Encouraged by my recent volunteer experience, I recently got back in touch with a former mentor and role model of mine.   Since I spoke to him last (which I think was at his son Paul’s wedding many moons ago), Henry’s been appointed by Clinton and Bush to federal executive branch committees and boards (most recently on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National & Community Service) .   He’s now deputy director of a pretty big foundation in San Francisco.  This man is connected with a capital C in the non-profit (and probably some of the political) world, and he loves me like a second daughter, practically.   I remember when I used to come to his house everyday after school when I was a senior in high school.  Now he’s promised to think about how I could do some contract work for him or people he knows.

Why have I not called him before?  Because somewhere, in the recesses of my powerful little mind, there is always that voice that says…”I can do it myself, damn it!”

In the last week, I’ve thought about how the whole American sense of independence thing has gone to far for too many of us.  In fact, since I began my fascination with the whole concept of leadership, I’ve noticed that the wisest, most successful folks seem to have thrown the idea of being el lobo solo by the way side.  Per the infamous Stephen Covey, a habit of highly effective people is that they choose a more productive, satisfying, and easier alternative - they build on divergent strengths, and they leverage creative collaboration.  They build teams.  They delegate.  They rely on others.  They find partners.  They reach out.  They communicate.

In other words, instead of trying to do it all themselves, they actually get the help they want.   Notice I didn’t say “get the help they NEED.” Why?  Because the reality is, many things in life can be accomplished alone, so for many tasks you don’t technically NEED help.  But does life have to be so hard?  No, my fellow citizens of a country borne from the Protestant-work-ethic, no.

It’s usually not as much fun doing something alone.  In addition, it’s usually harder.  And, you actually can bring joy into other people’s lives by asking or allowing them to help you do something they are naturally talented at.

This is not new stuff.  We’ve all been told we need to learn to delegate, to work as a team, to be cooperative and collaborative.  But why don’t we really believe it?  Talk to your therapist, but it also may be partly because there are still lots of unspoken images and myths abound that still reinforce the opposite ideal, in the media, our own families, our work places.

Reaching out for help, connection, to delegate and to outsource is something we all need to be reminded of again and again to really internalize it.   I had another lesson in this recently, when I mentioned to my best friend, Olivia* that I had a challenging career coaching appointment coming up.  Olivia happens to be job hunting right now (long story, but if you know of some good business development or relationship sales jobs let me know) and before I knew it, she had rattled off at least 5-6 effective approaches and tips for me to use on my call.  Again, I didn’t need to struggle on my own, trying to research on the internet, etc.

I’ve actually gotten worse about this since I became a mother, because of the super-mom myth about us being able to do it all.  Man I would have gotten a lot more hands-on help when I was on maternity leave, home alone with a less than 3 month old, if I’d done more than call my sister for help, who couldn’t come over to help me very often, since she was occupied with infant twins of her own at the time.

Just pick up the god damned phone, ping a friend on Facebook, e-mail, whatever.   Be strong enough and smart enough to stop being so freaking independent.  You don’t have to go it alone.  No man is an island.

Once you start doing this on a regular basis, you’ll actually be more successful in whatever you do, personally or professionally.  Life is easier, too.  And a lot more fun.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent - that is, me.

I went on vacation to San Francisco this past week, where my husband and I lived for four years before we got married.

After a work-related presentation at Goldman Sachs, we enjoyed a four day vacation, making overdue calls on old friends and enjoying the diversity of the Bay Area, from the colorful Mission district and Berkeley to the cool and rustic green hills of Marin County, to the newer – though scorching hot - East Bay communities.

We arrived home, happy, travel-worn and tired and I had to launch right back into work with a career coaching client. This MBA student, who I’ll call Megan, was torn, by two paths:

(1) the safe route of pursuing an operations job at companies who recruit on her campus, since her school has earned a reputation amongst Fortune 500 recruiters for graduating solid to strong operations MBAs.

(2) taking a leap of faith in herself to more independently pursue what she thinks she would prefer, a corporate finance job.

I encouraged Megan to “go for it” and get an early start on networking and researching the finance jobs first, because when you are less than passionate about a position and have to fake it to some extent, it’s likely to show.

I could sense her trepidation, given the understandably scary employment market and her background of being brought up in a conservative family who always urged her take the safe route. She felt better when I assured her that if we got an early enough start (e.g., this summer), we could learn more about how hard finding a finance job would really be – and if she was uncomfortable with focusing solely on finance, she could select operations opportunities to pursue as well in the fall.

