that which we did not receive. Acknowledge mistakes or obstacles you were able to avoid, as well as the lessons you learned from not immediately achieving what you desired. As a matter of fact, if you made a mistake or failed, give thanks for that too! Each lesson is a brick that builds towards that final goal.  

Third, we must be grateful for our current dreams, though not yet manifest. It is a gift and a privilege to have a meaningful dream, and we must show respect and reverence for it to grow into something more. How does one nurture a dream and transform it into a vision? Stay still.

The ability to stay still is a pertinent step to transforming a dream into a vision. The world harbors so much chaos that many of us have lost the ability to hear our inner thoughts or visualize our ideas. Instead, we observe other people living their dreams aloud and we wish that their lives were ours, as if their happiness will automatically equate to our own happiness. We give up our power and allow someone else to tell us what we have and, more importantly, what we don’t have. Then, we find ways to blame adversities for diminishing our strength to work hard, when, in reality, we’re the ones who are running after other people’s dreams and neglecting our own insights. We allow the chaos to clogs our mind’s eye and block the efficient flow of our creative energies.

So, how can one stay still to see the truth in one’s heart, mind, and soul?

We can stay still through different forms of meditation, including meditative prayers. We can also quiet our minds when we spend alone time in nature or when we do mundane things like exercise or shower. With these activities, we are participating in routine activities that do not require overthinking or worrying; thus, we free our minds to focus on visualizing our thoughts, images, and ideas. They may start out murky and shapeless, but the more you take the time to visualize, the clearer they become until they are completely formed.

If your mind begins to wander during meditation, pick one part of your body and place focus on it while taking slow deep breaths. I like to focus on my nose or my forehead. If I still feel distracted, I sometimes visualize a bright star resting on my nose or my forehead. Try inspecting each of the star’s five-points, notice its center, its grooves, and illumination. Once you’ve mastered your focus using this image, replace the star with a scene from your dream. It could be a house, a car, a career, whatever it is your heart desires. Notice every detail about that dream and pay attention to your feelings as you focus on your dreams. Soon, this vision will become so crystal-clear that you can always see, hear, taste, and feel it, even without extensive meditation. You will then carry your vision with you wherever you go.

      Once you can clarify that vision, you’ll soon begin to pick up on opportunities and resources necessary to make that vision into a tangible reality. You’ll begin acting and living through your vision, each decision deliberate and intentional.

      Congratulations, you’ve turned your dream into a guiding vision! Now what? Take action.

      If you can visualize it, then you can begin to do it. A vision without deliberate, time-bound actions taken with patience and persistence is just a hallucination. You must develop a strategic plan, a road map that is organized with well thought-out goals, objectives, specific implementation strategies, outcomes, and deliverables on strict but reasonable timelines.

      When I turned forty, I made a goal to become financially independent in ten years. I wrote the amount of wealth I wanted to have accrued in that timeframe and, for me, that meant becoming a multi-millionaire. Subsequently, I created a nine-column spreadsheet with the following headings:

• Goals: Here, I listed my goal of becoming financially independent with an X dollar amount in parentheses.
•  Objectives: I listed moneymaking ventures to accomplish my goals. For me, that included working diligently as a professor to get every merit raise by meeting annual productivity milestones, investing in passive income-type businesses such as rental properties, land banking, writing books, making maximum contributions to employer-matched pre-taxed retirement account, opening a ROTH post-taxed individual retirement account, investing in the stock market, and starting my own motivational speaking business.
•  Strategies: I listed the specific steps I would take each day, week, or month to move me closer to meeting each objective. Some steps included writing for four hours each day, researching a stock, calling my realtor, or setting a new budget.
• Due Date: I set realistic due dates by which I had to implement my strategies.
• Outcomes: Here, I listed finished products that I would count as outcomes. Some outcomes were at least three published manuscripts each year or bought at least one stock every month.
• Accomplished: Did I accomplish this task?
• Not Accomplished: Did I not accomplish this task? Why not?
• Reward: Here, I wrote down a reward I would give myself for meeting each deadline. Some rewards were to buy my favorite potato wedges from a local grocery store, watch a Nigerian movie on YouTube, or get a massage.
• Reflections: Here, I reflected on my accomplishments or not while being attentive to the things I could do the same or differently. I also reflected on my feelings about my vision to ascertain that my vision was still authentic.

