I Introduced My Inner Critic to a Room Full of Strangers. Here's What Happened.

By Tricia Scott.

One extraordinary day with Moxie at Jardines de Palerm in Ibiza showed me what it means to live by design — not default. I wasn't prepared for how much I needed it.

It is 7:30am and I am standing on an elevated deck somewhere above the Mediterranean Sea. The horizon hasn't quite made up its mind — the water and the cloudless sky have blurred into a single wash of turquoise blue. Candles and incense are lit, their scent drifting over us as a sound bath pulls us slowly, gently, into ourselves. By the time the yoga is over, I am already somewhere I didn't expect to be: open.

That is the particular alchemy of the Moxie Reset. And it begins before you even land in Ibiza.

The Programme

The premise behind Moxie is subtly radical: most of us aren't living by design. We're living by default — reactive, overstretched, running on whatever the day throws at us. (I cannot tell you how precisely that landed. The accuracy of it.) Founders Sue Stoneman and Michael Faulkner built Moxie to interrupt exactly that: a 90-day programme combining coaching, AI tools, and immersive retreats for ambitious people who know exactly what they're capable of but have somehow lost the thread of what they actually want.

You can enter the Moxie world at whatever level feels right — from membership and the one-day Reset all the way through to the full 90-day programme. I came via the retreat, and before I arrived I completed the Moxie Behaviour Index — a detailed personal assessment that benchmarks who you are right now. That data shaped a pre-retreat coaching session, informed the day itself, and for those who go deeper, powers the AI coach that walks alongside you for the 90 days that follow.

The retreat isn't the destination.

It's the ignition.

The Day

The one-day Ibiza Reset is a compressed version of Moxie's signature five-day retreat, held at the Jardines de Palerm — a renovated 17th-century finca nestled in the foothills of Sa Talaia. Every detail feels intentional here: the staff are discreet and genuinely warm, the various infinity pools reveal themselves like beautiful secrets around each corner, and the elevated yoga deck made a 7am sunrise start not just bearable but the kind of thing I'll be telling people about for years.

After yoga and a sound bath so deeply relaxing that I think I genuinely left my body for a moment (I am not being dramatic — ask anyone who was there), we moved into the coaching work. And this is where Moxie earns its reputation.

Having Michael, one of the founders, in the room alongside our coach Trevor — who is multi-skilled in ways that keep revealing themselves — gave the day an extra dimension. These aren't people delivering a programme. They're people who live it.

The first session had us excavating our biggest dreams — the ones we've been carrying around but rarely examine, rarely say out loud. That alone would have been enough. But then came the inner saboteur.

Mine is called The Matron. She's bossy, she's relentless, and she is, frankly, A LOT. Giving her a name and a personality — and then introducing her, out loud, to a room full of strangers — was one of the more challenging things I've done in recent memory. (You know that moment when the story you've been telling yourself in private suddenly sounds completely different out loud? That. Exactly that.) There was a quality of honesty in that room that you don't often encounter. Everyone felt it.

But what Moxie understood — and made sure we did too — was that The Matron isn't just a bossy obstacle. She's also been keeping me safe. That inner critic, that voice of doubt: it has a protective function. Once you understand that, you can stop fighting it and start a conversation with it instead. When you do that, it gets quieter.

Remarkably quickly.

The final session of the day was the one I keep returning to. We each wrote down something we wanted to leave behind — a fear, a pattern, an old story about ourselves — and dissolved the paper in water. It sounds simple. In practice, in that stunning space, with those people, after that day, it was one of the most profound things I have ever done.

What Stayed

I said yes to this trip immediately. Retreat. Reset. Ibiza. A stunning finca. I didn't need much convincing. But what I understood only once I arrived was that saying yes to this trip was actually saying yes to myself — something I now realise I don't do nearly enough. (The timing, it turns out, was not accidental. It never is.)

The food was the kind you eat slowly — fresh, beautifully prepared, as though someone had given thought to what a woman who'd spent the morning doing emotional excavation actually needed. The party that closed the evening — drinks, a DJ, and a gathering of Ibiza's creative and business community — was the perfect exhale. After a day of going that far inward, stepping back into the world felt like stepping into it differently.

Lighter. More aligned.

Two weeks on, The Matron still shows up. She just doesn't get to chair the meetings anymore — and I am a little kinder to her, and to myself.

If a single day can do this, five days with Moxie might just change your life.

To discover more and find your Moxie visit .https://www.mymoxie.co.uk/ 

Photography credit: Alex Garcia @alexgarciaok

Tricia Scott is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Female CEO — a global platform, magazine, and community dedicated to helping women build confident, aligned, powerful businesses.

A startup mentor and multi-company director, she’s spent the past decade helping women move from overwhelmed and isolated to empowered and intentional.

Most days, she’s juggling her MacBook, her next big idea, and a very necessary caffeine supply. Connect with her at thefemaleceo.com.