Work/Life Tango: The Myth of the 50/50 work/life balance split

[Music] hi I'm Dr Nicole liin and this is the hey kiddo podcast where we talk about all things parenting today I'm really excited we're speaking with Marissa green the creator of work life reimagined a work life design program for working parents Marissa draws on 20 years of building organizational culture through human Center design to help working parents rethink balance in a modern world and use creative intention to build a work life design that helps the whole family Thrive Marissa we're so excited to have you on the hey K podcast to talk about this thank you I'm so excited to be here this is one of my favorite topics and to apply it to the whole family and help kids Thrive I'm very excited to talk about it it's so exciting I want I want to start with the a burning question that I don't understand what is work life what is work life Bal let's I meant to say what is work life design but what is work life balance what is work life balance well yeah I first of all it's a joke it's a joke it's not total joke it's not real anymore I don't know that it was ever real um but it in my experience and when I talk to my clients and all the different parents that I work with basically what we're learning in today's modern society especially is that we've been set up to fail the whole idea and visual of balance makes makes us think that there's two sides of an equal coin we put work on one side we put life on the other side and our goal is to try to figure out how to get that to just stay even and be balanced and as you and I both know and all working parents know there is no way to have that 50/50 balance really ever it is an EB and a flow a roller coaster it changes every day changes with every season of our kids' lives and so I say it's a joke I say it's like balance is not actually real that's not what we're striving for when I when we do work life design it is not to strive for balance it's really to design from an intentional Place how do you go through those es and flows and how are you going to make intentional choices every day that work for you and your family right I well I love that I I I literally have never in the 20 plus years that I've been doing this work as a as a clinical and organizational psychologist I literally have never understood that term because I don't understand why work is separate from life like work is for it's so much part of our identity for it's it's such a big part of who we are I've never understood why it fell on opposite ends like and it's it's right for for those of us that choose to be working parents when we can learn to do it in a way that whatever meets our design like how we want to intentionally show up it's a great thing to model for our kids so I I just I've never understood why their opposite ends of the spectrum makes and I think when we put them at opposite ends of the spectrum something happens and that identity piece is really really important so one thing that's been coming up in my work with people is I'm starting to realize that especially for working moms something happens you know used to be physically when we would go into an office now it's a little bit more philosophically when you show up on a zoom call or whatever it might be there's almost a shedding of the personal Parenthood identity so if I keep imagining people walking into an office and all of a sudden like the baby rattle the bottle bag the um you know yoga sweats whatever kind of fall off and as you walk into the office you put on this whole other persona to go into the office and this the opposite happens when you come out of the office like your suit comes off you put in all these other things and all of a sudden you're in a different world playing a different role and when we look at things like balance 50/50 work and life as two separate things our identities also become two separate things and we're kind of caught between these two worlds and I'm my my whole goal in this work life design is to help more people get to what you're describing how do we actually look at the two together and have one identity that works in both places because our energy is Zapped because we're trying to be too many different people in too many different places and it is all one life it's not work it's all one life I love I love that you're saying that because that's the other thing it's like you know what what is the workplace Persona like are are you unless there's unless you have a you know a a psychological disorder where they personalities like you are show you are showing it is part of who you are and and and to and to expend the energy trying to stuff it or keep it compartmentalized is really hard like I remember I used before covid traveling a ton like I just traveled a ton but I would also be in New York at least once a week with clients and I would drive there and be having conference calls pumping like I will never forget having conference calls pumping through the tunnels yeah everyone saw my boobs like being in being in like public bathrooms pumping like just doing it where I had to do it like that I didn't all of us sudden once I was with clients turned that off like that was it's part of what yes part of what I what that life was at that point right right and what's interesting though is I think only over the past maybe well especially since covid but probably even the past eight years has that become more acceptable right that where where the idea of a woman pumping in a conference room or bringing her baby to work as a newborn right people did not do that before people I have several colleagues um people who were leaders and kind of helped Mentor me through my career who would say I didn't tell anyone in my job about my divorce because I didn't want my personal life to show up at work or I was really struggling with some you know development or social