A Powerful Weekend

This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending the inaugural Power Up Weekend, hosted by Uneeka Jay of Powermommy Nation, which helps working mothers to be the “CEOs” of their families and households. You might recall that I was a guest on their Powerful U radio show a few months back. This weekend, I had the opportunity to share and learn with women (and a few men) from all over the country at Power Up Weekend — and powerful it was!

Now, if you couldn’t already tell from my Monday Morning Memos and my mild obsession with Oprah, I have always been into self-help, postive thoughts and affirmations, etc. Over the years, I’ve read and heard about a ton of theories about why we do the things we do and how we can go about producing positive changes in our lives. That’s why I found Power Up Weekend to be SO very powerful. The dynamic roster of speakers cracked me wide open with the truths they shared. Even if it was something that I had heard before or already knew and believed, they presented it in such a way that it hit me as if I was hearing it for the first time.

While much of this will be familiar to those of you who follow me on Twitter, I felt that it was only appropriate to share some of my top takeaways from Power Up Weekend.

ON OWNING YOUR POWER AS A WOMAN: “Women especially must introduce themselves with their first and last names.” – Helen Jonsen, formerly with Forbes and Working Mother magazines and now with Howdini. (Think about that for a minute. If you are in the office and say, “This is Richard Jackson and this is Shirley,” no matter what her title, you just demoted Shirley.)

ON WORK/LIFE “BALANCE”: “It’s not about balance; it’s about choices and decisions. [Therefore, you must] make choices that support the life you want to live.” – Cheryl Pullins of iMentorWomen.com. (Sidebar: Why did this instantly make me think of Jill Scott’s “Le BOOM Vent Suite” *lol*)

ON GETTING WHAT YOU WANT OUT OF LIFE:

• “Whatever you allow and tolerate is license for others to do the same.” - Cheryl Pullins
• “If you don’t like the terms of your life, re-negotiate!” and “If you don’t give yourself credit for what you’ve accomplished, it’s harder to accomplish the next thing.” – Shun Strickland

ON FASHION AND STYLE: “Think of your body as real estate. Fifty percent of what yu wear is a Jedi mind-trick… you get to tell people where to look!” and “Weekend doesn’t mean frumpy! ‘Just’ – as in, ‘I’m just going to the grocery store – is an excuse. Instead go for a curated casual look.” – Monica Barnett of Blueprint for Style

And this doesn’t even include content from the sessions I missed! (I’m particularly thinking of the vision boarding session with Dr. Nicole Cutts of the Vision Quest Chronicles.)

In addition to gaining all this knowledge, it was amazing to reconnect with Chanea Davis of BellaNOR Boutique (which I reviewed here); put faces to the Twitter handles of Ange Anglade, Monica Barnett, and Justice Fergie (who reaffirmed my reasons for blogging in her “Blogging for Balance” workshop); and make the acquaintance of Simply Z (who has her own event planning business), Aleea Slappy (who has her own greeting card company), Vanessa (founder of The Girlfriend Group), Tevyka (aka Miss Pretty as a Peacock), and TravelJonez, whose “WOW” factor is that there’s “nothing a tube of red lipstick can’t fix!”

So, there you have it. My Power Up Weekend. Simply fabulous!

— curvyceo

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