Bossed Up

Professional ambition, wellbeing and relationships can feel impossible to personally negotiate. Bossed Up founder and CEO Emilie Aries talks to Cristen and Caroline about how women in the workplace can abandon martyrdom mindset, avoid burnout and get unsuck from unfulfilling careers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From House top
works dot com. Hello, and while there are the podcast,
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, And today on the show,
we're talking about so many issues that I can relate to, Caroline,

(00:23):
but they resonate with you and I'm sure that a
lot of our listeners deal with this as well. Issues
at the workplace. Yeah, no matter where you work, issues
about burnout and boundaries really affect us. All that feeling
of kind of spinning your tires as you go through
the week rather than you know, driving smoothly on through

(00:45):
your days exactly. And also that on top of navigating
gender discrimination and gender biases in the workplace that so
many women and especially women of color face. And we're
going to talk to in just a little bit a
friend of the show, Emily Ayres, who is the CEO
and founder of bossed Up, which is an organization she

(01:08):
started specifically to help women navigate those burnout issues and
merge what's happening in your work life with your home life, because,
as we talked about in our at Leisure episode, the
lines are there is no line anymore. There is no line,
and so you start to feel like Okay, I've got
to answer emails at eleven PM, or I have to

(01:31):
be expected to send emails at eleven PM. And rather
than focusing on maybe limiting your work to a certain
set number of hours and focusing on quality work, it's
really easy for a lot of people to end up
in the busy trap of like, oh, I've just got
to be busy, and I have to look like I'm

(01:53):
working really hard. And that whole looking like I'm working
really hard thing isn't necessarily to impress other people. It
might be just something that you've internalized within yourself. Yeah.
I mean I think that we, especially if you work
in digital at all, we are in a culture, a
workplace culture of business. I mean I hear this conversation

(02:13):
from not only people I work with here at how
stuff works, but also friends of mine who routinely talk
about you know, and I'm included in this group of like, oh,
I was up until ex o'clock working, and working at
o'clock is my favorite hour to stay up until ex o'clock. Yeah,
when you're working at ex o'clock, you know, it's pretty rough. Um,

(02:35):
But listen, Caroline, I gotta tell you that I was
guilty of doing the whole like buzziness kind of thing
to you earlier today, earlier today, earlier today. Indeed, you
asked me how I was doing, and I just said, oh, busy, busy,
which I mean she did look scared when she said it.

(02:56):
If that helps set the scene, I mean, granted, my
outlook calendar today is crazy, horrifying, yes, and legitimately I
am busy. But as I was thinking about what we
were going to talk about today, in these issues of
uh work and burnout and all of that, I was like, oh,

(03:17):
that's that is part of the trap of kind of
kicking up that dust of your own business sort of
let everyone else know what's going on. So right after
this conversation happens, Kristin and I had to dip into
a meeting, which is one of the outlook things that
she's referring to. And as our colleagues were talking, I
swear I was listening to what they were saying. But

(03:38):
as they were talking, I started to think, like, well,
Kristen and I basically have the same outlook calendar because
we are like work partners, and so I was like, wait,
should I worry? Should I be worried? Should I be
more stressed than I am. I mean I'm pretty like
like mid stress, like, but my constant state of anxieties
like pretty high. And like I had this conversation my
therapist and so like I started going expiraling in that meeting,

(04:00):
and I was like, you know what, I'm not gonna
worry about it. I might not get lunch today, I
might have to eat dinner at four o'clock because that's
just how that's going to shake out. But uh, you know,
maybe I maybe this day, this is the day that
I'm going to release all of that business anxiety trap stuff.
But see, that's how contagious this stuff is. It took

(04:21):
me saying one word busy. And as to your question,
how are you for that to then set off a
mental spiral in your head? Well, it's like if Conger's worried,
should I be worried? Well? And the thing is too,
if we if we expand beyond the world of CE
and C. Wait, there's a bigger world out there, I know,
surprisingly beyond you know this podcast studio. There is another world. Um,

(04:45):
And it does seem like the research tells us that
women are more prone to overwork and burnout Yeah, that's
coming from research from this group called Mackenzie and Company,
and they found that not only are women more liely
to burn out, but they are less likely to climb
that corporate ladder, which to me is the definition of

(05:06):
wheel spinning. You're so busy you're less likely to take
a break than a dude, but you're not then climbing
the ladder. And now I'm realizing that I'm comparing wheels
and ladders and you can't drive up a ladder. That's
the game of shoots and ladders. Yes, so does that
help this make sense if we say yes, I don't know.
I don't know either. I think the fact that I
don't know means no. Let's introduce Emily a little bit

(05:31):
for our listeners and then dive into that conversation. Yeah. So,
Emily's got a fascinating story. She talks about how her
quote overachieving sprint through the semester habits that served her
well in college left her spinning her wheels and exhausted.
And it's that drive, though, that led her to start

(05:53):
this company because once she focused on whoa, I feel
burned out and out of control. Oh wait, this isn't
just me this is so many women, how can I
help other women? And the academic background she's bringing into
this was a focus on the intersections of women in politics,
gender equity, theory of feminist theories and how those functions

(06:17):
in the everyday lives of women. So she has all
sorts of stuff Mom never told you, related info ready
to share with us. So let's not transition this conversation
we've been having about women in the workplace, ambition and
burnout to our chat with Emily Airs, founder and CEO

(06:39):
of bossed Up. Emily, thank you so much for joining
Caroline and me today. My pleasure be here. Thanks so
much for having me huge and stuff Mom never told
j fan excellent. Well, I have a feeling that you
are about to have a lot of stuff. Mom ever

(07:00):
told you, fans um, So could you tell our listeners
who you are and what you and bossed up are
all about? Absolutely so. I'm Emily Areas, the founder and
CEO of bossed Up. We are a training company based
in the Nation's capital, Washington, d C. And we help