emotional needs for my kid and I needed more support but couldn't talk to anybody about it at work and that's not okay we shouldn't have to stuff that down we shouldn't have to leave that at the door and I'm all about boundaries and ensuring that you you know you don't have to disclose things you don't want to disclose but in our workplaces when we expect so much of our employees we also should be able to create an environment where people can show up authentically and recognize that there is life outside of work and it does impact how we show up and it also impacts the bottom line for businesses when you take care of the whole person the whole person and recognize that there's different parts of our identity like there's you know there's different parts some are transient some and and it's interesting because the different parts of our identity at different parts of our life compete you know like during covid like the role of parent versus the role of employee or different phases in our life when we become parents when we become grandparents or if we get sick yeah there's turmoil in that competition there is there's extreme tension and I I think that's the part about the design that's also really important is in the same way that like balance is never consistent Your Design is never perfect like there will be a day that the boundaries get completely blurred and and like my favorite example of that is when you've got a big meeting or you're like sometimes for me I do a lot of workshops so I know I'm on in a workshop and I get the text your kid's sick uh she forgot something like whatever happened where then the lines get blurred and all of a sudden 5 minutes before your Workshop you're like okay who's on point like who's who's going to take the thing or you know and so it it's never going to be perfect and so it's also that idea of letting go of the of the concept that we have to always get it right too that we've got to be that that we're never going to fully be present as a parent this kind of I don't I don't know if I even want to say this but I'm gonna like throw it out there say it we're never going to be fully present as a parent and we're also never going to be fully present as a employee or an entrepreneur or a person working when you're trying to do both at the same time and I think we have to create space and Grace for that to be true like to be human and to not be perfect in either place but do our best every single day to make it work well you're speaking the truth and I think that I think that and I want to I want to dive into to to to work life design a little bit more and understand fully what that is but I think our I'm going to say something I probably shouldn't say either but I think we should I mean I think that's the truth this is the truth I think our Pursuit are like this the um the strength-based movement for example was a great movement but we took it in a Direction that's not realistic like you can't just focus on your strengths and ignore your weaknesses because your weaknesses become an Achilles heel like I might be the most you know compassionate empathetic person but if I am compassionate and empathetic but I'm also super impatient and you're not going to remember my compassion and empathy when I'm being super impatient to you like I can't just ignore that and I think so I think we took the strength B BAS movement in a different direction than it was intended but I also think we took the positive psychology movement in a direction that was not intended like you know chronic or toxic positivity or you can have it all or We should strive to be happy all the time like the reality is is as humans we have a range of emotions and if you were happy all the time literally all the time there would be there would be something wrong with you you're not feeling your feels that's not it's not possible too and it I love what you just said too we can have it all we can do you know it it did it created this environment where it was just I think it made all of us feel like oh this is tough it made all of us feel like you could have it all and that and in that that then became the expectation and so as more and more people are starting to realize that the idea of having it all in the way that it's currently framed which is you know masterful career amazing family uh also balanced as a human and happy all day every day when people start to Fall From Grace realizing that that isn't reality and that isn't possible yeah that's when the shame the guilt that you start to think that there's something wrong with you and social media has created this environment now it's it's a twofold in one way it's created an environment where you're watching everyone um represent all the best of their lives which then makes you feel that Gap even more when you don't have all that happiness or all that you know a work life 100% Balan your house isn't beautiful right your house isn't Immaculate right and but on the flip side I think it's also created a space where we can have truth bombs and real dialogue about the difficulty and I think that's starting to shift so that people are starting to realize and I believe this I believe you can have it all I just think you have to decide what all is for you you can't you can't have it all in the way that it's been dictated to us today but you've got to decide for you what is that and there is no right answer to that like there is no shame or guilt to feel about whatever all is for you for some people all is being with their kids all the time for some people all is a part-time job and picking their kids up at three for others it's like all in on a business and you know your partner's taking care of the kids and so any one of those are a great intentional choice and that can be all for you it's just you got to own whatever that is for yourself and not worry about what it might mean to anybody else because