We’ll see how it goes with Megan, but thinking about her situation made me think of how we all face choices on when and whether to make leaps of faith in our lives. I thought of the array of friends we had seen on our SF trip, as well as other friends and family:

• the parents of newborns who chose to take the leap into parenthood (my friend Kathy, a psychologist, reminded me of a great book I’ve picked up and am reading next about the current state of motherhood)
• the just-laid-off father of two who has been pondering changing careers into something more socially significant
• the newly-back-to-work mothers who have decided to try to make working motherhood work
• the friends, along with myself who are choosing not to pursue eight (or 10, 12) hour a day jobs to pursue entrepreneurial careers in writing, consulting and coaching

The thing is about these leaps though, you really can’t force someone to do it, and you can’t really force yourself to, either. Some people, like myself have to hit some sort of “rock bottom” of unhappiness before they take the leap – particularly if you WERE brought up in a less-than-entrepreneurial family. I was miserable at this time last year, I had outgrown my Fortune 500 job, I felt like I wasn’t doing well at home or at work and I was spinning mentally. Today, while I still have fear and anxiety to face, I’m much happier overall for having made the leap.

What’s keeping you from going after your dreams?  When will you take your next leap to make change in your life? And if you know you’re not quite ready, in the meantime remember it doesn’t hurt to dream and start formulating a plan…

"frustration as a result of all the pressure we put on ourselves"

“In life we often do not say what we mean or mean what we say.  For example, when many of us speak of abundance, we actually mean money; and when many of us speak of health, we actually mean our appearance, when many of us speak of joy, we actually mean happiness.  The difference between experiencing joy, abundance, and health, and acquiring money, a good appearance, and happiness is vast.  The former are inclusive while the latter are exclusive.  Joy is the state in which we allow ourselves to experience everything without judgment or concern.  Abundance pertains to being grateful for all the physical, mental, and emotional energies that flow through our life experience.  Health pertains to attending to the well-being of every aspect of our physical, mental and emotional experience.  However, happiness requires that “this” happens and that “that” does not happen, while money is just cash, and appearance is only skin deep.” - Michael Brown, The Presence Process

When I read this paragraph, I was struck by how completely “exclusive” we all are - and as a result the kind of pressure that we put on ourselves.  For example, we can only have abundance if we have a lot of money, we are only healthy if we are skinny and we are only joyful if we are happy.  So we press on, looking for that elusive life where we are abundant, healthy and joyful all the time - where we are rich, skinny and happy.  It sounds a little ridiculous doesn’t it?  This mad quest for such limited outcomes?

Michael Brown’s quote made me realize that I needed to widen my own definitions and let go of the pressure I put on myself.  I am abundant - namely because I have a full spectrum of mental, emotional and physical experiences that I am living and loving.  I am healthy because I am taking care myself on many different levels - even if I’m not at my goal weight.  And I am joyful because my life is full of many experiences, both positive and negative and I am living through every one of them. I don’t need to acquire or be anything other than me.

What are your definitions of abundance, joy and health?  Could they stand a little widening?

The subject of couples who work together is near and dear to my heart, especially those who throw love and risk and money into one pot and choose the entrepreneurial route together. After all, I worked with my significant other for over five years, before turning our business into an international non-profit. 

While working together for the same company has its risks (losing your job at the same time) and benefits (seeing each other often, knowing the same people), running a business together can really make or break a relationship. 

Issues around how much money to risk on a venture, how much time to spend together, and bringing business into the bedroom are common problems, and it often seems that when the business begins to struggle, the relationship struggles as well. Communication and clarity of purpose become paramount, as is knowing when to leave work behind to just “be” with each other.

Add to this potent mix the question: Who’s in charge here? Power struggles can take their toll on both the business and the relationship. Sometimes it’s best to simply make one of you the boss. This couple seems to have found happiness when the husband went to work for the wife. I found their story inspiring. 

What do you think? Can couples work together successfully? Are there some ventures that are more conducive to romance and business co-existing? If you’re in a business with your significant other, how do you make it work? Would you want to work with your lover?

My three year old’s favorite book before bed is a Caldecott -honor book called “When Sophie Gets Angry — Really, Really Angry.”  It’s about how Sophie deals with the uncomfortable, and sometimes even frightening emotion of anger.  Interestingly, I have actually found myself working through some uncomfortable emotions of my own lately.

