In fact, what distinguishes the most memorable campaigns – whether they are for marketing, for politics or for actual military battle – i.e., a real REVOLT! – is a mantra that grounds the leader (Ruler) and her team, a rallying cry that moves the action plan forward.  It was only after I dealt with the fear of what would happen to me if I didn’t lose the weight that I developed a mantra to help me achieve my goals.

The mantra was a command that I plastered at strategic points all over my house.  It was anchored by a SMART goal, which entailed a specific date, the amount I wanted to lose and milestones along the way to track my progress.

Like a lot of goal-oriented individuals, I chose my birthday as a deadline.  I was determined to lose 57 pounds by my 57th birthday.  So, the mantra I plastered all over my home – especially on my fridge – was this:  “57 by 57.”

What powerful and DARE-ing mantra would help you REVOLT to reach a Big Goal? Tell us about it – we DARE you!

In order to stage a successful REVOLT against my weight, I needed to be a strong Ruler – of my time, my resources, my diet, my exercise.

If you’ve ever staged a REVOLT – for your life, your career, for a cause you care deeply about – then you know that merely wanting to do something and actually getting it accomplished are two different things.  It requires discipline, goal-setting and all the other tips and advice you’ve heard thousands of times.   

Are there resolutions you would gladly “resurrect” if you knew you could stage a successful REVOLT to achieve your goals? Tell us about it – we DARE You!

For a big, brash and believable REVOLT, you need a lightning bolt.

To jolt myself to lose 60 pounds last year and keep it off, I decided to literally scare the fat out of my body (that Catholic-school fear thing again).

I set out to research all the ways that my appetite was a dictator over who I was vs. who I wanted to become.  I noted all the ways that my excess body weight could kill me and—considering that I am a 50-plus, type-A, childless, career-woman whose body mass index was at least 15 points higher than it should be—that was more of a lightning bolt than I had expected.

I obsessed about the fact that I was fattest in areas that put me at high risk for heart disease, cancer and other hideous diseases. I was almost as frightened as I would be in the face of an actual dictator.  That’s what ultimately did it for me, what pushed me to REVOLT.

What kind of dream, desire, fear or challenge could jolt you to REVOLT? Tell us about it – we DARE You!

A lot of us want to change ourselves, our careers or our communities in a year.  But, a REVOLT of that magnitude – a Big SMART Goal – can be daunting if you don’t set certain smaller goals, increments and benchmarks to hit along the way.

While a Big Goal, like a Big Cause, requires the dedication of a marathon or a fighting army, you don’t have the resources for that (unless you’re Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel).  All the more reason to set goals that can be accomplished in sprints of a few weeks, a month, several months.

Staging a REVOLT involves specific measurable goals you want to achieve, plus a strategy for achieving them, especially if you’re the one who’s a dictator.  If you’re trying to do too much, with too little time, or always for other people, that requires a different kind of REVOLT.  It requires a re-envisioning of what you want to become, in light of what you have to deal with now, rather than focusing on where you were in the past.  

As a visionary, intelligent, motivated woman over 40, when was the last time you REVOLTED against trying to fix the past and instead DARED to envision a great future? Tell us about it – we DARE You!

If I didn’t set a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely goal—with benchmarks, a deadline and timetable, I would be as sunk as I had been in previous years in trying to over-RULE my weight problem. 

SMART goals can help you REVOLT in ways that change your life, career and community for the better!

Set some SMART goals and tell us about it—we DARE You!

Believe him!

At the beginning of 2009, as I had done at the beginning of very year for the past ten years, I “resolved” to “really try to lose weight and get more healthy this year.”

Hah! If all it took was a resolution, I would have been at my ideal weight by then.  Hell, I needed a full-blown REVOLUTION! I needed to get excited, really excited.

For me, the guilt-ridden product of Catholic schools where nuns use to run kids into the ground for “disobeying,” getting excited involved fear.  After 12 years of that kind of education, not only did I learn about fear, I also learned how to REVOLT.  REVOLT involves facing and rebelling against the fear.

