Living Your Purpose Now

Over the next week I’m going to highlight extraordinary people who have not only found their purpose in life but are also living it daily. I’m going to do a series of guest posts touching this matter and finish it with my own post on how I found my purpose. First up is:

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Di Westaway, founder of Wild Women On Top, has turned her passion for mountain climbing and empowering women into her life, her business and her career. Check out her blog: http://www.wildwomenontop.com/culture/blog

Ten years ago I found myself at 20,000 feet on the edge of the highest mountain in the southern hemisphere, struggling for breath, and wondering what the hell I was doing. I realised that I was ill prepared for this World Class Trekking peak of Mt Aconcagua, Argentina, 6,962m.

When I set out for this trip, I’d never climbed anything before. I had never even been in a tent. But, the idea of summiting the highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere captured my imagination and it changed my life. I really needed a challenging goal to motivate me to stay fit and healthy, and this was it!

I had thought I had found a new passion for climbing mountains. When I returned, I knew I was wrong. My new passion was empowering teams of women to be fit enough to safely experience awesome wilderness challenges.

I began Wild Women On Top, and my passion became my life, my career and my business.

Confucius said ‘Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’.

I have done this.

Throughout the last ten years, Wild Women On Top has grown exponentially, now training around 150 women around Sydney to achieve amazing adventure fitness goals. I have the opportunity to do ‘interesting things with interesting people while adding value’, travel internationally, have amazing adventures, and fulfil my philanthropic interests through the Wild Women On Top Sydney Coastrek, a 50-100km team challenge which has raised nearly a million dollars for The Fred Hollows Foundation.

Eight years after our failure on Mt Aconcagua, we finally achieved success. Wild Women on Top motivated and trained a team of women for this World Class Trek using Trek Training. We chose an itinerary guided by World Expeditions and this time we were prepared. It took eight years of hard work, passion, commitment and lessons learned to build up the skills to earn this summit. On January 12, 2008, our team of Wild Women on Top finally stood on top of the highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere, Mt Aconcagua, nearly 7,000m high!

In the words of Sir Edmund Hillary: “It is not the mountain we conquer, it is ourselves.”

Through our passion and preparation, we conquered ourselves.

My passion has become about empowering women to achieve extraordinary goals, and Wild Women On Top does exactly that. It gives women the opportunity to connect with other, like-minded individuals and achieve dreams they never thought possible.

And through training them, I have empowered myself.