There are No Ordinary Work Days – Challenge Yourself

Inspiration for women, women in sports, women entrepreneurs

Yesterday high atop the gently turning green tree leaves to gold and orange, eight brave women strapped into a harness, ascended up a steep hill and approached a wooden platform. Most of them were zip lining for the first time as a way to kick out fear and jump start a stronger business cycle. I decided to go first since I was leading the pack of women to prove it was safe. I asked each woman to think of something they wanted to risk moving forward in life or business as they jumped off the platform trusting the cable to zip them to the top of a tall tower. One by one, with other women supporting each jumper, they sailed through the air in delight and pride.

We didn’t know then zip lining would be the easy part of the day as we hopped into a wagon and driven to a higher part of the mountain where an elevated ropes course awaited us. It wasn’t the fact the ropes course was attached to the tallest trees on the mountain but the challenge of the rope course itself. There were six different rope setups with the three of the most challenging in the middle of the course.

Having been a downhill skier since I was five years old, I had no issue with the height of the course.What I didn’t expect was the difficulty of moving my body horizontally along a vertical rope wall trying to keep my body from falling back into the harness. One, two, three, four tries and I couldn’t do the hardest rope. I called to the ropes manager to come over and show me how to do it. He had only described the exercise. I learned yesterday I am a visual learner and needed to see him do it and “walk” me through it. Sure enough I did advancing across the very lengthy ropes with my sister entrepreneurs cheering me from other platforms.

The next challenge was walking on a thin cable moving across a cut out board for feet and arms that read, “I can do anything!” and I did trusting the harness to suspend me if I feel backwards. I finally advanced to the end of the course only to hug each of my brave customers who came with me on the day long adventure. The walk down the mountain was much quieter as the soreness of our arms and the strength reminded us what we just accomplished. Only the ropes manager said to me, “If you are a skier and you know what a black diamond slope is, well this course is a black diamond ropes course!” No wonder, I thought!

Waking up this morning I realized I gained wisdom from my thoughts and my sisters in adventure. We each agreed we are much stronger than we imagined. We are also more fearless than we thought. Most importantly, we were able to complete the difficult adventure after wanting to give up because other women believed in us. If our sisters weren’t telling us they believed we could do it, we wouldn’t have done it!

This is the same lessons I have learned 23 years supporting women in business. Women love supporting other women and nothing in this world or any challenge we face will ever change that.