I’ve lived through many stages of life as a Mom. Right now I’m the Mom of a guy who’s almost 23 years old; he’s launched into a life he thrives in, doing work he finds challenging and rewarding after graduating from college a year ago. Luckily, I get to see him about every 6 weeks or so. And we text now and then. Believe me…I’ve had to adjust to this amount of contact, and this new stage of life as a Mom. The Mom Juggle Begins When my son was 4 I started my side-hustle…working with career coaching clients at home while I worked with MBA students during my day job. At that time, I wanted my own business so I’d have a flexible working life, and be available for my son’s day-to-day life. We all know that being a Mom is a full time gig – whether… Read More
Parenting
5 Ways to Raise Career Savvy Kids
I was pregnant with my unborn son and already had ideas for what sort of work he would do as an adult. I figured that, with my interest in people and wanting the best for others combined with my then husband’s analytical brain and approach to the world, that our son could be an important weather scientist who could predict terrible storms and save hundreds of lives. Ok, so maybe this sounds a little nutty. But really, don’t we as parents think about our child’s future all the time. Who will they be? How will this little person’s life turn out? We spend hours researching schools and encouraging our children to do well in school. We are constantly doing things for our child’s future. But oddly enough parents often unknowingly overlook sharing some very important information that could greatly impact their child’s future – they don’t share the realities… Read More
Beginnings
As adults with college age or twenty-something kids, you’ve seen a lot of changes in our society and definitely in the working world. And your kids saw some of those changes happen, whether they were very aware of them or not. For those young people what they saw was ‘The Way Life Is’. So the dot com boom and the incredible money that many people in their twenties made, the huge press that these people got, along with the toys, homes, and subsequent opportunities is probably one of their assumptions about ‘The Way It Is’. Add to that the rise of women in a whole host of careers and the relatively new expectation that women can and should be able to achieve any professional level they want if they’re willing to go for it. Then add the incredible rise in Celebrity Star Power and Reality TV stardom, where the value… Read More
Connecting the Dots (pt. 1)
“You’ve got to find what you love,” Jobs says This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student,… Read More
Connecting the Dots (pt. 2)
I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was… Read More
Connecting the Dots (pt. 3)
My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death,… Read More
Seeking the Fountain of Youth
As midlifers seek the fountain of youth, chances are they’re not noticing the younger folk glancing enviously their way. “I’m looking forward to my 40s,” says Mikey, a struggling entrepreneur in her mid-20s. “I plan to suffer my midlife crisis at the wheel of a new red Porsche.” Recent college graduates have always grappled with hesitation and self-doubt. But in their new book, “The Quarterlifer’s Companion,” co-authors Abby Wilner and Cathy Stocker suggest that these feelings can signify a legitimate problem. The quarterlife crisis – which typically hits between the ages of 21 and 35 – is, according to Wilner, a “state of intense anxiety resulting from the uncertainty and instability accompanying the shift to adulthood.” The crisis generally sparks feelings of helplessness and isolation. And various culprits like student loans, inflation, job competition and parental pressure are to blame. The key factor, though, is the void created in the… Read More
What is it with the kids?
CHICAGO Evan Wayne thought he was prepared for anything during a recent interview for a job in radio sales. Then the interviewer hit the 24-year-old Chicagoan with this: “So, we call you guys the “Entitlement Generation,” the baby boomer executive said, expressing an oft-heard view of today’s young work force. “You think you’re entitled to everything.” Such labeling is, perhaps, a rite of passage for every crop of twentysomethings. In their day, baby boomers were rabble-rousing hippies, while Gen Xers were apathetic slackers. Now, deserved or not, this latest generation is being pegged, too as one with shockingly high expectations for salary, job flexibility and duties but little willingness to take on grunt work or remain loyal to a company. “We’re seeing an epidemic of people who are having a hard time making the transition to work, kids who had too much success early in life and who’ve become… Read More
