Hi everyone, welcome back! A couple of weeks ago I examined the close connection between ‘feeling our negative emotions’ and our happiness and in the process it got a little emotional for me :-). This week, I would like to examine a very popular relatively new belief which is getting a lot of attention especially from women these days. And that belief is – A WOMAN CAN HAVE IT ALL!!
Belief: A WOMAN CAN HAVE IT ALL…
Even though at first I really want to say, no, absolutely not; especially not without making sacrifices which would affect at least some aspects of a woman’s life – personal or professional and the lives of her family members; I also believe whether a woman can have it all or not depends on how she defines as “having it all” and what her priorities are in her own life and what parts of her life she is willing to make compromises with because without compromises, there is no such thing as “having it all”!! For me personally, it’s not possible to have it all because whenever I think about having it all, what I really want in my professional life is to have a very high profile career with amazing pay, a fancy title, and great prospects to keep climbing the corporate ladder regardless of the long working hours. On top of that, for my personal life, I want to be married to a husband who is very loving and supportive of my high profile career and who pitches in to raise our 2 very well behaved kids. And I don’t think I am going out on a limb when I say that most women define “having it all” similar to how I define it. But like I mentioned above, since a lot of compromises will have to be made to get to “having it all”; I don’t think it is even appropriate to call it “having it all”. It should rather be called “having most of or some of it all” 🙂
Folks, I believe a revolution started a few decades ago in this world when some women who became aware of their very intense desire to become as successful as men in their own careers and therefore started to work very hard to achieve their dreams of having these very successful careers. And even though these women were out there achieving amazing heights in their careers, they still were not willing to sacrifice their dreams of having amazing personal lives on top of these high profile careers. Thus, over time, as these women tried to have the best of both worlds, it created a huge dilemma for these ambitions women because at the end of the day, they were still women which meant that according to the laws of nature, they were still the ones who had to get pregnant and bring human beings into this world and nurture them far more than their husbands could. And since this law of nature hasn’t changed and probably never will; and on top of that, since over the last few decades a lot more women have bought into this belief of “having it all” and now have this flame of ambition burning inside of them, it has impacted women by tremendously increasing their workload and as a result their stress levels. And this is what has led some women, including myself, to question the sanity of this belief – IF A WOMAN CAN REALLY HAVE IT ALL?
If you are a woman who believes in this belief; each time you watch/read the news which talks about the Marissa Mayers and Indra Nooyis and Sheryl Sandbergs of this world; do you think to yourself, I can be them. Or I want to be them? Or I have what it takes to be them? And the more you pay attention to such stories, the more you buy into this illusion and think yes, you can have it all!! You can have a very high profile career; a loving and supportive husband who has a similar high profile career, yet, completely supports you in your career as well and 2 beautiful and very well behaved kids. Each time you think to yourself, if these ladies can do it, why not me. And if you are already an ambitious woman, these kinds of news stories really catch your attention and make you desire the kind of life that these ladies lead. It makes you desire the kind of power and money and importance and being needed all the time by very important people to do very important things. But ladies, the truth is, even though these women with these high profile careers appear to have it all, however, what you don’t know is the entire story. You probably don’t even know half the story because this is the side that you don’t get to hear in the news. You don’t get to hear what these women’s internal states are as they try to manage everything in a day that just like all of us only has only 24 hours in it. You don’t hear the news about their stress levels and their coping mechanisms to deal with those stress levels. You don’t get to hear about how little or no time they have available for their own kids and spouses. You don’t get to hear their kids’ longings to spend time with their own mothers and not the nannies. You don’t get to hear about their own disappointments of missing out on watching their kids grow older. You don’t get to hear about the kinds of relationships they have with their own family members. My point is, you don’t hear about a lot of things which they have to sacrifice to get to where they are in their careers, the price they have to pay. And its not just women who end up paying the price, its men too who pay the price for having a very high profile career. But this is the compromise they choose to make. And that’s why, even though, to you it may appear that these women have it all, they simply don’t! They just choose their careers over other things in their lives. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that because this really is a personal choice. But even though this really is a personal choice, at the end of the day, you, the woman, has to be satisfied with making this choice no matter what you end up choosing. If you choose your career over your personal life, you have to be OK with it. If you choose your personal life over your career, you have to be OK with it. If you try to do a little bit of both, you have to be OK with it. You have to be OK with it because if you are not, you will never be happy living the life that you have today and will want to do what your friend is doing or your relative is doing because like I mentioned before, everyone’s lives look much more appealing than your own until you look deeper. Moreover, at the end of the day, all these choices lead you to one and only one destination – happiness and none of these choices are better than the others, I think. They just make our life journeys different, that’s all!
I know to be able to be at peace with your choices in general is a tough thing let alone when that choice impacts the entire foundation of your life and the people who matter to you in that life. But personally coming from an ambitious mindset and now living peacefully by accepting a little bit of both worlds, I can tell you that no matter how highly your boss or colleagues think of you, its only spending those few precious moments watching the smiles and laughter on the faces of these little people who you brought into this world is what makes my heart sing with joy :-).
Leave me a message if you feel like leaving one and until next time, live life 🙂
