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A few weeks ago I started a conversation on Instagram stories centered around my perspective of millennial career women. When I say that, I mostly mean women who have been in a traditional job or career for 10 years or longer (millennials are those born between 1981 – 1996).
From that conversation, two articles were shared with me that rocked my world. Check them out here:
Women Rejecting Traditional Ambition
A Letter From a Working Mother to a Full-Time Mother
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Some snippets that really hit me –
“When Kim Kardashian was dragged for declaring, in her signature vocal fry, that ‘nobody wants to work these days,’ she was a little bit right. We don’t want to work ourselves to the bone, clocking overtime hours without overtime pay, for a vanity title at a soulless corporation anymore. At this point in our collective professional history, women are looking for something more. Or is it something less?”
Once I entered my thirties, we moved from Orange County to San Francisco and then cross-country to Georgia, buying our first home. Christian became partner in a business. We experienced a global pandemic. I continued working solo from home. We welcomed two children with hopes and plans to add a third. We now live within driving distance from our families for the first time since we married in 2012.
As these major life moments have happened, I’ve found myself wondering what my new definition of success is. Because I know it’s not the same as it was in my twenties.
The beauty of this conversation is that there is no right or wrong opinion. It’s really about stepping back in each phase of life and reevaluating your choices. Reviewing how you spend your time in an effort to recognize what actually makes you happy. Have your personal goals changed? What does success mean to you in this decade of life? When do you feel most at peace?
From the Elle article:
“Yes, I’m ambitious,” a friend told me recently, “but climbing the corporate ladder does not interest me like it used to. A title, a bump in pay—it’s not satisfying. What I need to feel successful and fulfilled is completely different. Am I doing something that brings satisfaction? Do I feel like I’m learning? Do I feel like I’m contributing? Do I feel like I’m connecting to other people? Do I feel like I have flexibility in this new way we live and work? Am I given not only responsibility but autonomy? Am I in a place that aligns with my values? The things that I am looking for have changed.
… For many of us, the ambition to rise through the ranks in our chosen field has dissolved into something simpler: the desire to not feel so stressed and exhausted all the time.”
Perhaps what it comes down to is that this is the first time that my own professional ambition has shifted. It’s decreased. We decided to move to Georgia so we could have more space to accommodate a larger family, be closer to our families and enjoy a lower cost of living. To have an overall slower pace of life in general.
Then entered the children and yes, our day-to-day life changed but even more so, the source of our joy changed. From this, my personal definition of success has been altered. In the past, success meant working well past 40 hours a week to gain professional status and recognition in addition to earning as much money as possible to save for a home or even a second home. Earning enough to have flexible spending for vacations, luxury items, and so on. Now, my definition of success is taking on projects that make me happy and are fun, being my own boss so I can have a flexible schedule and only working from 10AM to 4PM so I can participate in daily family routines with my children and partner. I take weekends off, I rarely work overtime and I have a maximum number of partnerships a month I will accept (prior to children there was no number – it was limitless, and that was by choice! #hustle).
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I am incredibly grateful for my career because it brings me so much happiness and creativity. I feel like I’m constantly challenged to learn new things and expand my skill set. I love having adult conversations and trying to become more intelligent, savvy, and productive with my working hours. It gives me confidence and is how I continue to invest in myself. And perhaps more than anything, I love being my own boss. I recognize what a total luxury and gift that is. I’m grateful for it daily and vocalize this gratitude repeatedly.
However, I also know what kind of mother, partner, and friend I want to be. We have a really special community where we live, and I want to be there for my friends when they need a hand or a hot meal for their families. I want to participate in our small group with other couples once a week without being stressed about the time commitment. I want to take Fridays off to alternate spending one-on-one time with my children and show them I’m invested in their hobbies and interests. To quote Kelly Wynne when she decided to close her retail business, “I want to give my children the best of me and not the rest of me.”
A book I’d recommend if you are a person of faith and interested in this topic is John Mark Comer’s Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. I was encouraged by some career women I admire to read it and they were right. It has changed the way I view how I spend my time. You guys often tell me you picked up this book at my recommendation, and I cannot tell you how much happiness that gives me. I hope it has blessed you as it has blessed me!
I really loved what Phoebe Robinson had to say about ambition:
“As I’ve gotten older, the definition has expanded, because it’s not just about the professional for me. I want successful friendships, romantic relationships, and hobbies. To me, ambition’s about working hard to have the life you want. Having that desire to take this one life we all get to live and do it our fiercely independent way and experience joy on our terms.”
I have a saved highlight on Instagram called “AMBITION” with more of this conversation, but it was so impactful to me that I also wanted to carry it over to the website where it could continue. You guys had SO many amazing things to contribute to the conversation on instagram, and I needed to highlight some of the direct messages so more could read your words!
If you have thoughts on this subject, please share them in the comments. I really love hearing what you guys have to say. Thank you so much for stopping in and reading, and you can find more personal content in the “personal” category of this site. XO –
