Dear Future Self,

I hope you’re reading this in an amazing place — some exotic locale or drenched in sweat after an adventure or sipping lemonade on your front porch. I hope you are reading this with joy in your heart and a love that knows no bounds. I am sure you are wiser than I am right now but believe you will still be driven by that 8-year old girl who was intensely curious, who never quite paid attention to anyone laughing at our naiveté or mocking our silliness. For many years we got caught up in their game of asking “how” and falling short in our answers, feeling as though if we didn’t have an extremely effective game plan and clear-cut measurable results there was no point in trying. As of this writing, dear self, we’re on the precipice of getting out of that game. The answer to “how” is “yes” and the only results that truly matters are ones which can not be broken down into metrics.

Remember making tortillas during a Baja cooking lesson?

I want to remind you of some of the really cool things we’ve done. Remember when we did our first triathlon? Then tackled a half Ironman at Muskoka in part because we loved to say the name and it was in Canada? How about that impossible trail marathon in Letchworth State Park? Or the times we kept going back to the Musselman race, because it was so much fun and at some point, there just had to be a day when it wasn’t 90-degrees on the run course.

We are not merely one-note, however. We’ve traveled. Remember how we ended up with great seats for the Pete Sampras-Goran Ivanisevic final at Wimbledon? How we tackled a ropes course for the first time in Colorado then cycled in Tuscany? Remember that week in Baja, Mexico when we swam with sea lions and kayaked and hiked?

For a long time, we didn’t talk much about what we did. Our “accomplishments” weren’t to be touted much publicly, or even much in our inner circles, because we wanted to honor humility. We didn’t want to come across as bragging. We didn’t want to have to answer the accusation, “Who do you think you are?” And we didn’t want anyone to rain on our parade, to tell us that what we’ve done, what we’re proud of and excited about, really isn’t all that great. We didn’t want to be judged. We didn’t want to see how we failed to live up to some external expectation of what our life was supposed to look like.  We spent a period of time feeling bad about that and tried to look and act like everyone else.

But here’s the good news, future self, we’re busting out of that.

All those races and events and trips I mentioned? Just a friendly reminder of the life we’ve lived. Those are just some of the things we’ve loved and embraced along the way. And at times when we’ve got the blues (which is bound to happen in the realm of human emotion) a quick reminder of all the amazing things we’ve done, the bigness we’ve created, helps gets us out of that funk. We don’t need to live in the past, but those past stories, well, they help put is in the right frame of mind to create our future. We don’t need to force it. We don’t need to figure out “how.” We only need to show up with curiosity and love. Sometimes we may get hurt or disappointed, but that’s only temporary. Because our capacity is far greater than what we’ve led ourselves to believe.

Create yourself an amazing day.

With love,

Amy