What it’s really like to be a woman at work in 2026 (coming from a career coach)

Podcast Episode Title: 5 Unspoken Rules EVERY Corporate Women Knows (That Nobody Tells You When You're Hired)

Transcription:

Just girly things. Getting paid less than boys, just girly things. Sigh. I was gonna do like a cute intro for this, but I have to be honest, there's nothing cute about the fact that we still have to talk about this shit. So today, we're talking about the five unwritten rules, the five unspoken truths about being a woman at work that no one tells you until you are that woman at work, being like, is this happening to Bradley? Is this happening to everyone else?

And unfortunately, the answer typically is no. You are listening to Clock In with Emily Durham, and I am equal parts agitated and excited for today's episode. Agitated because the reason I wanted to do this episode was because I made a post on LinkedIn probably like two months ago. And it was because I read this study and the study came out saying that women tend to have different salaries based on how much makeup they wear.

So if a woman wore very light makeup, she presented herself as quote unquote conventionally attractive, which is ridiculous that we're even saying that. She would earn more money than a woman who wore no makeup and more money than a woman who wore too much makeup. And the message I took from this is look good, don't look too good, don't look bad, wear a little makeup, not too much makeup. Like, okay, this is impossible. With peace and love, most men just roll out of bed, show up to work and get to focus on the task at hand.

My shift starts before I even get into my car, because if my eyebrows aren't plucked and my gloss is too bright, people are going to look at me sideways. Anyways, I made this post on LinkedIn. I said it nicely, right? It was appetizing, easy to digest while I was doing my makeup. The comments that I got on that post, specifically from hiring managers, from people who had HR in their job title, people who had talent manager, uh CEO in their job title, it was actually fucked.

You know what? Let me be petty. Let me open up my Instagram. I'm gonna tell you exactly what those comments were. My jaw hit the floor. People are actually fucking sick. He commented, a man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. Right. Another one that I really enjoyed, uh civilization.

Sorry, this one's actually funny. A civilization at the peak of psychosis and you are at the top.

I can't even get mad. That's it. Like, it's funny. It's funny. You are implying the same doesn't happen to men, LOL. The reason the full glam is less likely is because it portrays that you are more interested in attention than work. All I hear from that is you think I'm hot, so thank you so much. um And a personal favorite. Where did you get your professional victim certificate? I was thinking maybe next week I would apply and give it a shot.

Is there an application I can fill out or do I just start acting like a victim? I honestly would have rather heard about what you accomplished this week or maybe a course you're taking to make yourself better. Victim card it is. And they all kept their names on it by the way. Anyways, all to say we're gonna be debunking some of the things that definitely happened to women at work that happened on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is incredibly drenched in sexism in tiny ways.

I guarantee if you yourself are a woman listening or if you are someone who knows women and you know women or are a woman on LinkedIn, you've probably been treated like you're on Tinder, where you get a message from someone sliding in saying, hey, I'd love to connect about your career. And suddenly they're flirting with you, trying to get your phone number, getting inappropriate comments being left on your posts. This is one of the many reasons some women just aren't comfortable posting online because even on a professional platform,

you're still subjugated to these really uncomfortable experiences and moments that frankly, men don't have to. And I'm not saying men don't get judged for how they look or men don't get judged for different quality of character, they do. I just mean there's this level of comfortability, I think, doing this so publicly for women and shaming women for existing in ways that men don't get shamed. And I'm not saying men don't get shamed. I'm just saying they're not being shamed as publicly and as aggressively, I think, as many women are.

That's neither here nor there. I'm not even gonna get into the LinkedIn of it all because I'll lose my mind. I'll chop off even more hair than I have. uh Side note, I am posting a bonus episode by the time you're listening to this, so if you need the down low on what the hell happened with my fuck ass bob, which is now a fuck ass mullet, I'll link that one down below. But enough rambling. Shall we clock on in, friends? I might need to hold your hand as I tell you this one.

If you're a woman at work, no one is going to tell you this, but you're going to feel it. And once I say it, you're going to be like, wait, that's happening to me. Women at work are disproportionately measured and looked at from a career growth perspective based on their likability and their personality. Do know women are more likely to have their performance-based conversations? Conversations that should be about how they're doing at work, if they're accomplishing certain things.

those conversations are more likely to be rooted in things like personality, not actual skill. In fact, women are 1.4 times more likely to receive critical subjective feedback. And what does that mean? It means they're not saying, oh, that report could have been better. They're saying the report could have been better because we find you to be like a bit aloof and a bit bubbly. And it's coming off as like really tacky and immature. And a lot of times it's not even as assertive or as bold as that.

