Are you happy with your love life, your health, and your career? And the balance between them?
Emilie Aries, founder of Bossed Up, asked herself that question a few years ago and didn’t like her answer. She found herself stuck in a toxic relationship, an exhaustion-inducing job, and had gone from being a college athlete to not having exercised consistently for three years.
After moving to Washington, D.C. and changing all these elements about her own life, she started Bossed Up’s Bootcamp program – a weekend-long retreat with expert-led training designed to help all women craft happy, healthy, and sustainable careers.
The problem is not just the pressure women put on themselves to be super-human. We’re also battling unconscious biases and legal ambiguities.
On average women make 79 cents to every dollar a man earns. Talking dollars and cents hides just how big that gap can get. If a man makes $65,000 (the median income in D.C.), a woman doing the same job makes about $51,350.
What could you do with an extra $13,650?
For queer women particularly, the story gets harder, faced with additional layers of discrimination and lack of employment protection in 32 states including Virginia.
Here are a few tips from bootcamp to start transforming your life now:
Make mindful choices and forgive yourself for less than perfect decisions.
Some days are more important than others, like the day you negotiate your salary. Aries calls these inflection points and their impact can last for years. Take them seriously, but realize that you’re going to fail, make the wrong call, or do life less than perfectly sometimes. Don’t dwell on the missteps; forgive yourself and get back up.
Schedule fun and fitness as deliberately as work.
In the age of electricity, we think a human can run like a computer with 14 programs open at once on an endless power supply. That cannot be further from the truth. Any great effort takes focus and must be followed by rest for body, mind, and soul.
Surround yourself with supportive and purpose-driven people.
Have you ever had to “fire” a friend or find a new family of choice? Do you have a team of people invested in your life and success as you define it? Or do you rely mostly on your own bootstraps? Whatever bootstraps actually are, the myth that they’re all it takes for success has led to huge failures. Life is tough enough without having to go it alone. Throw out your bootstraps and find people who want what you want and want it for you.
Next Bossed Up Bootcamp: May 16 -17, 2015
