Dollar store is back

After a three-year absence from the County Fair Mall, The Great Canadian Dollar Store reopened there recently. Employees like Katie Bice were busy making sure the store was ship-shape for the first visitors.

At church this past Sunday, a lady told me her son came away from one of my events inspired and positive about his future. However, she continued to imply that my remarks about a person’s ability to get anything they want was simply not true.

I had to ask why. She said her dream has always been to visit Nashville, but she knew deep in her heart that it would never happen. I suggested that this belief was her obstacle.

One of the most crucial parts of achieving your dream is to maintain an absolute belief that it ‘will’ happen. You must visualize it, write it down, and put a plan in place for it to happen. If you don’t, it will never happen.

There are four major elements to achieving your dream:

1 - Want ‘right’ or ‘good’ things. If what you want is something bad or a misfortune to happen to someone else – it is not going to work. Actually, there are people who will tell you if you wish misfortune on someone else, it will eventually come back on you.

As well, you can’t wish that someone else (husband, wife, friend) will change. You are only in control of your own life – nobody else’s.

2 - Truly believe in your heart that it can happen. When I hear someone say, “I really want ’X’, but I don’t believe that is possible, I tell them it is not because that is what you believe.

Henry Ford once said: “If you think you can, or you think you can’t – your right”. You need to be thinking constantly about possible ways things can happen.

If you are constantly thinking of road blocks and all the reasons it couldn’t, then that will be the reality you will create.

Please understand − what you think results in how you feel. How you feel will determine what you say. What you say is what you do, and what you consistently do becomes your habits. Your habits determine your character and your character will determine your destiny.

By transforming our thinking, and therefore our actions, we can create opportunities for ourselves and change our own lives regardless of any outside forces.

3 - Be willing to pay the price. There is a price for every growth we experience. Usually the people who complain about not getting what they wanted in life are people who were not willing to pay the price.

Think of the many Islanders - our own family, friends, and neighbors who wanted a better life that went off to work in places like Fort McMurray. They had to give up being with family and the comforts home to live in group accommodations, spend hours on airplanes, working in harsh conditions, and miss many PEI social events. So if you think you deserve what they now have, you must be willing to pay the price they paid.

4 -Take action: Achieving the life you want is really, really, hard. Unfortunately, we have conditioned beliefs that prevent us from doing what we need to do.

Years ago, a friend said to me – if you want to be happy, wealthy, or successful, start watching what happy, wealthy, successful people did to get there.

Work the hours they did, invest the way they did, buy what they buy, shop where they shop, save the way they save, and even dress the way they dress.

So to my friend at church, if you truly want that trip to Nashville, start believing it will happen and start doing the things that need to be done to make it so. Stop putting up your own mental roadblocks.

My question this week: What thinking are you engaged in to get what your heart really desires?