It can be said in really, really subtle, tiny ways. Little comments about your personality being flighty, you're a bit bubbly, you know, or on the flip side of this, the presentation was good, but you come off as aggressive, all because you weren't smiling. You're an assertive negotiator, all because you asked for money in the exact same way Bradley asked for this. And what's interesting is you start to feel these small moments in your career, particularly when you work in male-dominated industries.

where you realize if you mirrored the exact behavior of a man, you would be treated very differently. And this is especially true, rather, for women of color. Black women specifically, when they negotiate for their salary using the exact same script that I, my white ass self would be using, are more likely to be labeled as aggressive, assertive, and difficult to work with for nothing else other than the fact that they are black women. And the fact that we...

deny this in many spaces. uh I saw one woman post about this online and the comments were filled with people saying this isn't true, this isn't true. I can tell you the data tells us that it is. It also ties into the different intersections of personality. So as a woman, if you are someone who maybe isn't as bubbly and warm, maybe you don't, you you're not like a smiler, you're not a hugger, all of those things, you're more likely to be labeled as assertive and assertive women specifically in the context of work.

studies show are less likely to be liked. Less likely to be liked. But if you had an assertive man, who was like firm, think of the, you know, John Hamm's character from Mad Men, right? Firm, straight faced, was not very like warm and bubbly. He was looked at and revered. Oh my gosh, how do I get like him? But if a woman occupied that character, she'd be labeled a bitch. That's like, it's a tale as old as time. And if you're a woman listening to this, you're like, yeah, of course, like you know these things.

But the fact that it bleeds into our work so much, especially in the context of performance reviews, is wild. So the message here is very interesting because if women show up as their personality, whatever that may be, perhaps that's not as bubbly, not as outgoing and quote unquote warm. Maybe it's someone who's a bit more quiet or a bit more loud. All of those traits automatically get categorized into negative quality attributes. They get categorized into you're aggressive, you're assertive, you're too much, you're too little.

On the flip side of that, if you're too likable, there's actually studies that show you're also going to get penalized at work. Women specifically at work who are seen as very likable, think of like the office celebrity, right? Really bubbly, happy, people enjoy working with you like a stereotypical quote unquote likable person. They actually get less access to career opportunities because of that. Because they are so likable that people then think, oh, she's full of herself. Oh, she's distracted. Oh, she should be focusing on her job.

The moral of the story is the girls just can't seem to win. We just can't seem to win, girls. So my friends, if you're listening to this and thinking, great, all of the cards are going to be stacked against me, what the hell am I supposed to do about this? Take a breath. The first thing is this is meant to validate you and remind you you are not alone and you are not the problem in a lot of these cases. So you have community, there are people you can lean on. What you tactically and practically need to do in these moments,

is evaluate the working world you are operating within. If you're working in a very traditional male-dominated industry, be extra careful and cautious with your words because they will be used against you. Don't be too friendly, don't be too cold, and this all feels impossible and like you're being fake, and to an extent it is. It doesn't mean you change your whole personality. It means around people that you think might use things against you, like your personality, like the words you use, just operate with a little bit of extra caution.

until you find a workplace that actually gives you safety and security. Because I've worked in spaces, when I worked at Intuit, I was my full personality self and I was rewarded because Intuit had a culture of celebrating people. There were women in significant roles of leadership. There was just a culture of this. But at other organizations I've been at, that has not been the case. So just operate with a degree of caution and know these are some of the things the shitty people are sometimes looking out for.

Kind of spoiled this one, but the second thing, love this one, is makeup and attractiveness bias. Yes, because you don't just have to be smart, you gotta be hot too, thank God. So I kind of talked about this because this is what inspired this episode, but the specific statistic is that women who were wearing makeup, but the right amount of makeup, not too much makeup of course, were perceived as more competent, likable, and trustworthy.

and we're given 10 to 20 % higher salaries. And that comes from Harvard. Yeah, so that's ridiculous. I will say, if women are going to be financially penalized for not wearing makeup, you tell me why mascara isn't a tax write-off. You tell me, CRA. eh

And then there's the attractiveness piece. So ridiculous. This is much worse, by the way, in customer facing roles. If you're in sales, especially if you're in sales in recruitment, like dealing with external people. But in any role, women who are seen as conventionally attractive get access to more opportunity and therefore higher salary. But there's a line. If you are seen as too attractive, perhaps you have a body people envy, great hair, whatever.

