If you hold up two fingers, that’s the number of times I didn't finish a multi-day hike in my eight years of solo hiking. Not bad, eh? One resulted in hitching a ride off the mountain with a rescue helicopter, and more recently with my partner living his best Tokyo Drift fantasy, driving an hour down a gravel road to pick me up near the Hawke’s Bay border. How he made it there with his bumper intact is beyond me!

As a maximiser, there's always a ‘how can I go bigger’ itch that sits in the periphery. Maybe it stems from knowing that growing old isn't a given, or the longer my ‘someday’ list lives in that Excel document, the less chance it will ever happen. The goal was never to get to the bottom of the list, I just wanted to keep making memories every year.

I'm two months deep into the Growing Greatness leadership program at work. It's facilitated by Anne Elder-Knight, a woman I described to my GM as unapologetically unfiltered. Love that for her. Our last session covered self-talk, self-care and how you show up for yourself. Three things I haven't given much thought of lately. I went home and looked at myself in the mirror. I was tired. There were bags under my eyes, shoulders slumped and I finally noticed the coffee stain from morning tea. As someone who always relied on her ‘Asian youthfulness’, I was surprised at how much I had aged.

I had two choices: Put it in the “too hard” basket or do something I probably don't do enough of - ask for help.

So, I asked my partner Aaron if we could go away for a weekend. More importantly, to please organise it all. I'm definitely the planner in our relationship (and friend group) and bloody good at it too, but this time, I wanted someone to take care of me. The rule was I had to let him do it his way. It wasn't easy, I continually found myself trying to add activities. Could we fit in a short walk before the hot pools? Or, can we check out that light exhibition we missed last time? Aaron would give me the look, just long enough for me to realise I was doing it again, you know, making myself busy when what I had asked for and needed was rest.

Let me tell you, he did so good. As a woman in her forties (let's not even get started with my peri-menopause hormones), there's something so incredibly sexy when a man plans your date night. Just tell me what I need to pack, let's eat delicious food and all is good with me. He really showed up for me that weekend, and now I'm figuring out how I choose to show up for myself. I've started writing a list, because we all know maximisers love a good list!

A river flows the same whether you run or walk through it. The maximiser in me asks, “Why can't you just fly over it?” If there's one thing I've learned from my years of solo hiking, it's that you don’t always need to charge ahead. Sometimes the real win is choosing the slower route. Showing up for myself can be as simple as asking for what I need. Maybe growing greatness isn’t about flying over the river at all, it's giving myself permission to slow down and enjoy the view.