it's your family that matters the most it's helping your family through that's the most important so talk so talk about the intentionality because you're you're you're leaning into that right now around work life design and what it is and and how you how you craft it and cultivate it okay so this one's a little bit tough because you in order to be intentional you have to be willing to see the reality of what things are and I think with most of my clients they'll come to me with a usually a work rated thing that they think they need help with it's either I need to grow my capacity so I can get a promotion or um gosh I'm really bad at bad at time management and I need help finding balance because I'm bad at managing my time and most of the time what we find is that Underneath It All it's not so much that people are bad at time management it's not so much that they don't have capacity for the promotion it's that they just aren't being intentional about what they really want their work and life experience to be like and in most cases people have gotten to a place this is of course just with my clients this is not a standard statement for everyone in the world but people have gotten to a place where work has crept in and has become the thing that they are intentional about and life becomes whatever fits in around it and and so what we work on is taking a look at the whole picture and saying from a creat space and from a human- centered design space which means your family you get to choose I I really encourage people to put themselves first and in the center and for a lot of people that's really hard to like very hard me and what I want um so there's also an option to do it like for your family unit but the whole concept of human centered design is that you put the person or the group of people who you want to design for in the center and for a lot of my clients that's like their biggest aha because they come in with a problem that is focused on work and wanting to grow a capacity or do something to shift what they're doing at work and when we start to put them at the center or their family at the center all of a sudden the design changes all the things that are happening around them the perspective shifts and so that intentionality is all about being willing to see what reality is putting yourself and your family at the center and then designing around that now look I'm a realist in some workplace circumstances you can't 100% design for your family at the center so then those become bigger questions and you know bigger things to uncover in terms of what people really want and are they in situations that can support the design that they really want to have um but the intentionality really comes with with the willingness to open our eyes and see what life looks like with our family at the center or yourself at the center uh in best case scenario right you know it's interest it's a very interesting way of looking through things and it's very hard I I'm I'm curious why you think in your experience people come identifying the work problems first or people tend to put the work first I think that they are easier to see it's harder to see um okay let's take burnout for an example right and I'm not a burnout expert so you can check me on this if I'm right about this or not because I think you you know it better than I do from a clinical standpoint but in my personal experience of burnout I didn't even notice it was happening until it was already manifesting in my body now I went to a coach and a therapist before it was manifesting in my body but the thing I went to them for was is you know I'm really struggling with managing everything I have on my plate like I'd really love some help getting more organized or I'd really love to grow my uh you know whatever like basically help me get a promotion because I can't manage what I've got on my plate and I want to get you know farther I didn't even realize the impact it was having on my body oh sorry I didn't realize it's like that it's like that news remember that guy that was on news in BBC or the little kid comes in that's exactly what it is that's exactly what it is can I answer her question that of course of course please Sloan what's up she has a fever she's sick today oh Sloan oh thank you look at this oh hi princess oh my gosh it's did you say hi hi Sloan sorry you're not feeling well she said sorry you're not feeling well um um so anyway you don't even notice that the real issue is happening to you because I I was so focused on how do I get better at my job how do I manage my time better how do I get more organized and then all of a sudden the burnout started manifesting in my body and then the other thing that I started to notice and this one's hard is and relatable for all you hey kiddo folks is I didn't even realize also how that was Rippling into my family until two years later like I can look back now now that I've been on the journey that I've been on and done the work that I've done thought about what intentional design looks like for our Our Lives which is different all the time I can look back and be like holy cow like these moments I start to remember these moments and like what my interactions were like with the kids like what like what like okay great example yeah no this is great Scott and I that's my husband um we were like looking back at videos and probably about three months before I started to have like headaches in the body manifestations of burnout we had um during the pandemic decided to go to Utah for a month sounded wonderful it was wonderful we had a great great time worked in Utah while also having the two kids home with us so we were both working we had both the kids home with us no help from other people so it was insane let's be real that was a completely ridiculous thing to do we split our days you know I worked from 600 to 12 he worked from 12 to to 6 then we