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Earlier this year, I went around my team and asked the following question: “If you were to travel back in time to high school, what would you tell yourself knowing what you know now?” What better way to hear from New Zealand’s best hockey players, some of them the best in the world, about their time at high school.

Let’s get real. It’s winter. It’s cold. It’s dark. If you’re human, I’m sure you’ve caught yourself with some pretty negative thoughts lately. I know I’ve been having a fair few, especially last week. I’ve found myself complaining a whole lot more than normal, and I’ve noticed what an impact it’s had on my well being. I often get told that a strength of mine is that I try and find the positive out of a lot of bad situations. I think this comes down to my upbringing, watching my family have the ‘glass half full’ attitude with life.

Warning: Very emotional story to follow. I thought hard about sharing this. It’s a subject that is very personal to me, and I’m shit scared that other people are reading this. But if it can help others going through any type of pain, then it’s worth it. Pain. Pain is a funny word. Pain is something that generally we all try to avoid. We find ways to ease the pain, to soften it, to pad it with something. We find distractions to take us away from the moment of pain so we don’t have to feel the full impact. I thought I was pretty good at dealing with pain, being an athlete and all. We learn how to push through. Our coach’s favourite saying is “be comfortable with being uncomfortable”. We run harder, we don’t make excuses, we walk it off when we get hit with a hockey ball. I thought I had a high pain threshold, until 2013 came and hit me like a freight train.

Hi from Belgium! So we are at the back end of the tournament... the business end! Tomorrow, we will take on the Netherlands in the Semi Final. The team is excited, these big games are the reason why we play hockey. The pressure, atmosphere, and quality of the game is always lifted in a semi, and it’s within our complete control to decide how we show up.

After the Olympics last year, I found myself in a bit of a rut. I knew I had to dedicate the next six months to rehabbing my knee, but while I was doing that, I needed to figure out what to do with my career. I graduated in 2013, worked at a marketing company for two years, and then committed a year to the Olympics where my main focus was hockey. Once I got back from Rio, that daunting question was floating around in my head… “Now what?” I didn’t want to go back to an office job, so I made the leap into self employment. When I made that leap, I felt really self conscious about what to tell people that I do for a job. It hit me the most when I went to fill out a form, and staring back at me was a big space next to the word “OCCUPATION: ________________"

It’s funny how I wrote the topic for this blog idea quite a while before I actually sat down and wrote it, where at this moment, I’m sitting here literally having launched a support programme called 'All About Balance' to help high performing young women at high school BALANCE their sport, life and school. *Note: Read to the end to learn more about my 6 week e-course for high school girls that I've launched and I am currently taking applications for, or if you don't want to keep reading, click here to learn more and apply! (If I were you, I'd keep reading!)

I went on a leadership retreat in October last year. One conversations really stuck with me, which made me make a huge life change. They asked us, “what have you been putting off because you’re scared, or nervous, or think you’re not ready for?” I’d like to think I’m a go-getter, that I constantly challenge and push myself. So I was surprised when I started writing a list of things that I had been putting off because I thought that I wasn’t ready, that I needed to get more experience, that I wasn’t good enough etc.

“When I’m worried and cannot sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep” Gratefulness is something that we are so often too busy for. How often do we actually stop and think, “wow, I’m so grateful for this opportunity” “I’m so grateful to have this delicious cup of coffee” It sounds super cheesy, but it can change your attitude in a few minutes if you remember to practise it.

I thought this topic is quite timely to talk about, because at the time of writing this, I am mentally and physically recovering from a 6-2 loss to USA who we play again today. Pressure is something that we all experience, in every aspect of our lives. The intensity of the pressure depends on how invested you are in what it is you are doing, how important you think it is, how much you care, and how much you deeply want something.

WHY? It’s a question that I think it completely undervalued, and it is a question that I try to ask myself on a regular basis.