My Story: Rúna Magnúsdóttir

by Rúna Magnúsdóttir

Some of the most pivotal moments in my life have occurred when everything seemed to crack — including me.

In 2024, a cycling accident shattered five bones in my body. But what it truly cracked open was something deeper: my pace, my patterns, my relationship to doing. It forced me to stop — not just physically, but spiritually. To ask: Who am I when I’m not achieving?

Long before that, it was the social boxes that fractured. Gender roles. Leadership stereotypes. The invisible rules of “success.”

I was 14 in 1975 when I watched my mother and thousands of Icelandic women flood the streets in Reykjavik in protest — demanding to be seen and valued just as men. Their courage lit a fire in me that never went out.

Five years later, I watched Vigdís Finnbogadóttir become the world’s first democratically elected female president — a cancer survivor who had undergone a mastectomy. When asked how she planned to lead a nation with only one breast, she replied: “I’m not planning to breastfeed the nation.” That moment taught me that bold leadership isn’t about appearances — it’s about presence and purpose.

Years later, that same fire led me to co-create the No More Boxes Movement, write three books, and launch BeBBY-AI — a conscious GPT-AI tool built not to predict you, but to reflect you.

Leading today means rewriting the rules — not on paper, but in presence. It means recognising how many roles and rituals are just peer pressure from dead people — patterns we never truly chose. And asking: Is this structure supporting the change I want to see?

Real leadership requires self-awareness. The courage to question the bubble we’re in. To step outside the box — and follow both heart and mind.

That’s not failure. That’s evolution.

We’re not here to fit in. We’re here to reshape the course — for all of us. ______ With hope, this is aligned with what you requested.

Only my best,

Runa