On a personal level, it also involves setting Big, Brash and Believable Goals.  Big, Brash and Believable Goals scare a lot of people, but without them, you won’t get excited.

What Big, Brash and Believable Goal would constitute a REVOLT that would really excite you? Tell us about it—we DARE You!

Focus instead on the real TREASURES we can justifiably rave about and take heart that there are so many DARE-ing women over 40 who made the world a better place in 2009—for all sorts of people, ages, faiths, nationalities, and persuasions, via the media, the arts, business, science, non-profits, and public service.  Here’s our 2009 list of DARE-ing women to TREASURE—all of them over 40.  We DARE you to be uninspired!

#16: Brenda Barnes

Brenda Barnes, CEO of Sara Lee Corporation, www.saralee.com, which makes and markets some of the world’s most popular brands of food, beverages, household products, and body care lines.   Barnes joined Sara Lee in 2004, and was named CEO in 2005, but she perhaps is best known among DARE-ing women for her headline-generating decision to leave her position as president and chief executive officer of PepsiCola North America (1996 to 1998) so that she could devote more time to raising her then-young children.  Among her multitude of accomplishments at Sara Lee, she has created internal initiatives to champion women employees’ needs for balancing career goals with the demands of motherhood.

#15 and #14: Dr. Elizabeth Helen Blackburn and Dr. Carol W. Greider

Dr. Elizabeth Helen Blackburn and Dr. Carol W. Greider, both 2009 Nobel Prize winners for their work in studying the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Whether we mere mortal women understand what the telomere does or not (at least, I don’t), the true gravity of Drs. Blackburn and Greider’s achievements is that they not only survived in the brutally sexist fields of science and medicine, but rose to the top.  Prior to the 1980s, and even into the 1990s, clinical health studies were almost always performed solely on men, and by men (duh, right?).  Women scientists do not receive the same kind of mentorship through their doctoral studies as their male counterparts; and there was a disproportionate amount of focus on military research—by men—as opposed to the kind of research that could diagnose, prevent, and cure illness. Thanks to DARE-ing forces like Drs. Blackburn and Greider, that’s changing.

#13: Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle, the Scottish singer who blew everyone away on reality TV show Britain’s Got Talent last April, singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables.   The so-called “plain” Boyle gave new meaning to the word “DARE” when she released her powerful voice on an audience full of skeptics.  Her first album—“I Dreamed A Dream”—was released in November 2009.  It debuted as the number one best-selling CD around the world, and has become Amazon’s best-selling album in pre-sales.

#12: Kathy Cloninger

Kathy Cloninger, CEO of The Girl Scouts of America, www.girlscouts.org,  which today serves 2.4 million girl members and nearly a million adult volunteers by providing girl-centric programs in science, technology, business, and financial literacy, health and safety, and outdoor and environmental awareness. The activities are designed to provide fun and friendship opportunities, and to foster the development of self-esteem in girls of every race, faith, economic status, geographic origin, and physical ability.

#11: Katie Couric

Katie Couric, is not only anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, a correspondent for 60 Minutes, and host of @katiecouric on CBSNews.com, but the first solo female anchor of a weekday evening news program on one of the three U.S. broadcast networks.   On air, Couric retains the accessible and cheery personality of her “Today Show” days, but she has obliterated—yay, Katie!—that “perky” moniker she was saddled with for so long by handily brain-busting the sad and sorry Sarah Palin, who presumed she could just sashay into the berth that’s one heartbeat away from the leader of the free world.   It is disgraceful and disrespectful to all smart and DARE-ing women over 40 that Palin didn’t think it necessary to prepare for her close-up with Couric.  Did Palin really presume some sort of implicit sisterhood with Couric and that “Katie” would run a softball interview?

#10: Vicki B. Escarra

Vicki B. Escarra, CEO of Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest) www.feedingamerica.org, which provides food to more than 25 million low-income people facing hunger in the United States, including more than 9 million children and nearly 3 million seniors, through its network of more than 200 food banks that serve all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.  Escarra is leading an aggressive strategic plan so that the organization can feed even more millions of needy individuals in the next several years.