When I wrote my first post, I was in the middle of our bootcamp “cleanse” and obviously pretty focused on food.  By the time the cleanse was over however, I found myself not focused on food so much, but rather confronting some larger life issues.  The clarity and energy that resulted from ridding my body of the toxins, sugar, gluten, etc. forced me to deal with some fears I didn’t realize I had been avoiding for several weeks.

As I mentioned in my first post, food is something that I have long used for comfort. What I realized this week is that in the last month or so, I’ve specifically been using food (and a lot of other distracting activity) to blunt the onset of uncomfortable emotions of fear, anxiety and angst around my professional and financial future.

By way of background, you have to understand that I grew up with very type-A, achievement oriented immigrant parents who impressed upon me that my first priority goal in life should be ensuring myself a secure financial future.  So the fact that I left my Fortune 500 job for the more flexible, but yes, less secure world of freelancing is not something that always rests easily with me.  While my heart and my mind know that this is the path I want and need, and that I am talented enough to land on my feet no matter what happens, there’s still a part of me that is still petrified at times.

Without any “splurge” foods in my life for seven days, I was laid bare to myself.  But as difficult as it has been to been to confront my fears, the interesting thing is that once I let myself feel them, it has become easier to move on from them. Once I admitted my fears to myself, I had no choice but acknowledge them and work through them.  The end result has actually been a renewed energy, motivation and productivity in my work and the path I’ve chosen for myself.

So I challenge you, whether with the aid of a nutritional cleanse, a journal, therapist or whatever means …to have an honest look at what uncomfortable emotions you might want to face up to.  The process might not be easy, but you’ll be surprised at how gratifying and cathartic it is to work your way through it.

Hello, all:

My name is Karen Lee and I’m honored to be blogging for Ideal Balance for the first time.  I am a married, working mom of a three year old, a career coach, MBA admissions consultant (http://mbaexchange.com), and writer.  But mostly I’m just a modern woman trying to balance my life, just like all of you.

I take a holistic approach as a career coach, having learned by hard-won experience that life balance is key to career success.  As Julie Morgenstern (http://juliemorgenstern.com), organization expert and columnist for O magazine, said in one of her bestsellers, the highest performing employees/entrepreneurs “keep their lives in balance…so that they can replenish their energy and recharge their perspective for their work.”

How do you replenish your energy?  To get some support and guidance on how to do it in a balanced way, I am currently enrolled in Monica’s Life and Body Makeover Bootcamp. My favorite part of this week’s call was hearing a participant say that she wanted to focus on what she IS putting in to her body during the bootcamp cleanse, vs. focusing on what she is NOT putting into it (“non-cleanse foods” like dairy, meat, refined sugar.)  This got me thinking about how we regard food in this country (and more locally, in my mom and dad’s house when I was growing up):

A) Food = comfort

B) Food =  unfortunate necessity (”eat your veggies, even if you hate them!”)

C) Food = indulgence, reward, or pleasure

I’m all for limited amounts of regarding food as A and C, but what Monica more importantly focuses on is regarding all food, in moderation, as good; and regarding healthy, whole foods as a REFUELING, RECHARGING, ENERGIZING, POSITIVE SUSTENANCE.

I want to actually stop referring to healthy food as “good for me,” since that implies that there is a morally “bad food” as well.  Yes, it’s not healthy for you to eat a cupcake in big quantities because it has adverse effects on your body.  But if you put a one cupcake in your mouth once in awhile, it’s not bad.  In fact, I am actually starting to regard it as good, in the sense that it is, as Monica calls it, “a splurge food.”

On the other hand, I want to regard, let’s say a strawberry, as even better food, but not in the traditional way we think about “good for you.”  Instead of thinking of it as a “good” in the virtuous sense, I want to think about it as a better food to refuel myself with SUSTAINABLE energy to be able to fully enjoy and be present in my life, whether it be in: my alone time, my time with my husband and daughter, the time with my other family and friends, or my time working.  If I have that cupcake, I’m more likely to crash later and have less energy to, for example, play with my darling little girl or spend some quality time with my husband.

In other words, I want to think about all eating as a positive thing again, not something I feel guilty or proud about…a perspective hammered into me by, yes, say-it-all-together-now, my mother.  In her defense, she probably learned it from her mother or by the cultural media of her adolescence.

Then it’s just a matter of what you want to do with your refueled life…