Walking down the corridor to the safety of an elevator, she was taunted by fans about how the Super Bowl game ended and out came the now famous words about not being able to throw a ball and catch it at the same time.

Maybe it was the shame of losing (someone had to), maybe it was the tension of hearing her husband was not as good as Eli (Manning that is), and maybe it was the frustration of expectations (too many).

In any case, why did what she said go viral?

Was it the use of an expletive that is as common today as saying “how are you”? Was it the fact that she is a tall, well-known model?  Was it that she was saying what some were already thinking?

We are a nation of sound bites. We love to jump on bandwagons when someone just “blurts it out”. We really don’t care what the words are about; we love to point fingers and snicker.

And yet, there is more!

The day of the Super Bowl was the final day of a GUTSY WOMEN LEADERSHIP RETREAT. Women leaders from all manner of business were gathered together to get to higher levels of awareness about how to perform their work roles even better.

What became apparent is that these women have learned to juggle multiple areas of life with elegance and determination.

They play in the Super Bowl everyday.

Hey Gisele, think about this: most women in leadership positions have already learned to “throw the ##//*6^!! ball and catch it at the same time” and do a darn good job of it. So, maybe part of football training camp would be to let the guys spend a day or two in the typical world of a woman leader and learn to turn this trick.

Diana, sitting across the circle from Sue is a nurse. How could it be that she had the same ankle injury with that big, long medical name, a year ago? And she was also given the same “careful forever” diagnosis.

And then the room began to light up.

Diana told how she let her GUTSY side take over as she searched for alternative ways to get that busted ankle better. She gave Sue the name of a physical therapist, someone willing to take calculated risks, putting her in a spinning class that helped this never to be better ankle become better than ever.

Then Vera talked about her dream, a long term dream to make a garden grow. Well, not just a garden; a blighted district filled with vacant lots that she passed every day going to her “day job”. She spoke with strength and conviction and someone sitting near her knew farmers not far from that very area, organic farmers to top it off, who could be contacted to give their time and advice.

A big dream, a picture painted that again made the room light up as these two connected.

Then there was the engineer, a woman so used to being the only one on her work team with men that she stayed quiet at the beginning of the GUTSY WOMEN WEEK END out of pure conditioning. That was until an educator with brilliant ideas for making children more delighted with real learning rather than studying for test scores spoke up. They could collaborate; both with visions of how to do it differently.

The electrical engineer and the educator also shot the room full of light.

Women are natural connectors, natural networkers, natural gatherers.

Here is the recipe: create a circle of conscious females who know this is their time to make a difference, give them the safe space to dig deeply into their hopes and dreams and then they all become electricians making things fit together without competing or judging.

By Sunday morning the links and connections were all over the room making the world brighter because of the possibilities.

For the love of money!

One of the best leadership teachers in any era comes in the form of paper or metal.

We love it, hate it, covet it, or disdain it.

Our romance with money belongs in every leadership development program on the planet.

Ever hear the expression “You can never be too thin or too rich”? First, too thin is called anorexia and you can die from that. Too rich, question is what does the word really mean?

Rich in cold, hard cash, rich in love, rich in friends, rich in _________. You fill in the blank.

Money is so much more than a means of exchange for goods and services. It determines how we relate to family, friends, colleagues. Money can cause dissonance or harmony, it can make us serape or angry, and it can be a dream fulfiller or a dream destroyer.

New research, especially the work of Dan Ariely, whose book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”, delves into the behavioral aspects of why we buy, or hoard, or share; how we decide what we prefer and how money shapes relationships. This is eye opening information as we continue to learn in this time of economically induced stress (at least for so many of us).

The hidden aspects of money are fascinating to bring to the surface. And in this year of per-election presidential debates the theme of money is front and center. Mitt Romney is proud of making a bundle, Ron Paul is okay with much less, Newt Gingrich confuses us with where he got his money, and Rick Santorum has to make sure he has enough for his family of nine.

This is a good time to take stock personally. One of the most important areas for leadership training is money education. Start by understanding the subtle (or overt) messages that reverberated in your family as you were growing up. Think back about how power games around money were played.

