Celebrating women: The growth that comes when we challenge ourselves

This week we’re celebrating International Women’s Day, with the theme ‘choose to challenge’. What a great opportunity to celebrate some of the amazing women who have had the courage, determination and humility to challenge themselves through our programs, undertaking  journeys of self-realisation and authenticity.

This week it’s International Women’s Day, and this year’s theme is ‘choose to challenge’. We’re being asked to challenge, to celebrate women’s achievements and take action for equality.

I love the idea of challenging ourselves in all areas of our lives. We see the benefits of this during our women’s programs, where we challenge participants to be the best version of themselves, providing support for them explore their skills, abilities, values and beliefs . When you really know yourself and where your strengths lie, then you can understand how you interact with others and the impact you have upon the world. It’s the basis for all leadership a crucial foundation on which to build a fulfilling career and life.

Celebrating achievement and discovery

We ran one of our ‘Authentic You’ Women’s Retreats just last weekend. These two day programs take women on an empowering journey, learning to move forward in life with courage, joy and authenticity.

The retreats provide a small and supportive group environment, combining exercises/challenges with our horses, communication, awareness and empowerment activities, meditation and mindfulness, and, of course, networking , drinks and nibbles. We create a safe space, designed to allow women to grow.

We were privileged to witness so many women experience incredibly powerful moments of realisation. It was truly inspiring, and one of my career highlights to date. In the spirit of celebrating our achievements, I thought I’d share some of their stories in the hope they will inspire us all.

• There was one woman in a wheelchair. Regardless of the challenges she faced to participate, she brought a wonderfully positive attitude and excelled in all the activities. She was a vital part of the group and watching her work with the horses was incredibly inspiring. She really demonstrated that barriers are all in our minds!

• Another woman, who had a long successful corporate career, had made the challenging decision to make some big life changes after her husband became unwell. Her courage and belief in herself and her path forward was really uplifting. She said the retreat had taught her that “to lead with love in life you have to be brave.”

• We also had a woman who had been a first responder and had worked at many traumatic events including the devastating 2020. As a result of her work, she had endured mental health challenges including PTSD. She joined our Retreat, as a personal challenge to take time out for herself and make herself a priority, for once. One of her insightful take-aways was that “we hear more when we don’t speak” – when we observe nonverbal cues of communication such as body language, and listen to our intuition.
• And there was the woman who had to take reduncy, due to Covid, tell us she had learnt that she had to trust in her own heart in order to be able to focus on her future.

What great achievements, and I’m happy to celebrate them and all other women who have had the courage to know themselves.

Got an inspiring story to tell? Something you’ve learnt? Let me know in the comments.

Our next Authentic You retreat is