Rimbey Women’s Conference attracts good crowd

Her infectious smile, vivacious manner and slightly offbeat way of interacting with her audience proved to be a winning combination for the keynote speaker of this year’s Rimbey’s Women’s Conference.

“Walk the talk. It’s the little steps that are important,” Karen Driedger told the crowd of ladies who filled the community centre.

Driedger, whose talk titled Strut Your Stuff included plenty of interaction with the audience, owns Fourward Thinking, a service based company from Calgary which provides creative and professional expertise in learning, living, leadership and leisure.

The slender, curly haired blonde who led the audience through an imaginary journey of life by creating lots of word pictures making visualization relatively easy elicited more than a few chuckles when she noted many people who have finished their career believe, “I’m retired, I should be happy.”

Her suggestion to take a day off from being an adult provided food for thought especially when she emphasized the point by running furiously like a child around a table full of somewhat surprised onlookers.

Taking an optimism break was another idea Driedger floated to the crowd.

“Just think of all the joy you can offer to others if you take such a break,” she said.

At one point during her presentation Driedger had the women waving their arms in a figure eight, first in one direction and then in the other. She also had them close one nostril and breath through the other and then reverse the practice. The point of such exercises, she explained, is to balance the brain so both sides are equally active.

“Standing on your head also works,” she said, however, no one in the audience was ready to comply to that suggestion.

The power of creativity is huge, she noted, encouraging the women to ‘strut their stuff’ and find their passion.

“Be creative, that is strutting our stuff,” she said. “Figure out how you can be in that moment more often.”

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity,” she said, concluding her presentation with a rock ‘n roll tune that quickly had her audience moving to the beat.

“Blow them away with who you really are,” she said. “Smile frequently and expand your perspective. By expanding your perspective you expand your possibilities until you see something that you were unable to see before.”