When I was 16 years old, my classmate’s older sister announced she wanted to become a lawyer. I was fascinated…awestruck, actually. Despite my strong academic record and enthusiasm for art and photography, my traditional, Eastern European parents raised me to believe that when I finished college I should marry and have children, and that if I wanted a career, I should teach something “of substance” or work in an office.  Art was out of the question.  So, once the lawyer seed was planted in my mind, there was no going back.

I forged my path through college and law school, found a job and was on my way.  My interest in art persisted, nourished mainly at museums.  In time, I changed jobs, became a mother and searched for the precarious balance that motherhood and ambition dangle in front of the tempted.  My mother, enchanted with her first grandchild, came to the city twice weekly to envelop him with adoration and relieve me from the niggling guilt of working a lawyer’s hours. Still, after several years I decided to leave my law firm, have another child and, in exchange for greater schedule control, became counsel to the family business. With time, patience and assistance from my husband and father, I found my footing.

Museum visits waned as my husband and I juggled children’s activities and our respective careers. Things hummed along but everything at work felt forced to me, and I didn’t want to miss the milestones and challenges awaiting my children.  So, I left the business and volunteered at school. Over time I became class representative, head grade representative, mock trial coach, and upper school internship coordinator.  I attended my kids’ plays, concerts, and ball games. I became “analyzer, organizer, advocate, communicator, and editor in-chief” in my various roles, using several “lawyer” skills earlier developed.

Regular museum visits resumed, and I relished them.  I also had time to think about how much I used to love a good art project or an interesting photograph. I needed a creative outlet, and decided to take a class at the 92^nd St. Y called “Oil Painting for Absolute Beginners”.  I later added classes in pastel and figure painting, entered student exhibitions, won a “Best in Show” award and continued to pursue my love of painting and photography. I took up gardening and learned about the different artistry needed to bring a garden to its peak while dealing with challenges of weather, insects and four-legged intruders. I accepted an invitation to join the Brandeis University Arts Council, which annually reviews faculty proposals seeking funding for special art, music and theater programs to benefit university students and the community at large. These things complemented the volunteer activities that I took on over the years to meaningfully contribute to my children’s school community.

As my youngest son’s graduation approached, so did my own, from years of daily parenting and volunteering at school.  I started to wonder, “What next?”  I had heard about Whitney and “Dare, Dream or Do” on the Gotham Gal blog just before the book’s publication.  I got the book, read it, ruminated over what I read for some time, and decided that the time was ripe for me to act.  I followed Whitney’s advice about making space for my dreams, inventoried my interests, strengths and competencies, and then threw out my usual checklist in favor of “discovery driven planning”, which allowed me to modify my plans as new information emerged.  I approached my art teachers about my making a change, and was encouraged to  “go for it”.

So, I took a class about creating artist websites, and I created one.*  Then I started a blog, Michelle Bratsafolis Artcetera** where I share thoughts about art exhibits, garden venues, and related projects. I applied and was accepted to a full-time studio intensive program at the National Academy School of Fine Art, where I will continue painting and explore different art forms like sculpture, printmaking, and new media.  Come September, I’ll begin classes and have dedicated studio space to pursue my art afterwards. I’ve also purchased a domain name that I hope to use as a platform to pursue my art and related interests down the road.  My wheels are constantly turning as I think about opportunities yet to unfold.

Daring myself to dream beyond my comfort zone kindled my desire to disrupt old routines and navigate uncharted waters. I’ve reflected on who I am, who I want to be, what I like to do, how often I like to do it, whether to explore new artistic media and how to engage others about my interests. I’ve shed preoccupations that I’ve outgrown, rediscovered passions long buried beneath layers of professional accomplishment, and reconnected with my willingness to experiment. I’ve opened doors and am ready to follow a path paved with nothing but my curiosity.  I don’t know where it will lead, but the journey itself is motivating and I look forward with great anticipation to what lies ahead.

***

Michelle Bratsafolis lives in Manhattan with her husband and spends weekends upstate in Dutchess County, New York. Together they have three children. *A varied selection of her artwork can be seen on her website, www.michellebratsafolis.com. **Her blog, Michelle Bratsafolis Artcetera, can be accessed through her website, or michellebratsafolisart.blogspot.com

. 