Were decisions shared about what to buy or did one person have all the say?

Was there money for vacations, luxuries, or surprises?

Start to observe your reactions to partners, parents, co-workers, bosses, and children. Even pay attention to your thoughts at the gas station and the super market.

What is your tale about money? Careful the tale you tell, that is the magic spell!

Off to the office, you battle the traffic, thinking about how to tell your rebel employee that there have been complaints about his behavior.

You dread the meeting and yet know it can’t wait.

Pulling into the parking lot you feel a wave of frustration, seeing that someone has parked in your reserved spot and the rain is now coming down in buckets. Glad there is an umbrella on the back seat, you make a run for it hugging folders from last night’s homework close to your chest.

The demands for your time never stop.

By noon, it feels like this Monday has been a month long and you start to wonder what it’s all about, why you work so hard and why there are so many demands on you that just don’t stop. Then you take a deep breath and realize,

“Ah, this is called BLUE MONDAY”.

This Monday, at the end of January, has been dubbed the most depressing day of the year, and you’re in the thick of it!

Now, step back and take a minute.

How many other Mondays do you feel depleted, discouraged, depressed?

This is a perfect time to take a cup of green tea, sit quietly for, oh, five minutes or so and quantify the amount of time you take care, really take care of yourself.

In research for my book “GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change” I was shocked that women STILL take so little time to nurture and nourish our personal selves. You would think that after the entire “stand up and be counted” era from the 1960’s till now, we would have gotten the message that self-care is a #1 priority.

In our GUTSY WOMEN WEEKEND RETREATS we teach that “self-care is not selfish care”. We spend time looking at the individual behavior patterns that we learned from our mothers and grandmothers and from the culture in which we grew. Then using this image: “A hungry waitress makes a very poor server”, there is time to develop YOUR action plan that includes personal time to do whatever makes you feel enriched.

It’s late in the afternoon and you find yourself calling your favorite massage therapist.

Tonight you will tackle BLUE MONDAY to the ground. You go girl!!!

To jog their memories, I told a story about unfairness when a boy in my elementary school class was yelled at when I was the one “sneaking” in front of him in line. (You can read the whole story on the “About Sylvia” page of www.sylvialafair.com.)

Another great example. This gal was an assistant in an after school gymnastics class. The teacher was absent for three weeks due to illness and she led the class alone. At some point, she felt she should be paid, assistant or not, she was the one doing all the work.

She was encouraged to go to the head of the program and state her case. She did. And they agreed to pay her.

She was twelve years old!

This is a perfect example of GUTSY at a young age.

Think about the messages of success or failure you were given when you stood up to say what you wanted and needed. Were you, like this extremely vibrant woman, heard and acknowledged? Or, like some of the other stories, were you told to lower your head and be quiet?

Please note that often these moments of getting recognition or not form us. In the present moment we make decisions to speak out or “shut up” based on what happened when we were three, or seven or twelve.

What impacted you? It is always helpful to tell our stories.

Here’s what was fascinating.

When she was little,  way before You Tube, she loved to listen to songs and stories by Marlo Thomas from the album “Free to Be You and Me”.  She went on to talk about other parts of her life, looking at what it means to be a woman, a leader, a creative human who yearned for adventure and depth.

Back to Marlo and songs from a revolution to give children the freedom to choose what their lives would include. My daughter, Mikayla, told me how she would listen to the story of Princess Atalanta and how hearing this well over one hundred times, informed her to be free to be.

The story in a nutshell:  a king thought it was time for his daughter to marry. He decided to have a race where all the males in town could compete and the winner would have the princess for his wife. EXCEPT…Atalanta was no ordinary princess of her times, she was from the new breed, a GUTSY GAL who would make her own choices.

She made an agreement with the king that she would also run the race and if she won she would decide on her own future. The king, never thinking this could happen agreed.

Watch this You Tube version to find out what happens. Click Here

For me, it was powerful to learn what an impact this story made on a young girl who just happens to be my daughter.

What I teach in my GUTSY WOMEN WORKSHOPS is how family, culture and crises form who we become.

