I am an Independent Woman . .

Today’s is international women’s day. What does it mean? Or more importantly what does it mean to you? Do you look back at the women that have fought for our rights and contributed to the world? The women that have endeavored across various fields to make our world a better place. So that we can work, vote, and have the right to choose our life. Do we thank our mothers for empowering us to make our decisions. Or do we reflect on how we, ourselves are setting an example, not by what we say, but by what we do? How do we choose to live our life? With that in mind, I wanted to pause and really hone in on this and take this opportunity to reflect on my independence, as a woman on Women’s Day. Independence, be it emotional, financial etc gives us options and allows us to make better decisions.

So, lets look at some ways we empower ourselves as women. Watching a movie alone, taking yourself to dinner, with or without a book, reading books, extra points for regularly reading or reading at least once or twice a week. When is the last time you took a cooking class, photography class or a Artificial Intelligence, course, in my case! The AI course on Coursea by Stanford professor Andrew Ng is my new thing right now.  This is my newest endeavor and I’m so excited. First, the chance to learn from the authority on AI, second, the course is available on-demand so I can squeeze it into my schedule and third it’s FREE! MOOG has education accessible to us all which makes it easy to follow our passion, keep up with topics of interest and add some spice to our cocktail conversation.  oh and lastly, according to Mark Cuban, “if you are not into Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning – whatever you’re doing if you don’t understand it – learn it.  Because otherwise, you’re going to be a dinosaur within 3 years” Anyway, I digress.

Another suggestion is traveling alone. I decided to do this for the first time over Thanksgiving 2015. I had travelled solo for work many times, but this was for vacation. I was anxious, actually, I was not prepared for the trip at all. I had planned to go to Turkey, but two days prior, there was an ariel bombing and I decided against it, well my parents and friends convinced me otherwise. So, I switched my destination from Istanbul to Panama City and thus began my first solo trip. I have to say I pretended I was fine on many occasions, but I’d worry what other people were thinking of me, travelling alone, eating alone, vacationing alone! Panama City, as you can tell from the pictures was amazing, from the rainforest, to the canal, the wildlife, the nightlife, the people, the food!  I scuba-dived, chilled out on the glorious, white, sandy private beaches.  Such pure rapturous pleasure! It was a four-day trip and every day was packed. I thought I wanted to be efficient with my time, which was true, but the reality was I was uncomfortable just being in the moment by myself. That is another conversation, but as I travelled more that year and the following year, and so much changed for the better

I am proud of the woman I am today because of my experiences which made me who I am. Some experiences have been more challenges than others, but each experience is valuable. It created memories that helped me grow, that helped discern my preferences. Each memory or experience makes us who are we and we are all unique individuals and when I think about the special men (without them I would not be who I am) and women in my life they have contributed so much to my growth. I want to thank those people.  They know who they are because I am privileged to often receiporate advice, laughter or a listening ear to the when they need it.  In helping others with relationship, career, finance, lifestyle and I draw on my experiences and weave a colorful story with the advice of the moment.  Women of all shapes, sizes, background are all valuable, we all have something worthwhile to contribute to others in this life and this our moment to share. By sharing we grow, we giving love, we love, we grow together as men and women. I want to state that although it is women’s day and however, you choose to celebrate this special day, please don’t forget the wonderful men in your life that love, support, women and help make your day magical! One more thing, before I close my blog post, don’t forget to feed your tribe, feed it with care and love and it will blossom into the beautiful flower, even more beautiful than you had ever imagined.  Have an amazing day and until the next time!