(07:20):
women navigate career transition and beat burnout. And frankly, this
whole endeavor, this adventure that has been launching my own
company is really personal to me. I burnt out very
quickly as a young woman in the workplace working as
a campaign organizer on behalf of President Obama. Back in

(07:41):
two thousand and nine, I helped past health reform as
the youngest state director in the nation with organizing for America,
and over the course of a few years of working
my butt off, frankly for causes and organizations, I believed
in my whole personal life was falling apart. And it
came to a head when I realized that if I

(08:03):
didn't change my strategies, if I didn't change the way
in which I was working, which frankly wasn't working at all,
but I was not going to be able to be
in this fight for the long haul. That I needed
to stop operating on what I call a semester sprint
mentality and start really investing in my sustainable success. Well,

(08:24):
so you talk on your website about this martyrdom mindset
that women are susceptible to, and how does that plan
to burnout? And do you think that there's a generational
difference between older women and younger women. Oh that's a
really good question. So, first of all, like you too,
I'm a huge research junkie, so I absolutely love where

(08:46):
social science comes into play and all of this. And
there's a lot of research we can talk about around
burnout and gender, but frankly it's lacking. The researchers really
lacking around uh, intergenerational differences with burnout end whether or
not women are more susceptible to burnout. There's a lot
of research out there that's a little bit closer to

(09:07):
the issue, and that does show some gender differences between
how men and women experience burnout. For example, women are
shown to experience the exhaustion part of burnout, whereas men
are more likely to start there. You know, challenges with
burnout with things like cynicism and feeling a lack of
effectiveness or detachment from their work. UM. And frankly, we

(09:31):
should back up here a little bit just to talk
about what burnout really is. What do I mean when
I say burnout? Because so often we UM, you know,
sort of colloquially use burnout to say I'm just having
a really long week and I'm totally burned to the
heck out, when in reality, burnout is a serious disorder
UM that is characterized by a state of chronic stress

(09:54):
and can lead to things like exhaustion, cynicism, detachment. And
what's scary about burnout is it starts to make you
feel less engaged in things that used to really light
you up and really set you on fire, things that
you used to be all jazzed about. And this can
obviously lead to more serious psychological disorders with depression and anxiety, which,

(10:17):
as we know, is the topic you two have shared
a lot about and covered deeply on this podcast. And frankly,
is you know an epidemic that I think a lot
of us women in particular, have struggled with over the years.
So what have you learned from your research and your
personal experience, um in terms of how we might set

(10:39):
ourselves up for burnout? Like you mentioned the semester sprint,
the martyrdom mindset kind of what are those precursors? Yeah,
let's talk about those, because I I have discovered through
trial and error in my own life and through working
with hundreds of women now across the country, and the
growing body of research that exists out there, as well

(11:00):
as the fact that I should say, we're in the
process of securing more funding to do our own research
on this matter and really died deeper into gender differences
with burnout. UM. But to me, the martyrdom mindset is
this troubling framework that brings many of us men and
women alike UH to burnout. And the martyrdom mindset is

(11:20):
super simple. It essentially says to us or it's a
presupposition that we carry, especially here in the United States,
that says success requires suffering. Right. It's this underlying assumption
that in order to be quote unquote successful whatever that means,
that we need to suffer, that we need to work

(11:41):
ourselves to the bone. And I honestly think that this
goes back to our roots with the Protestant work ethic
here in the United States. UM. But it is sometimes
subtly communicated in our family life and how we're raised
and whether we're praised for achievements or effort, and sometimes
it's not so at all. For instance, this past weekend,

(12:02):
I had the great pleasure of heading back to the
eighth annual Yale Women's Leadership conference called We Women, and
I delivered a keynote address on sustainable success, the murder
too mind set, all the stuff that we're discussing, and
it was well received and then I went into a
panpel immediately afterwards, just to sit in and hear some
of one of their incredible women that they had speaking there,

(12:24):
and one of the uh really highly respected career coaches
who had been a lawyer initially but turned to career coaching.
I was sitting there talking about UM talking to a
room full of undergrads and literally said, you know, in
those first couple of years out of college quote you
need to work yourself to death. And she said she

(12:48):
heard it right, she heard herself and said, listen, I
don't know how else to say it, but like, that's
what it takes. And I just was sort of flabbergasted
and horrified, sitting in the back of the row. And
what is ironic is how afterwards she came up to
me and praised me on my message, and we talked
about how many core values we share and beliefs that
we share. And so there's this real cognitive dissonance in

(13:11):
the United States, especially where we believe that we all
should deserve health and happiness, but we also fundamentally believe
that career success is incongruent with a happy, healthy lifestyle.
I'm thrilled to see that a growing body of research
and organizational psych college and personal development is showing that happier,

(13:32):
healthier workers are more productive and focused and frankly better
for the bottom line. So we are at a critical
change moment in the world, grappling with things like mass
automation and globalization, in which we have to make a
choice about our values, especially here in the United States.

(13:54):
But if we value workers truly, if we truly believe
that people should be able to be productive, to achieve
their full potential, and to live a comfortable and reasonable, happy,
healthy lifestyle, then we have to make big changes in
terms of how our organizations and institutions and how we
individually operate in terms in that sort of striving for success, uh,

(14:18):
each and every one of us. So I like to
focus on the personal level, and I'm happy to get
more specific in terms of what that means. So do
you see your work and the work of bossed Up
as sort of undoing this culture of busyness that we
see so many think pieces about lately. You know, everybody
in America so busy, and we're so proud of how
busy we are, and we brag about our business, but

(14:41):
at the end of the day, a Are we really
as busy as we say we are and be? Are
we really trying to be proud of just working ourselves
to death? Like that? One woman said, so, so do
you feel like the work you're doing is counteracting that
totally and completely? And it's always been my goal just
sort of help others see that there's a different an
avenue to success um And I think it started with

