Dear
Debra: I get so stressed out planning to leave work for vacation and check in
so constantly while I’m gone that by the time I finally unwind, vacation’s
almost over, and then of course when I get back to the office I’m snowed under
the pileup. How can I make leaving and
returning to the office after vacation less stressful?
Continue reading "How Not to Go AWOL (Absent Without Leisure)" »
Dear Debra: I’m dying to start a small
business. How can I find time to set myself up as an entrepreneur while working
9-5 for someone else?
Claim two hours a day for start-up activities.
One is for creative, strategic, hard planning—activities that require your
brain to be fully awake and fired up. The second hour is for the
roll-up-your-sleeves, boring, rote grunt work that doesn’t call for mental
alertness or focus—just time. Every one of us can find two otherwise wasted
hours, no matter what our work and life situation.
Continue reading "How to Start Your Own Business While Working Full-Time For Someone Else" »
Dear Debra: I ordered pizza for dinner for my kids twice this week-and last; the house is a wreck, I brought home a mountain of work last weekend and barely made my daughter's school play. What's wrong with me? Does everyone else have their act together?
Here's the truth that no one tells us, especially glib work-life balance evangelists: Once you get out into the world of work (and even before that-in college, for example) you should just expect that your day-to-day life simply isn't always going to flow smoothly.
Continue reading "Balance or Not, You are Normal" »
Dear Debra: I founded a fast-growing start up that's requiring a ton of time.
My wife supports how much she and I are devoting to career. Except lately, there's been tension when I end up stressing until the last minute about whether I'll be able to get away for a weekend trip we've planned, or repeatedly have to cancel dinner plans with friends. Am I normal or becoming a fanatical workaholic?
Continue reading "Is Your Big Picture In Balance?" »
By Maya Dollarhide Lucca. CNN.com. July 14, 2008
- Decision for moms to work or stay home is fiercely debated,
rarely easy
- Psychiatrist: Children who are put in day care feel a real
loss
- Author Dr. Debra Condren: Keeping yourself from your own ambitions can be "soul destroying"
Continue reading " Working Moms Look Back with Mixed Emotions" »
When it “sunk in that
mainstream schools shortchanged her severely autistic son”, Amy, 39, closed her thriving
medical practice to help start charter school. For a long time, it seemed to be
working out. “Then I found my husband in bed with a woman on the school
committee. We went through a horrific divorce. I had to try to revive my career;
at 49, it’s finally starting to take off again. But at my age, with everything I
had to deal with, it was f__g hard.”
What If? Could this be
you?
Continue reading "Is It Honorable For Women To Give Up Their Ambition? Part II: Let's Get Real" »
Debra: You preach ambition for women. Aren’t
you forgetting something? What about life balance? Mothering? –32, with better
values than “just career”
Say your ambition is to be a great wife,
mother, friend, or fair-minded coworker who refuses on moral grounds to educate
herself about office politics. That doesn’t bother you, does it? No, because
that’s socially sanctioned ambition. You’ll
likely regard the following women as having chosen “honorable ambition”.
Continue reading "Is It Honorable For Women To Give Up Their Dreams?" »
Dear
Debra: I just finished my M.B.A. I’m seriously considering joining my parents’ business.
Advice? –Mixed feelings at 26
Let’s
start with cons to consider:
Continue reading "Joining Mom and Pop Good or Bad Business?" »
I make my living teaching women how to unapologetically own their ambition in a
society that has a double standard. It’s our prevailing cultural paradigm:
ambitious men are go-getters, but ambitious women are the b-word.
I define ambition as
that which drives our creative existence, provides an outlet for our talents and
passions, defines who we are, and allows us to earn our full worth without
apology. I walk my talk.
But just like you I take hits.
In a moment of trauma, I too succumbed to those deeply ingrained
cultural beliefs about how women are supposed to behave. It happened to me when
my son almost died.
Continue reading "The Day My Son Almost Died" »