what would it look like if you believed in yourself more?

When I was in high school, I had this major crush on Blaine Peerless. He was a Milwaukee Admirals hockey player and had this beautiful eighties mullet with blonde feathered hair. If you were lucky enough to be around in that era, you know exactly what I am talking about. My best friend, Karen and I, would sneak out and go to the games just to see him play, with the hopes that somehow, he would see us in the stands and we would all live happily ever after. And although I was barely 15, with a mouth full of braces, horribly permed hair, and a completely unrealistic view of how this would go down, I hatched up a pretty elaborate plan on how to meet him.

You see...back then I was relatively fearless. If something sounded good, I was there. Midnight cliff jumping at the quarry? sounds good. Triple back flip off the diving board right before our swim meet? why not. Trade in 4 hours of free time at a summer basketball camp to practice hundreds of free throws? yep. Meeting a semi professional hockey player who has no idea I even existed? seems reasonable.

So, spent the next hockey season brushing up on my teenage stalking skills. I memorized every goal and assist Blaine made the previous season (in case I needed to recite the statistics on our first date), hung his pictures up in my bedroom and in my school locker and wore his jersey,..daily. I immersed myself in Blaine Peerless. I thought about what I would say to him when we finally met, what we would name our fictitious future children and, more importantly, I wondered if he could skip his upcoming game in Canada and go to prom with me.

Oh...high school love.

Those feelings we can create and so effortlessly fall into when we are young. How we can just dive in with both feet feeling and experiencing the moment so intensely. Those feelings of being limitless, confident and dreamy. Those feelings of being unstoppable, invincible and all knowing. Those feelings of having your head in the clouds, the 'nothing can get in the way of me' feelings.

Yeah...those.

To be able to immerse yourself into something so fully, so passionately, so driven, so freeing. To not be sidetracked by the 'what-ifs', the fear of it all, or how stupidly unrealistic something might seem. To just go for it, despite the fact that you may never get it.

Yeah...those feelings.

You see, somewhere along the line, friends, we lose all of this. We lose the feelings of endless possibilities, of pure simple joy, of unjaded love. We start to overthink...we dissect, we analyze, we talk ourselves out of taking chances, putting ourselves out there...We go to sleep. We switch to autopilot. We settle. We get stuck. We forget what it's like to wake up and be so excited to start our day. Over the years, we just seem to lose the passion and immense possibilities that life once handed us when we were younger. And this becomes our new normal.

Things become ok that once never were. Our boundaries get pushed. Our voices get softer. We shrink, we twist, we try and fit into what we think is expected of us. We try and make ourselves look like how you want us to look and act like how you want us to act. We wear shoes that are too high and jeans that are too tight and underwear that is too uncomfortable. We dye our hair, bleach our teeth, starve ourselves...and we are still not happy. We are still not free.

Friends...I know that high school was tough too..but there was a point in our early teens where we hadn't yet been trained to doubt ourselves so much. Where we hadn't yet been conditioned to look a certain way, act a certain way or to hold back on everything that brought us so much passion. A time where we gave less f*cks about what people thought. There was a time where if we wanted something, no matter how unrealistic, ridiculous or unattainable it may seem now, we went at it like it was already ours.

There was a time when we believed in ourselves more.

What would be different if we lived our life like that now? What would be different if we immersed ourselves in what we want and felt the feelings of having it before we even get it. To have goals and dreams that really excite you and to go about your day with total faith that you will have all that you want? What would be different if we stopped caring about what others thought about us so much? If we were our own biggest fan?

What would be different if we believed in ourselves more?

We are on a journey here, ladies. And it's just ours to live. There are no do-overs or take backs or resets. There are no magic pills, no secret recipes, no true second chances. This is all we have. Right here. We can choose to live our life in complete awe of how amazing each of us is and support one another for all that we are doing. We can get that passion back, that determination, that confidence, that excitement.

It's time to make that comeback. It's time.

Oh...and whatever happened to Blaine Peerless, you ask? Well, he was replaced by Jim McMahon and the Chicago Bears. Much more realistic, don't you think?

Reach for those stars ladies.