(15:04):
my my own personal experience, right. I was going through
life as a young woman with a big leadership role,
feeling stressed about my work life. But furthermore, we're also
finding myself falling into the traditional caretaker roles that society
really conditions us women to assume. And what that meant
for me is that I was I found myself in

(15:26):
a relationship with a brilliant, hard working man who also
struggles with alcoholism, and so all of a sudden, there
I am twenty two, twenty three years old, big job,
living with this man I loved, and having to feel
responsible for taking care of my boss and my boyfriend
and my volunteers and the causes and campaigns I was

(15:48):
working on. And everybody else came first except me. Everyone
else came before me, And so I I realized how
untenable a strategy that was, or how unsustainable a strategy
that kind of lifestyle and framework and mindset really was,

(16:08):
And to me, I had to get out of this
pattern of behavior that I've been taught my entire life
to be nice. Frankly, it came to a head when
I hit total rock bottom. I was so tired of
being tired and feeling inefficient and totally struggling with burnout,
to the point where I was stopped at a stoplight.

(16:28):
Right I was on my alma maters campus, Brown University,
driving through since I was organizing politically there, uh, and
I watched a bunch of college students roll their bags
home for Thanksgiving break, and something inside me was breaking
at that very moment, because all I wanted was permission
to go home, to relax, to sort of take a break,

(16:53):
and not feel seven tethered to my work, to my responsibilities,
and to carrying everyone else around me. And it was
that moment when I realized I needed to change my thinking.
I needed to change my approach radically, and I started
hitting the books like I did as a student, like
I always have, and one quote that always came back

(17:15):
to me was from feminist author Audrey Lord, who says,
caring for myself is not self indulgence, it's self preservation,
and that is an act of political warfare. And so
that's really at the crux of what I do at
bos Stop. I've created the conditions to replicate the same
acceleration that I experienced in my life when I changed

(17:39):
my strategies and my approach for many other women across industries,
but primarily women who are facing inflection points in their careers,
forks in the road, navigating transition points because they have
decided to bring themselves to that transition point, either by
saying I'm done with this career, I'm done with this job,
or I'm in a new place in a new stay,

(18:00):
I'm starting over. Or women who have found themselves at
a fork in the road they didn't ask for, you know,
the year old divorced, the you know, thirty three year
old career woman who is navigating the rocky terrain that
is having a child in the United States while wanting
to work full time and on an advanced career path.

(18:22):
What knows We can't do this alone as individuals. Obviously,
I think the big asterisks here and the elephant in
the room and all of these conversations is that we
need organizational change, We need political change, policy change. This
is not something individual women can can do overnight, and
definitely not by ourselves and not just women right. This

(18:42):
is a conversation that absolutely requires our male counterparts to
be involved in. It makes so much sense in terms
of needing that organizational change for companies to catch up
to these needs that we have. But I'm wondering how
this also relates to the increasing economy of freelancers and entrepreneurs, who,

(19:07):
like you, are people who are essentially becoming their own bosses. Totally.
I love this question, Kristen. I was actually at the
United States Capital not too long ago, a few months ago,
was with the Women's Economic Forum rolling out a new
agenda for I believe they said like the New Women's

(19:28):
Economic Agenda. And throughout this conversation it talked about how
employers and employees need to take better care of one another,
and how we need better structures for workers rights and
protections from a federal level, from a union level. And
I raised my hand at the back of the room.
I think I was obviously out of place. First of all,

(19:50):
as one of the much younger people in the room,
and I raised my hand and said, you know, hi,
I'm Emily. I am a millennial. I started my own
business for the flexibility that it afford me, but also
for less of out the reasons of course, what you know,
how do we fit into this equation? And the head
of the a f l C. I Oh was there,
Elizabeth Warren, Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, kicked it off

(20:12):
and I asked this question, and not those two folks
in particular, but on the whole. Their response was, well,
there's so few of the what that it's it's that
there aren't that many freelancers and entrepreneurs and so like
that's kind of a you know, not central to this
whole plan. And so that shocked me as being incredibly inadequate.

(20:38):
And I sort of wonder, Okay, who's representing the interests
of workers who are less likely to stay in one
place where twenty five years at a time, a k
A all of us? Right? And so this is in
my opinion as someone who got my start in politics,
got my start as an advocate on behalf of workers rights,

(21:01):
and especially through the health care fight, advocated for those
individuals like me who were going to be kicked off
of mom and Dad's insurance pretty soon. So when I
stopped being a political organizer, I got back on my
parents insurance thanks to Obamacare, until I was twenty six
years old, and I started my business that same year.
And on January one, when I lost my parents insurance,

(21:24):
even though it was extended thanks to Obamacare, I was
in the first class of people who were enabled to
enroll as an individual in the UH in the healthcare
marketplace for group rates. So thanks to Obamacare, it enabled
me to start my business with the security of having

(21:44):
health insurance. That's the kind of social safety net that
more of us need, just not for health insurance alone.
Let's talk about retirement packages. Let's talk about you know,
workers rights, and there is some action being taken with
the Freelancers Union, although I'm not terribly familiar with those folks.
But here at BOSTUP, we enable women to be better

(22:05):
advocates for themselves in a world and in an economy
in which we no longer have the same advocates that
our grandparents had fighting for them. So how how can
women be better advocates for themselves and get unstuck from
those jobs that in which they might feel like I
do have to work myself to death. That's such a

(22:26):
great point, Caroline, because I'm actually thinking of young women
in particular. I was doing a little bit of research
and sort of going over um the case for burnout
prevention recently and was reminded of that case not too
long ago in which a twenty one year old Wall
Street intern actually died after working three consecutive days and

(22:52):
nights in a row UM due to epiplectic seizure complications
that some have tied to exhaustion. I would certainly tie
to exhaustion. Although there's been a huge case against or
there's been huge interests um pointed at countering that, you
know connection, but it finally caused us to wake up

(23:13):
a little bit and maybe acknowledge that internships, especially those
that are unpaid, uh, you know, should be outlawed from
working people to the bone. And in this case, working
yourself to death was very literal. And so I think
the step one is we have to stop perpetuating the
martyrdom mindset, the whole semester sprint mentality of I'm just