tried to finish things up at night anyway we were watching a video from that time and the video is the kids dancing in the living room of this place that we had rented I'm sitting on one couch Scott's taking the video and as this video goes on you just like I completely check out like I am I am not present whatsoever at one point I'm even like on my phone but probably not really doing anything special on it I was so at my Max I couldn't even be in the moment with them and they were being so adorable they were so cute they're dancing and Emerson comes over at one point puts her hand on my knee and I just I don't even like check into her at all and so that now looking back I mean gosh if I had seen that a year ago I'd probably be like sobbing but um you know we do the best we can with what we've got in the moments and we learn from them um and try to do better the next time but right it shows up and you got to be willing to see it and sometimes that's harder to see than the fact that you can't manage your time in the office absolutely well thank you thank you for sharing that and I think one of the things you're also you know hitting on that's popping up in my brain as you're talking is I think a lot of us well look globally the entire world during the pandemic yeah you know I I I don't think we I I I I think we minimiz this like we all exper and I know trauma is a very big loaded word I I I get that but we all collectively experienced trauma and in fact the psychological Community coined pandemic trauma stress experience oh yeah and it's that everyone experienced because we all had stress experiences like I don't care if we're like oh I was fine I was fine I was fine just coping with the grief whether we lost someone or not what you know life changed yeah and and just a millisec in a millisecond and when things changed there's grief there's loss it was constant change in ambiguity and we're not we not designed for that it was you know es the people that are in professions that care and help other people it was dealing with other people's stuff even if you're not even if you were like entering like you know a software engineer behind a computer like you're still dealing with other people's stuff all of us collect like one of those things can take down the human brain all of us we're dealing with all of it so we all experience shifts and that shutdown it's very interesting because I wonder what that would have looked like also like if it happened 10 years ago or whatever you know before like if you had kids 10 years what whatever right right we none of us got out of this unscathed and none of us went through it unscathed and I think that when we talk about shame and guilt and all of that these are those again this is part of the human experience these are emotions that are part of the human experience but we spend as adults so much time shoving down like why am I still feeling anxious why am I still feeling why am I still feeling burned out like instead of just being like I'm still feeling anxious still feeling it but the why and the shoving down and the hard to admit part as adults why is it still happening well it should still be happening it's kind of like I always equate what happened with the pandemic is a car accident like you get in a car accident all of a sudden your nervous system spikes up your adrenaline spikes up and it is until you chill out your body chills out that you feel the pain and the emotional pain right the same with this like our body like it's over it's done but this is when this stuff spikes up but we're also living in a world where we're inundated with all this like kind of stuff politics environment stuff our brains are on constant high speed but like of course we're still feeling this and of course the intentionality around our work life design is constantly shifting because we're constantly also shifting because we're shifting life changes every single day and this is such a great point because they've been doing you know during the pandemic they did all these studies on burnout because everyone was burning out but they've continued a lot of them and still 89% of workers say that they're still burnt out yes and and and the funny thing is I bet they were before the pandemic too because I've in in all of its um difficulty and Trauma the the pandemic also offered an opportunity for reflection yeah and an opportunity for a also I don't know if I'll go as far as saying a collective Awakening like I don't mean to be that like big with it but yeah but it created an opportunity for people to reflect and recognize that things could be done differently and I think we're also in this phase part of the reason that um I love what you're saying about like feel it be in it it's okay if you still feel burnt out it's okay if you still feel shame or guilt or you know whatever the things are because you got to feel that stuff to figure out what OCC creative Next Step might be and if you're not even feeling what it feels like to um experience reality or real life you're going to just keep kind of staying on the hamster wheel because it feels comfortable feels feels comfortable to just keep doing what I was always doing yeah um and not really recognizing or taking a deeper look to say like is it really working for me like right right is it really working for me and my family am I like you got to feel the pain so that you can recognize it because otherwise you just kind of think everything's okay and like is an okay life okay I don't know I kind of want more than an okay life yeah but it's it's interesting what you're saying right now because I think that like you know we get on that hamster wheel we get on the stuffing like that's just stuff I just got to get it done like just keep going well and sometimes that's all we have capacity for I mean that's totally totally totally but I also think that with that you know when our