While waiting in a doctor’s exam room, I seized my medical file, which was abnormally large for a 24-year old. Listed were the “normal” things: asthma, allergies, acne, depression and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). And the dramatic, Hodgkin’s disease, at the young age of thirteen. My pressing concern?  Stubborn weight loss. I understood the body broke down without explanation, but weight I could control.

With my lucky number 30 (pounds), the windfall of weight loss promised a perfect job, relationship and the fantasy life unbridled confidence brings. Staring at my medical history, a pattern emerged. I defined healthy as being cancer-free, a loose but narrow definition. The last decade involved running away from cancer versus towards wellness.

Exploring this idea of replacing fighting with diplomacy in dealing with food and body issues would continually disrupt my perspective of food and health, along with my career over the next decade. I studied functional medicine and holistic health. I pieced together why I was involved in a game of medical ping-pong. A gluten intolerance and transitioning to a whole foods diet provided an olive branch for all the A-diagnoses in my medical file. They also were key in resolving my depression and IBS.

The war mentality, which has a place in the cancer world, didn’t get me where I wanted to go with food or feeling well. But the metaphors we live by aren’t just words. They are stories with deep emotional resonance. With my body’s healing also came a loss of 10 pounds, but I still battled emotional eating.

After my holistic health education and personal health results, I started seeing clients while still retaining my corporate job. Several months after seeing the equally liberating results of those I counseled, I put in my two-week notice. Eerily, after leaving my corporate job, my binge eating stopped. The more I worked through my emotional baggage about food and life requiring constant vigilance, a casualty of my cancer war, the less I ate out of emotion. I lost 20 pounds, not with boot camps or surveillance, but through enjoying and trusting life.

This same pattern occurred with my clients. I saw coaching to be integral to facilitating this revised story of food diplomacy, with weight loss a welcome side effect. So after being accepted into the University of Pennsylvania’s Master’s program in Organizational Dynamics, concentrating in coaching and change management, I set out to deeply understand what was happening.

Einstein is quoted as saying if he had an hour to save the world, he’d spend 59 minutes defining the problem correctly and one minute solving it.  By discussing food and the body in such hyper-masculine war terms as “arming” yourself with fat facts, “tracking” calories and “conquering” cravings, the problem becomes one of thinking it necessary to become more aggressive to win the “war”. Food and weight loss become a hero’s journey as outlined by mythologist Joseph Campbell.

The Biggest Loser and other transformation stories follow the hero’s journey narrative: pre-fab eating plans and boot camp trainers are the mentors and helpers; calories at holidays and early morning alarms are the demons and dragons to slay, while a make-over and size 4 dress that isn’t black are symbolic societal honors for winning the epic battle that eludes mere mortals. These external changes are all that is required for weight loss, which is code for “happily ever after”.

However, after real life returns, or the “maintenance phase”, the weight usually does too, because wars aren’t sustainable and food cannot be a constant enemy. In 1991 in the Clinical Psychology Review, psychologists David Garner and Susan Wooley concluded that when it comes to dieting, “It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of weight regain, that appears open to debate.” Dismal statistics in the years since confirm this: food isn’t the enemy and weight loss isn’t a battle. The problem is defined incorrectly.

I’ve come to understand the problem is not in learning to fight food or to act more masculine. Rather, the adventure is to understand food, body and emotions. The stages of learning involve embracing the qualities of the archetypal feminine; the feminine being associated with the Earth, the body, feelings and wisdom. It’s a story not of a hero’s journey but a heroine’s journey as outlined by Maureen Murdock.

I adapted the healing phase of the heroine’s journey into a four-stage, circular adventure called Truce with Food™. The four phases include:

Wise Council Replaces Food Police: Embracing Earth’s foods connection to the body’s physiology, which is equal to our thoughts in generating moods, energy and cravings.

Tapping Inspiration’s Well: Honoring one’s history and feelings about food to complement the logic of calories for consistency.

Anchoring Around the Emotional Eating Undertow: Working with the unconscious reasons for emotional eating, alongside the conscious, to create calm and ease around food.

Tonic Time: Celebrating with a food restoration plan for your unique body instead of detoxing into a metabolic crash.

The end result is a new story of food and oneself.

Some clients simply wish for food to stop “ruling” their existence and get back more of their lives. My clients’ weight losses range from 10 lbs. to over 90 lbs. Weight loss maintenance is elegant not awkward, because they see food differently. Most importantly, they come to deeply understand weight loss as a side effect of the internal process of feeling confident, beautiful and balanced. In reality and spiritually, they’ve become more whole. Now they are playing with joy, not fire.