(23:37):
gonna work my tail off now because after finals, I
can take a break. We have to make sure that
our young people who graduate from college recognize that the
same skills that get you an A in college, like
perfecting and performing for others and pleasing others, those skills
which we women have mastered, by the way, are not

(23:57):
the same skills that get you ahead in the real
not necessarily. And so first giving ourselves permission to ask ourselves,
what do we want? What is our vision for our lives?
Creating a safe identity workspace is the language that the
Harvard Business Review used in a cover article from their

(24:20):
Timber magazine that started to unpack what's holding women leaders
back some of the invisible barriers, as they called them,
that perpetuates uh sexism frankly sexism two point now, which
they call second generation gender bias in the workplace. And
so the first is to create an environment in which
you can come in and redefine yourself, define your identity,

(24:45):
really work to create an identity that reinforces what you
want and gives yourself ownership over your own life. Now
that it sounds a little fluffy, like I hear it right,
and it sounds like a lofty goal, Yeah, I would
love to be able to figure that out. It's vallenging
thing to do, but it's something that we've created in
our programs and really all it requires. First of all,

(25:05):
definitely read that great article. Um it's the best article
I've ever read on describing the current status of sexism
in the workplace. But too, it really requires a place
where you can get clear on your audacious goals. Author
Jim Collins says that we all need big, hairy, audacious goals,

(25:26):
and he's talking about corporate goals, but I address that
just as uh equally important for individuals. We need crazy, big,
audacious dreams, visions for our lives that can propel us forward.
And then we need a space where we can have
women or people, really anyone who supports you to reinforce
your sense of your to reinforce your ability to actually

(25:52):
make that vision of reality. And so first it comes
down to giving yourself permission a dream really big. And
the second part of the equation is is learning to
be better advocates for actually making that stuff happen, because
if we don't advocate for what we want, inertia will
fill that void and other people will tell us what

(26:13):
we deserve. Quite frankly. And so the biggest concrete skill
that I think so critically important for women to develop
is assertive communication. And there's been a lot written on
a sort of communication, and that's a big part of
almost every training and workshop and online program that we
deliver at bost Up. But basically it starts by understanding

(26:37):
the difference between assertive, what it means to be assertive
and aggressive, since very often those two words are confused
and used interchangeably in our in our society. And so
the first thing I always say, and this is so important,
it's in our manifesto. It's in the boss Up Manifesto
that we came up with that basically describes what it

(26:58):
means to be a boss in my universe and what
it means to be the boss of your own life.
And really, assertive means that your forthright about what you
want and your needs and your rights while considering the
rights and needs and wants of others around you. Being
aggressive is similar but different. Being aggressive means you are

(27:21):
forthright about your wants and needs and desires, but without
regard for the rights and wants and needs of others period.
So it sounds like the big difference there's empathy, yeah,
which unfortunately is subjective in almost every example, especially in
the workplace. But I'll give you I'll give you an
example of how this is such a critical difference. One

(27:43):
of my advisory board members here at BOSSTOP is Dr
Lucy Gilson, who is the head of the NBA program
at Yukon and works with the Women's NBA program and
helps spearhead the Geno r M, a women's leadership conference
every year. And she got a call from an academic
higher up in her sort of world who was calling

(28:05):
about a colleague of her as a woman professor who
was up for a promotion, and this higher up of
hers wanted to get Lucy's opinion on this colleague and
she said, you know her key. The director asked Lucy
what she thought about her colleague by saying, we've heard
great things from her students. She publishes all the right papers,

(28:26):
she's peer reviewed. You know, we think she's a really
hard worker. But we've heard from some of her colleagues
she can be a little aggressive and ding ding dingg
there's the magic word. Right. So, Lucy, who has actually
trained and delivered some of our Boste boot Camp training
on this very subject. Busted out one of the slides

(28:47):
from Boston boot Camp and said, well, hold on a second, now,
let's talk about what you mean here. Do you mean aggressive?
And she read in the definition? Or do you mean assertive?
And she read them the definition there again, and he
said on the other line of fun. She said that
the line went silent, and she was really kind of
worried that she had miss stepped or said something wrong.
He said, wait, when can you say that one more time?

(29:08):
I'm writing that down because are too often we just
don't hear about that difference, and we don't give credit
to women who are being assertive as opposed to aggressive
because and I'm sure you too know this. I'm sure
a lot of your listeners have felt this in practice.
When women are assertive, we are less likable by men

(29:32):
and women alike. We are perceived as cold, we are
perceived as far nastier things that start with the letter
B and it's not boss, right, And so you know,
over the past thirty years, social scientists have picked up
on that inverse correlation for women. When women are assertive,
the certainness goes up. We see the likability factor go down.

(29:54):
When men are assertive that is in line with what
we've been socially conditioned to expect from men as aggressive
leaders or as assertive leaders, and so their likability remains
are unharmed when men are assertive. And so it's it's
a really tough tight rope that we're all tap dancing
on as women who want to be leaders, because assertiveness

(30:15):
is essential to getting stuff done. It's essential to leadership,
and it's essential to what I call self leadership. It's
essential to being the boss of your own life, to
drawing healthy boundaries, to demanding what you're worth, to asking
for what you need to be successful. So what if,

(30:44):
what do we as women especially do with that likability piece?
Do we just throw it out the window and march
ahead or what I mean? That is the million dollar
question right there, Kristen. And it's it's the problem that
fuels me personally, and it's it's the reality that drives

(31:04):
us all crazy. Rightfully. So, and here's the thing. I
actually turn to this brilliant video from Nicki Minaj who
describes what it feels like in in reality to be
you know, compared to Lil Wayne, you know, her male
basically mentor in the hip hop world who can come
in and demand whatever he requires, demand what he needs

