Designing Your Life for Women is a hands-on workshop retreat that helps you learn and use the Life Design© method, popularized by the New York Times bestseller Designing Your Life, How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. You will leave with mindful awareness of where you are right now, new designs for balance and energy, new ways to frame problems you’ve been trying to solve for a while, insights on how to hone your decision making, and three possible future paths for your life.
We will:
Best of all, you will do this work in a supportive community of women with similar goals.
Gwyn Erwin attended Designing Your Life for Women in May of 2018. Here, in her own words, is her account of the experience… My hopes for the Designing Your Life for Women Workshop were high — my expectations, cautious. I…
Patty Woods and Stacie Hagenbaugh, DYL for Women alumnae from the summer of 2017, have taken life design back to the Smith campus, and are sharing what they learned at the workshop with their students. Take a look at the…
“When you rest in mindful awareness, you are participating intimately in life as it is unfolding, seeing what happens, experimenting, allowing the original beauty and mystery of the world and of yourself to speak to you…” 1 In our…
Designing Your Life Workshop Leader
I am the Managing Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University, where I teach Product Design, Mechanical Engineering, and “Designing Your Life”. I have 15 years of experience developing electromechanical and software products, and proudly hold five patents. I consult with Silicon Valley companies, teach design thinking, conduct ethnographic research, and develop product strategies and concepts. My experience includes roles as Sr. Product Manager at Arena Solutions, Sr. Manager of Technical Programs at D2M, Inc, Manager of Mechanical Engineering at nLighten Technologies and Mechanical Engineer at Cardica. I am the co- creator of “Designing Your Life for Women” and a passionate advocate for design thinking as a methodology to empower social change.
Designing Your Life Workshop Leader
I have dedicated the last 35 years of my career to catalyzing individual and business transformation and growth. I have held executive positions at Hewlett Packard, Gap Inc., Deloitte, Yahoo! and BTS, where I have led large scale business changes, cultural renewal, employee engagement, leadership development, and global marketing services in the computer systems industry. I am an adjunct professor at Antioch University, teaching Women and Leadership, and I’ve taught Designing Your Life at Stanford, in companies and women’s retreats. I am a regular speaker, consultant, and author on leadership development. My Odyssey Plan for the next five years is all about empowering women to change the world!
Instructor and Owner Holistic Connections
As the founder of Holistic Connections, Inc., I have designed and taught healing workshops on forgiveness, emotional health, and all aspects of Kundalini Yoga. Through my training with some of the most highly skilled teachers on conscious living, including Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, PhD, of the Kundalini Yoga tradition and Leslie Hershberger, M.A., of the Enneagram of the Narrative Tradition, I’ve learned how to enable true healing to occur. My practice areas include: the Yoga of Authentic Relationships, Mind and Meditation, Stress and Vitality, Somatic Experiencing, the Enneagram, and the Emotional Polarity Technique. I enjoy my role in the Designing Your Life for Women workshop where we create a space for participants to unwind, and reveal a deeper awareness of themselves.
You will find women of all ages, backgrounds and career experiences participating in this retreat. Their common goal is to design a life and career with more joy, purpose and fulfillment. And they are usually at some kind of crossroad in their life, like starting their first job, or making a mid-career change, or deciding whether to leave or re-enter the workforce, or designing their retirement. The diverse group of women really brings different perspectives which makes the collaboration and community work so well.
Many women who come to our retreat have read Designing Your Life – How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life and want to do the exercises and new designs for their life in collaboration with others. It’s especially effective to be in a room with women you don’t know, as they have no history or preconceptions about you, and they have no stake in your decisions, unlike family and friends. So they can hear you and propose possibilities for you in a new and refreshing way. We work very hard to build collaboration and community in the first 30 minutes!
Women have told us its helpful to read the book in advance, and others have said they like doing the workshop first and then read the book. It’s a personal learning preference, not a requirement to read the book in advance of attending the retreat.
Check out our Workshop & Retreats page to learn more about both programs.
We include breakfast and lunch and a wine and cheese reception on Saturday, and breakfast on Sunday. We end before lunch on Sunday and you are responsible for your own dinners. We are happy to help you with recommendations and making arrangements for people who want to eat dinner together Saturday night.
You are responsible for securing your own lodging. Please see the Eventbrite registration pages for information about hotel options near each venue. You can also check travel sites, AirBnB and VRBO to find other options.
Yes, we provide a 10% discount for alumnae friends and family, for a total price of $720 (Your favorite alum will give you the promotion code.). We also provide a 50% discount to students and veterans, as well as a few scholarships. Please contact us to learn more.
We do not refund your money if you cancel, so please make sure you are able to make the date you have selected. If something unforeseen happens, please contact us about your situation, and we will see if we can transfer your registration to another workshop if one is available.