brains evolve like they did like for all of us again recognizing the opportunity also recognizing the the stress experience all of that you know when you use the same strategies to cope and your world around you is different and your brain's different you're not going to get the same results and I think when and again it makes sense that like when scary things happen and all of that or we're feeling really bad it makes sense that we dig into our old coping mechanisms yes but when they don't work because things are different and we need to evolve our coping mechanisms then we're like why isn't it working but we have to allow like and this is where I think the toxic positivity and the right constant Pursuit of Happiness really messes us up because maybe it should be the constant pursuit of feeling the feels yes and then like pull that one out yeah pull that one out and then like evolving knowing that we have the power to evolve our thinking and knowing that we have the power to evolve our coping mechanisms like we're evolving till we die that's a great that's great news so we can do differently we can think differently and that ties into what you're saying yeah and I want to ask about this like how do you actually do the work of figuring out the family in the middle or you in the middle like how how does it happen so the approach that that I take is all centered on taking a creative approach so literally thinking of yourself as a designer um I believe that when we can put our minds and our brains into a creative space we have a lot more freedom and a lot more um I don't know that I would say clinical term psychological safety but we allow ourselves to think differently than when we um are trying to solve a problem and so the first thing that we do is spend a lot of time getting into a creative space and thinking um really thinking like a designer of your life like I go through an exercise the very first exercise that I do with with my 101 clients is I have them go and do like a Pinterest board of all the life experiences that they want to have the life experiences that they would be excited to be part of the life experiences that would help them feel the way that they want to feel and we like a vision board kind of like a vision board but it's um it's a little different in that the perspective that I asked them to take is not one of achievement like it's not a vision board to say like this is what I want my life to look like in five years or this is what I want my life to look like at the end of this it's literally a creative juices type of experience to say how do you put your mindset in a place of what possibilities are and don't hold on to them yet don't let that's not your design your Pinterest is not your design but it's to get you in the creative space of feeling free and feeling safe to dream of the possibilities and and the one reason that that's a really important first step is most of the time when you ask someone what they want from a work life design standpoint there's there is an immediate um deterrent after they say it well I would love to like start my days at 10:00 but gosh that's not possible my boss would never let me do that I'd love to take a two- week vacation this year and go to Europe but I just don't have the time I've got a huge project you immediately go to a place of limitation not immediately but a lot of people go to a place of limitation because it doesn't feel possible and so part of human- centered design when you're doing it inside or organizations or inside you know um Community structures is to do the discovery from a creative space that there's like Photo design where you actually go around communities and take pictures and like discover from a place of creativity and so I try to bring that into someone's life so that they can say from a creative space in a place not of limitations what could the possibilities be and so we do that first and then there there is deeper coaching work in asking some of those questions around how do you unlock those limitations like that's a deeper set of work you can't do that with a Pinterest board um but the Pinterest the Pinterest board creates a space and a place to like draw from to have those conversations and then as you go through the process the latter part of the process is really then starting to say with Clarity what are your non-negotiables yeah the only way you can build a design is to understand what you unapologetically build a boundary around and you have to be willing to an apologetic with the boundary and I find I found over time I didn't didn't know this right away for myself and I also didn't know right away for my clients but you can't start with too many boundaries in too many places they're too hard to hold we we've lived a life of saying yes to a lot of things we've you know been on that hamster wheel for a while like you can't all of a sudden just walk in and be like put a bock around every single thing in my life and so we start small and we start with the ones that you can get comfortable give me an example give me an example so like going let's let's I'll give two examples because I think it's important to show both sides so example one let's say I want to have dinner with my family every every night at 5 that's that's a tough boundary like not people can like make that happen so you could have your boundary or your non-negotiable be I want to have dinner with my family every night at 5: or you could say I'm gonna have dinner with my family at 5: one night a week and I'm going to practice and be intentional about setting that boundary so that people understand that it's important to me and so it becomes something that you communicate to your team it becomes something you have an out of office on in your email like the the follow through of the intentionality is actually what's more important than than the like saying the boundary itself