(31:25):
and say, you know, of course you need to deliver
from me because anything less is unacceptable. And when Nicky
comes in and does the same thing or has you know,
exhibits the same kind of a sort of behavior, she's
called a diva or a bitch. Right, She's not everything
to everyone. And so while we're not all pop stars
and we don't have the same problems as Nicki minaj

(31:46):
Uh speak for yourself. I don't know, fair fair boy,
I don't I don't want to speaks. Life is pretty glamorous, Okay,
I can imagine they better treat you right over there. Um.
But while it's not always the same, we all experience
that double bind. And so two things. One the more

(32:08):
we talk about this and how in innate but also
um unintentional this kind of second generation gender bias is
we raise awareness and we change awareness when we talk
about these issues. And so one of the key components
to second generation gender bias, which is which delivers double

(32:30):
binds like this, is that no one is essentially being
malicious here. There's no malintent required for these perceptions to persist.
So hey, we gotta call him out, because the more
we raise awareness on them, the more we can all
check ourselves, men and women and just ask ourselves, are
we really upset with her because she's being you know, mean?

(32:52):
Or is she being assertive? Can we start to pass
through perception a little bit more? And the second is, yeah,
go ahead and be assert of anyway, because leadership requires
risk taking. And I this isn't a popular opinion of mine,
but you are not there to make everybody like you,

(33:13):
right like, you have to put your leadership purpose over
perception sometimes, and no one does that better than Hillary Clinton.
You know, she goes up to make a speech about
how you know, she's in the secretary of stage, is
traveled to more countries than anyone any when inhald that
office in the past has done before. And the headlines

(33:34):
are about the scrunchy that she's wearing, right Like, sometimes
there's not more that you can do to control how
others will perceive you. And while I'm not saying that
to make anyone feel like a victim or anyone to
feel helpless in the matter, um, you know, putting your
purpose over others perception of you can be a really

(33:54):
liberating thing. And you know, I'm not one to say
not to be strategic about it, but also so to
cut yourself some slack, because we don't all get it
right all the time. In fact, I would say no
one does. I love your ideas about approaching both your
personal and professional life like a boss and really dedicating
some carved out time to taking care of yourself and

(34:16):
also taking care of work. And I'm interested to know
how you feel like that approach can perhaps change our
outdated ideals of what a good office worker is. I
love that question because the reality is that I learned
this vernacular by reading the book Overwhelmed by Bridget Sulty,

(34:38):
which came out not too long ago, and it's a
really good um rundown in a very well researched way
to describe how we got to where we are today.
And this overwhelmed UH workplace and and current status of
America in general. And what she says is that the
modern American workplace is designed around what we know as

(34:59):
the quote ideal worker. And this ideal worker is a myth.
This ideal worker is from nifty and it's a man,
and he goes to work all day and can totally
focus on what's happening in front of him, because there's
no digital life to worry about, and he has someone
at home a k a. His wife who's holding down

(35:20):
the home front. And so this worker, who's the ideal
worker for whom our workplaces are still too often designed, um,
you know, doesn't have to worry about dry cleaning or
daycare or dinner or you know, taking a nap. You
know they're well arrested. We assume so many things about
our workers that are there's no longer based in reality.

(35:43):
So I'm encouraged by the changing um conversation. Here. We
have organizations like the Family Story Project that's headed up
by one of my other board members, Nicole Jersey, who's
really taking a policy approach to say, hold up, let's
talk about what an American family unit looks like today.

(36:03):
Let's talk about the growing female breadwinner population. Let's talk
about uh, stay at home dad some more. We saw
the NFL commercials the dad do I thought was absolutelyly brilliant. Right,
We're seeing different kinds of family arrangements being reflected finally
international conversation, and just barely are we seeing companies begin

(36:25):
to adapt. So Google has dry cleaning services and a
cafeteria for its workers so that they can actually worry
about the work that they're there to do. Right, we
know that the Huffington Post has nap rooms so that
people can sign up for a rejuvenating half hour nap
without shame, right sanctioned by everyone there. Because creating new

(36:47):
norms in our workplaces is the challenge of leadership today,
and it's financially your best interest because of things like
retention and leadership development. And so I think it starts
with advocating for what we individually need to be successful.
And I think that starts with our you know, psychological
research on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, Like, what do

(37:10):
we actually need to be fully functioning when we go
into the office. We need security, we need a roof
over our heads, we need rest, we need food. Right,
These are basic needs that I think we've taken for granted.
I know I did. When I first entered the workplace,
I felt like there was never an end to the
work day. I was constantly on and I found myself

(37:34):
going from being a college athlete to not having any
form of regular exercise in my life for about three
years there, and I was working right through my lunch
break every day, and I was chronically underslept. And I
think that is a normal, almost prideful, in a really
demended way, stereotype for the career person, whether it's a

(37:57):
career woman or man. And so when we individually admit
to ourselves that that is not the best way to
be our best selves, that starts a conversation in which
we can actually assert ourselves and demand what we need
to be successful. And then I think, you know this,
call me haive, because one, one person alone can't do this.

(38:18):
But I think that if enough of us get together
and say these are the companies we are willing to
work for, they are willing to invest in their workers
in a way that invests in their sustainable success, not
our short term efforts, then I think the market has
to change. Whether that requires, you know, public policy and
intervention from a regulatory standpoint or not is to be determined. Yeah,

(38:42):
I agree, And I'm also happy to see more companies
not only paying attention to working parents, but also working
single people, because we are doing a lot on on
our own as well. Um. But I also wanted to
ask you because I know that you have looked into

(39:03):
this how the picture changes for women of color because
you know, we have layers of discrimination, you know that
um that they're walking into the office facing that white
ladies like us might not experience so much. Absolutely, and
this is such an important question because to me, feminism

(39:27):
can exist without intersectional feminism, right if we're not talking
about women's rights with a framework that acknowledges that not
all women, not every woman's experience is the same. But
then we're just kidding ourselves and we're being naive. And
here at bossed Up, where I am candid about in
every one of our trainings, which frankly, I think it's

