I am going to be completely transparent here.  

When I first heard about Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, and her movement accompanied with it’s own non-profit, Lean-In.org, I felt a pit in my stomach.  

For the past two years, I have been passionately mentoring women to help them create careers that are flexible, fulfilling and financially rewarding.  Now this Sandberg comes in with talent, power, passion, and loads of money and it left me feeling very small.

For those who have not seen her all out media blitz to encourage women to lean in to their ambitions, Sheryl Sandberg is the COO of Facebook and was the first women appointed to it’s board of directors.  She also serves on the board of the Walt Disney Company.  She has two degrees from Harvard and from 1996 - 2001 served as the Chief of Staff to the US Secretary of the Treasury.

And she knows what she is talking about.

My reflex was to feel that this women was eclipsing my opportunity and would expose me as less than. Even though we essentially want the same thing for all women, I was seized with the feeling that my small-start-up self didn’t compare to that which is Ms. Sandberg. 

The familiar refrain of “Who do I think I am?” kept insinuating itself in my mind.  

Then two things happened.  

I watched her interview on 60 Minutes and I found myself nodding my head vigorously with each point she made.  In fact, she appeared to have her own insecurities and I began cheering for her.  She was so authentic, I liked her.  I even watched the after interview, and ended up liking her immensely.

Then I read this article about feeling sorry for Marissa Mayer’s baby after her decision to require Yahoo employees to work-on site five days a week. And I kept reading articles that as Deana Shanker posted on Article 3, “keep pitting Sandberg versus Mayer versus Slaughter.”   

The articles and comments lambast one for no flexibility and dismiss the other's flexibility as pure privilege.  It's as if everyone wants to point the finger at someone for the challenges women have trying to build flexible and fulfilling lives.  

I know better, no one can take our flexibility or tells us we aren’t smart enough to ask for it.

But still, I wanted to make Sheryl Sandberg responsible for my feelings of self doubt.  

And then it hit me.  

We are 100% responsible for our lives, our feelings, our choices and our decisions.  In the words of Jillian Michaels, “Do not hang your state of being on the outside world.”* 

Not taking responsibility is distracting because we get side-tracked by the circumstances.  Instead of deciding how we will respond to a situation, we talk about the situation (or in my case read incessantly about it).  Instead of deciding and asking for what we want, we blame others and then look to them to save us.

Once I started thinking about my responsibility, I remembered there is more than enough in this world to go around.  She doesn’t take from me, I build my own.

We have options.  And we go through stages when one options seems better than the other.  And we change our minds.  We choose to focus on our family or ourselves or our careers or all of them all at once.  

The beauty of this moment is that it is all right. 

The bonus is that you can now leverage the resources of women who are using their power, their reputation and their expertise to give you a road map on how to ask for what you want.

This isn’t about what everyone else thinks, it is about living the life that you want.   

So I asked myself, “As a leader, how can I take 100% responsibility for my life in this moment?”

I decided to lean in to my purpose.

I will be part of the team and get very good at my position on the field.

I chose to be inspired by Sheryl Sandberg.  I ordered my copy of Lean In and I look forward to reading it.  I am reading the Lean In stories of other women on Leanin.org and may very well share my own story.  

I could even learn a thing or two that will make me a better mentor.  Sheryl Sandberg could be one of the best things to ever happen to my business and the business of women in this country.  It will all depend on what I decide to do about it.

What will you do with this moment?

*In the spirit of transparency, I also admit I am a fan of The Biggest Loser and often find quotable nuggets of wisdom while watching the show.