What does ideal look like?

Valentine’s Day taps your fantasy. You may be perfectly content until Cupid rears his head with images of what could be … and makes that frozen dinner in front of the TV look downright pitiful.

Don’t confuse you with pitiful!

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and relax. As you get sleepier, imagine your ideal romantic relationship. Look at the details. How do you feel? What do you look like? Where are you? What are you doing? Who is your partner?

Wake up, but don’t dismiss your dream as impossible.

Next, close your eyes and look objectively at your life as it is. Look at the details, and ask yourself the same questions.

Again, don’t confuse you with pitiful.

Identify the disparities between the two pictures. What stops you from living your ideal life? Is it really your ideal life … or is it just some fantasy you conjured up when you were 16?

Whenever and whatever, you created the fantasy. You also created the reality. You can change both.

Now, be honest with yourself. Are you “perfectly content” until Cupid shows up? Or are you perfectly complacent?

When YOU live up to your ideal, so does your reality.

Take the time to know what your ideal relationship — and life — really looks like. Then go about living them. You don’t have to change who you are; you simply have to be who you are! And you have nothing better or more important to do!

If in your fantasy (today’s) you weigh 10 pounds less, lose the weight. If you smile instead of complaining, smile. If kissing is more important than working, kiss more. If you live someplace else, move.

If you have a partner, collaborate. Don’t arbitrarily pick your fantasy over your partner’s and then try to squeeze him or her into a mold that doesn’t fit. Find out what does fit.

Maybe the city doesn’t fit both of you. Maybe the country doesn’t. Maybe the beach does.

Maybe you are too tired in the morning. Maybe he is too tired at night. Maybe you are both awake and amorous in the afternoon.

Come on, this is important. Take the time to figure out how to be you and still be coupled with the one you love.

Forget about all the excuses to go without and be unhappy. The only thing that stands in your way is you. You can and will be as happy as you want to be.

If you are not motivated to live the life you want, you haven’t really imagined it yet. Close your eyes again and raise the bar. See whether there’s a dream inside that you have suppressed, one that inspires your strength and creativity … one that feels so much like you that it seems possible.

There is nothing pitiful about you! If you want that frozen dinner, eat it with a smile and nothing to prove. Eat it and have time to paint or read or stretch your muscles. If you don’t want that frozen dinner, give it to somebody who does.

Don’t wait for Valentine’s Day to live your fantasy. You CAN’T live your fantasy one day a year. You can’t magically be transformed to fit into the picture.

You can be transformed, though. So can your fantasy. And when one reflects the other, every day is Valentine’s Day or some other perfectly YOU day.

Close your eyes, and release the to-do list and self-imposed boundaries. What do you see that you want to make your reality today?