#9: Joi Gordon

Joi Gordon, CEO of Dress for Success, www.dressforsuccess.org, which was founded in New York City in 1997 by Nancy Lublin, with a $5,000 inheritance from her great-grandfather, which helped fund the collection and dissemination of used or discarded suits and other clothing suitable for work to women who are economically disadvantaged.  Since 1997, Dress for Success has served more than 500,000 women around the world.   Under Gordon’s leadership, the organization has broadened its focus to include employment retention in addition to suiting.

#8: Judith Jamison

Judith Jamison, the American dancer and choreographer, is best known as the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a post she earned after a lifetime of studying and performing dance.  She first joined the Ailey company in the 1960s, then made a DARE-ing departure to star in a Broadway musical.   During the 1980s, when she was in her early 40s, she began choreographing her own works. When Alvin Ailey died in 1989, Jamison was named to her current post.   Since then, she has choreographed many works for the company.  Her numerous awards include Kennedy Center Honors (1999), the National Medal of Arts (2001), and a prime-time Emmy.

#7: Andrea Jung

Andrea Jung, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Avon Products, Inc., appointed CEO in 1999, elected Chairman in 2001, and a member of the Board of Directors since January 1998.  Jung is responsible for developing and executing all of Avon’s long-term growth strategies, launching new brand initiatives, developing earning opportunities for women worldwide—a feat for which we at The DARE-Force think she should be canonized (after Sister Lillian Murphy, #12 below). Avon is the premier direct seller of beauty products, marketing to women in more than 100 countries through 5.8 million independent Avon Sales Representatives.

#6: Nancy Meyers

Nancy Meyers, Hollywood writer/director/producer, whose latest movie is “It’s Complicated”—featuring Meryl Streep as a DARE-ing woman over 50 who’s juggling the affections of both Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.  A recent New York Times article confirms that  “… Meyers makes movies … in which the middle-aged woman always triumphs.” Just as relevant to yours truly, a newly-minted 57-year-old MBA, is that four of Meyers’ movies in the past ten years grossed an average of nearly $250 million each worldwide—a triumph for certain in an industry that practically ignores women over 40 (with cash flow!) who love movies where we’re not portrayed as crones, drones or bones.  Meyers, who grew up in the same leafy suburban enclave of Philadelphia as I did (yay, Drexel Hill!!), has been called a “micro-manager” and “idealistic” because she will go so far as to restyle a movie set with different books if she feels they don’t accurately reflect the character’s personality or lifestyle.  Obviously, that critic has never sat through marketing briefings about how a particular brand—whether peanut butter, cereal or a car—“behaves, thinks, and acts.”   Trust me, I have.  Meyers is not only a visionary movie maker, but a brilliant marketer who knows exactly what will plant our middle-aged butts into those cramped little seats.  Ka-ching, Nancy, ka-ching!

#5: Sister Lillian Murphy

Sister Lillian Murphy, CEO of Mercy Housing Inc., www.mercyhousing.org, a national organization founded in 1981 with an initial investment of $500,000 by the Sisters of Mercy of Omaha—who found that a lack of adequate housing was the root cause of many of the health and education problems in their community.  Today, Mercy acquires and develops housing around the country, for a variety of low-income populations, including families, seniors, and people with special needs.  Sister Lillian is a DARE-ing and commanding presence, literally doing God’s work, but she is also one of the most gracious and kind women I have ever met.

#4: Annise Parker

Annise Parker, newly elected Mayor of Houston, Texas, the country’s fourth largest city. That Parker was elected in November as the first openly gay mayor of a major city is nothing less than a triumph over the long-held stereotypes about Texans and how they are expected to vote.  After all, isn’t Texas the state that is customarily associated with tan, strapping alpha-male cattlemen who all look like actor Sam Elliot (or wish they did).  The truth is that the same state that gave us Papa Bush, Wubya, and Governor Rick Perry also happens to be home to some of the strongest, most powerful women in public life, including iron-queen Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (aka “KBH”) and the late great Anne Richardson.  Parker joins a long line of female politicians who prove that “Don’t Mess With Texas” is more about Texan women than its men.  Here’s wishing Her Honor a successful and productive run.

