Ms. Sassy Classy: Living The Dream

"Living the dream" is a quote I often hear from people when they are asked how they are doing. Often this quote is said with sarcasm. I have said this myself without a second thought when asked how I am doing and I have found myself saying it with sarcasm. The last time I heard someone say they were living the dream in a sarcastic tone, I found myself reeling over why people say that phrase with sarcasm and realizing how unfortunate it is that anyone would feel that way. But wait a minute, I was feeling that way too. I found myself re-examining my own life and questioning why I was saying that with sarcasm and not shouting from the rooftops that my life is wonderful and exactly what I had always envisioned it to be. That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks that I was not even sure what my dream was so I definitely could not be "living the dream", at least not my own dream. At that moment it was like someone had woke me up from a catatonic state and I started to come back to life. I needed to find my dream and get to living it before it was too late!

I started by spending some quality time with myself. I took a hard look at my life now and started contemplating how I wanted my life to be. The first thing I did was make a list of the things that I consider to be my dream and figure out why I am not living that dream. I have a nice home that I own, a great job and an amazing son so I am off to a great start. So what is it that is missing and why am I not bubbling with joy every day? Sadly enough, and as hard as it was to admit and accept, the reason was me. I was holding myself back. Not only back, but I was holding myself down. Failure is easy. Failure requires little thought or action. In order to convince yourself that doing nothing and being a failure is okay, you have to make many excuses all day, every day which in and of itself can be exhausting but isn't that easier than all the work it takes to be successful? To me success was scary. For me being successful has so many deeper emotional elements that I won't go into right now but I will just say that successes had always brought me feelings of guilt. I thought that my successes were causing other people pain so being a failure was the right thing to do. I had totally convinced myself of that. I became overweight, got into bad relationships, isolated myself from everyone I used to know (including my own family) so that I could keep my failures a secret from the world, and was completely miserable and alone in my misery. I wasn't living my dream, I was living my nightmare.

I was so insecure that I wouldn't even go to a family reunion or meet up with old college friends. Occasionally I would muster up enough courage to do things like go to my class reunion a few years back. But before I could do that I crash dieted for months and I still had to drag my ass there. And it was fun. And I know now that everyone there didn't care what I looked like on the outside nor did they care what I had achieved. They just wanted to see Tina. But the Tina they knew had not existed for many, many years. I missed that Tina too and would like to see her myself. My memories of the old me are constants that will never change. There are some parts of the old me that I look back on and think if I only knew then what I know now because there are so many things that I might have done differently. Well guess what, I know now what I know now and there is no reason I can't make those changes now and be the person I know I am and have always wanted to be.

I completed my list of my dreams. The most important thing on that list is to have a truly happy life. Staying true to yourself and being yourself even when the world around you tries to make you something else is the greatest success of all and that is my dream. And I can honestly say I am living my dream! I have made a lot of changes inside and out and I am a work in progress, but now I am a happy work in progress. Sometimes it is not easy choosing better options or choosing what is good for you over what feels good or easy for you in the moment, but you and you alone have the power to make your choices so choose wisely. And the old Tina that I miss is still inside me, she has just been buried. So I decided to dig her out, dust her off, instill in her all of the stuff that I know now that I wish I had known then, combine her with the mature, successful, beautiful, confident, adult lady that I have become and watch out world. Now I am the new old me. Tina 2014.

A lot of people may think their dream is to live someplace magical but always remember that wherever you go, there you are. If what's inside isn't happiness and joy where you are right now, going somewhere else you will just be the same miserable person with a change of scenery. It is never too late to have a happy life and it is never too late to live the dream, whatever your dream may be!

Now when someone else asks me how I am I can honestly say "living the dream"! I hope everyone who reads this is already living their dream and if you are reading this and you are not living your dream what is stopping you??? You only get one life, YOLO as my son and his friends say, go make it fabulous!!!! Start right now!