I'm telling you, your company, your boss will punish the pretty girl. You will notice that you get singled out. People assume that because you are quote unquote too attractive, you're not gonna be smart. You know, you're a bimbo. Do know how many times I've read comments being like, this bimbo knows nothing. Right. All I'm choosing to take from that is you think I'm really cute and you just can't believe I'm as smart as I am. But these are the real things that women every single day experience is their pressure to look good, but not too good. Their pressure to show up and fit the mold with the makeup and the hair. And again,

The intersections of race and identity here are so big. Think about even how we deem professional dressing and professional hair and makeup. When you Google professional hair, what comes up? It's girls who look like me. It's white women's hair in a ponytail with a blowout. Where is the space for people who are not white? Well, there is none. All of the things around professionalism and how we dress and our hair and our makeup.

are rooted in this Eurocentric standard of what professionalism and beauty looks like. The takeaway from this is not that you need to look perfect. I do not want you looks maxing trying to look like someone else. I want you looking and feeling like you because that's what's important. What I want you to do though is just be aware of how we each present ourselves impacts, even though it's incredibly unfair, how other people perceive us. I've learned that when I'm going into a meeting with people who don't know me,

I'm not doing my full glam makeup. I'm not doing the bright red lip. I'm not doing the outfit that they might walk away and be like, oh, she was serving too much body. How is her waist so small, but she's still so curvy? How does she do it? I don't think anyone's saying that, but I'm hoping they are. That's some of the shit talking I hope to be receiving when I leave the room. But basically, you want to show up and just protect yourself. I don't want you dulling your sparkle. I don't want you feeling like you need to look away that you aren't.

I just want you to have this information so in spaces where you already feel unseen and unsafe, we are taking this information and just making decisions around it. Maybe it means we, for our first day, maybe it means if you have a boss who you know treats you differently and you suspect it's because you're a woman, maybe we're not doing the full glam makeup when we have meetings with him. Maybe instead of the pink blazer, we go for the black blazer. And I actually hate saying this because it is so...

frustrating. I'm so big on self-expression. I love wearing bright colors and fun makeup and I don't want you dulling that if that feels authentic to you. But if you're already feeling unsafe in a workspace, this is a tiny thing you can do to protect yourself even though you shouldn't have to. Have you all seen the girl with the list on TikTok? She's the girl who has a list of all of the running reasons she doesn't want kids. And it spans from husbands being absolutely fucking useless to like kids shitting their pants and smearing it on the wall.

If you're the girl with the list, I'm gonna need you to clock in. Because there's some data that really sits with me. On average, mothers earn five to 10 % less per child. And mothers tend to earn 70 to 80 cents per dollar that fathers earn. We already know that women tend to be less likely to negotiate their salary, not because women don't want to, obviously we wanna get paid, but because of all of these biases, we're more likely to be met with negative reactions. More likely to be told no, more likely to be told we're too aggressive.

or more likely to be assumed to not be qualified to be asking for this money. This is especially true for mothers. Many employers, I've seen this myself, subconsciously think, oh, well, she's a mother, she's going to be distracted, she's going to be leaving early, she shouldn't get the promotion. That also impacts the wage gap. It's not just about the offer you get, it's about the career progression that you have access to. Men actually receive something called the father figure bonus. They're actually perceived to be more trustworthy.

when they tell their employers that they're having a kid. Like they're more responsible. Like they've adopted a puppy. This is me getting heated. I don't even have kids, but I have a puppy. Maybe that's why I'm getting frustrated. So what's the takeaway here? First of all, I need you giving yourself permission to negotiate. Yes, maybe you get met with an answer we don't like, but I'll be damned if you don't try. Please negotiate and advocate for yourself. If you are a mom at work,

Tell your boss you want to take on more, communicate that clearly. Do not give them an opportunity to push stereotypes and bias onto you. They still may, but at least at that point, you know you've done everything you can and you have said, I have the capacity, I want to do more, give me more, here are my career goals. Be aggressive with communicating those.

And always, always, always, when it is time for your year end performance review, or even if it's just negotiating your salary, root your expectations in data. Data, data, data. Here's what I've accomplished. Here's what I've delivered. This is my market average. What can you do for me? If you need a full breakdown on how to do that, we'll include the episode link in the description of this one. But all to say, we can't change how people treat us, but we can change the messaging we send.

to make sure we protect ourselves. Because if you keep getting denied opportunities or you keep being treated poorly and you've communicated what you're looking for, this is when we have an HR case that we could escalate if we feel it's appropriate. Raise your hand if you've been in a meeting. Mid-idea. You're pitching a great idea, asking a great question. And Bradley hops in and says, I was just going to say that. Bradley pops in, yeah, and building on that. Bradley, what if you shut the fuck up? Bradley, what if you built the skill of silencio?

Did you know that women are significantly more likely to be spoken over in meetings? And although this is annoying, it's not just that. The reason this is so impactful is when you speak over someone, especially in front of leaders or clients, that is automatically putting the person who is interrupting in the driver's seat, in the power. I just got choked up. Sorry about that. We're back. It puts them in the position of power. It puts the person getting interrupted

in a position of being junior. You you wouldn't speak over the CEO, but if you speak over Susie, it's automatically communicating that Susie's ideas don't matter. It makes her look silly. It makes her look stupid. It makes her feel stupid. It makes her feel insignificant. And that also impacts how seriously people therefore take her. I find it particularly interesting that men tend to interrupt women and over-speak them more than they interrupt other men, which is a really fascinating study here.

