Buckingham - Find your strongest life: what the happiest and most successful women do differently

Praise for Find Your Strongest Life

Drawing on years of research, Marcus Buckinghams work helps an individual identify her strengths. It guides the reader to put their strengths to work in order to play to her best advantage in all aspects of life. Find Your Strongest Life is an excellent resource not only for women, but for any executive who manages, advocates, or guides the development of women.

Camille Mirshokrai, Director of Leadership Development, Accenture

Marcus Buckingham is amazingly in touch with what women need to set ourselves up to win in life and work. In Find Your Strongest Life, hes developed a powerful program to identify and leverage your true strengths in the midst of the pressure of trying to have it all. Read this book and you will know all the secrets of living a strong life, and you will learn to walk confidently toward the unique and fulfilling life waiting for youthe life in which you win.

Lori Goler, Head of HR, Facebook

In this groundbreaking book, Marcus exposes the powerful myths that unduly complicate the lives of women, smashes the wrong assumptions that steer us away from happiness and success, and unveils a refreshingly insightful and powerfully simple program to get us the lives we deserve. As a woman, wife, businesswoman, mother, daughter, friendIve never encountered such an inspired message that grasps all the roles we play and offers a path to a truly strong, authentic, and fulfilling life. Ill be coming back to this book for years!

Susan Gambardella, Region Vice-President, Coca Cola North America

What Marcus has to say about the myth of balance is worth the price of admission. For so long Ive strived for balance because I thought thats what everyone needed from me. Now I know my strongest life is something altogether different. This book is full of insight and tips that cut against the grain of what you thought to be true. This is a book about sustainable happiness and true success. You must read Find Your Strongest Life! It will change your life!

Monna Nevils, Sr. Vice President, Talent Systems, Jones Lang LaSalle

Most of us probably have what it takes to be successful. What most people dont have is the foggiest idea of how to tap into those strengths and realize that success. Marcus Buckinghams common sense guidance is useful for anyone who believes there is something more (and better!) in store for them.

Deborah Norville, Anchor, Inside Edition and Author, The Power of Respect

Marcus gets it! Im the kind of woman who is always looking for new ways to live healthier and happier, and Marcus has a direct line to the heart and mind of women. This is an insightful and empowering messageyou must read Find Your Strongest Life.

Robin McGraw, #1 New York Times Best-Selling Author

2009 by One Thing Productions, LLC

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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Names, dates, places, and other identifying details have been changed to protect the identities of those mentioned.

ISBN: 978-1-4002-8078-0 (IE)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Buckingham, Marcus.
Find your strongest life : what the happiest and most successful women do differently / Marcus Buckingham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4002-0236-2
1. WomenPsychology. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) 3. Success.
I. Title.
HQ1206.B7973 2009
155.3'33dc22

2009019560

Printed in the United States of America
09 10 11 12 13 QW 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Jo, Pippa, Lilia and Jane,
the women who shape my life

CONTENTS

TEN MYTHS ABOUT
THE LIVES OF WOMEN

. As a result of having better education, better jobs, and better pay, women today are happier and more fulfilled than they were forty years ago. Actually, the opposite is true. Surveys of more than 1.3 million men and women reveal that women today are less happy relative to where they were forty years ago, and relative to men.

. Women become more engaged and fulfilled as they get older. No, men do. According to a forty-year study of forty-six thousand men and women, women begin their lives more satisfied than men and then gradually become less satisfied with every aspect of their livesmarriage, finances, things they own, even family.

. At work, women are relegated to lower-level roles. Actually a higher percentage of women (37 percent) hold managerial or supervisory positions as compared to men (31 percent).

. Most men think that men should be the primary breadwinner and women should be the primary caretaker of home and family. Most men used to think this74 percent of men agreed with this statement in 1977. Today, however, that number has fallen to only 42 percentwhich happens to be almost exactly the same as the percentage of women who agree with it (39 percent.) Your opinion of which roles are most appropriate for men and women to play is not now determined by your sex.

. Women would prefer to work for other women. Most wouldnt. In fact, almost twice as many women want to work for men rather than women; 40 percent compared to 26 percent, with the remainder saying they wouldnt care one way or the other.

. If women had more free time, they would feel less stressed. It doesnt appear so. According to a twenty-five- year study, each extra hour of free time doubles a mans feelings of relaxation, but does nothing for a womans.

. Having children makes women happier. Not necessarily. It turns out that kids are a bundle of stress. All studies linking stress and satisfaction with motherhood reveal the same finding: married mothers are always more stressed and less happy than married women with no kids. (I know, you love your kids, but this finding has been repeated so many times, in so many countries, theres no escaping it.)

. Kids want more time with their working mothers. Not according to the kids. Most mothers think they do, but when one thousand third through twelfth graders were asked what they wanted from their mom, only 10 percent said more time. Their most common request (34 percent): I want my mom to be less stressed and tired.

. Women are good at multitasking, and it helps them get everything done. Two nos on this one. First, women are no better than men at multitasking. (These are tests in a lab, mind you, not tests in your home.) Second, research shows that your IQ drops ten points when you try to do two tasks at the same timemultitasking is just a nice way of saying divided attention.

. Women do more housework per week than men. Okay, this ones true. (Seventeen hours for women. Thirteen hours for men.)

R ecently, my wife, Jane, attended a forum in California organized by the governors wife, Maria Shriver. The Womens Conference, as it was called, brought together thousands of the most influential and accomplished women in the world, among them feminist icon Gloria Steinem. After her talk, a woman asked Ms. Steinem if she could explain what she meant by You can have it all when, the woman continued, We clearly cant have it all.