Redefining the Dynamic Woman: Beyond Doing It All

It has been 13 years since I started the Dynamic Women community. Lots has changed over the years, and now I think it's time to redefine what it means to be a dynamic woman because it's beyond doing it all.

The Outdated Image

Many people think a dynamic woman is someone who's doing it all. But that is such an outdated image of a strong woman. Why is it that a strong woman is the one who's hustling and doing all this stuff and filling her calendar and achieving? This is so outdated.

I'm not saying that ever was my definition of a dynamic woman, but it's not about achieving success by choosing self-sacrifice, self-abandonment, doing it all, holding it all together, and never needing help.

I want to question, very gently, my original intention, where it came from, and make sure that we have evolved, that this definition is super clear as we move into another year, where I still stand so strongly behind being dynamic.

What Dynamic Is Not

To go even further:

• It's not productivity
• It is not perfectionism
• It is definitely not martyrdom, sacrificing yourself

These definitions will quietly and very quickly exhaust women.

Why I Originally Started Dynamic Women

That's where I was at when I wanted to create the Dynamic Women community. At the time, it was even called Dynamic Women in Action, and I took "in action" off for multiple reasons. The main one is that just calling us Dynamic Women was enough. We didn't have to be in action.

As a co-active coach, I was taught about the “being” and the “doing”, and I wanted to make sure that we brought the being in. If we're always Dynamic Women in Action, in the doing, then we're never in the being.

After my daughter was a year old, I started to get back into networking. I was like, "Oh, this sucks." Maybe you feel that way now about networking. It was a lot of "Here's my business card, here's what I do, buy from me." It was very transactional and surface-level, and it was really starting to tick me off.

I thought, "Okay, I can be mad about this, or I can do something about it." So there I am, 2 AM, middle of the night, when I should be sleeping, thinking, "What can I do? I want to start my own group." Because if I can be bitter, or I can make things better, I'm going to make things better.

I thought, "Confident Women group." But then no, because some women will feel like they’re not confident and I don't want them to feel left out. I then feel I downloaded the word "dynamic," because I thought, "Well, dynamic sounds really powerful. It sounds like a catalyst for change."

The Power of Dynamic

When I dove deeper, this word was super powerful, but it didn't mean that the woman had to be powerful in a forceful, productive, hustle way.

Instead, what I found when I started each of my eight locations for the Dynamic Women community was that every time I started them and talked about what it meant to be dynamic, the words that I received from the women were polar opposites:

• She's a great listener / She's a great speaker
• She questions things / She has many ideas and answers
• She's creative / She's analytical
• She's outgoing / She holds space

On and on, we got the polar opposites. So basically, being dynamic was every positive attribute, skill, quality, and adjective ever possible to define who a woman was. I thought, "Great, this encompasses all women. All women get to be dynamic."

My Evolution

Over time, the pendulum has swung for me, I have been very extroverted, outgoing and powerful, and I do a lot of things, and while that is still me, now I’m more on the “being” side in a lot of my life. I have experienced the benefit of being and as I have struggled with postpartum depression, regular depression, grief and overwhelm with my nervous system getting wrecked and other health issues, I've realized, "Wow, the dynamic woman is not about the push and the hustle and all that. It's around so much more."

The Stages We Go Through

Let’s discuss some stages that maybe you have felt, that you've gone through:

Stage 1: Proving Ourselves

In the early stages of anything we're doing, or even in our 20s and such, or as a new mom, or just earlier on in things, we're at a stage of having to prove ourselves. The way we prove our worth is by doing more. We have to prove we are capable. We have to prove our competence.

Sometimes that means…

• We say yes to everything.
• We don't choose who we work with in our business.
• We end up doing it all ourselves.
• We work hours we don't want to work.
• We sometimes self-abandon because we're trying to prove our worth.
• We're not feeling enough.
• We don't get to be fully ourselves because we're just trying to prove that we belong.

Stage 2: Setting Boundaries

As we grow over time, we start to set some boundaries and guidelines and make more decisions because we're starting to feel like, "Oh yeah, now I know more of what I'm doing." We can set some of these boundaries or guidelines in our work, and we start to see where we fit in. Our expertise grows, our competence does too, and we start feeling better about ourselves as we do better.