What do you think?  Is it time for a truce with food? To enter into diplomatic relations?

***

Ali Shapiro, MSOD, CHHC, is described as the Swiss army knife of wellness, using food, emotions and coaching to help clients call a truce with food. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and holistic health certificates from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition/Columbia’s Teachers college, the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, CHEK Institute and Level 1 Reiki. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Shopping, Redbook Magazine, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Philadelphia Magazine. She was previously a regular health contributor to the NBC 10! Show.

P.S.  You can sign up for the Truce with Food staple grocery list and easy recipes complimentary at alishapiro.com.

You know what’s about one of the most soul crushing things for someone that considers themselves a passionate person?

When all of a sudden you don’t feel like you have one.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been an all in kind of person. I typically find one thing I’m passionate about and pour myself into it. I want to master it. I’m not the girl with a million hobbies. For the last 10 years, my play time and my work time has been all about good food. If you know me (or my instagram feed for that matter), you’d think I was crazy to doubt my passion for food.

Backing up, I arrived to college as a chemistry geek, but after a year and a half I had my nose in my cooking magazines more than my textbooks and my kitchen became my new lab. I switched my major to become a food writer. I had a mentor give me the advice that if I wanted to be a food writer, go become a food person first. At about the same time I realized I was a horribly inefficient writer, so I shelved that, but the food part stuck. I took culinary classes, worked in restaurants and then I began working as a buyer for a specialty food retailer called The Fresh Market based in Greensboro, NC.

It was there I recognized there were all these cool products with great stories and I wanted to make it easy for people like me to discover them. I teamed up with my co-founders Rob and Nik and we built Foodzie an online marketplace for artisan foodmakers. I had pretty much unlocked my dream job. Eat good food for a living? Check. Lead my own creative vision? Check. Work with passionate people? Check.

We built the company for a little over four years, sold it to Joyus a year ago and then transitioned out at the end of 2012. It was emotional to say goodbye to something I’d merged so much of my identity with, but knew Foodzie had prepared us for something bigger. Quite frankly I was thrilled for some time off. A true break to explore the next thing. No responsibilities to anything. Joy, sweet joy. And then the break came and…I freaked out.

The thoughts in my head were shouting, “I don’t care about a break; I just want to know what’s my thing!” Food had always been my thing. And while I knew I hadn’t lost my passion in food completely, there wasn’t a big challenge in food I felt the burning desire to take on. Food felt like a small flame instead of the roaring fire of a true passion I knew it once to be.

Needing some advice on how to move forward, I stepped back and realized I had given this very advice in a TEDx talk to a group of high schoolers. Toss out the notion of finding your passion (at least to start) and explore your curiosities.

Finding your passion is a lot like finding a husband. Who wants to evaluate every first date, asking yourself if he is the one? It’s far easier to ask yourself, if you simply want one more date with this dude.  So my advice? Go on dates with ideas, until you realize there’s this one you just can’t stop hanging out with…when you’ve found that, you’ve likely found your passion.

At the end of March, my fiancé (and co-founder) Rob and I were about to take off for a two month long trip around the world. Reminded of my own advice, I let go. I stopped searching for my thing. I gave myself a break, allowed myself just to be a particle in the universe and for those curiosities to emerge.

I journaled nearly everyday of our trip. I was scribbling down ideas for a productivity app and a new educational platform. But it was the visit to the Japanese tea farm that had me pumped full of energy, the epic sushi experience that felt like pure bliss, and the cooking class in Thailand where my heart sang. It was like throwing kindle on that flame. Again my curiosity to discover new tastes and the people connected to that food was alive. Finally big challenging ideas connected to food were in front of me again and the fire in my belly was back. Now back in San Francisco, new food business ideas and food projects are filling my days.

Whether you’re trying to find that passion for the first time, or like me, trying to get it back. Give yourself a break and try simply being curious. I’m learning so far that your life’s calling might be less about passion and more about being continuously curious.

When were you last passionately curious?

***

Emily believes everyone can appreciate great food if you just have the chance to taste. She founded and sold one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Food Companies, Foodzie.com where she discovered the best products from small foodcrafters. A passionate food enthusiast she’s spent 10 years in the business from food writing, to culinary school to working with artisanal foodmakers. Emily has been named Inc Magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs and Food & Wine Magazine’s 40 Big Food Thinkers Under 40.