I know when my daughters were both growing, I was in that place of saying “There has to be a better way” and began to search for a more meaningful way of living my life as a woman. I always knew that I had played a role, yet, I now see that Atalanta, the epitome of a GUTSY GAL, and Marlo Thomas were allies also.

The story is universal and timeless, so if you have young girls in your life give them the gift of Atalanta.

What women want is to be heard!

We do not need to have the problems solved for us. However, before we can make change happen we require dialogue, discussion, debate.

In my book “GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change”, I did some digging to consider basic things that have been handed to us that have become part of who we are, part of our culture. I was fascinated by the “pink and blue” thing. Where did it come from, what does it represent.

Did you know that before the 20^th Century pink was for boys? It is a watered down version of red, and red is the color for bravery. The thinking was, red was too bold for little boys, so they had the mantle of pink.

Now, it belongs to the girls. So, let’s not forget it is a variation on the theme of being bold and brave.

Sounds like today’s women to me!

My daughter and I were debating the merit of even “wasting time” writing about colors for kids and then along came little Riley. Talk about GUTSY! She stood in a toy department, right there in front of all the pink and frilly little girl dolls and said in her little  voice  a variation of “Girls can like pink, they can like princesses, AND they can also like the action figures that are the domain of the boys.”

If you have not seen Riley, about 3 million viewers have fallen in love with her. And I want to acknowledge the man with the camera asking Riley questions. I assume it is her father and what I love is he is not challenging, just asking and listening.Watch Riley On Boys’ and Girls’ Toys

Now back to my basic premise, “what do we women want”?

We want what little Riley got; someone to ask and listen and not have to solve it for us.

In our next GUTSY WEEKEND  at the beginning of February, I will have Riley there, speaking her piece along with Isabel Allende, Julia Roberts and others (sorry NOT in person).

So my question to each of you is “What do you want others to hear from you”?

In days of yore, we were to be kept “barefoot and pregnant” and now we have “freedom of choice”.

The big question is, what are we choosing and why?

The following post is one that should make all of us stop and think. What does it mean to have a child and why do we decide to do what we do? We really need more training in how systems thinking works rather than just the individual concept of “what we want”.

I’d love to hear from women who are looking at the issues of bearing and raising a child and what really matters, what we want and desire, and the best interests of the child. I don’t want to be shouting out like a moralist. I do know from my background as a family therapist and executive coach that there is more to being a mother than procreating.

Let me hear your thoughts.

Click to read:

Fertility: Should You Have A Baby On Your Own?

By: Melanie Notkin, Founder author,  Savvy Auntie

The following is a validation that we still have a long way to go to make change happen when it comes to beliefs and perceptions about little girls and education. When I did research for my GUTSY book (due out in January) I was both frustrated and delighted with the studies that show how our own adult anxieties are picked up by little learners.

The more we can bring these fears and concerns to consciousness, the more we can alleviate their impact.

In my work, I am dedicated to target and transform behavior patterns to spark success. The ingrained patterns of past generations are often merely myths we are now popping to explode and make way for new ways of thinking and relating.

Click the link below to read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-brenoff/girls-good-at-math-study_b_1146191.html

Girls Are Good At Math, New Study Claims

Ann Brenoff

Senior Writer, The Huffington Post

The following TED talk on regret sparked some interesting emotions in me. I had a flash of remembering writing a freshman college paper on regret. My hypothesis was that if I paid attention to EVERYTHING I did and said I would live a life free of regret.

Hummmm…

I got an “A” for the quality of writing and research on that paper. I also had a comment by my professor that annoyed me terribly. He wished me well and asked me if I would be willing to rewrite the paper in 20 years and we could have a cup of coffee and note if I lived up to what I had written.

Of course I could now write a major thesis on all my life regrets, as a wife, mother, professional woman, and human being with hair that would be gray if I let it.

I know this is not the season for regrets, however, it is a season for love and clearing of the old as we soon ring in the new.

So, as a gift to yourself and those you love, take the time to write a few of your regrets and then share, as the Rumi poem below suggests:

Go to that magical place beyond right and wrong and open your feelings with those who matter to you.

It makes a great holiday present.

Click here to watch Kathryn Schulz On Regret