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Prepare to Forge Your Own Path in 2 Minutes

By Carolyn Lawrence, President & CEO, Women of Influence

“You just have to find a new angle.”

It’s a great quote that I hear, oh I don’t know, a dozen times a week when my son watches, and re-watches, Big Hero 6. I enjoy this repetition in my life as a reminder of how we can get stuck following the same routine, but somehow expecting we will still learn and thrive. This reminder also serves to highlight the importance of shifting one’s perspective to find a solution, which is required in the many hats that I wear as a business owner, but also in my mandate to find the solutions to women’s advancement.

Overall, “You just have to find a new angle” is part of a larger theme that I’m inspired by right now: women are doing courageous, powerful and inspiring things by forging their own paths. In fact, I would go so far as to say, women are becoming superheroes. And if there’s one more thing I’m sure of, it’s that we need more of them.

Now, I wouldn’t be completely honest if I didn’t share a little more about where I’m getting inspired, in addition to my son’s movie preferences, here’s where the theme of female superheroes is showing up for me:

  • Madonna’s new track “Joan of Arc” where she sings “I can be a superhero right now…I’m not Joan of Arc, not yet…”
  • The “superhero” pose showed up in Grey’s Anatomy (yes, I’m still watching this) as the women doctors prepare for a legendary brain surgery
  • Playing “superhero” in my house is also a daily activity, complete with capes and masks—I play Ironman, of course, as there are no suitable women’s superhero costumes for child’s play
  • Our own podium where I introduced 3 of the most radical women I’ve met over the last 12 months; and whom I referred to as not just role models, but corporate “superheroes”
  • And, recently I wrote a strategic insight on the need for more female role models (okay, superhero moms) in children’s movies, on the heels of Geena Davis’s message about the unconscious gender bias favouring men in children’s media.

To me, a superhero is someone who finds a new angle, breaks physical and mental boundaries and, as a result, forges a new path for us all to follow. A superhero is a rebel who finds their cause, their fight to win.

Here’s what you can do to forge your own path: listen to Amy Cuddy’s TED talk on how standing like a superhero for two minutes results in considerably better performance.

And then, keep following us as we locate more heroines like two of my personal role models, Janet Kestin & Nancy Vonk, who will be speaking at our upcoming luncheon in Waterloo. Janet and Nancy forged their own path in advertising (as the creative masterminds behind Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign) and challenged that working mothers can’t have it all (“Darling You Can’t Do Both”).

Unleash your potential. Stand tall and become a superhero by forging your own path.