Funny, helpful tips for work-life balance
“Once you stop having joy in something, move on before you hate it.”
That’s some of the best advice I’ve heard lately, and it came from a sassy woman with buzz-cut, blue-tinted hair and sparkly sneakers. “Move on before you hate it,” Lisa Lampanelli says, can apply to a range of things — say a career or a husband. She’s done both.
The former “Queen of Mean” left her successful career last fall as an insult comic and divorced her husband before she hated him. The Fairfield resident now is a certified life coach and feels renewed.
That’s not to say she’s all sweetness. Unavoidably raucous and a bit raunchy still, Lisa had a room of several hundred people — mostly women — in stitches Wednesday night. We were at the eighth annual Conversations with Extraordinary Women discussion brought together by the Women’s Business Council, which is part of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Robi Ludwig, a psychotherapist, author and TV commentator, and Ava Diamond, a pro-athlete and mental fitness coach, held their own with Lisa, while moderator Michelle James, the executive director of the Community Action Agency of Western Connecticut, kept the free-ranging discussion moving along.
Find Your Balance was the theme and initially I thought I had heard it all: No wonder you’re stressed, the last thing you do is take care of yourself. The first step is to give yourself credit along the way. Stop trying to be Superwoman, be open and true to yourself, that’s where it happens. Got it.
But as the Conversation weaved along, I realized we COMMENTARY were hearing gems, nuggets of gold, from insightful and talented women in the world of coaching others to lead fuller lives. Naturally, I want to share these gems with you.
Dilemma for just the privileged?
How to find a work-life balance is a question our parents, for the most part, didn’t ask. They didn’t track the topic trending on TED Talks; they were busy raising children and working to provide for the family.
Maybe our parents did want all that, but it wasn’t framed as a work-life fulcrum until after the wave of feminism in the ’70s when women entered the workforce in greater numbers.
Balancing work with the rest of life is another way to ask the question: Can women have it all? Can we have successful careers and still be good mothers and wives and daughters? Or, conversely, Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” in Atlantic magazine in 2012 and reignited a debate. “It’s time to stop fooling ourselves,” she wrote.
This is not a question solely for those of a certain income level who supposedly have time to consider existential matters. The fallacy is that low-wage earners are too busy trying to make ends meet to fret about balance. We all want well-rounded lives, don’t we? Whatever our job is, we want to do it well and succeed without sacrificing the care of our families or connection of friends.
The Conversations with Extraordinary Women broadened the discussion to pertain to anyone — even men — no matter if your night out is a McDonald’s around the corner or the waterfront in Greenwich at L’escale.
Trying to be your best at work and your best at home — always the best! — can be stressful.
“Let’s face it,” Michelle James says, “We’re exhausted.”
That’s stress. Which can be a motivator, but the problem is when it leads to you devaluing yourself, Robi said.
Lisa put it this way: Compare and despair. Don’t compare yourself to others. “Who cares what that yenta over there thinks or what that chick over there is doing?”
Be yourself
What we’re talking about, really, is reducing stress by living authentically. That sounds great in a jargony way, but how to do it?
Let me distill the advice for you. Here are nuggets shared freely by these experts.
Find a purpose
Ava says to discover your “purpose, passion, power.”
That’s great, but how to do that if you can’t go live in an ashram to find yourself?
Consider what is holding you back. What are the negative limiting thoughts and beliefs about yourself?
As Lisa points out, your brain can talk you out of something in five seconds.
These internal negative reactions often come down to two limiting fears: “I am not lovable. I am not enough.”
But your limiting beliefs are not a death sentence.
Feelings are not facts, Robi adds.
What doesn’t work is saying just think positive, Ava says. “One trick to dissolving limiting thoughts is to neutralize them with facts. Words matter. What you hold onto in your brain shapes reality.”
Lisa suggests what she calls “notice without judgment.” “Find that sweet spot between letting yourself off the hook and beating yourself up.”
Ava offers the two Cs of success: clarity and conviction. Look for the aha moments in life — something you find delightful — to reclaim yourself, see which parts have gone dormant.
But you’re too busy to reflect? Lisa calls it the “disease of busyness.” That can be procrastinating. “You can’t be alone is a way of avoiding feelings,” she says.
A question to ask yourself is, Lisa says, what’s the feeling you want?
Instead of thinking I want to lose 10 pounds or win $1 million, ask how each would make you feel. Safe, secure, protected. That’s what you really want and need.
Be confident “Confidence is really difficult to get if you don’t have perfect parents,” Lisa says, to knowing chortles in the room.
You can’t wait for confidence to come. You’ve got to take action to build confidence.
“Confidence comes from doing something,” Ava advises. “You never know where it’s going to go when you take those steps. That knee-knocking feeling — that’s good stress.”
Say no to rules that don’t work for you anymore. “No is a complete sentence,” Lisa likes to say.
“Don’t give yourself an expiration date and lose relevancy,” Robi advises. “Have a little Moxie.
“We’re going to be living a lot longer, mid-life has changed.” When Gail Sheehy wrote “Passages: Predictable Crises in Adult Life” in 1976, mid-life crisis was at 35, she says.
Mid-life, whatever the age, is a great opportunity to recreate, Ava says.
“You will live longer if you tap into three core pursuits,” she says. They will be different for everyone; find yours. Let’s say a core pursuit is loving your dog, really that translates to having connections. Elevate your life
You do this with gratitude.
“Gratitude elevates the experience,” Ava says. “Pause, appreciate, share.”
Robi adds, “Never miss the opportunity to share what that moment means to you.”
I’m glossing over the unscripted parts about sex. That’s advice for another day.
Instead, here’s a comic relief thought from Lisa to put everything in perspective: “We’re all going to end up old and ugly someday.”