because what I find especially in workplaces is that in most cases if you are reasonable with what your boundary is like going to dinner at 5 one night a week is pretty reasonable like people will respect the boundary but if you communicate it to them if you don't remind them and tell them every Wednesday this is my night for dinner with my family they're going to put a meeting on your calendar at five o'clock and if you don't have out of office they're gonna expect you to show up at that meeting at five o'clock and so you have to hold the boundary but I find that if you can pick one thing do it small do it really well and get comfortable with realizing that people will respect your boundaries then you can start expanding it then it can be okay I'm going to do it on Friday too or I'm going to do something different for myself in the morning go to the gym and show up at work at 9:30 um I also want to show the flip side though because I think this is really important our kids learn to respect them too and as working parents it can't always be about setting a boundary or non-negotiable with work sometimes it also has to be about setting a boundary or a non-negotiable with our families and that those are sometimes harder right they're children they're it like my daughter like came in she delivered me coffee which was amazing but it could have been like Mommy I need something mom I need you right right you know and so those are harder to hold but equally important to set and communicate so if it's something like every Saturday I need to be able to wake up later and like have some of my own time to reset and get ready for weekend first of all it's a perfectly respectable boundary to have so many parents think I worked all week I got to wake up and be on the second my kids wake me up on Saturday morning not true don't have to they'll be fine tell them they can be on their iPad tell them to read a book whatever it is you cannot come in my bedroom until 8 o'clock this is not a boundary I have but I have clients who do have this boundary yes and and so you do the same thing you have to remind them every Saturday at 8:00 they're going to come in but you remind them and you reset the boundary but that practice of the reminding and holding it unapologetically that's what allows you to be able to realize that the boundaries are possible that people will respect them and everyone will be okay but you can't take on too many all at once like you're not GNA be able to do like a life overhaul uh you know day one of work life design because they're hard to hold boundary I mean you do this work like yeah boundaries are hard to hold extremely hard to hold they're extremely hard to hold but would I love that you were talking about before too and thank you for these examples is our the limitations like our mindset of limitation and like kind of how we immediately go there it's really interesting and I you know I think especially limitations that we set around are the boundaries that we set with our families and the again limitations tend to be rooted in guilt and shame yes yes and we're full of it full of it and to your point yes we I I've been thinking about this while we're also talking this idea of like feeling feeling our feelings right feeling feeling the feels sadness feeling pain feeling and and I don't know if this is true but I now H am wondering and have a hypothesis around I think part of the need for us as parents is to find a way to take the shame and guilt and move it to the underlying emotion that we feel about whatever the experience is and most of the time what I find if I'm feeling like a shame or a guilt about I've been traveling a lot my work life design right now does not look super balanced um it's been a lot but there's like a bit meta level balance that happens throughout the year so in these times that are really busy I do feel like shame and I kind of feel guilt when I'm leaving but when I go underneath it it's actually because I'm I'm sad and I miss my kids like or it's because I think someone else might judge me for what I'm doing and like then if you can get underneath it then you can start to decide which things you actually want to hold on to and feel and which things you want to let go of and like holding on to a feeling of sadness because I miss my kids that feels a whole lot better than feeling shameful for being away do you know what I like I can sit in that I can sit in sadness I can be sad the whole plane ride I can look at pictures of them the whole plane ride and be like God I miss them yeah kind of sucks that I have to be away yeah but it is what it is yeah I do I can't you know while you while you were saying that you know also sometimes there's two two things I just wrote down first you you know sometimes the shame and the guilt comes from our cognitive distortions which are normal ways at our brains like that the way we the way we yeah they're normal they protect us but they interfere with with thinking clearly and our thinking affects how we feel so you know oh I should be home or you know my I am not a I am not being a good mother or I am not being a good father whatever it might be because XYZ you know it's our distortions in our head a lot of times that create this and I and I do think again when we allow ourselves to feel the feels and really get to it we can also allow ourselves to think about what's at the root of it like what is our thinking pattern that's creating this and yes dig and I I always love this technique in in in you know working with companies like the why like asking yourself why seven times or is it five wise right like just go go go go I don't know what it is but go go keep going keep going keep going you also mentioned and I think this is a biggie you mentioned judgment you mentioned judgment and it feels like that's a biggie and like you know the you know as humans we're so self focused