#3: Diane Sawyer

Diane Sawyer, anchor of ABC World News with Diane Sawyer. OK, so she isn’t the first evening news network anchor, but Sawyer could become formidable competition to Katie Couric as the preferred antidote to Brian Williams’ (NBC) persistent and pompous “voice of God” delivery style.  Sawyer’s DARE-ing journalistic chops are even more impressive:  As a former aide to President Richard M. Nixon, Sawyers helped him write his memoirs and prepared him for his now-legendary interviews with David Frost.  Sawyers was a “60 Minutes” correspondent when it was unusual to be a female amidst that Mount Rushmore of craggy old men.  Sawyer simultaneously held down two jobs—as co-anchor of both ABC’s Prime-Time Live and 20/20—when she agreed to add on the job as “temporary” host of  ABC’s morning broadcast, Good Morning America.  She did that indefatigably for ten years before being named Charlie Gibson’s successor in the evening news anchor chair.  Sawyer and Couric are no mere tokens.  They are totems of how far women over 40 have come and how much they’ve DARED.

Finally, just when you think your head will explode from all the negative and hackneyed stories about women over 40 who are victims done wrong by their men, or victims done in by their men, or villainesses doing other women’s men, there’s a breath of fresh DARE. Get a Tivo, amputate the ads, and tune in to these two surprising TREASURES who will convince you of the power of DARE-ing women over 40:

#2 and #1: Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb

Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, co-anchors of the fourth hour of The TODAY Show. If you think that the 10 to 11 A.M. hour of TODAY is a vast wasteland relegated to stay-at-home housewives in their fuzzy slippers and robes, you’re the one in a time warp.  Kotb, a veteran broadcast journalist, and Gifford, the former “Regis…” co-host and cruise-ship pitchwoman whose personality and comedic delivery have been unjustly maligned for way too long, are so much more vibrant, crisp, knowledgeable, and assertive in their delivery of news and features for women than almost anyone else on TV—at any hour.   Tune in even once to listen to them dissect—eviscerate?—the news headliners of the day, their tone dripping more than a dab of vitriol but a lot of intellectual firepower.  Your happy meter will be reset on high for the whole day.  But here’s another unexpected TREASURE of that hour:  the affirmation and validation it gives to women over 40—especially the show’s segment called “Ambush Makeover,” where celebrity hairstylist Louis Licari and US Weekly’s style reporter Jill Martin pluck a decidedly unglamorous but definitely DARE-ing woman over 40 from the screaming hordes gathered outside the NBC studios and then proceed to transform not only her hairstyle, makeup and wardrobe but her very psyche.

What’s especially endearing is that the women selected have heart-wrenching back-stories: They’re widows, or they’re single for other reasons not of their choosing, or they’ve been job hunting for too long, or they’ve been so dedicated to their (now grown) families that they’ve had the same hairstyle since their breast-feeding days.  The reaction of their families, who are blindfolded until the “ambushed” women come on stage to show off their makeovers, never fails to generate tears of joy and hope.  Kudos to everyone involved with that fourth TODAY SHOW hour—but especially to all connected with Ambush Makeover.  Tune in, you’ll love it.

Then, get out DARE and make it a happy, healthy, and inspiring new year—for you and everyone around you!

[He DARED me to publish it, thinking that I would not be DARE-ing enough to let him have his say.  Hah!  I TREASURE the fact that he did most of the work for me this week.  All I had to do was my usual big-sister micro-managing—editing for typos, misspellings, grammar, etc.  After all, I do have standards!]

Yo! DARE-Head! TREASURE begins at home!

by Lou DiMarco

Wow, the theme about “TREASURE” really hit home with me and made me wonder why my big sister, Liz DiMarco Weinmann—the big-mouthed, big-word host of this Website—did not explicitly mention our MOM as a TREASURE!   At least, she didn’t in her last post, although she’s praised both our parents in other posts.  I know I’m risking my life by saying this, but could it be that her “mental-pause” is finally kicking in?

