Achievement & Abundance (Material)

10th Installment of A to the Power of 8™

EXTERNAL STATES
Steps 6 & 7 of Our Self-Coaching Process: Achievement & Abundance (Material)

To continue the 6th and 7th steps of our process, which are also the 1st and 2nd steps of the External States, I will tell you the incredible story of the rags-to-riches young Englishman, as promised.  You may have already heard of Dylan Wilk, who sold his BMW to build 63 houses for the poor in the Philippines.  But even if you do, it bears repeating here.   He is reported to have gone from being unemployed at 20 to being the 9th richest man in the UK before he even hit 30.  Within five years, he turned his computer games company into a multinational operation that he sold for millions of British pounds at age 25.

He began to enjoy his material success and bought one luxury car after another and went from holiday to holiday.  In various media interviews, he talked about how that became rather meaningless and empty after a while, how pleasure was like fire that needed constant re-fuelling and how he discovered the difference between pleasure and happiness.

He has been reported to say that he didn’t want to end up being like the pot-bellied, wealthy, successful men with the “perennial drink in hand, sitting in leather upholstered chairs in exclusive clubs, twice or thrice-divorced, hated by their children who hardly see them, substituting money, beautiful houses, fast cars, expensive resort vacations for love, warmth, caring and a sense of family.” 

Instead, Wilk chanced upon a Christian organization in the Philippines called the Gawad Kalinga or GK which built cluster houses for the poor and he ended up selling his newly purchased silver M3 BMW, to build what was then dubbed the BMW village, providing homes for some 600 people.  

The story doesn’t end there.  It gets better and better.  Wilk went to work full time for the GK, married the eldest daughter of the executive director of the GK (she grew up with the GK work and he says “We’re totally one in our mission”) and travels the world raising funds and gaining support for the GK’s projects.

Wilk and the GK do more than build houses for the poor.  They build communities and teach them how to start and operate sustainable livelihood programs.  Together, they have changed the lives of many and made a difference.  Wilk’s example has also inspired wealthy Filipinos to do the same, in terms of giving up their luxury cars and donating the proceeds to build more GK communities. 

So, Wilk went from survival to material success and emptiness, and progressed to personal spiritual wealth, creating abundance for others and fulfilment for himself and others.  He found a worthwhile cause he was looking for and a meaningful life.   He had the awareness and the maturity or inner alignment to see that material success alone simply wasn’t enough.  Even though he went directly to Steps 6 and 7, he was evolved enough to backtrack to Steps 1 to 5 and ended up accomplishing Step 8, almost all at once and at a very young age too!

He must have been inspired by Antonio Meloto, the executive director of the GK who is someone who clearly lives life with Step 8 in mind, as he says that the GK helps the poor to help themselves and the program is “about nation building; about looking at the poor not as a burden but the greatest potential of this country.  If we just organize and motivate them and help them aspire for a better life, then we will unleash the greatest asset we have – which is the poor.”

Let us be citizens of the world, like Wilk, taking care of our own needs and desires, and contributing towards creating abundance for others.  Let us together build a safe and sustainable world, where joy and endless possibilities are the norm.