How to Find Your Super Awesome Sassy Self!: A Modern Woman's Guide to Living a Less-Stressed Life.

By Melissa Young-Dorn PhD

How to FIND your Super Awesome Sassy Self is loaded with cutting-edge tools and strategies to build a strong foundation that gets you out of your comfort zone and into your visions and dreams. Tackle the overwhelming pressures of being a woman in this fast-paced modern world of today by being the best sassy you ever!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452523750

Melissa Young-Dorn PhD

Melissa Young-Dorn is a self-help author, teacher, artist, motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and award-winning coach. She is the CEO and founder of FOUNDationYOU™, a program and company designed to transform women’s lives from not-so-hot to unbelievably more-than-satisfying. When she’s not trying to inspire people to get out of their comfort zones or trying to be as witty and expressive as possible, she’s pursuing her PhD in psychology and working with teens through athletics. Her absolute joy in life is being the world’s okayest mom to both her children. You can visit her at: www.foundationyou.com

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Copyright © 2014 Melissa Young-Dorn, PhD candidate.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Melissa Young-Dorn

Dix Hills, New York

[e-mail]

www.foundationyou.com

Photo Credit: SoulScaping Photography

Edited by: Susan Mary Malone

Cover Design: Melissa Young-Dorn

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and/or publisher do not guarantee that anyone following these techniques, suggestions, tips, ideas, or strategies will become lucrative. The author and/or publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to anyone with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2374-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2375-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014918409

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/5/2014

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1   Life has Sassy Structure

Chapter 2   I have a Foundation?

Chapter 3   The Sass to Acceptance

Chapter 4   Laundry List to Sassy Tips.

Chapter 5   What’s in it For Me, Missy?

Chapter 6   The Six Essential BE-LIFE Elements for a SUPER AWESOME SASSY SELF!

Chapter 7   The Five FOUNDationYOU™ Principles

Chapter 8   C.T.L, Baby!

Conclusion Note to Sassy Self

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to the two loves of my life, Karissa and Kyle. I love you both to the moon and back infinity times.

Acknowledgements

An ambitious woman in modern times is as much a necessity as it is vitality for life’s missions. Our foundation holds the inspiration that is guided only by our knowledge, energy, thoughts, and beliefs that propel us into our visions and dreams, which reinvent the future.

How to FIND your Super Awesome Sassy Self is a tribute to all the women who want to empower our world one friend or family member at a time. I acknowledge all the moms, wives, girlfriends, aunts, sisters, and teenagers who have taken the time to motivate, excite, and bring forth their passions to be that catalysts of change.

I would also like to personally thank my own mom, as she has always been the one person who’s had my back, taken care of me in times of need, and made me the Super Awesome Sassy woman that I am today. Rest in peace, Mom, knowing I’m okay, and always will be.

Thank you,

-Melissa Young-Dorn PhD candidate

Introduction

What’s going on? You’re rushing around like a lunatic trying to get to work. You’re screaming at your kids, you’re screaming at yourself. Your only purpose in life is to make sure you don’t get food stuck to the seat of your car, which yikes is overdue for an oil change! Where are you going? How are you getting there? Slow down, woman, you’re about to hit a wall. Seriously, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack. Even worse, you’re going to give me a heart attack!

Whoa. You ever get so stressed out like that? All of a sudden you’re like holy cow, I need a glass of wine, or wait even better I need a whole bottle! Ever have weeks that just drive you insanely nuts? I’ve felt this way many times over and over again. The best way of describing it is as if your mind is going hundred miles an hour and you know your body needs to move as well but you have so much to do you just don’t even know where to begin. You’re just trying to keep your head above water but you seriously have no idea where land is.

Okay. Hold on. If this is you, do me a favor, chill out. Just breathe. Yes, you have a lot on your plate, but take a second to sit down and just relax. Go get yourself a beverage and sit. Yes, seriously, stop feeling guilty because I’m giving you permission to grab your favorite drink. By the end of this book, you’ll be giving yourself permission too. Go put your feet up and (oops, move the toys off the couch first before you sit on the latest version of your kid’s superhero action figure) sit, take a deep breath… and… just…relax.

Now, how does that feel? Take another deep breath. Close your eyes. Just for a minute. Listen to everything around you. Ignore the mess just a little longer. It’s hard, but just keep breathing slowly. Humor me and sit still. Okay. Open up those beautiful eyes. Take a sip, and keep reading. Give me that gorgeous smile of yours (even though you may not feel like smiling just yet). Just please do it. Great! That’s my girl.

