All lady bosses who fall in love with a talented man ask themselves “my career or his?” at some point in their life. When either of them gets a remarkable job offer this might pop up. Becoming parents is another moment to consider this possibility.
Today I offer you here some considerations to answer this challenge
1. Your Career is Your Business
Managing your career path is your responsibility. This is a brilliant opportunity to develop remarkable leadership skills. Forget about blame or guilt. You are the CEO of your own life. Show up. Be a leader.
You are not a victim of your partner. Don’t prioritize his career to please him or keep him.
You are not a bad person by choosing for yourself. You will grow closer together the more authentic you are.
2. What Kind of Life You Want
Forget about what everyone would advise you. Take a deep breath and connect with your own wisdom. Visualize your ideal life. You have just one life. How would you like it to be. Think about what excites you and energizes you.
Make a picture of your ideal day. Here I offer you a visualization for it,
Rejoice on that vision. Come back to your now and consider steps to bridge the gap between today and your ideal day. Consider which choice could accelerate your ideal future: his career or yours.
3. This is a Portal Towards Greatness
After a 3 decades career I can tell you that I’ve learnt tremendously by radical and painful changes in my career and life. Moving country (and dumping my boyfriend) expanded my vision of life and business. Choosing for his career around the diapers time was a blessing for me. Motherhood left me stronger. Post natal depression made me better.
All those changed where uncomfortable. If you want to grow as a leader and as a women, you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Do you want:
- a brilliant career AND
- a loving intimate relationship
Yes, it is possible! In this book you will learn how
4. Apply Scenario Planning To Your Decision Making
Scenario Planning is a future envisioning technique created by Shell. This technique is based in choosing 2 variables as key for decision making. In your case it could be: living together, long distance relationship, kids now, kids later, living in x or y.
You create a 2x2 matrix and develop the scenario of that combination. Get into that scenario. Feel what you like and what you hate about it.
This is brilliant as you have a tool to communicate with him. This will allow you both to share their views on the intersection of your ideal life.
5. Find A Mentor
Ask for help.
Look for someone who already has taken a similar decision. If you want me to be your mentor, let’s talk.
6. Be Your Top Sponsor
Once you make the choice, embrace it. See all that is good in it. Look for all the possibilities and positive aspects of it. Don’t allow blame to creep in. Remember that you are the boss, not a weak victim of a wicked monster.
See Your Career as a Set of Stepping Stones, Not a Linear Path.
This decision making moment has the possibility of making both your career and your intimate relationship stronger. To be able to make this choice and managing afterwards you’ll need to be more mindful as a couple.
To help you do so, I’ve written “One Couple Two Careers”. In this book I offer you a powerful framework that will allow you to surf the challenges of stress, little time and intimacy.
Now back to YOU
All this is worthless without action. Let’s use the comments below to solidify your future. Think about which of these points touch your heart.
Which consideration touch your heart?
Which one will you use now?
Please do be as detailed as possible. You can be the inspiration that other readers need.
Thank you for reading, sharing and commenting. Interacting with you is so energizing for me.
Wishing you a wonderful week
Do you want:
- a brilliant career AND
- a loving intimate relationship
Yes, it is possible! In this book you will learn how
Blanca,
I am sharing your article on Face book, and LinkedIn.
I feel that without sacrifice of either of the partner, goal of each can be aimed at with mutual understanding.
Arun
Thank you for your inspiring article, five years ago we made the decision to move to The Netherlands to give my wife the opportunity to take on the challenge of a promotion in her career. I decided to support her without the prospects for a job for myself. Over the past years she has excelled and is enjoying her success. I enjoy seeing her happy and achieving her goal. Previously she had given up opportunities to take care of the children. Today they are successful and she is enjoying her career. I have taken the time to try new thing and look for new adventures.
The short answer …. is we look at our careers as one