Finding Empowerment by Setting Fulfilling Goals

What am I doing?

This year I am investing in myself through further professional training in my journey as a coach, delving deeper into therapeutic approaches. As part of my development, I have been contemplating what’s most important to me and how congruent this is with my life right now. It’s made me reflect on something a male colleague said to me early in my career, ‘women can’t have it all’. At the time, the feminist in me was outraged. But on reflection, can any of us have it all, gender aside?

“I Want It ALL” ….or do I?

Queen may have had us all bursting this out at our graduation party – but did we know what ‘ALL’ meant? Equality means we have the same opportunity. But, not everyone is driven by the same purpose. Crucially, equity opens up for us greater freedom to pursue what matters most to us and what fulfils us as individuals, regardless of our starting point. 

My ‘ALL’ falls into two buckets, both of which I need to maintain to have a fuller, whole sense of self-satisfaction and fulfilment.

• Professionally – it’s about getting others to be the best version of themselves they can possibly be. Watching from afar as a coachee achieves their goal, or, helping put one of my athletes on the top of the podium with their gold medal.
• Personally – it is about having a loving and contented family, being there at the classroom door when my daughter bursts out with pride that she has written her first story…. Or having the flexibility in my work to start a new hobby.

Finding Balance in Your Reality:

In my 20’s I was adamant to prove narratives often spun about women were unjust and incorrect. I threw myself into competitive sport, working long hours, a full social life – and yep you could have guessed it, I ended up burnt out. Appointments in Harley Street for chronic fatigue meant I had to embark on a journey back to health that involved a lot of reflection about what I wanted from life.

Recent research has some interesting findings:

• 43 percent of women leaders are burned out, compared with only 31 percent of male leaders at the same level – McKinsey
• 72% of women feel conflicted when balancing work and family life – Silver Swan Recruitment
• Women with a partner and children are 5.5 times more likely than their male counterparts to do all or most of the household work – Women in the Workplace

It’s important to remember that we are in control of where we spend our time. Balancing work and family life does not mean equal time or concentration for both, instead we should recognise where in our daily lives one can give for the other. To be able to find work and ‘life’ routines that enable our best in both.

So why is this so important to me, and why should it be for everyone?

1) Having women in your business, makes your teams smarter (Doyle, 2011).

2) People prefer a job that promotes a better work-life balance over salaries (Wong et al, 2020).

In short, it’s in everyone’s advantage to think about how our businesses can seek to #EmbraceEquity.

There are clearly still significant challenges as a society we need to address to overcome imbalances around what is expected of women in both the realms of work and family life. It’s crucial we continue to work through the means of equity on the road to equality. While these challenges are all the more important, in the next section I share some guidance that has worked wonders for me and my coachees to get clear on their ‘ALL’ and then take realistic steps to achieve it in the context of their reality.

Aligning your ‘ALL’ with your reality

Everyone has their own personal motivators, values and ambitions that serve as criteria for their decision making. Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?’s Oars Model is centred around the concept of “whats in it for me?”. Implementing this model can help you navigate this intersection for a more confident and purposeful life, both professionally and personally.