I remember sitting on the floor as a little girl, marker smeared all the way up to my elbow, focused intently on hand-drawing/coloring bubble-letter posters for every holiday, family birthday, and special event. I remember collecting every variety of Crayola marker I could get my hands on – they used to make cool sets like “Jungle Colors”, and those were my prized possessions. I remember how delighted my family was every time a new poster graced the walls—they’d hang there for weeks. I learned early that art and color make people happy, and most importantly that art and color made ME happy. I remember my grandma telling me once that I should be a fabric designer when I grew up.

Despite my early love of art and of making things, I never really considered being an artist when I grew up. I wanted to be a singer/songwriter. Making art was just this fun thing that I liked to do. I was dismissive about it.

When I started applying to colleges, I applied as an undeclared major, because I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do or study. Ithaca College was one of the schools to which I applied, and by some strange stroke of fate (or, more likely, a weird clerical error), I was accepted as… an art major. I hadn’t even sent a portfolio or anything. Weird, right? I know. Ithaca College was the school that I ended up choosing to attend, and I figured that I guess I’d try out this art major thing since I did like making art after all, and I could always change it if I wanted to. So off I went to college, to (maybe) be an art major.

I graduated with a BFA, focusing on painting. The art program at my school was small and fairly traditional. I took one computer art class for a semester, where I learned some fundamentals about Photoshop, how to work a scanner, and how to make a rudimentary animation. It was fun, but not something I saw myself using very much in the future. I was a painter! And I loved painting, but there was always something missing. I had this notion (picked up from my cranky oil painting teacher, among others) that art had to be IMPORTANT. And SERIOUS. And MEAN SOMETHING DEEP AND BIG. Ugh, no pressure or anything. I’ve always been drawn to color for the sake of color. Art that makes you feel happy. Decorative art that makes you feel good and uplifted, like I made when I was a kid. I learned in college that that type of art isn’t enough.

So I continued on in my path as a painter, living with the notion that I wanted to create work that was pretty and simply makes you feel good, while also believing that it had to be more “important” and serious than that. Hello, inner conflict!

I discovered pattern design 5 years after graduating from college. I saw artists who called themselves “surface pattern designers”, creating amazing patterns and sharing them online, and I thought “why didn’t anyone ever tell me this is a career?? This is what I’ve been waiting for! This is the missing piece.” (If you’ll remember, though, my grandma did tell me when I was a kid that she thought I should be a fabric designer… she must’ve been psychic, that one.) Their work was fun. It was decorative, pretty, and it made me feel good. So I obsessively taught myself how to use the computer programs I needed in order to become a surface pattern designer. I gave up the old belief that art had to be so serious. It took over a year of learning and teaching myself before I created my first successful repeat pattern. And I was TRIUMPHANT! Finally. I was on my way to making my new dream a reality, one new pattern at a time.

Discovering pattern design and fully embracing it as my true path has led to a life and career beyond what I could’ve imagined—amazing licensing partnerships, lines of gift products, co-creating a passion-finding book called The Declaration of You (being published in June 2013!), exhibiting at licensing trade shows, and many wonderful new friends.

But most importantly, it taught me that listening to your soul’s callings and your intuition is always, always the answer. It’ll lead you to exactly where you want to be.

Jessica Swift, a full-time artist, surface pattern designer,and writer, is on a quest to inspire everyone on the planet to pursue their wild + colorful dreams.  Her magically uplifting and colorful artwork is licensed by companies and manufacturers for iPhone cases, fabric, stationery, and much more. Her art and products are designed to serve as tokens of happiness — reminders that you need (and deserve) to feel GOOD in your life. Her first book (co-written with creative career coach Michelle Ward), The Declaration of You, will be published by North Light Books in June 2013. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two adorable cats, and you can find her colorfully creating and blogging online at JessicaSwift.com.

And then there were six. Three from country star Blake Shelton’s team, Danielle Bradbery, Swon Brothers, and Holly Tucker, one each from Adam (country/pop artist Amber Carrington), Shakira (R&B singer Sasha Allen) and Usher (Indie artist (Michelle Chamuel).

As Adam, Shakira and Usher fight to stay in the competition, and knowing, that each song downloaded off of iTunes counts for 10 votes — what did we get last night?

Country.

