Celebrating International Womens’ Day last week brought to mind the many women I know doing a multitude of amazing stuff every single day….. raising kids, supporting partners, supporting relatives with disability, tending to aging relatives, bouncing back from various crises and challenges, contributing in paid work roles, building businesses, studying to transition to other careers, keeping friendships alive with listening and simple acts of kindness, fitting in fitness, sustaining pets, caring about their communities, listening to their hearts and knowing their why behind their choices.

And one thing common to all women is that a healthy dose of self-care is necessary if we are to sustain our valuable leadership and contributions in our busy lives.

This year,  NOW Leadership Inc  partnered with Stretton Connect to celebrate IWD19 on 8th March with a luncheon event that highlighted three successful business women from the northern suburbs of Adelaide – Vanessa Bamford, Louise Nobes and Monika Fiebig.

Focussing here on just one of these amazing women… Monika is the managing director and owner of Monika’s Organics, and at the event she shared her story of determined success in building her organic produce business over the past two decades.  It was brilliant to hear how having a very clear why, plenty of persistence, willingness to ask and learn in what she found to be a male dominated industry, and a strong drive to succeed have all been assets in growing her business.

In relation to the IWD19 theme “Balance for Better” Monika advised the women at the event to commit to regular self-care. She told us about a handy acronym – “NEWSTAR” –  that she came across, which highlights various ways we can pursue self care:-

N….nutrition

E…..exercise

W….water

S…..sunshine

T…..temperance

A…..air

R…..rest

This list is a great reminder that self-care can be about taking simple actions that nurture us, at low cost and without special equipment.

Monika’s tips were a great prelude to the mini workshop I then facilitated where we kept the conversation going about how we can experience more of the ever-elusive Balance, and considered some further tools and strategies that can help with this in our busy lives.

So in the spirit of International Womens’ Day, Monika and I encourage each woman reading this to pursue success in whatever it is you are focussing on – and to make it sustainable by including some self-care elements every day.

You can follow Monika’s Organics on Facebook for more information and updates about her nutritious farming produce, and connect with Heart Choice Enterprises on Facebook too, where the focus is on ‘Making Life Do-able’.