I have a client who when asked how he is doing always responds “I am living the dream.” This has become a popular response and I hear it often particularly in business circles. Often times I hear the response a bit sarcastically. However, I know that this client really means it when he says that he is living the dream. At least from all outward appearances he is successful financially and has a good family life and healthy productive children. For most of us I believe that would qualify as living the dream.
As I was thinking of this phrase this morning I found myself responding to a different client with my client’s response. When asked how I was doing I responded, “I am living the dream.” My client laughed and I could tell from their laugh that they thought I was responding in the sarcastic manner I hear so often. However, the reality is that I was serious. I really am “Living The Dream.”
Last night I read something that I wrote six years ago on April 20, 2005. I found the document under a pile of magazines that I was filing. I was writing about the need to understand who we are and who we want to be. What I wrote then was that I wanted to be a person that read more, listened to others, and continually practiced self-examination. I also wrote that I wanted to learn more so that I could positively impact the lives of others. Finally, I wrote that I recognized that I was not “finished yet” and that I could see myself as a work in progress. That was what I imagined six years ago and that is what I was dreaming I would become. Last week as I worked with of small group of just under 20 people I recognized that I was impacting the lives of people almost every day. The thought caused me to write the following as my revised mission statement: To give to those whose lives I touch the best that I can be. This is the shortest version of my personal mission statement that I have written in about seventeen years. Yet, it really reflects what I was dreaming about six years ago.
Living the dream for me is not a financial measure. Neither is it a measure of business success. Rather, it reflects that every day I have the chance to do something that really does impact the lives of the people closest to me, and that impacts the lives of my colleagues and clients. It reflects that I have the opportunity to learn new things constantly, and I am learning to really listen to people. While this last one has not been mastered just yet, I am getting better and I can see that in my interactions.
What I am learning is that living the dream is by no means easy. Yet, those that are doing just that are living fulfilled lives. They are vibrant, they work hard, and they are happy. One example is another colleague that yesterday completed the Boston Marathon. He is 46 years old, a lifetime runner and he had a goal to qualify for and complete the Boston Marathon. He is living the dream. My colleague will not earn any sponsorship as a result of his performance yesterday. He won’t make any more money at work as a result of the race, and today he is likely quite sore. But I can bet with a high degree of certainty that yesterday he managed a smile and perhaps even a sigh of relief as he accomplished something that he hoped for and that a relative few will ever do. I think this is really what living the dream is all about. It is about doing what you dream of. It is about accomplishing goals that you set in your life and doing what really matters.
So many of us have dreams that we are waiting to begin. We tell ourselves that we will do it when the time is right. The fact is that now is the right time. In fact there may never be a better time. We need to start living the dream not tomorrow, but we need to start today. My colleague that ran Boston yesterday began living the dream long before he ran in Boston. He likely began living the dream before he ran his Boston qualifying time last fall. I believe that every day that my colleague got up to go out for a run he was living the dream. When he spent time talking to his son he was living the dream. While he was doing his job each day he was living the dream. I am willing to bet that my colleague has been living the dream perhaps even longer than he knows.
If we are waiting to start living the dream we run a tremendous risk. We risk reaching the day when we look back at our lives and we say we did not do the things that were important to us. Or we wish that we had done things differently, like take more time for those we love, or pursue a dream that we had when we were younger.
Commit today to start living the dream. You will need to say no to some things that have been standing in your way. You may even need to say no to some of the things that impact those closest to you. But in saying no you will be saying yes to your dreams. Start now I mean literally right now. Put this down and start living your dream. If you don’t do it now you may some day have to say, “I wish I had lived my dream.”
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