The following week, while searching for a pair of shoes in my closet, I stumbled upon my old vision board. I had designed this powerful visualization tool three years earlier after reading Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret . When I saw the powerful image of my goals (including my dream home in Saint-Lambert and several idyllic travel destinations), I realized that I had not achieved any of them. That’s when I understood the reason for my dissatisfaction. Since 2015, I had worked tirelessly to grow my business, naively believing that working hard would guarantee the accomplishment of my goals. How wrong I was…

Wishing for the unattainable

I rolled up my sleeves and went looking for the best personal productivity books. In particular, I discovered The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone. In this book, the author emphasizes the importance of writing down all of your goals (professional, personal, and spiritual) twice a day. He suggests choosing goals that are so bold that they initially seem impossible to achieve. With much skepticism, I took a sheet of paper and wrote: “ I flipped a house worth over a million dollars in the city of Saint-Lambert .” This idea seemed completely unrealistic to me in my situation at the time. After all, I had neither the contacts, nor the financing, nor the experience to accomplish a project of this magnitude.

So I started writing down my goals every morning while I had my coffee. I would then set aside a few minutes of visualization to generate positive emotions related to achieving them. Although this routine seemed crazy at first, I repeated it until it became anchored in me. After all, studies show that it takes 66 days of repetition for an action to become a habit.

Everything comes to a good end…

There’s a common misconception that if you’re doing a renovation, be prepared for the unexpected. God knows how much of an emotional rollercoaster this project has taken me through. From the classic situation of the highly recommended subcontractor who didn’t deliver acceptable quality, to long lead times for materials, to running out of funds at the end of the project, I’ve had several moments where I wanted to give up. To counteract these unsettling situations, I’ve gotten into the habit of rewriting my goals in the middle of the day, whenever I feel overwhelmed. In doing so, I’ve reminded myself that setbacks are part of the process and that encountering problems is not a sign of failure, but of progress toward success.

As I write this, a year and a half after starting this routine, I proudly note that my dream of flipping over a million dollars is about to come true, as the Saint-Lambert house will be listed at $1.3 million. I attribute a large part of this success to this new life discipline. In fact, not a day goes by without me constantly thinking about my goals. Writing them down allowed me to clarify them, prioritize some and even eliminate others. Oddly enough, I realized that by visualizing my dreams, they became more and more realistic every day. After all, the subconscious mind does not distinguish between reality and imagination: it only reacts to our thoughts; positive or negative. Now I understand better the meaning of Napoleon Hill's famous quote: " Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, that it can attain ."

Now that I know the power of written goals, I am seriously thinking about going back to another desire from the first vision board; traveling! After the ups and downs of my real estate project, this vacation will be well deserved! And you, what goals are you going to write today?