even even those of us that don't feel that we're very self focused and think everyone's think everybody else is looking at us when in real worrying about what what I might be thinking about them like so silly right because no one has time to pay attention to anyone else but like but there is I mean let's talk about let's talk about the judge J and work life you know the int the intentionality that you set I think there are camps like the stay-at-home mom versus the working mom and there seems like it always like reminds me of like you know what's it called Westside Story like the two games on the playground the like stay home moms versus the like Mom who just got back from the office yeah yeah yeah it's like let's dive into that a little bit okay this one's really hard for me because especially since leaving corporate and doing my own Consulting and starting the coaching I it's like been an identity crisis again like like what oh wait a minute which Camp am I in now like I don't know which side of the you know am I the jet or the what are they whatever I don't know I don't remember West Side Story I don't know I don't know whose team I'm on and what's been interesting as I've had more and more conversations with especially working mom or not working moms all mothers all mothers um also I do I do believe moms who stay at home are also working they they have like they the CEO of their family like have a whole you know a whole thing so I even struggled when I started doing this like what do I call moms working in an office because it it could make other Mom stay-at home moms feel like they don't have a job and that's not true right you I got all in my head because I was worried about how I how this work was going to make other people feel right yeah and how it was make what judgments would be out there and I think what I found in having all these different conversations similar to what you just said about we worry more about what everybody else might be judging us for or thinking about than the reality of what they're thinking about us and I think the same is true for these moms on either side of the playground the working mother is feeling all that guilt and shame because she thinks that like the stay-at-home mom might be judging her or looking at her differently similarly a stay atome mom might be feeling oh I should be doing more or gosh you know because she thinks that's what a working mom might be thinking about her when in reality again we're really only focused on our own like we're not I'm I'm not thinking about my friend who you know is with her kids all day long I'm I'm not I'm happy for you I'm excited that you get to do that I think that's an amazing life choice and I know she's not judging me for what I'm doing but I'm over here in my head like oh gosh she must think I'm a terrible mom because I didn't make you know muffins yesterday for the kid's birthday or whatever the thing is right you know so it it most of the times to the to the same degree of limitations we're in our own way we're in our we are the ones standing in our way um and if but letting go of that feeling of being judged is really difficult I would also argue if we are thinking about our friend that is a stay at home mom or a working mom and we are finding oursel in a place of judgment I would say that's very good information to explore I love that because what is it behind like if I'm feeling like you're staying at home and I'm sitting and judging you and I'm working my B well am I not intentionally designing my life and feeling actually upset that I'm not spending more time with my kid or whatever it might be I think judgment is often rooted in it should be rooted in self-reflection yeah I think that's great I think there's a quote and I'm not going to get it right I'll botch it but it's some kind of quote of like jealousy shows us what we really hope for our own lives some something like that totally and I think this you could replace jealousy with judgment I think when you yeah that's such a good point that element of if you're seeing something in someone else that makes you feel a certain way it it maybe it's because you're missing it in your own life it's a big one I think that's I think that's a topic we should explore another time I think it's a big it's a Big E Yeah I want to ask you about W with work life you know with with setting the intentions with designing your work life the way you want to and the way you can how how does this how does this impact kiddos so I I'll speak first for my own experience because I feel most rooted in it and not being like a clinical psychologist I don't want to comment on that part so let me tell you my experience and then let's unpack what you think that means you know that might Ripple for other families so in my experience what I've seen is my our ability to be connected as a family significantly grew when we got intentional about putting I did start at first with me in the middle to to be frank I like that's why I am a big believer that as parents we need to put ourselves in the middle first and take care of ourselves first and everything else will Ripple yeah through throughout the journey though after putting myself in the middle we started to do it collectively as a family and put the whole family in the middle and the shift in our ability to connect has been the biggest and greatest impact I think on the kids so that's not only my ability to be present but actually our ability as a family to protect our time like to protect the things that are important to us to protect our moments of connection to ensure that you know if we say we're going to do dinner at 5 we darn do our best to be together to do the dinner at five five's unrealistic six o'clock let's go back to but um early bird special comes a little later right but but the other part about it so I would say like number one the ripple effect to the