Eat, Pray, Love Your Way to a Dream Life

Hanging on my bedroom wall is a quote written in black felt pen, nailed right in the center of my dream board which reads,

Happiness (your dreams) is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings (dreams).

And once you have achieved a state of happiness (living your dream), you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness (that next dream) forever, to stay afloat on top of it.

It’s a quote from a section of Elizabeth Gilbert’s wildly popular book, Eat, Pray, Love with some Catherine mixed in with it.

In 2006, I purchased this book because my 16-year career in mortgage banking was crashing, like some prized porcelain vase swan-diving onto a cement floor.

BOOM!

Disaster!

I was looking for something to take me away from the pain and destruction that had become my life (and the lives of those around me employed by Real Estate) and procure some sort of relief from my new daily fear, which yelled in my head:

Ohhhhhh fuc* what will I do next (for a career)?

Note to Catherine: fear makes for the absolute worst bed partner – it lays around your place nagging you with gut-wrenching thoughts, while turning boxes of tissue into little wet balls of cotton, leaving you with red wine stains on the bathroom counter, and thinking your whining really does matter.

It doesn’t. Remember this.

In an obscure area of the local bookstore, from about 3 feet away, I found myself staring at the popular book cover, contemplating whether or not I wanted to spend money on the latest hot thing.

But the idea of a book title beginning with the word, “Eat” (a term most women avoid like the plague) fascinated me. It helped that it ended in “Love” too – something I’d been so horribly bad at for such a long time (when it came to partners).

A voice inside me said, “Catherine – buy the damn book!”

So I did.

Never argue out loud with a voice sounding like your Irish grandmother after you’ve just had a Starbucks coffee, and you are spending your single Friday night in a local bookstore, where the salespeople would like you to leave so they can close and have a life.

Have some self-respect.

It was a Friday evening and my son was with his father for the weekend, so I went home, changed into my pajamas, crawled under a blanket on the couch – with my usual box of Kleenex, and glass of red wine. Light jazz played softly in the background.

Self pity goes great with some good jazz.

At 3:00am I was still reading Eat, Pray, Love, and contemplated finishing the entire piece in one sitting.

So I did the thing that most women would do in my position:

I took the book to bed, curling myself around its pages like some long lost lover cuddling me to sleep, and I drifted off dreaming of India.

As soon as I awoke that morning, I rolled over and began reading right were I stopped.

I didn’t make coffee. I didn’t eat breakfast.

I stayed in my pajamas until I finished the book – sometime that afternoon.

I remember it was afternoon because the sun was casting a long soft ray of light through West window of the living room. I went over, laid down on the floor under the sun’s rays with my arms spread out and the book closed tightly in my right hand.

I inhaled a deep breath and thought,

I need to get a better fuc*ing life.

Here’s a woman who went out and faced her life head on. She faced her limiting wall and scaled over it. She did it traveling and eating, traveling and meditating, and traveling and riding bicycles through rain forest country. Then she did it again for the whole world to read in a book.

Then I told myself, “Well, she didn’t have responsibilities”

and

“She didn’t have kids.”

and
“I love raising Brian and she doesn’t have that.”

But truth be told, I envied her.

I envied her because, even though she was afraid, she changed her life anyway.

It couldn’t have been easy – even without kids.

I continued to lay on the floor for what must have been an hour. The sun moved down behind the fence, while my living room faded into the colors of sunset.

Suddenly, I jumped up, threw my box of Kleenex in the garbage and said, “Catherine, old girl, whatever it takes – you are going to change your life!”

Of course, you have to be really specific with these types of requests when making bold statements at the universe, or it will send a hurricane into your living room, then sit back and say, “Well, you said you wanted change.”

As you can imagine, I was very specific.

That night I created a dream board from the magazines laying about my house. I then went on to create a list of the 150 things I wanted to do before I died. I entered them in my daily journal. They take up 6 pages.

Then, a funny thing happened to my life.

I’ve completed 12 of those 150 goals so far – this website is one of them.

In order to change your life have to stop burying your real passions and go after whatever it is you really want to be every day for the rest of your life. You are the only one who can make your dreams come true.

You only have one life.

And let me be the first to say, changing – it ain’t for the faint of heart.

It can be difficult and tiring, boring and tedious, and you can go years before you see any real change happening. But if you look carefully at your life while you are working on it – you will notice little, subtle changes occurring, and one day you will find yourself smiling for no reason.

Because it suddenly dawns on you that you’ve changed your life.

And there’s no better dream.

Trust me.

If not – then go ask Elizabeth Gilbert.

Catherine

Catherine’s dream is to make 8 Women Dream the premier online publication for women looking to change their lives. She is a published author, known for her humorous speeches on finding your dream life and blogging for fun and profit. Catherine also writes about her life as a mom at the blog, A Week in the Life of A Redhead and several online marketing publications. She would also like to be invited to speak at TED about her observations on people chasing their big dreams. Catherine posts on Sunday evenings and fills in when needed. Join me on Google+ rapieress@aol.com

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