I'll focus on my health when I get that promotion.
I'll stop working at night and on the weekends when I finish this project.
How often do you make these excuses, only to see your health, productivity, and relationships suffer?
When I worked in Corporatelandia, I was always waiting for something to allow me to focus on my husband, stop working on weekends, and get more sleep.
Those things came and went, and I just replaced it with a new thing that I had to get through.
Without a doubt, I triggered my Hashimoto's Disease during two years of work that I put in 60+ hours a week, was so stressed I didn't sleep more than 4-5 hours a night, and felt completely unsupported in my job. I cried several times a week and became so depressed and angry that a couple of my friends wanted to have an intervention with me, and my husband said I had become boring.
Looking back on that time, none of it was worth it. A raise was a couple of thousand dollars, my support at work came too late, and I missed out on fun because I couldn't get out of the gutter. Not to mention triggering an illness.
What do you wait for?
I work with high-achievers. Almost all of my corporate clients have been promoted or received a special project while working with me, and three have started and/or completed an Executive MBA program while having infants and young children.
I don't use the words work-life balance anymore because people abuse the term or think it means equal. Even when balancing, we are always slightly moving back and forth, teeny tiny muscles keeping us upright but always contracting. This is the same with our work and life. We may sway right and left at different times on the tightrope, but the result should be a balance that keeps us from falling off. Instead of a tightrope, think more like a slackline.
One of my clients, Andrea Pereira, had a new baby and was concerned that she would miss out on professional growth at work because she wasn't putting in the extra hours everyone else was. She also wanted to be a great Mom to her daughter. We set parameters, had focused professional growth time, and a year later, not only had she received a promotion, she didn't work nights and weekends and had started an Executive MBA program at UNC-Chapel Hill!
After just a few sessions with Marcey, I started to breathe again and approach my days not only with more confidence but also more time! I learned real and practical tools for email/calendar management, energy management and balancing all the chaos that comes with being a mom, wife, and rising professional. Fast forward 18 months, and I’m a new person, in a new role, in an executive MBA program and in-tune with my own capabilities more than I ever have been before. I am, quite possibly for the first time in my life, in control of my time and energy. – Andrea Pereira
Jen Shevlin came to me with big goals, both personal and professional. Not only did she incorporate habits to help her climb the ladder, but she also achieved personal family success.
To say it simply, Marcey changed my life, as cliche as that may sound. When I started working with Marcey, I had just started a new job in a new industry. Due to the turnover on my team and a myriad of challenging business priorities that all came at once, my job very quickly became all-consuming. I found myself in meetings all day and catching up on work and emails at night and on weekends. I was achieving results and getting positive feedback at work, but I soon realized it was coming at a price. My husband and I were trying to start a family, and the stress from work that carried over into my personal life was making this impossible. I wasn't able to fully disconnect outside of the office. I wasn't fully present with family and friends, and my relationship with my husband was suffering.
That's when a friend and co-worker introduced me to Marcey. I met Marcey over video conference and quickly decided to take a leap of faith and invest in the 6-month Power Plan in the hopes of both achieving work-life balance and building healthy habits. I remember second-guessing my decision when the actions coming out of my first session were to stand more and to drink more water. I quickly learned, though, that Marcey has a method to her madness, a method that works. I slowly began to learn some small habits that made a big difference – simple things like email processing and utilizing my Outlook task bar to prioritize my tasks. These are habits that I could have read about in a book or online, but what Marcey provided was the encouragement and the accountability that enabled these habits to become ingrained as part of my daily routine.
I began to set boundaries for myself. I went from leaving the office at 7pm to 6:30pm, and eventually to 5pm every day. I went from working 5 nights a week to 3 to none. By the end of the 6-month plan, I was leaving work by 5 or 5:30 every day, I wasn't working at all outside the office, and I was able to fully focus on myself and my family while at home. I got pregnant, my husband and I became much closer, and I found time to exercise and focus on nutrition. I reduced my working hours significantly but increased my output and results at the same time. I was promoted into bigger, more challenging roles and was able to perform at higher and higher levels without sacrificing my work-life balance. The best part is that I've been able to maintain these habits and this balanced, highly productive lifestyle 2.5 years later. I'm in an even bigger role now, I have a beautiful 19-month-old daughter and am expecting my second child in June, and I've never been happier. Marcey taught me that you don't need to choose between being a good wife and mother and being a highly successful businesswoman. You can do both, and you can do them extremely well. – Jen Shevlin
My client, Deb McMurray, wanted nothing to do with me when we started. Her company bought a package where I coached three senior-level staff members and conducted workshops for their team. Deb felt she had everything under control and didn't need what I was cookin'. After just a couple of weeks, she started to see how her efficiency could be escalated even more and tiny adjustments in health behaviors could make a serious impact. Now, Deb is one of my biggest advocates and has shared the knowledge with her team, friends, and family.
Working with Marcey has made me feel stronger, confident, present, hopeful, self-aware, less of a victim, thankful, less of a martyr, and honestly a better version of me. I lost 10 pounds, have decreased my blood pressure medication and my labs at my last doctor appointment were perfect! I no longer work every night and weekend. I unplug, disconnect and recharge without feeling any guilt. I'm so happy. – Deb McMurray
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