No matter how sophisticated and grown-up we become, everyone has her insecure days.

Dear Paper Dolls,

Take this oath as a challenge-
"I believe in you. I believe in your authenticity, your uniqueness, your intensity, your wildness. I love the way you blare your music while you lip sync every single memorized lyric. I love your restlessness and your hunger. You possess the energy that, if unleashed, could transform, inspire and heal the world."

Everyone seems to have a certain way they want you to be - your mother, father, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, boyfriends, fashion gurus, celebrities, girlfriends.

DISTURBING STATISTIC NEWSFLASH: 74% of women say they are under pressure to please everyone.

I have done a lot of thinking about what it means to please; to be the wish or will of somebody other than yourself. To please the fashion setters, we starve ourselves. To please men, we push ourselves when we aren't ready. To please our parents, we become insane overachievers. If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs? How do you even know what your own needs are? The act of pleasing makes everything murky. We lose track of ourselves. We stop uttering declaratory sentences. We stop directing our lives. We forget what we know. We make everything OK rather than REAL.

I have had the good fortune to travel around the world. Everywhere I meet teenage girls and women giggling, laughing as they walk country roads or hang out on city streets. Electric girls. I see how their lives get hijacked, how their opinions and desires get denied and undone. So many of the women I have met are still struggling late into their lives to know their desires, to find their way.

Instead of trying to please, this is a challenge to provoke, to dare, to satisfy your own imagination and appetite. To take responsibility for who you are, to engage. Listen to the voice inside you that might want something different. It's a call to your original self, to move at your own speed, to walk with your step, to wear your color. I dare you to live as an emotional creature. Learn the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. Be OK with being different, with being this alive, this intense. Learn to be you and love it!