Women welcome at workshop

Mary Sharp knows about life's highs and lows.
She knows the extremes of success and - let's not call it failure, let's think unrealised potential or loss of direction, because she's been there.
Her highs-and-lows include being a businesswoman, a near-bankrupt trying to recoup and repay, a top real estate agent and, more recently, a mentor for others trying to access "the power within to be all they can be".
Mrs Sharp says she did it with help from the spirit world combined with a good dose of business ambition.
In little over a decade the former Kamo High School girl who grew up in Whau Valley as Mary Jonas has been seriously wealthy, seriously in debt, and journeyed back to fairly seriously wealthy.
But she didn't simply arrive back at a point of financial comfort. She got there by hard graft and a gift for seeing opportunity. Coupled with a gift for "seeing".
Ten years ago a sceptical Mrs Sharp - "I was the biggest sceptic ever" - was taken to a clairvoyant, which led her to creating a business with spirit, you might say.
Her company now runs seminars and workshops teaching people looking to boost their personal success quotient how to tap into a psychic realm.
But she cuts out the middle mind.
"Women can connect with the spirit themselves. That's what I want them to know. I help people discover how to utilise the power of the mind and the power of the spirit, to understand that that's how you can be the best you can possibly be.
"Although I'm an international trainer and a motivational speaker, that's where I step outside the mould."
Calling on the spirit is just one side of connecting with success, Mrs Sharp says. She stresses that she wants to help women build, not read, a future.
"I don't do a vaudeville act. I'm not going to stand there and pick out someone in the audience and tell them I see someone standing behind them ..."
While anyone is welcome, she targets mainly women.
It's a sad fact, she says, that New Zealand has the western world's lowest ratio of women in top executive positions or on boards.
The biggest block to more women breaking through is that old glass ceiling.
But the good thing is that women can see through to where they aim to be, she says.
Using her blend of business nous and spirit world guidance, women can crack the ceiling.
She'll be back in her hometown on Tuesday night at Forum North, with a full-day workshop the next day.
In keeping with helping weave the power of the mind with the power of the spirit, she'll share the workshop with Auckland clairvoyant Lynley Shewiery.