I believe.

A book I was reading suggested an exercise. It suggested that you write down the top 5 people who have influenced your life. After you have done that, if you take a look at the list you will realize one thing. These are all people who have believed in you. Not people that give you things, or people that just exist in your life, they have truly believed in YOU.

After thinking a bit, most likely (and sadly) parents may not end up on this list. If your parents do, consider yourself lucky (and don't just put them on there out of guilt). Often time parents do not believe in their children. They view them as weak and dumb. Even when they try to be the best positive influence, a child can sense whether mom really believes in them.

What would be your reaction if your child asked to walk to school by themselves, or take the bus somewhere. Nowadays it would be an automatic, "No way!, you can't handle that".

But where does it begin? Are you willing to go out of your comfort zone and let your child do something that you think they can't? Most of the time, they in fact can, but we box our kids into glass and don't want them to get hurt or even worse...fail.

I'd like to toot my own horn and say, I've been pretty good about this. Even before I read the book. I let my kids fail ALL the time. I let them climb things that I think they'll fall off of, I let them work puzzles I don't think they can solve, I let my daughter put a cookie sheet into the oven today while the oven was on and hot. And who do I owe this parenting style to? My own parents.

At the age of 10 my parents let my brother and I ride our bikes 5 miles from our family business to our home. Across 3 bridges and down 1 highway. We thought we could disassemble a television and put it back together. We tried and we failed...so we had to save up more money to replace the TV in my brothers bedroom. I was cooking our family dinner starting in 3rd grade and my brother did all the laundry. I saw a blog the other day where a lady didn't let her 6th grade daughter bake brownies for her school party because she thought she would mess it up or burn herself.

I hope I can be as loose as my parents were with us. It kept me grounded and out of trouble. I didn't smoke cigarettes in high school when all my friends were because my parents let my brother and I take a drag off of theirs once. Turned me away forever (they stopped smoking 20 years ago btw). I didn't drink either because my parents would let us have a little glass of wine here and there during special events. Even let me try rum and coke. Seemed pretty lame when my friends would pull out a hidden bottle of mad dog after school.

So, to conclude this long rambling post. Believe in your friends. Believe in your co-workers. Believe in your kids. Let people (and little people) do things out of your comfort zone. If we all stopped criticizing and thinking that every person we interact with is a dumbass, maybe life will get a little better.