(39:50):
also important to note that we have women of color
doing this work right, not just hear a bossed up,
but we work in concert with other organizations that or
tackling this um with racial diversity at top of mind.
But the first thing to acknowledge is that that inverse
correlation between assertiveness and likability is even worse for women

(40:12):
of color. They have to contend with the black angry
woman trope. Right, Women of color have a lot more
uh perception challenges to to tap dans on a tight
rope with, and it's it's important to acknowledge the differences
and in experience first, and then the second part of
this equation is acknowledging that the gender wage gap and

(40:37):
the gender leadership gap both are are more dramatic for
women of color. And so, first and foremost, the challenges
that are faced by women are different across the spectrum,
and so intersectional feminism is all about looking at gender
diversity with a lens of how that intersects with racial

(40:57):
discrimination and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation
and ability and lots of other shades to the discriminatory
pellette that we have to choose from in the United
States and in the world. Frankly, the second thing to
acknowledge is that what I see contributing to women's burnout

(41:18):
most dramatically, what is called role overload. Roll overload is
when we feel poled in competing directions in which we
are facing multiple demands for our limited time and energy
and resources. And we have to acknowledge that different families
look differently, right, Different people have others to care for,

(41:39):
have a variety of demands that are placed on our
time and energy, and that's not the same for all
of us. That's certainly not the same for the Lena
Dunham characters that we see in Girls as opposed to
the come up stories that we hear from in the
hip hop world. Right demands placed on us financially, emotionally, um,

(42:00):
you know, based on time and relationships look very different
across the spectrum of what different women's lives look like.
And I think it's an important thing to acknowledge and
be sensitive to, but also just check my own privilege
on when we're actually talking about burnout, Well, we actually,
Kristen and I hear from a lot of women who

(42:21):
are in the service industry, for instance, who felt a
little left out when we did our conversations on the
concepts and lean in a couple of years ago. And
so I was wondering if you have any advice for
some of those women who feel alienated from this typical
discussion of the office and of burnout that's specific to uh,

(42:43):
the modern office workplace when they're working paycheck to paycheck.
Maybe they're single moms, or maybe they are caring for
elderly parents. What would you say to some of these women.
I think that's such a great point, and I want
to talk more about lean in a second. But first, so,
my mother is a labor and delivery nurse at a
hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. She works twelve hour shifts on

(43:06):
her feet and has done so for the past years
who knows what. And you know, I'm here telling her
how to negotiate and how to you know, be a
third of about her time. And the reality is, in
her industry, she gets the schedule ones every two weeks
and there's no union representing her, although I've tried to
ask her to organize one, and you know, her ability

(43:29):
to negotiate in her mind is nil, completely none, no ability.
Now granted, she had four kids, right, one of whom
is still in the nest. Right, my baby sister is
still a senior in high school, and so for her,
the risk factors for facing not getting that paycheck is
astronomical still. And so you know, being your own boss

(43:50):
or being brazen about what you want is not as
simple as we spell it out in as this this
conversation alludes to. And it's not as simple as leaning
in and working harder and asking for more um Building
power is something that I I studied and worked a

(44:11):
lot on as a community organizer with communities that alone
individually have no power. I truly and fundamentally believe that collectively,
we can all create power by aligning ourselves and our
mutual interests with people who have diverse resources to contribute

(44:32):
to leverage in to leverage our power together for what
we need to be successful. And so I'm getting on
my soapbox here and sounding like quite the labor organizer,
but really what I'm saying is that no matter where
you're starting from, you have power over where you put
your money, where you decide to what businesses you decide to,

(44:54):
you know, serve with your financial power. You have power
over where you show up, how you use your voice,
what you dare to say or not say. And while
no one can tell you that being assertive is the
only and right way to be, it is a tool
that I want all women to have in their toolbox.
I want all women to feel empowered, to feel capable

(45:18):
for choosing mindfully when they want to be assertive, and
not to feel like we are totally um without ownership
of our own lives, because that's a really scary place
to be, and I've been there. Um. Because when you
ask for what you need, some people might say now

(45:39):
and and I guarantee you, if you ask enough people
for the right kind of help for what you actually need,
the world changes. The world delivers in a kind of
amazing way. When I was leaving my ex boyfriend, I
had no money. I was totally financially screwed in that relationship.
We were living above my me and it was completely

(46:03):
impossible for me to sub let out one of the
two bedrooms in our apartment because of the nature of
the dramatic and really ugly way that that we split,
and that police were involved. You know, this was a scary,
scary time in my life. I had no money, My
parents frankly have no money. And while I'm privileged to
have a great education and at the time had a

(46:24):
good job, I found myself basically homeless. And when I
have the courage to be vulnerable with the people I
trusted who loved me, they gave me a roof over
my own head. Right, I could crash with a friend,
And I basically crashed with friends for six months, living
out my lease and then uprooting my life with a

(46:46):
whole bunch of credit card debt to come to d
C to make something else of my life, and a
year and a half two years later, I started Busted
Up to help others do the same, and over that
year and a half to two years, I found myself happier, healthy,
and wealthier than ever because I had the courage to
assert myself and decide no, I am not going to

(47:09):
let my life continue on with me in the passenger seat.
So Emily, Uh, I'm feeling first of all very empowered
right now to leave the studio and go to take
over the world. So thank you for that, um. But
also before we leave, I just wanted to know if
you had any parting thoughts for our listeners and of

(47:29):
course where they can go to find out more about
you and bosst Up. Absolutely well, thank you again for
having me uh, Christian and Caroline, It's been such a pleasure,
and I'm so jazzed about the fact that we are
going to be talking together again in real life. I
r l at south By Southwest, so I'm so to

(47:51):
have been invited by you two to present together and
I can't wait for that awesome conversation. But also for
folks who want to learn more about boss Up, get
some free resources, join our community of courage, and start
taking charge of your life right now you can head
over to Boston dot com and you can learn more
about me at Emily Aris dot com as well. All right, well, Emily,