For all of you women just over the age of 40 or even 50 and 60—who might forget about your moms who are well over those milestones and still doing daring feats every day—here’s my DARE-ing insight:

Don’t forget the women who go unknown, who are not so famous, who worked in a time when it was for survival—not just being fashionable.  Women whose steps up the ladder were literal and not part of some statement, model, goal, or vision other than helping their families!

I TREASURE my mom this holiday season, this woman who worked as a seamstress in a clothing factory (a.k.a. sweat shop). Every day, day after day, year after year, despite deteriorating eyesight and dealing with stress from travel into very bad areas of the city where we lived.  Not for personal growth, not for her own needs, but for the survival of the family.

When I was old enough to drive, I would pick up this selfless woman from work.  I was so full of life and fearful of nothing—until I realized just how bad her factory’s neighborhood was.  Policemen on every corner, a drive-by waiting to happen.

At that point, my appreciation for what this woman—my MOTHER!—endured every day rose even higher.  There is a reason why the term “Greatest Generation” was coined for women like my mother, who grew up or immigrated here after World War II and gave birth to the baby boomers, a generation of advocates and activists, to be sure, who were more than a little inspired by the sacrifices of their mothers and fathers before them.

For my mother and millions like her, the TREASURE was to retire after working for so many years, well into their sixties, to help put three children through college—all without taking on student loans or any other kind of assistance.  Again, the reward was not about her, but about what she and her husband—my father—had inspired in their children, which was that education was the key to a better life here in the United States.

For them, their greatest TREASURE was in seeing their three kids graduate college and go on to remarkable careers—three kids who grew up in a house with two parents who had no formal education.  This was a tremendous accomplishment for two immigrants who some would call “uneducated” but I would call inspired and nothing short of transformational.

To this day, my mom puts aside as much money as she can for her “Christmas club” bank account, just so she can give my sons and my niece nice things.

So, this holiday season, I TREASURE that part of me and what I have become: my success, my goals, my heritage that is from a very strong woman who influenced my life beyond her dreams and beyond what even she believed she could DARE reach.

I TREASURE the value of family, a strong father who worked hard and influenced my two sisters and me to do the same.

I’m impressed that my big sister is DARE-ing enough to let me have my say on her Website. (Old rivalries die hard!) I TREASURE the woman she grew up to be and her work to help other women be strong.

Seems there’s less to TREASURE than almost any other year in recent memory.  (Unless your memory is lodged firmly back in the 1920s.)

Well, cheer up and get DARE-Borne! There are so many people, places, and things to TREASURE from 2009, but if you think this is going to be a Hallmark cards/American Greetings moment, think again.  Shit flies, pigs happen, many lie sleepless in their battle.

Here’s my take on why it’s important to DARE TREASURE your life, your career (the one you have, had, or want to have; it’s your experience that counts), and the fact that there are geeky, cheeky scientists who study what constitutes true happiness. 

TREASURE the comic relief provided by those who obviously don’t know or appreciate their TREASURES until someone else enlightens them:

• Tiger “The Cheetah” Woods - pouncing on so many cougars and cobras and chick-lets that it’s hard to fathom how he could keep score on anything else.  For us making less than millions of dollars per year, there are so many reasons to TREASURE one’s existing spouse or significant other, or one’s solitude, if that’s your TREASURE, and none of those reasons have anything to do with multimillion dollar post-nuptial agreements.
• White House social secretary Desiree Rogers – so narcissistic she couldn’t take her eyes off her own reflection in the Potomac swamp long enough to protect the real glitterati she was hired to serve.  TREASURE New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (deliciously DARE-ING over 40), who wrote the most biting, hilarious and dead-on excoriation of the poseurs and “arrivistes” that swarm Washington at any given time in any administration’s tenure.
• Senate Finance chair and Montana Democrat Max Baucus – who nominated his state office director (a.k.a.: chief coat warmer, favorite foot massager, and main martini shaker) for the job of U.S. attorney in Montana.  Obviously the senator took literally his name’s similarity to Bacchus—god of wine, women, and song—while asserting that he was separated from his wife when he began the affair with his staffer.  (Pun intended.)  I worked in D.C. for two long solid and sordid years, long enough to know that there were always far more pelvises grinding than there were noses to the grindstone.  TREASURE the fact that you’re not working in a job that requires you to accompany members of Congress to cocktail parties, take an accurate head count of the “guests,” and then hit them up the next week for thousands of dollars in “support.”