Adam turns Skid Row’s I Remember You into a pop/country song for Amber Carrington; she chooses to sing Patsy Cline’s country classic Crazy.
Shakira chooses Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats for Sasha Allen.
When Michelle Chamuel selects Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble, Usher invites Taylor Swift into the studio for a surprise visit; Taylor ‘blesses’ Michelle’s rendition; Michelle sings superbly. Which equals downloads which equals vote.

Adam, Shakira and Usher learned what all entrepreneurs must eventually learn: it isn’t enough to have a product, you need a product that customers will buy.

Last week, America took Usher, Shakira and Adam to start-up school.

Tonight, we’ll see if they have customers.

P.S. Thanks to Marty Crampton for the insight about product/market fit.

Since I was a little girl of 6 years old, I always wanted to be an actress. Being on stage is where I belonged, and it took me places. It took me to New York City, where I majored in musical theater at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts. It took me on a cruise ship around North America where I sang my heart out for a year. It took me to Studio 8A in Rockefeller Plaza, where I got to be on “Saturday Night Live”. It even took me to The-Closest-Movie-Theater-Is-An-Hour-Away, PA and The-Town-With-A-Gas-Station,-a-Consignment-Shop,-a-Pizzeria,-and-a-Gun-Store, New Hampshire.

And all of a sudden, the life I was pursuing for 20 years wasn’t what I wanted anymore.

I didn’t want to leave my home in New York City. I didn’t want to spend my “days off” sitting at auditions to sing 8 bars of a song and wonder where the day went. I didn’t want to get a job and have to pick up my life with one day’s (or one week’s) notice. I didn’t want to be a 35 year old waitress/ hostess/ temp/office manager.

I wanted my days to mean something, to be valuable, to matter.

So I got a real job. And another one. And another. I had 20 jobs in 7 years, constantly trying to find “the perfect fit.” I’d get restless easily and fairly despondent, thinking that there was nothing else out there for me that I could devote myself to passionately and enthusiastically.

One day I declared, “Enough! I refuse to accept that there is nothing else out there that I’m going to love doing!”

I was going to find My Perfect Career.

I enrolled in a Career Change Workshop at NYU and realized that I wanted to help others find their own path, especially “creative types” that thought they wanted one thing their whole life and now have to rewrite their plans.

I wanted to help them figure out what they wanted to be When They Grow Up.

Instead of enrolling in my life coach certification right away, I decided to get out of my current job – the one with expected 24/7 BlackBerry access, pointless travel, and the verbally abusive boss – and find one without, well, all of that. Within a month or two I landed a cushy gig as an Executive Assistant at a financial consulting company. I know it might seem counterintuitive, but having that consistent paycheck, no Blackberry/overtime/travel, and a boss who didn’t make me psychosomatic allowed me to keep my nights and weekends to myself, get certified, and build my business.

I started that job in August of 2007, which was the very same month I enrolled at the International Coach Academy. It took almost two years (I got engaged and married in that time on top of my full-time corporate gig!), but I graduated in June of 2009  and set my sights on building my business with a professionally designed website, a few months of severance in the bank, and enough consultation calls coming in that made me think people out there knew that I existed.

March 19, 2010 was my last day in Corporate America, and I have been a Woman of the World (my phrase for “full-time entrepreneur”) ever since. I think, actually, I’ve been training my whole life to be a creative career coach. I’ve set the stage for my ideal clients to know that I’ve been there, done that, walked away from it, lived through it, found something new to love, built that, and am currently thriving in the career that was my Prince Charming all along – a career that wouldn’t be such a perfect fit without all the pavement-pounding that came before it.

Now, I get to use both my coaching skills and my personality and experiences so that clients of mine like Alexandra Franzen (not-so-jubilant 9-to-5-er to published author / sold-out workshop leader / communication expert), Megan Collins (advertising agency drone turned founder/editor of men’s style site) and Tiffany Han (retail associate to artist & studio owner – and now a certified coach & speaker) can take center stage.

My communication skills, my enthusiasm and sense of humor, my desire to help people find their passionate career, my creative experiences and my people-loving-personality makes this the role that I was born to play.

Are you ready to declare you?

————–

Michelle Ward, aka The When I Grow Up Coach, helps creative women get out of their soul-sucking jobs and into work that feels like play (while still being a grown-up). She’s a Professional Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation, a musical theater actress with her BFA from NYU/Tisch, and a Corporate America escapee. Her first book (co-written with artist & designer Jessica Swift), The Declaration of You, will be published by North Light Craft Books this summer.

