You give yourself a confidence-boosting pep talk that runs something like this: I’ve already done everything that I needed to do, and more. I’ve come through on a project when the odds were against me. I’m not adding any value to the company sitting here. Anything extra can be handled by e-mail later. I not only can go home, but I should go home.
If you’d had a real handle on your mental game, you wouldn’t have even hesitated to go home in the first place. You would have known that the confidence—in yourself and in your work— that you would show by approaching your boss, giving a quick rundown of where everything stands, and saying good-bye would outshine almost every other consideration. You don’t want your boss to think you’re not a hard worker, but think about it, you spent plenty of time already proving you are one. By going home, resting, spending some time with your family, and relaxing, you’ll be able to come back tomorrow and show your boss the same thing again.
The outlasting-the-boss game is just one example of what happens when our priorities get muddied by our perception of someone else’s priorities. But escaping that trap takes a major mental adjustment that involves really knowing what you want from life and work. It’s about defining your goals, and pruning other people’s. For well-educated, ambitious, committed women this mental process can be harder than anything else we’re going to ask you to do in this book. But once you have it, you will have slain the ego dragon and be on your way to a saner, more integrated, more satisfying existence. Ready?
Let’s start with that age-old question:
What do you really want from life?
Warning! Do not put down this book and mutter disapprovingly about the uselessness of New Age psychobabble. We get very practical very fast. Trust us.
When you are seventy years old, looking back at your many productive years, what will make you feel good about the life you’ve led? What do you need to do now to maximize satisfaction and minimize regrets?
OK—are you starting to see our thinking?
Chances are that if you’ve picked up this book, your feelings about work are complicated, just as they are for hundreds of well-educated women we know. You saw those numbers in chapter 2. You, like most of us, want a job that satisfies you intellectually but leaves you enough time to lead a fulfilling personal life as well. That’s your long-buried need. And it should be your clear definition of success. But the truth is that for most of us it’s not that easy. We rebel against it because it’s not the “traditional” way of doing things.
But have you ever stopped to wonder why most of us are so inherently uncomfortable with the “work till you drop to make it to the top” model? Even as we feel we should be pursuing it? Let us suggest the following: we are uncomfortable with it because it doesn’t fit who we are. It never has. Because it’s not success as defined by women, for women. It’s somebody else’s version of a successful life. Somebody of a different gender. It’s not what we want.
Don’t panic. If a less hierarchical concept of success sounds appealing to you, it doesn’t mean you aren’t ambitious, smart, professional, or committed. Far from it. You want to remain engaged in your professional life. You don’t really want to sit in a playroom and sing nursery rhymes all day, but you do want more time for your life. It is nothing to be ashamed of.
Saying I want some life with my work—or even, I want some work with my life—is not renouncing your ideals; it’s understanding, accepting, and embracing your fundamental desires.
And don’t be hard on yourself if you’re already finding this exercise in honesty exhausting and troubling. Don’t stop now, even if you feel that such thoughts are heretical, maybe even disloyal. We know, because we’ve been through it, that it is surprisingly hard to turn down the noise of social and professional expectations and tune in to a clear, confident, and personal definition of success.
We have a list of questions we’ve put together over the years that has helped us find our right track. It’s a list we still run through every time we face a career change or feel we’re off course or risk going off course. If someone offers us a new job, or our boss asks us to take on a new challenge, we go back to this list. It’s our “Womenomics gut check.”
So here we go. You may need to put aside a quiet afternoon to think about this, or mull it over for a few days or even weeks. And remember, it only works if you answer with absolute honesty.
womenomics