EPISODE TAKEAWAYS:

• Modern working moms have to grapple with the pressure to lean in, even when they don’t want to. 

• Lean In isn’t the problem, Leaning In when it’s not right for you is. 

• You can learn a powerful system for living a life you love, without perpetual inner conflict and without constantly bowing to external pressures. 

WHAT'S INSIDE:

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Hello, everybody. This week we are chatting about a really important topic for working moms. So many of us were brought up on the idea that leaning in was one hundred percent the way to go if we wanted to make it in a working mom world. And now the question is out there is: Is Lean In dead? Short answer: No, it's not dead. It's not dead, but does it need an overhaul? Does it need some adjusting? 100 percent, mom, right? 100. 

Let me back up. If you have not been living on this planet for the past 10 years, Lean In was Sheryl Sandberg's book that talked about this really actually empowering idea that women should be able to take a place at the table with men and that women deserve a place at the table, that women shouldn't just be in menial labor roles or in assistant level roles. She said there's no problem with being in those types of roles for people who love them, but that women deserve to be in whatever positions where men are and that, when women are in positions of leadership and of power and in the C-suite, that actually they are FIRE. They create so much change in the world. We have unique superhero powers as working women and especially working moms, and we should not shy away from our full potential in our career capacities. 

Fair, totally fair. And at the moment that Lean In was written, that's what we needed. It was like a kick in the pants, you know, because for a long time women had to fight and claw their way into the workforce in general. They didn't have as much respect as their male counterparts did and it felt like the only way for them to get ahead was to have this idea of grit and, kind of like, just be a man. This is a boys club, so you need to play like the boys.

What's happened though, because of people like Sheryl Sandberg who leaned in and because of industrious women like my mom, who took phone calls while we were at home for her business and would shut the door on us when she was on a phone call and give us the meanest eyes, like, "How dare you speak in this house when I'm on a phone call. I will be with you in a second. And if you mess up the fact that I am at home taking this phone call for me and I don't get this deal, like there will be no forgiveness." 

My mom was a killer at work. My mom owned her own business. My mom ended up being a director. My mom was a total bad a$$. She's just amazing. And in order to do it, she burned the candle at both ends. She didn't want to, but she has told me, "I didn't think there was any other way. In fact, Whitney, there really wasn't any other way. And I felt like I was showing you this amazing role model of someone who could do it all. When you told me you missed me at a school event you wanted me to come to, I was thinking in my own head, 'That's okay, I'm teaching her I'm doing something really important. And you will do something really important one day too.'"

I have no bad feelings toward my mom about that because I know that my mom had the best intentions for me, and that she really cared about her work. I know my mom loves me and cared about me then and cares about me now. But what happened as we had all these moms who were burning the candle at both ends, who felt like, okay, I still have this pressure of I'm supposed to lean in at work and I'm supposed to lean in at home?

I'm supposed to be all the different things to all the different people. And because we're amazing super humans on the surface, we CAN do it on the surface every single day. I can get up at five. I can make food for the kids, make their lunches. I can drop them off at school. I can head to the office. I can be amazing to my patients. I CAN (on the surface) do all the things. But then, at the end of the day, when I go to sleep in my bed, I feel empty and exhausted. I don't want to get up in the morning, but if I don't keep going on this hamster wheel, I'll never be able to start running again. I only have this moment to keep on going because it's like the inertia is making it so that I CAN keep going as a working mom. It's not because I'm feeling in so much alignment or I feel at peace or I feel joyful constantly, right? No. In fact, I feel the opposite. I feel burnout. I feel empty. I feel conflicted. I feel constantly like I'm in a tug of war between everybody's needs and my own.

That's the place I found myself in with my family as a pediatrician, as a doctor, as a mom, with a kid who really needed extra assistance. I felt like I could do it all and I should do it all because that's what the generation before me told me to do. They said, yep, lean in all the way to all the things you can do. And if you can't do it, just hire it out.

Well, I didn't always have the resources to hire it out. I know YOU don't always have the resources to hire it out. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge believer in when you get the resources to hire it out, do it. That's one of the best things you can do (when you're trying to lighten your load). There's no shame at all in deciding that you actually don't enjoy doing certain tasks and that if you have the money to make it so that somebody else does it, that you have that person to do it. That's such a no brainer. You're going to spend less money on therapy or other expensive, overly indulgent self-care things if you just get someone that makes it so that at the end of the day, you're less burnt out. But for me, and for most other moms that I know, that's not ALWAYS an option.

So is Lean In dead? No, it's not dead in the sense that we should 100% lean into our top priorities. But is leaning into every single thing that we do dead — to every single menial task that means nothing to us? Leaning into that is that dead? Yes. Is leaning into being fully a mom and fully professional at the exact same time dead? Yes.

In our Centered Life Blueprint we talk about five center points, five priorities that we want to really define where we want to spend our time and energy and attention. And if you were trying to be fully leaned in to all five points all the time, even that would be too much. You have to decide, okay, this is a moment when I'm fully leaning into work, okay, switch. This is a moment where I'm fully leaning into my kids. And you have to make space in the middle of that for yourself. So that way, instead of swinging so far in one direction or another, I'm swinging over a little to take care of my work fully. Then I'm swinging over to take care of my kids fully. I'm going back and forth in little itty-bitty swings. I'm like a toddler on the swings at the playground, as opposed to a ten-year-old that can swing all the way up and all the way back. It makes it so you're not so bipolar about the places you put your effort.

Knowing yourself, trusting yourself, and becoming your best inner advocate allows you to then become your own navigational beacon to decide where you NEED to lean and WANT to lean. Then you can decide, these are the moments that I do need to make a shift. This is a moment where I should be leaning fully into my kids. This is a moment where my kid needs me at that recital or where my kid is sick and needs me to say no to work. This is a moment where my work needs me to say, "Yes, I will fully lean into that decision-making session about budgeting or about, are we going to open that next office, but I don't need to lean in about what color we're going to paint the parking lot." That's the difference because Lean In was about play it like the boys, do whatever they ask you to do. If they ask you to be committed one hundred percent, do it, don't even think about it. Just say yes. What I'm asking you to do is to create some nuance, to know yourself and trust yourself enough, that you can take that mini pause, where instead of being reactive, you're being responsive, so that you can use intentional problem solving when someone asks something of you and when someone makes a request on your time and your energy, so that you are not so scattered and stressed that you can't even think clearly. Instead you take a moment and you have the wherewithal and the bandwidth to pause, to visualize the framework of your life, to visualize all the parts and pieces. That allows you to see what goes where and to ask, "Where are my priorities?" And then to say, "Hmm, how does this fit within that framework?"

This also allows you to say yes, or to say no, leaning in only when it makes sense for you as an individual person and for your unique family. That's where it's at. So I love Lean In. I love the idea of putting your all into something, and putting your entire spirit into really going full force, and falling off the cliff into something. I think about the idea of falling in love with my husband at the tender age of 18 or19 years old. I didn't hesitate. I just fell right in. I leaned right into it. That's an amazing feeling when you can give all of yourself to someone or something. That's actually what I want the most for moms: to feel like they have the ability to lean in fully, but only to the things they want to lean into — only to the things that bring them joy, only to the things that bring them purpose, only to the things they know, even if it's something real hard, that they will say, “Oh my gosh. Yes. So worth it,” about. So Lean In dead? No, not at all. Just lean in, in ways that work for you.

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