Happy August! Happy Friday!
Last week, I attended the 9th Annual BlogHer Conference held at the McCormick Place and Sheraton Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. What a time I had! It was intense, inspiring, and informative. That’s why I decided to write several blog recaps.
Today’s blog recap is about my “Lean In Moment.” The theme is based on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and the impact of her BlogHer Conference interview with Lisa Stone, BlogHer Co-Founder and COO, on July 27. For more information, watch part one and part two of Tracy Baim’s video of the interview.
I read Sandberg’s book earlier this year. It took me a full weekend to inhale her words and wisdom. Her book was filled with many golden nuggets I have used in my life and shared with other women. It also inspired me to write and submit a case study entitled “Lean In and Listen to Yourself” for the Hot Mommas Project. As a result, I was recently named a 2012-2013 author for the Hot Mommas Project case study library.
When I learned Sandberg would be a BlogHer keynote, I was thrilled! Here are the key takeaways I received from her interview with Stone.
- Believe in yourself.
- I am unapologetically a feminist (inspired by Mellody Hobson, President of Ariel Investments and one of my virtual mentors from the 1990s).
- Reach for any ambition.
- Ask yourself what would you do if you weren’t afraid, and then reach for those ambitions.
At the end of her interview, she challenged audience members to write what they would do if they weren’t afraid on paper signs her LeanIn.org provided, take photos with the signs, and tweet and post the photos on LeanIn.org Tumblr. I loved the challenge. Check out the statements I wrote below.
Writing these statements helped me get clearer on what I really want to do with my passion, gifts, energy, and time. My next step is to lean in and publish my Digital Sisterhood book (you know the one I have been writing since 2009 — what a journey!), create space in my life to write more books and create art, and plan when I will cut my locs and grow my Angela Davis afro (will probably happen during my 50th year on earth which is fast approaching in 2014 — maybe even 2015).
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
What are you leaning into?
UPDATE: BlogHer posted a full video of Sheryl Sandberg’s interview. Click here to watch it. Also, check out a video of BlogHer’s Lean In Circles session held at the 2013 conference. Enjoy!
Ananda Leeke 