***

My daughter Emily and I recently spoke to prominent members of Congress and Healthcare aids about the need for Federal funding from Congress for research for Endometriosis. Emily shared her difficult journey with the disease and how she is handling the pain she still suffers from. I spoke about how difficult it is to diagnose children with Endometriosis, the poor treatments, the affects both physical and mental for women and how common the disease is, which currently affects 1 and 10 women in the US!

I challenged Congress to support the National Institutes of Health and other research avenues, who can provide the research money needed to discover better treatments and a cure for this disease.  We had a large turn out to hear us speak. It was very empowering to be the voice for millions of adolescent and adult women who continue to suffer from the horrible pain that Endometriosis causes, and who are relying on someone to fight for more funding for a better treatment and cure for this terrible disease. I am so grateful to be able to partner with my daughter to create positive change for women worldwide.

Who are you partnering with to further causes that matter to you?
What causes would you want to support with your children?
How are you making meaning of your challenges?

***
Mary Alice Hatch is the mother of two children, lives in Boston, MA, and never intended to become an activist.  You can learn more about Mary Alice’s efforts to educate pediatricians and mothers about Endometriosis on her NPR interview here and visit the website for Boston Center for Endometriosis and make a donation here.  Any amount is appreciated and will help fund important research to relieve the suffering for millions of adolescents and women, including Mary Alice’s daughter Emily.

Each of the fourteen startups presented for a little under 10 minutes and was introduced by a sponsor/mentor. The entrepreneur explained why they started the business, what the business does, how much money they were raising: the pitches were superb. I was impressed enough, I recommended one start-up to an angel investor friend, another to (3) potential clients, and a third to well-regarded publication looking for an op-ed piece.

If you are serious about going into business — and need either capital, partners, customers or employees, this is hands-down the best 2-3 hour tutorial on the market.

I can’t speak to all Demo Days. Perhaps Boston, run by Katie Rae and Reed Sturtevant, is exceptional.  Likely not. Here’s the calendar for other TechStars demo days:

Nike+ Accelerator, powered by TechStars in Portland • June 10
Microsoft Accelerator for Azure, powered by TechStars in Seattle • June 21
New York • June 27
Boulder • August 8
Chicago • August 28
Kaplan EdTech Accelerator in NYC • September 12
London • September 27
Seattle • October 24
(Austin TBD)

Are you starting a business?
Wondering how to pitch?

If you come to the next Demo Day in Boston, I’ll see you there.

As an immigrant Indian woman in a predominantly male financial industry, I’ve often wished that women like myself spoke more openly about their journeys.  So when Whitney graciously asked me to write a post for her site, I thought it might be interesting to verbalize my own voyage. Maybe my words would resonate with someone like myself.

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced along my way, by far, has been the constant tug-of-war between solely working toward professional dreams whilst trying to tiptoe around my predominantly family oriented Indian culture. As a woman, there is much emphasis placed on being a good wife, daughter, and mother, while it is men that are traditionally career oriented. I felt guilty for being as ambitious as I was. Being Indian also meant having a shelf life as a marriageable woman. Arranged marriage is still a fairly common occurrence in India, and growing up, my parents joked about it frighteningly often.

Over the last few years, I have received several admonishments about attaining more of a balance in my life, all of which I dismissed with polite snorts. When told this by family in particular, I attributed it to them being far too traditionally Indian and old-fashioned; I thought they were trying to rein my ambitions in because I was a woman. As an already rebellious and determined individual, this disapproval, if anything, made me even more driven to break the mold and be successful – in a man’s world, and despite my culture.

To prove a point to them and to myself, I put my social life and emotional growth on the back burner, thinking of accomplishments and dreams in purely professional terms. Right from my first job out of school working at an algorithmic trading desk at a hedge fund, to my current role in investment management, there was and is a constant need to quantify progress. Having set foot in the financial industry at the impressionable age of 21, over time, my definition of success began to be molded by my peers and the context of my career. It was growing to be something that was just as easily quantifiable as the work I was doing. Surrounded by extremely intelligent, ambitious overachievers who have always checked off the ‘right’ boxes in their lives, and the social prestige that accompanies it, it’s so easy to think that’s what the path to success constitutes. Checking off the right boxes. And follow that path I did.