kids is just a deeper better connection as a family now you could probably talk about what that then means you know clinically for their development and social emotional well-being like it's you got toone can talk about that it's obvious that it helps right right it helps I think the other thing that has been fascinating for me that I was not expecting and that I've seen in a couple of my clients as well that have been like farther along the journey because this takes time like you can get a new design in I don't know six to eight weeks whatever like we could put it down on paper but actually putting it into life and like doing the roller coasters and redesigning a couple times like that takes a couple years you're not going to build the full effects for a while um so if you want a quick fix this is not your jam but um but what I've noticed over the past couple of years and doing it consistently and having the conversations with the kids is that they start to become owners of their own design too they start to communicate and articulate what they want mom dad I'd really love to just have downtime this weekend mom you've been traveling a lot can we just have our own day you know on Saturday or hey they hold me accountable too they'll be like you said that we were gonna blah blah blah it was part of what you told us and part of your design let's you got to do it and like that has been like magic because all of a sudden it isn't just about what Scott and I sitting and putting the kids in our family in the middle and making all these decisions it's actually like we as a unit are owning kind of owning our power and designing what we want work life to look like and this expands Beyond just like how we manage our time yeah this is about like deciding what kind of vacations we want to take deciding how we spend our summers deciding like it goes beyond so that really what you're curating is this holistically intentional life not just oh gosh I got a fit life around work and you start to make these B oh that that is that that is huge what you just said so basically you are teaching the life's I I mean one of the impacts that I'm hearing from your daughters is that they're learning how to set boundaries they're learning how to build accountability in themselves and hold others accountable yes and do it let them eight and not yes like yes and every once in a while like you'll love this every once in a while there will just be this moment where they're like really negotiating for something now sometimes it's candy like let's you know not always like a big life moment sometimes they're negotiating for something that like okay they really put thought behind this this is like meaningful to them they're negotiating for it we gotta like move things around you know to make it happen and holy cow if in those moments I'm not like what have I done what have I done like this is so hard like just made my life harder but then and in those moments usually Scott can tell he could like see the words coming across my brain and he'll just be like we designed it this way we designed it this way designed it this way and this is what we wanted we didn't know this is what we wanted for them we did it for us first we really did I love this but like I love it yeah the impact has definitely been for them so so okay wrapping up what are the top five things I could talk to you for hours and we will and we will what are the top five things that you want listeners to take away okay I love this I love that you ask these top five things at the end okay so one um work life balance is a joke so just let it go let as much as you can let go that idea of like the 5050 balance I think go ahead and sit in the idea that when you're burnt out it does have an impact on your family yes that sucks that hurts that's like sitting in the pain a little bit like it does but use that as fuel to start making the intentional decisions that you need in order to be able to help yourself and your family and so with that I would say I love I wasn't sure if I was going to read the quote but I'll read the quote what you focus on grows what you think about expands and what you dwell upon determines your destiny by Robin charma and the the thing I like about this is that whole idea of oftentimes our focus is really work because sometimes that feels easier than focusing on all of the other things coming at us in life and especially the difficulty of parenting but just remember that what you focus on is what's going to grow so if you're you know how do you B balance how do you create an intentional design where you're really focusing on the things that are most important to you to you like it's okay if work is your priority be intentional about that being your priority um and make a decision about whether that's what you really want or not I think the work life design boundaries can create safety for the whole family like it's you you can really be the one to help your kids learn how to create those boundaries and it enables you to create connection and safety and inside your families and then just soow slow down yeah slow down sometimes we're running so fast it's not even possible for us to feel the feels or understand that we're burnt out or recognize that we're jealous of the person who has more time vacationing or whatever or if you're a person who works part-time and you're feeling jealous about someone's career like feel that slow down enough to recognize that you want something different so that then you can get into a cre space to design it the way that you really want it to be oh this is amazing Marissa thank you so much for being on podcast this was great thank you thanks for listening to hey kiddo if you like what you hear give us a review wherever you get your podcast learn more about hey kiddo at our website hey- kid.com have a question for our experts email us at hello- kid.com [Music]