We eventually get to a point where we're just like, "Screw all of that self-abandoning and doing all this stuff I don't want to do. I'm going to do what matters. I'm going to do the things in my life that are the priorities to me."

It's not like you didn't have priorities before, but it was really difficult to stick to them. It was hard to set guidelines, be firm about them, and follow through.

Stage 3: Living the Life You Want

Then we get to this point later in life, where we get to live the life we really want to live and build the business we really wish to build.

What I started to see in some of the ladies in the Dynamic Women community was that over the topics we had in monthly meetings, as they joined my coaching programs, as they worked one-on-one with me, they really were stepping into that higher place, that next stage. It was almost like they graduated. They fully came into who they were meant to be.

They took the maturity in their success and were able to say:

• I am not going to push myself for productivity. I'm going to go for results.
• I'm not going to go for perfection. I will put something out there and then make adjustments as we go.
• I'm not going to self-sacrifice, self-abandon, do martyrdom. Instead, I will choose what matters, and I'm going to value myself and honor myself.

This is how we go from proving to choosing.

Your Identity Shifts Too

Just as my clients and members were elevating and moving up, I was also elevating and moving up and making different choices for myself.

I want to give you permission to change: Different seasons of your life require different versions of you.

I'm going to say that again because I really want you to have this land: Different seasons of your life will require different versions of you.

It doesn't mean you have to change yourself because you're bad. It means you will let go of identities that once served you but no longer do.

I let go of:

• Perfectionism
• Hustle and self-sacrifice
• Doing it all myself, that solopreneur mentality

It's okay to have a different version of you. It's okay to let go of past versions of you, even if people are like, "But that's what I love about you." Well, you know what? That's not who you have to be moving forward.

You have permission to evolve without explanation.

That's the same for a dynamic woman. She gets to evolve with all those different qualities and attributes, those polar opposites. She gets to choose whatever comes in.

The New Dynamic Woman

I'm inviting you into this new version of the dynamic woman:

• She is releasing hustle as a badge of honor.
• She doesn't believe anymore that busyness is getting rewarded socially.
• She doesn't want people to say, "Oh, you're so busy.”

She doesn't want that. (I hate when people say "you're so busy," because I've worked so hard not to be, to be able to honour myself and my family.)

There is such a hidden cost to always pushing. You might be in a season where you can push, and that is working for you. Great. I'm speaking to the women who have pushed for so long or are now in a place where they have suffered from pushing so hard, from hustling, and they've gotten to that place of saying, "What now? I've checked off every box; I've had the success. What now? Why am I not happy?"

The dynamic woman gets to be happy.

Join Me for a Special Event

There's a special event I have coming up on January 29 in North Vancouver. I'm going to bring these next-level, evolved, redefined dynamic women together. I'm holding two events on the 29th. It’s called, The Wealth Shift: How to Grow Your Business to 6 Figures and Beyond.

Since you are a reader of the Dynamic Women content, I really want to reward you. There is no way I could have won five awards for the Dynamic Women podcast, that we could be in the top 2.5% of all podcasts, or had over 347 episodes without you.

If you're curious about this next stage, if you want to be in the energy of that room, get some learning I’m going to share, and meet other like-minded women who are ready for that as well, then I invite you to come.

The Wealth Shift is an intimate, in-person business workshop for women who are ready to grow their income without working harder or doing it alone. In this focused session, you’ll uncover the subtle shifts that separate businesses that plateau from those that scale. We’ll explore how successful women often mismeasure progress, leak time and opportunity, and rely too heavily on effort instead of structure, support, and alignment. You’ll leave with clarity around what’s actually driving income growth at the next level, where your current approach may be limiting you, and what needs to change to build sustainable wealth in your business and life.

Get Your Gifted Ticket (for in-person event in North Vancouver, BC - January 29)

Join the Waitlist (for online/virtual event)

What Replaces Hustle

What replaces hustle is:

• Intention and Discernment - The ability to really choose for yourself what will be best for you, to be selective about where you invest your time, your money, and your energy

She Chooses Wisely

This new dynamic woman, you can be her. She's going to choose to be dynamic, and in life she will choose wisely. She knows that the ability to choose is the power. Her choosing herself, her priorities, her values, what brings her satisfaction is not weakness; it's wisdom.

That's where the new dynamic woman is today.

Thank you so much for reading. I so appreciate you.

Until next time, stay dynamic!