(48:12):
thank you again so much and look forward to seeing
you in Austin. So thanks so much to Emily for
talking to Caroline and me, because Caroline, I feel like
so much of what Emily had to say resonates with

(48:36):
the research that you and I have found in terms
of gendered patterns of how we work and in terms
of that burnout conversation, women being even just less likelier
to take breaks. Yeah, there was this Captivate Network study
that found that men in the workplace are more likely

(48:57):
than ladies to take personal break and that includes being
more likely to go take a walk, more likely to
stop and eat lunch, more likely to just take a
break and let your brain drip out your ears. Yeah.
So I'm a contributing writer for Refinery twenty nine dot com, Caroline,
and they had an internal campaign recently that has stuck

(49:19):
in my brain because it was encouraging all the employees,
which it's a mostly female company, but encouraging all the
employees to take their lunch breaks because of this kind
of research where it's so important for us to take
those breaks, but we tend not to do that. Well. Yeah,
because speaking of our finery twenty nine, thank you for

(49:41):
setting me up. I'm just gonna like hit that off
on the on the your welcome. Yeah, okay, just lobbed
that softball over to you. Thank you. I don't even
know if did you. I don't even know if you
knew you did it. I didn't know. Cool. Well, but
speaking of o finary twenty nine, they did have an
article talking about this whole culture and constant state of
business susan advice colm kind of thing, and the writer

(50:02):
is telling the woman who had written in that this
serves as being this business serves as a declaration of
worth for a lot of people. And she says, you know,
it's no wonder that we're sort of in the midst
of this cultural kind of across the board need to
work all the time, because she talks about how, yes,
the economy sluggish, the job markets tough, and everyone who's

(50:25):
managed to stay steadily employed feels lucky. So you feel
like you've got to bust your but you feel like
you need to work all the time, be available seven
and sort of allow those boundaries between your public and
private day and night lives to blur. But she says,
the advisors says that this is really just helping perpetuate

(50:47):
the problem. You are helping contribute to this new unattractive
standard of dizziness. And she says, so what to do?
Keep resisting? And I feel like, yes, absolutely we should resist.
We should establish boundaries, and we should not encourage our
coworkers to work until x o'clock in the morning and

(51:08):
perhaps take more advantage of say email delayed receipt features
in your outlook. Yes, yes, and and I mean granted,
you know, we do have to give mone that different
people like to work different schedules. However, when you do
find yourself falling into this like oh, I worked sixteen
hours yesterday, thing, it is time to do a couple

(51:29):
of things. One, establish boundaries for yourself, do try to
take breaks um, but also to ask yourself how much
of that work you did in the sixteen hour period
is actually quality work? And that can help you maybe
prioritize your time a little better. Yeah. I'm a firm
believer that a project will take you as long as

(51:51):
you give it. And one thing that I've started doing
fairly recently, Caroline, is I time myself. I usually give
myself like fifteen to twenty minute increments of time and
I just set the timer on my phone. There's probably
a handy app for all of this, and I'm just
saying it like the longhand what I bet it's like
six dollars, it's probably, I mean, who knows, I mean

(52:13):
six dollars. That's that's a lot of money for now.
That's a good sandwich right there. Um. But it helps
focus me and pay closer attention to how much time
I'm taking to do different kinds of things. And it
has raised my attention on things that I have been
sort of frivolous over or just like taken unnecessary time with,

(52:37):
um and all. This is important because of that issue
of burnout. Yeah, and this is something that Emily and
her group bossed up really focus on because she really
had to battle her own burnout and it can lead
to things like cynicism, depression, lethargy, and it happen a

(53:00):
lot of the time when you just sort of feel
out of control. And I know that I've experienced that
when I worked at that newspaper years ago. Now, I
mean I didn't care. I didn't want to get promoted.
I didn't want to take the next step up the ladder.
And that is a huge warning sign. If you aren't

(53:20):
even interested in what you're doing the company you work for,
and you're not interested in pursuing bigger, better opportunities with
that job, whatever it is, that's a giant warning sign
that perhaps A maybe your job is just wrong for you,
but b maybe you're burned out. Yeah, I mean, because
the fact of the matter is most of us don't

(53:41):
like our jobs, at least at some point. Deloitte put
out a survey not too long ago which found eighty
percent of employees report job dissatisfaction. I mean I didn
go figure. Yeah. And and of course this culture of
dizziness and the fact that you can technically be reached

(54:03):
any time and can be doing your job and interacting
and building your personal brand and networking all the time
if you want to. Twitter exists, LinkedIn exists. When when
should we ever stop working? I just like a sweaty
palms thinking about that. But shoots and ladders, I know,
But um. One of my personal faiths brn A. Brown,

(54:24):
who writes a lot for OH Magazine, which is one
of my favorite publications in the world. UH talks about
how for women, there's this myth that we're supposed to
do it all and do it perfectly. And she says
that saying no, whether it's to work or to friends
or whatever, saying no queues a chorus of inner shame.

