USING WELLNESS TO TRANSFORM
This article is adapted from a keynote speech delivered by the writer at the recently held, Women in Management: New Year Conference. At the event, the writer spoke on the transformative power of wellness in leadership, drawing from her personal journey as a mother, entrepreneur, and wellness advocate. The writer also explored how intentional living, physical strength, and mental resilience shape the way women lead, make decisions, and show up across every role they play.
Why Being Well Is a Leadership Skill
For many women, leadership does not begin in boardrooms or titles. It begins quietly, in the choices we make every day while balancing careers, families, expectations, and ambition, often all at once. The way we show up in these roles is deeply connected to one fundamental truth: how well we are. This is why wellness is not a side conversation to leadership. It is the foundation of it.
My understanding of wellness did not come from theory or trend. It came from lived experience, and context matters. I grew up in a privileged environment, with access to both local and international education, followed by undergraduate and postgraduate studies in business. I was surrounded by opportunity, support, and stability. I share this not to highlight comfort, but responsibility. Because privilege does not exempt us from the work of becoming who we truly are. No matter who your family is, who your partner is, or what doors are open to you, it is critical, especially as women, that we build something uniquely our own. Without that internal strength, even the most comfortable lives can feel unfulfilled. For a long time, my identity was defined by roles. I was someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, and someone’s mother. Roles I was proud of, yet I felt a void. A quiet sense that I needed a purpose beyond routine, beyond responsibility, beyond what was expected of me.
That desire led me to build my own business from the ground up, Gaia Skin Naturals, a natural and organic skincare brand closely aligned with my values. The brand grew rapidly over seven years and gained island-wide recognition. While I spearheaded operations, I was also supported by my family. I had safety nets. I had reassurance. And although I was leading, I wasn’t yet relying entirely on myself. My leadership had been shaped by comfort. Then COVID-19 happened. In the first year of the pandemic, I made the difficult decision to wind the business down. Practically, it was the right call. Emotionally, it was devastating. Overnight, I felt stripped back to being “someone’s someone” again. I felt overwhelmed, unseen, unaccomplished, emotions many women quietly carry at different stages of life.
As my children grew and my husband continued to excel in his career, I felt invisible in the effort it took to hold everything together. That emotional exhaustion did not stay emotional for long. It manifested physically: low energy, mental fatigue, weight gain, hormonal imbalance, and unexplained headaches.
That was the moment I realised something powerful: when we neglect ourselves in the pursuit of managing everything else, our bodies and minds eventually force us to listen.
Wellness stopped being optional. I had always been active, and I assumed that meant I was healthy. I was wrong. At that point in my life, I didn’t want a dramatic transformation. I wanted relief. I wanted clarity. I wanted direction. I wanted to feel like myself again, beyond daily chores and obligations. Searching for answers, I enrolled in a personal development programme that asked me to confront hard questions: Who am I beyond my roles? What truly matters to me? What kind of life do I want to live? Without hesitation, my top priority was health. I can’t fully explain why, but instinctively, I knew that without health, no success is sustainable. As the saying goes, when there is no health, there is no wealth.
Although I trained consistently, even during lockdowns, my body hit a plateau. Despite doing everything that appeared “right,” nothing was changing. That frustration forced me to question everything I thought I knew about fitness. Through research and lived experience, I learned a hard truth: much of the fitness industry prioritises quick fixes and aesthetics over sustainability, mental resilience, and long-term wellbeing. These deeper conversations are often avoided because they require commitment, patience, and accountability.
Eventually, I found the right guidance, and everything changed. I did things I had never done before. Strenuous training. Mental discipline. Consistency. Most importantly, I stopped chasing goals and started building habits. Building habits when convenience was easily accessible was not easy. Repeating the same training sessions, committing to disciplined nutrition, and staying consistent amid family obligations, social pressures, and daily distractions required resilience and patience. But with repetition, something shifted. I wasn’t just changing my body; I was rewiring my mindset. Physical strength built mental resilience. Discipline created clarity under pressure. Movement became a tool for emotional regulation. I became someone who could lead with presence, empathy, and conviction, and I was able to hold space for others while navigating complexity calmly.
Science supports this experience. Skeletal muscle is now recognised as a key organ for longevity. Strong, functional muscle improves metabolic health, insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular function, bone density, and reduces inflammation. For women managing teams, households, and expectations, movement becomes an act of self-leadership.
Through discipline, I found clarity.
Through consistency, I found confidence.
Through physical strength, I discovered mental strength.
Strength training gave me a confidence I had never gained through privilege or professional milestones. Today, I am no longer reliant on external support to carry me forward. I rely on my mind, my body, and the systems I have built to support my goals. That shift changed not only how I look or feel, but how I lead. And that builds character.
The character of a true leader. This personal transformation also gave birth to Raise The Bar. As someone who once struggled with severe stage fright, I could never have imagined hosting a podcast featuring elite coaches and athletes from Sri Lanka and around the world. The old version of me would have never dared.
Raise The Bar began when I started documenting my own fitness journey on social media, the progress, the struggles, the discipline, simply to stay accountable. A childhood friend noticed my consistency and reached out, asking me to curate a fitness column. That became the foundation of Raise The Bar, followed by the podcast series.
I felt compelled to tell the truth about fitness, to bust myths, remove gatekeeping, and spotlight coaches and athletes who prioritised sustainability over shortcuts. After more than 40 interviews, one truth emerged repeatedly: wellness builds more than bodies. It builds resilience, clarity, emotional control, and the ability to function under pressure, qualities essential to leadership.
Wellness is not a luxury. It is not something we do in our spare time. It is not something we earn after success. Wellness is how we live. It is how intentionally we plan our days, fuel our bodies, manage stress, and allocate energy. It is not just what we do for one hour in the gym; it is what we do in the remaining 23 hours.
In a world driven by convenience and unhealthy consumption, intentional living becomes a leadership choice. That is why we must stop obsessing over goals and start building habits. Goals are outcomes. Habits are systems. A lifestyle is built on what we repeat, not what we occasionally plan. When women commit to wellness as a way of life, the impact is undeniable. We lead with presence. We make decisions with clarity. We inspire without trying. If there is something you have been scared to start, a version of yourself you’ve been quietly imagining, know this: it is never too late.
Start with your health. Start with your mind. Start with one habit. Because when women are well, they don’t simply manage responsibilities or hold titles, they set the tone for the environments they are part of. Their energy shapes households, teams, and organisations. The way they regulate stress, make decisions, communicate under pressure, and show up consistently becomes a cultural blueprint for those around them. Wellness allows women to lead with presence rather than exhaustion, with clarity rather than reaction, and with confidence rather than self-doubt.
Well women inspire not through perfection, but through example. When a woman prioritises her wellbeing, she gives others permission to do the same. She normalises boundaries, discipline, and self-respect. She becomes a living demonstration that strength and softness can coexist, that ambition does not require burnout, and leadership does not require self-sacrifice at the cost of health.
And from that place, real transformation happens. Women who are well lead lives rooted in intention. They make choices aligned with values, not urgency. They build systems that support longevity rather than short-term wins. They move through life with resilience, adaptability, and purpose. In doing so, they don’t just lead teams or families, they transform the way leadership itself is experienced, redefining success as something sustainable, human, and deeply impactful.
