International Women’s Day 2019

Happy International Women’s Day round THREE from me, myself and I and this little blog I call My Revamped Life. You may be new around here, and if you are, Hi babe! I’m Erika, I’m a corporate professional with a weird background in communications and theme park technology, I host a podcast with my bff, I only drink iced coffee and so much more. But most importantly, I work really hard to live my life where I am constantly a champion for other women through my blog, my happy hours chats with friends and my constant “YES!” to anyone who asks to do a meet and greet with me.

A few years ago I got a bug up my butt about #GirlBoss and on that International Women’s Day made a commitment to myself, and you to work hard to get others to realize that our gender does not define us, but it just makes up a fraction of who we are as human beings, people, friends, family members and more.

This past year, my company, The Walt Disney Company also upped THEIR commitment to women in the workplace and a new resource group was created: Women’s Inclusion Network. Or, as we call it: WIN. Fun fact: we love a good acronym around here at Disney! But when I heard about WIN I signed up ASAP and got my butt to a session as soon as I could. I met other amazing women who feel the way I do about female empowerment in the workplace and I learned a lot from these women, too!

However, a month or so ago when it was announced that the first ever Women’s Conference would be taking place at work on International Women’s Day. Leadership from the top down was encouraging everyone to try and attend if possible and that felt amazing. To work for a company that so deeply understands the need for diversity in all facets of life, that empowers women to stand up and be strong while also teaching men the importance of being an ally feels really freakin’ awesome! Oh, and you’re going to provide a day-long conference with amazing speakers, breakout sessions, network opportunities and more? Girl, you know I had a calendar reminder for the minute registration opened!

There are so many takeaways from today that I can’t wait to share with you in future posts but for today, of all days, I felt that the main message I learned in the keynote will sit with me for a long time to come. Susan MacKenty Brady, the author of what I assume will be a new favorite book of mine once I order it off of Amazon, “Mastering Your Inner Critic” blew my damn mind. Not only was Susan empowering to all 2,000 men and women in the room a soon as she stepped on stage but I could have listened, and learned from her, for another hour at least. The quick thirty-minute conversational keynote was all about how our Inner Critic needs to be retrained so we can be our best selves for not just us, but for others. But what Susan said right off the bat that made me shed my first “Holy crap this amazing” tear of the day is:

You are awesome! I am awesome!

Susan MacKenty Brady

I know what you are thinking “What? You cried over that?” Yuuup, I sure did. Because I am awesome and enough, and guess what? So are you. So is your best friend, so is your mother, so is your child…the list goes on. We are all awesome, we are all enough…and my awesomeness knows no bounds because yours doesn’t either. And since there is no scale, we don’t need to compete with one another. What we need to, and what we should do is work to always celebrate our awesomenesses with one another.

When we live our lives in what Susan calls the Compassionate Center we are our best self. We are not worrying if we are less than someone else, and we are most certainly not behaving in a grandiose way that puts others off. This is a small, yet mighty and difficult thing to accomplish. Our inner critic can pull us out of this center 18 times just on our drive to work,

“I should have woken up early today to work out.”

“I can’t believe what Gina said in that meeting yesterday.”

“Seriously? I had no help this morning getting the kids out of the house.”

So many thoughts can make us stray from our center so we have to give ourselves a pep talk from time to time “I am awesome!” Being a woman is tough work, but we’re awesome. I’m awesome, you are awesome. We need to lean into the fact that this is a hard road for all and not kick ourselves when we are already down.

So, I want to continue my commitment to you to bring you empowering posts, and a few silly posts in between, where you can always count on me. I don’t just think you are awesome, I know you are awesome. So this International Women’s Day 2019 let us ALL recommit to owning our awesomeness and empowering other women to embrace their rad selves as well.

Sisters…they are doing it for themselves, am I right?!