However, I soon began to find that checking off my boxes wasn’t making me as deliriously happy as I thought it would. The satisfaction and happiness lasted for a day or two, and then I was back to chasing something new. At the same time, I was also finding myself in relationships that were misleadingly perfect on the outside; with people who I thought fit my mental image of the sort of partner I should be with. More than anything, I wanted to have that big chunk of my life squared away so I could move on to more important things like, (surprise, surprise!) focusing on my career.  Needless to say, it never ended well.

I worked hard to arrange the people, circumstances, and experiences in my life so they were organized neatly like objects on a mantelpiece, in a manner that was most aesthetically pleasing to my eye.  But as rumblings of discontent arose in my mind despite my best-laid plans, I started to wonder what the success I was so dexterously pursuing even looked like, because the more I compartmentalized my life, the more things fell apart. Many frequent mini (and not so mini) meltdowns and stress induced injuries later, at some point, I realized that my challenge lay not just in attaining more balance, but in even being willing to redefine my rigid ideas of what success constituted, and what my dreams really were.

I even started meditating to help me regain my sense of well-being. But I knew it was high time I took a step back when at a meditation retreat I attended, I said to my teacher, “I know meditation espouses being content with yourself and your life, but I’m worried — what if being content with my life takes away all my drive and ambition? Doesn’t contentment breed mediocrity?”

——-

I wish I could say that I had magically figured out the answers to all my questions overnight and was now leading a blissful existence. But I can say with confidence that I am at the very least beginning to question things that I have in the past taken for granted. My thinking is slowly growing a lot less rigid and binary than it used to be. I make more time to be with the people I love, and when I fail, I’m better able to dust myself off and move on, as I’m working on developing a healthier relationship with my goals.

It is tempting to put the different aspects of our lives, and ourselves into neat boxes, making it easier to single-mindedly pursue one thing at a time. But it never really works like that, does it? Life is messy. Relationships are messy. Careers don’t go according to plan. And there is and always will be overlap within all of those areas.

I’m also starting to appreciate the wisdom of my own culture, which I had always previously dismissed as being archaic. There is a healthy emphasis on family, social responsibility, and a sense of romanticism about life that Indian culture propagates, which, while at odds with the increasingly cynical and success-oriented mindset in corporate America, isn’t worth losing sight of. At the same time, living in this competitive, result-driven environment has made me resilient and given me belief in my strengths and capabilities. I’m retaining what I need from two very different cultures that have their own lessons to teach me.

So who’s to say I can’t be an ambitious, successful woman whilst building and sustaining friendships, relationships, and a family?  Now, if there were only more than 24 hours in a day…

Are you experiencing a tug-o-war with your deeply-held beliefs?
With your dreams?

Pooja Parthasarathy is an analyst at Neuberger Berman where she works on a team that invests in investment grade interest rate products. Born in India, and raised in different places, her favorite being Nepal, she currently resides in Chicago, which is now home. Her interests include entrepreneurship, running, education, planning her life down to the minutiae, and questioning why women can’t have it all.  

Usually when someone says that to me, it’s a bad thing.  But last Saturday as I hopped on the treadmill to run 10 miles as part my training for next year’s Boston marathon, the voices in my head kept me going.

After the bombings, I decided to run.  Actually I said I MIGHT run, but given that I said it in a public space, I suppose I was hoping you’d dare me to.  You did.

Voice in my head #1 — you.

Voice #2 — Cheryl Kellond, founder of Bia Sport, who wrote “women in their 30s, 40s and 50s are rocking endurance sports”; I continually hear her whispering in my ear — “Whitney, You are an athlete!“.  Voice #3 is Emily Orton. When her fifth child was diagnosed with Down syndrome, Emily decided to run to prove to herself and her daughter that she can do hard things.

When I start to feel slightly nauseous or like I am going to lose my balance, I hear Laurel Christensen saying, “You’re not the girl you used to be”.  As I do sprints, Jane Barratt gently urges me, “Just a little faster!”, while my husband helps me calibrate, push myself, pull back, avoid injury.  Voices #4, #5 and #6.  Then there’s Voice #7: Everest, my accountability partner, that gives me that electronic Atta Girl.

I don’t know that I am ready to officially declare this a dream; I can’t yet picture myself crossing the finish line. But I am daring, and thanks to these voices in my head — my splendidly dare-to-dream team — I’m starting to do.

Who are the voices in your head when you are doing hard things?
Have you told those people that they inspire and encourage you?