(54:44):
Gremlin's there's an image for you. UH thoughts like, who
do you think you are? You're not a very caring mother,
friend or colleague. But but she goes on to say
that daring to set those boundaries is about having the
courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others,
and so that then ties in. I would think too,

(55:05):
this issue of self care we always hear about, because
not only setting boundaries and learning how to say no
and learning how to tell yourself it's okay to say
no and that you will still be liked or respected,
but then taking it a step further and saying, Okay,
now that I've set this boundary, now that I'm not
going to work a sixteen hour day, I'm going to
try to work smarter. What am I going to do

(55:28):
to make sure I don't lose my mind? Yeah? I
think it's really fascinating how the conversations around self care
and the media covers around self care really accelerated in
the past here. So and to me, it's just putting
validating language around this idea of yeah, taking a little
bit of time off and reframing it away from the

(55:51):
idea that doing so is selfish or lazy. Right. I
know my boyfriend and I have conversations all the time.
He's in a creative feel. Uh. He works all the time,
and again he's totally living under that whole thing of
your work is going to take up how much time
you give it um, And we talk all the time
about how like almost spiritually stunting it is to not

(56:16):
remember or give yourself time to do rewarding things for yourself. So,
for instance, like he's really slammed with his work right now,
but he made sure last night to take time to
play music with a friend and try to write music
and like just see a friend and be creative. He
for my birthday this past year gave me a bunch

(56:39):
of art supplies. I haven't used them. They're sitting in
the corner of my room and I look at them
and I'm like, I would, I would just love to
doodle or paint or something. But I don't give myself
the time. I am my worst boss. Well and and Caroline,
you know what, my my self care last night was

(57:00):
taking the time, even though I also was slammed with
just all sorts of things. I'm busy. Have I mentioned that?
Have I telled you I'm really busy? Um? But I
took the time to drink a beer and watch an
episode of Unreal because yeah, I'm addicted. Nice, No, I conguer,
I did the same thing. I well, I had a
glass of champagne. I missed beer. You're a little classier,

(57:22):
I know. I assure you it was cooks. I assure
you was probably cheaper than whatever beer you were drinking. Um.
So I took time to have a glass of champagne
and illegally download an episode of Down Abbey that had
already moved off of PBS because I was not fast
enough because I also am busy and apparently too busy
to watch down Abbey. And uh, it was so nice.

(57:46):
It was so nice to take that little bit of time.
And I'm not advocating that everybody get wasted and watch
a period piece on PBS to like, you know, make
yourself feel better. But that's something you see a lot
in literature around self care, that it's different for everyone.
And apparently Kristen and I are slowly morphing into the
same person and that's okay. But for you, maybe it's
going rock climbing and doing something active and outside, or

(58:08):
maybe it really is just taking a nap, turning off
your cell phone. There's a whole range of things that
can help you man or woman learn to reset and
feel better so that you can go back to work
and do better work. Well. Thanks again so much to
Emily Aries for coming on the show and sharing all

(58:29):
of her boss stuff wisdom with us. And now we
want to hear from you. We want to know if
any of those issues resonated with your work situation as well.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple

(58:49):
of messages to share with you when we come right
back from a quick break. So I have a letter
here from Joe in response to our episode on infertility,
and I just want to say quickly to preface this
that we have heard from a lot of both men

(59:10):
and women on this very sensitive topic, something that can
be really hard for a lot of couples out there.
So I just want to say thank you to everybody
who's written in about fertility issues that they have undergone.
So this is from Joe, and Joe says in two thousand,
we have been trying to get pregnant for a year
with no luck. I was thirty six and my wife forty.

(59:32):
We were living outside the perimeter, a little north of Atlanta.
What luck as it's the infertility center of the Southeast
are O b G. I n ran all the tests
on my wife and surprised she's just fine. I mean
the media does portray this as always related to female biology.
So living near an infertility center and the issue probably
due to my biology, the way should be smooth and

(59:54):
within sight. Right. No, there are many specialists for women's
reproductive problems, but for men, go find a urologist, a generalist.
All of them list fertility as part of their practice,
but few do more than dabble. They would run the
same battery of tests, look at me and say, I
don't know, you need someone more scaled than me, And no,
I can't recommend anyone. It took no less than twelve

(01:00:16):
urologists visits to identify someone who truly specialized in practices.
None of the previous eleven were honest that they dabbled
until they got a visit fee. Next was testing. Several
labs turned me away because none of the technicians wanted
to handle the fluids involved even in a lab setting.
One told me it was disgusting. Many treated me like

(01:00:36):
I was a weirdo playing some game. Two told me
that they couldn't help me because the sample needed to
be analyzed within fifteen minutes of collecting, and there was
nowhere on the premises for collection. A hospital with no
bathrooms question mark. Finally, I raised the stink, getting the
attention of the manager in one hospital and they were
appalled at my treatment. Tests were run, root causes found,
and a baby girl arrived in late two thousand three. Yeah,

(01:01:00):
note that this took three years to resolve. It was
the most frustrating, humiliating, and ostracizing experience of my life,
closely followed by a breast cancer scan as a male,
Another story for another time. Well of the time, the
way for women is against the current. This is one
where it's against everyone. The stigma of having a doctor
subtly grin when you reveal that you're infertile, or the

(01:01:23):
callous treatment by the labs needed for a diagnosis was
horrendous and marginalizing. I feel for anyone of any biology
going through this, so thank you so much for sharing
your story, Joe, and congrats on that baby girl. Back
in two thousand three, Well, I've got a letter here
from Jessica about icing your volva, which is one of

(01:01:47):
our new catchphrases. She writes, I just listened to Very
Close Veins, which was about Mr Cole's veins, and just
had to tell you that icing your vulva is actually
a thing. I don't know about it in relationship to
vericos veins, but among pregnant women and new moms it's
often discussed as a relieving treatment for immediately after a

(01:02:07):
vaginal delivery. The trick is to take a Maxi pad,
soak it in witch hazel, and stick it in the
freezer for a few hours before wearing it. I didn't
end up doing this myself, as my delivery wound up
being a C section, but I heard lots of moms
raving about the awesome relief it provides, particularly if they
suffered from tears during delivery. So Jessica, thank you for

(01:02:32):
that insight. I had no idea, and I mean I
just wonder if it works for you know, if you
just like had a long day, you know need, I
want a refreshing relief glass of Pino grigio, little ifce
pack on the volva. There you go. Maybe maybe something
from the Oprah Winfrey Network on television or Gilmore Girls

(01:02:56):
Bene just whatever really helps you relax. Well, listeners, we
want to hear what you have to say. Mom. Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
and for links to all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with
our sources. So you can learn more about Emily Airs

(01:03:17):
and bossed Up. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
Told You dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com