TREASURE the example of these women (strong characters, all of them) who turned the lemons that life hurled their way into rain and dough – building far bigger rainmaking machines than they might have, had their lives been “perfect”:

• Grandma Moses, who began painting in her 70s, after arthritis forced her to give up her career as an embroiderer.  For the next thirty years (yes, that’s 3-0, you read that correctly) until her death at the age of 101, she painted dozens of masterpieces, many of them depicting the rural scenes that grace sentimental holiday cards.  She exhibited all over the world, and her work has sold many times over for thousands and thousands of dollars.
• Mary Kay Ash, who started her eponymous cosmetics company at the age of 45, after being passed over for a promotion in favor of a younger man she had helped train.  Her how-to book for women turned into the business plan for Mary Kay Cosmetics, which might well make your holiday shopping list this year.  In 2008, the company had more than 1.7 million consultants worldwide and sales in excess of $2.2 billion.  Ash died at 85 years old, seven years ago, enjoying for many productive years the TREASURES that her midlife DARE-ing led her to create.
• Meryl Streep, the undisputed leading female actor of our generation, is redefining what is sexy, smart, and DARE-ing in women over 40.  She’s portraying characters who are exuberant, intelligent, and not afraid to stumble in reinventing themselves after a certain age or after adversity hits their lives.  Earlier this year, Streep’s astonishing portrayal of Julia Child—another DARE-ing woman over 40 who did not even publish her first great work until she was 49 years old!—brought tears of joy and recognition to millions of women who saw the movie about Child’s rise (screenplay written by another DARE-ing woman over 40, Nora Ephron).  Now Streep’s starring in “It’s Complicated,” a romantic comedy with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin where her character, a “dumped” divorcee, is so hot, even the commercials might make some men blush.
• Susan Sarandon, another DARE-ing actor who has taken on roles that might make Streep think twice.  In “The Lovely Bones,” the new movie release based on the breakthrough bestseller by Alice Sebold, Sarandon plays a big-haired, chain-smoking, whiskey-toting grandmother coping with the murder of her young granddaughter at the hands of a sexual predator.  Like Streep, Sarandon is not at all afraid to laugh at herself and invite others to laugh even harder.

TREASURE the fact that, in the midst of all the turmoil, trauma, and triviality leeching from the louses, losers, and lechers that generate our yucks (fleeting as they might be this year), there are brilliant economists who are finally focusing on what really makes us happy – besides money, that is.

• The so-called “happiness economists”—Richard Easterlin, Bruno Frey, Richard Layard, and Andrew Oswald, among them—have contributed voluminous research on the so-called “Happiness Index.”   Such an index could become a more reliable measure of a nation’s wealth than GDP or GNP.  If only!
• The bottom line on TREASURES, according to the happiness economists, is this:  After a certain level, money doesn’t really make us happy.  Even the rich and famous agonize over whether it’s wiser to be sexless, reckless, or feckless, and 2009 has proven to be the year when even they don’t seem very happy.

So, yes, your retirement plan exploded faster than that bag of 100-calorie popcorn you left too long in your microwave while you were surfing the Web for your next job.

So what if your 25-year-old son and his newly minted MBA diploma have moved back into the room you had transformed into your gym?  And, true, lemons are still rolling off American assembly lines faster than we can pour lemonade into their gas tanks.

But just look at the dubious TREASURES of the rich and famous: Tiger Woods (more women than ever!), Desiree Rogers (more leopard stilettos and hotshot close-ups than Michelle!), and Max Baucus (old Bacchus never had it so good!).

Do we really want to be like them?  Probably not, and that’s enough to at least make us smile.