Where women transform the world

What do women really want?

As I launch my career as a life coach, I find myself being drawn to working with young, entrepreneurial women who are up to big things. As a young, female entrepreneur myself, I find that I'm faced with unique challenges that come my way everyday, both personally and professionally. How I rise up to those challenges and choose to deal with them is where all the juicy learning comes in!

So here's my question for you - as a young, budding businesswoman, where do YOU face the most challenges? What type of support are you looking for? What are some areas you might need guidance and accountability? In today's still male dominated world, how to do you find yourself being perceived? What type of goal setting, networking, leadership development, or personal growth has worked for you?

I'd love to get some open dialogue from you fabulous women out there so feel free to voice your opinions! Would love to hear from you!

For more about me, visit www.highestpath.com

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Comment by Monique on January 6, 2009 at 10:34pm: Eryka - asking for help is one the hardest things for women to do in general, and it gets harder when you put that into the context of leadership. As women we pride ourselves for being strong, independent, and self-sufficient - as if those were the ingredients for success. We strive for those traits because we want to live up to the male-dominated view of leadership. However, I personally believe that our strength lies else-where - it lives in our vulnerability, our natural intuition and powerful femininity. Imagine for a second what it would be like to lead from that place, a place of softness and wisdom. Imagine how much more powerful and successful we could be as women if we dared to explore that part of ourselves and bring that forward into the world! I'm convinced we could achieve much more by leaning into our feminine wisdom - and I actually think we need to in order to bring the change we want to see in this world!

So bravo for leaning into your vulnerability and asking for help - how very courageous of you! And thanks for being an example of what true feminine leadership looks like!

Carolyn - working with the Inner Critic or your "schutch" is so important - especially as women, since we usually have a very loud whiny brat in our heads that keeps us from living our lives fully! Glad working on finding your Inner Wisdom voice - keep turning up the volume so the schutch can take a hike!

Comment by Eryka Peskin on January 3, 2009 at 1:18pm: I second that, Monique! What a great question, and one that I've been asking myself almost daily since I started the Red Tent Women's Project and become an entrepreneur. (I'm a photographer, a writer, a distributor of high quality supplements and skin care, and a consultant. I wear many hats!)

The biggest lessons (which I am still learning) have been around asking for help, becoming comfortable with feeling/being vulnerable as a leader, and surrendering to the flow of things. Our society--and I, as well--still have a pretty male-dominated view of leadership, where vulnerability and accepting responsibility are viewed as weaknesses. One day, when I was going through a particularly hard time with the Red Tent--we were SO low on money, and I didn't know how we were going to keep going--I was talking to my mother (my greatest mentor), and she said that I had to be open and honest with the community and ask for help. I was completely resistant to doing that. I didn't want to show that I was a "bad" leader--bad because I was having difficulties raising funds, and then on top of that, asking for help and showing vulnerability!

She pointed out that that was a very male view of leadership, which completely threw me. Here I was, dedicated to empowering women, and yet judging and disempowering myself by holding onto these unhelpful ideas. So that day I sent out an email to the list. And I received help. And here we are today!

As for what's worked for me...learning to be open to the brilliant ideas and abilities of the women around me. Of course there's more, but that's a conversation for another day. :)

Carolyn, what's a schutch?

Eryka