On 7 March 2024, Hands Across the Water hosted the #InspireInclusion Breakfast to honour International Women's Day (IWD) at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney. It was a beautiful morning to be inspired by our speakers Kirrily Dear, Chief Navigator of Inside A Bold Mind, and Claire Baines, CEO of Hands Across the Water, with Channel 7's Gemma Acton as our MC.
Sharing an experience together where we heard about courage, stepping outside our comfort zones and facing challenges, both personally or on behalf of others like Am and Mae Thiew, there was much to take in. Here are some of our highlights:
Expand your comfort zone. Kirrily talked about how she moved from the battle method of fighting the "big scary thing" to adopting the expansion method, where you approach that scary thing with curiosity and humility and in doing so learn to actually take in the uncomfortable to make it comfortable.
Ask 3 questions for courage. When you are in the self-doubt mountain range, here are three questions Kirrily asked herself: How will I bring this inside my comfort zone? What do I already know about this situation and my skills? How will I manage the risks?
Find one small way to move forward. Claire talked about Am and Mae Thiew and the lessons that we can take away from these two women who have faced adversity time and time again in their lives, is that we can all find a way to move forward. We can all take small steps to overcome obstacles and achieve great things or simply find joy again. Claire herself took a courageous step forward in speaking at this year's breakfast, not to mention the Half Ironman challenge she will be tackling in May. But we have to take that first step to show up, to identify what truly matters and start. Growth comes from the uncomfortable… And small steps.
We would like to thank Kirrily Dear, Claire Baines, and Gemma Acton for your inspiration, as well as our valued partner Narta, Julie Wallace for the florals, and Nerys Hancock from Clifton Creative Photography for the beautiful photos.
Finally, thank you to all our guests in attendance. It was great to connect with you, share this experience together, and #InspireInclusion.
We hope you will take that first step to Set A Personal Challenge for yourself in 2024.
Video courtesy of Vidzero
All photos courtesy of Clifton Creative Photography