So now, let’s have a little chat. We all know what it’s like to feel like that action figure you just sat on. It’s that feeling of being cramped up, thinking there’s nowhere to go. You’re trying to be mom of the year yet your kids think you’re boring. You’re trying to be the best wife or girlfriend but you’re just so tired, you’d rather take a nap than be with him. You want to produce at work but you have no time for yourself, and your creativity is taking a hit. You ever want life to just go the way you want it to? Well, many of us do. That’s why I wrote this book.

Most women need help in realizing what I call their own Super Awesome Sassy Self, or in other words their true SASS. I wrote this so that women who struggle with self-confidence, appreciating themselves, and bringing out their inner strengths can have more fulfillment in their lives and have a simple guide to turn to.

The word SASS to a lot of people has a whole other meaning. It’s stated in the dictionary as a negative term. According to its definition, having sass is talking back to someone, or showing your disrespect. However, I look at it in a new and positive way. Teaching someone how to bring out the SASS in her life is training her how to make a difference in her own world. How to grab your kahunas, (I know we don’t have them it’s just an expression), and have the confidence to say and do the things that make you happy! It’s not about a negative attitude and it’s certainly not about being disrespectful. It’s absolutely about showing yourself all the respect and love that you already totally deserve.

The fact that women everywhere are not respecting themselves is just bizarre. How can women all over the world not appreciate and love their own uniqueness, their inspirations, their core Super Awesome Sassy Self? How can women everywhere be so all over the place that they can’t even remember the important things in life?

It’s sad, but everyone’s been there at some point in her life, including me. A study by Emerson Eggerichs, bestselling author of the book Love and Respect, concludes that a wife needs love just as she needs air to breathe, and a husband needs respect just as he needs air to breathe (p. 37). The sample was taken from over 400 subjects. That explains why our confidence levels are going bonkers and we can’t even sit down to take a breath. We’re too concerned with making other people happy instead of cherishing our own positive feelings toward ourselves. We have inner remarkable traits that we keep hidden and/or blocked, and instead of receiving joy from them we hold them all in. That’s what’s causing the bulk of stress within our lives and our relationships.

Another study done by the American Institute of Stress (2011) concluded that only sixty-six percent of women are actually satisfied with their lives. Let me repeat: Sixty-six percent only satisfied? (So not only are we not feeling appreciated, we’re not having a more-than-outrageous life!) It boggles my mind. That also means that thirty-four percent of women are so stressed out they can’t even think of making anything remotely better for themselves. That’s an insane amount of women unmotivated. There are too many women out there not living the positive lives that they could be living. And that needs to change.

Stress itself is the number-one cause of all kinds of physical symptoms that lead to serious health issues if left untreated. Besides obesity, depression, stomach aches, hair loss, eye twitching, acne, rashes, and now back pain, researchers are saying there is a direct link between stress and heart disease and heart attacks. Do you want to have a heart attack? So, now not only are you unhappy, you could actually die. That’s not sassy.

That’s why I’m in it to win it here, and offer stories to encourage and to empower as many women as possible. Are you one of those women who would want to take that chance? Do you wish your life could be less stressful, more exhilarating, and also become a healthy hot mamma in the process?

Making the Shift

Then you’re not alone. My life was also in the pile of not-so-hotness. Thankfully, I’ve come to realize it, and have made some shifts to make it so much more fab-you-lous! And, to tell the truth, as a woman and mother, I’ve never felt more inspired and energized in my whole life. Really, I mean it. If that at all entices you and you would like to feel that SASS for yourself too, then this book is definitely for you.

The situations and experiences that I have been in, good and frankly not so good, have shaped the person that I am today. I’m almost forty years old and I’ve overcome some pretty tough obstacles. You could say I’ve made adversity a very close friend. I’ve dealt with being kidnapped by my mother and taken away from my dad in Hawaii in early childhood. In adulthood, I’ve handled a horrible high-end custody battle and divorce, and most recently I’ve learned how to absorb the grief of losing my mom from a serious head injury in front of my eyes.

While going through all of that, I was living with the all-over-the-place kind of mentality as a single working mother of two. Nearly killed me. Talk about women not feeling sassy, I was definitely the president of that club. I used to be extremely stressed out and took for granted a lot of the things that I already had. Someone said recently that I survived what they called a shit sandwich. Really? They make idioms like that? But seriously, I never knew which direction to go, and felt stuck in the realm of what we call the real world. I