            Once I filled in the pertinent columns with available information, I realized that the initial timeframe I set to achieve my goal was too short—I had to be realistic and diligent. So, I adjusted my timeline from ten to fifteen years. With manageable goals and deadlines set, I was ready to move onto the next step in my strategic planning.

      Being strategic means being real, non-defensive, and confident. To truly recognize all my capabilities and shortcomings in certain tasks, I always conduct a Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis. This analysis helps you remain honest about tasks you are good at thus you can complete efficiently (Strength) versus those you are not good at thus you must outsource to others (Weakness).

      Furthermore, a SWOT analysis helps you leverage opportunities that are required to achieve your goal. One day, I was listening to my television from my kitchen where I was washing dishes and my ears perked up on hearing the words “real estate investment training.” I grabbed a pen and paper from my kitchen counter and ran to the living room. I copied the phone number listed on the screen for a free two-hour training session on real estate investing. Later, I called the phone number, signed up and participated in the training.

      I recognized this as an opportunity because one of my strategies for becoming a real estate investor was to participate in live training and to not rely solely on information I learned from books and online. I did also notice a threat to my success, in the sense that any business decision involves risks and some loss. In terms of my real estate investing, a big threat was the risk of losing a huge sum of money by buying worthless properties.

      To minimize this threat, I used my skills as a healthcare researcher to sift through several realtors, then interviewed them and chose the person whose values were most aligned with mine. I also learned as much as possible about foreclosures and short sales, asked informed questions to my realtor and bank officers, and ultimately bought foreclosed and rehabbed rental properties at prices that were 50 percent their original values. By clearly understanding my SWOT, I made well-informed and professionally-supported decisions that brought me closer to making my visions a reality.

      Now, remember to be patient and persistent, especially when you are in the thick of trying to manifest your vision. You cannot give up at the first sign of obstacle. Instead, when you hit a wall, be reflective to decipher the reason why your previous actions were not as successful as planned. Most importantly, glean the lessons from that experience and apply them moving forward. One strategy that helps me to remain focused on my vision is to—you guessed it!—give thanks for every aspect of my process: the method, the success, and the failures. All of them work towards my nurturing. Always have an attitude of gratitude and keep your vision at the center of your attention lest you become distracted by shiny objects that are nothing more than other people’s dreams.

So, you might be wondering how the dream I described earlier turned out. Did I possess the hills and valleys with beautiful serenity gardens? Was I successful in leveraging these steps to move my dream to vision and my vision to reality?

      Writing to you now, it has been six years since I created my strategic plan and started following it. My efforts have paid off. I now own multiple properties and purchased ten residential lots to fulfill my land-banking objective. I teach at a new university where I received a substantial increase in salary and other benefits. I contribute the maximum allowed in my 401K retirement accounts, have a ROTH IRA, and invest in stocks. I have written and self-published a book and am now working on my memoir. I started The Strongest Me, a motivational speaking company. With so much already accomplished, I’ve added onto my original plan and am developing a plan to officially start a non-profit organization to realize my dreams for philanthropy.

      Were sacrifices made? Of course! I downsized my home and reduced huge mortgage expenses and other bills. Since I rarely watch television, I opted for a life without cable bills. But I could have only gained this success by giving up what I didn’t need and putting those resources into planning, budgeting, saving, and receiving professional help.

      Today, I have a team of supporters that always has my back. I have an expert financial planner with whom I consult to make sure I am on track with my goals and discuss rebalancing options for my investment portfolio. To move my writing forward, I hired a professional editor whose record of success can be measured by the number of published books they’ve edited. I also hired professionals to create the legal entity for my motivational speaking company and design the company’s website. All in all, I completed the pertinent, fundamental work necessary to achieve my goal of financial independence and am now using similar strategies to maintain and expand my plan. The clock is ticking, and I have nine years left.

      I did it. So can you.

            No matter what your dream is or where you are in your journey to achieving it, there are things we can all do: we all can give gratitude. We all can stay still. We all can hold ourselves accountable and take specific, planned, and strategic actions necessary to possess our blessings.

            The question I ask is this: Are you willing to inspire and empower your voice to manifest by turning that dream into a vision? Are you willing to allow the vision to evolve into endless possibilities as you live your dream aloud? Are you willing? If you are willing, now is the time to take action. You will be glad you did.

            I wish you luck as you take this journey together with me in strength and prosperity.

With strength, always,

Dr. Miriam O. Ezenwa.