Gail Golden - Curating Your Life: Ending the Struggle for Work-Life Balance

Ending the Struggle for
Work-Life Balance

Gail Golden

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my thousands of clients, who taught me almost everything I know about helping, to my marvelous sons, and to Daniel Golden, the love of my life.

When I ride the train to my office in the morning, I look at the faces of the other passengers. Some sleep, most text or listen to music, and others stare dully out of the window. Almost no one looks happy, or energized, or enthusiastic.

When I walk around downtown, its the same picture. Most people charge along, heads down or looking careworn and weary. The panhandlers on the street corners look especially miserable. But honestly, most of us dont look much happier than they do.

At the end of the day, were heading home, the lucky ones among us to spend time with the people we love. Do we look eager and anticipatory? No. We mostly look even more tired than we did in the morning.

This is not how I want my life to beand not yours, either.

Every day we read more articles about work-life balance, about managing your time, about having it all. Frankly, those articles mostly make us feel worse about ourselves. Its all so simplejust use the right app, drink the right juice, say the right mantra, and you too can have the perfect life. Well, Ive never found life to be simple, and Im deeply suspicious of simple answers to complicated problems.

It really is frustrating. There are so many companies offering us magical answers to all our difficulties. Just take a look at your mailemail or snail mail. Mine is full of quick solutions to make me rich, youthful, and thin. Check out the ads on TV, in publications, and on the sidebars of the websites you visit. More magic! Lately, I seem to have made it onto a sucker list for companies offering to vastly increase my client list, my income, and the number of people who are going to read this book. These offers are all magic in one waythey are excellent at reducing the weight of your wallet and making someone else rich.

I especially resent deceptively simple answers to complicated life issues. One of my pet peeves is the phrase, Just do the right thing. You know, most of us want to do the right thing most of the time. But how do you know what the right thing is? Sometimes we differ from each other about what is right.

So I will never tell you that achieving a happy and productive life is simple. If it were, wed all be doing it. But I know for a fact that achieving a happy and productive life is possible. I have spent my life and my career so far working on this problem, and in this book I will share with you what I have learned.

Early in my career, I was running my clinical psychology practice, teaching a huge lecture course at the local university, writing a weekly newspaper column, raising three little boys, trying to be a good partner to my husband, and so on and so on. Im a high-energy person, but a lot of the time I was running on fumes. It seemed to me that I was doing none of it very well. I looked at other people who appeared to have it all together. There was the prominent physician who was also writing books, raising three kids, and serving as a leader in our synagogue. There was the professor who was doing cutting-edge research, raising four kids, writing poetry, and learning to play the guitar. There was the brilliant, highly respected therapist with the magnificent home, always impeccably dressed and beautiful. And then there was me.

How were they doing it? I used to torture myself with the image of the person I thought I should bealways calm and pleasant, on top of all my responsibilities and still having time to be loving and funny and available to others.