But women are also less likely to speak up in meetings when they're outnumbered by men, which is why representation is so important. If you're the only woman in the room and everyone has groupthink and potentially is thinking and sharing the same experiences, you're probably going to feel less comfortable opening up and having that diverse perspective that actually would have been the game-changing one for the business. So if you're hiring and you're listening to this, you're an employer, you're a manager, always hire the best person for the job, but make sure the candidates that you're reviewing.

are representative of the communities that you serve. And if the world is 50 % men and 50 % women, let's make sure we're creating space for those two. If you're noticing this is happening to you in the moment, I don't want you crashing out, even though internally we all are. I've been interrupted by people regularly in meetings and it's so infuriating. It makes you feel undermined and silly. I want you to get comfortable doing something really scary. When someone tries to speak over you in a meeting,

I want you to say, sorry, just to hop in, I'm gonna complete this thought and then I'll pass it to you. You soften it with the sorry. You're not saying you better shut your mouth. You're saying I'm gonna complete my thought and then I'll let you have the floor. You're taking back some of that authority. Almost impossible for someone to keep speaking over you when this is what they've gone down with. If someone tries to derail the conversation by taking your idea or speaking over you, say,

I just want to get back to my original point, but I'll make sure we circle back to yours in a second. The nicest way to say, if you try to steal my thunder, bitch, you got a storm coming. Okay? That's what we're going to be doing. Women are 44 % more likely to be given unpromotable tasks at work. Have you noticed this when you're maybe talking to your manager or in a team meeting? Someone has to take notes because they're living in 1812 and apparently not using co-pilot to automatically do this.

And your boss looks around and they're like, who's going to take notes here? And slowly it goes into the hands of the woman in the room, typically the youngest woman in the room. It's these little moments. It's we should really plan a social. Can someone do that? All the eyes go to you. It's your boss asking you to plan socials. It's your boss penalizing you for not proactively planning socials. Unpromotable work is work that at your company does not help you move towards a raise or a promotion.

It's taking notes in meetings. It's helping with conflict resolution that has nothing to do with your job. It's planning socials that don't help enhance your visibility. Women are 44 % more likely to get those automatically. They're more likely for their boss or their team to assume it's their labor. And although I'm a big believer in doing things to help build the social element of work, it's great for networking. When you are more likely to get this work, there's only so many hours in the day.

So how are you going to get the other work, the work that actually gets you promoted? And it's also really uncomfortable to talk about this because it's not like there is outward sexism happening here. They're just asking you to help out. So if you speak up, you're going to feel like you're pushing back or like you're perhaps being difficult. And all of that can really impact how comfortable you feel on the team. All of this leads to a slower promotion or raises.

Despite equal or greater efforts because your efforts are not being spent on the things that are actually high value. What's your call to action? I want you asking yourself is this promotable work? Is this work that's going to help my career? And if the answer is no, you either need to find a way to make it promotable by making it very visible. Going to your boss and saying, here's what I did to resolve this conflict. Here's what I did for this event. Delegated, ask your boss if there's a way to distribute some of this work with someone else.

or automated. They want you taking meeting notes or doing admin. Show your boss how this can be automated with AI. Suddenly, you are not the admin person who is being minimized and taken out of your day-to-day work for things that aren't your job. You're now the person who's a tech expert. So really reframing this, but if it hits a point where you're noticing this as a pattern and a habit, I'm a big believer in having that open conversation with your boss. You don't need to go in and tell your boss they're doing something wrong. You can just express how you feel.

Hey, I've noticed I've been getting quite a bit of work pertaining to some of the team's admin and socials. I'm really happy to go above and beyond, but I'm just trying to manage my workload. Are these tasks that we see me helping me get closer to my goal of a raise or a promotion? And if your boss says no, well, they're going to have to shift. And that's usually enough for them to kind of realize something's off. If they are not going to adjust, this is where you document. If you're starting to think it's getting into the territory of,

holding you back in your career, it's veering into discrimination. This is where we document and potentially go to HR if things are not resolving on their own. Here's what I will say. The goal of this is not to sound negative or like everything is ho-hum. I love being a girl and I love working. First of all, there are workplaces that will celebrate you. Indefinitely, they will celebrate you. Not every workplace is like this. Most of the work experiences I've had haven't been like this. But sometimes,

Having a name and data to support the little things that we're feeling when we're in the not so great workspaces is enough to remind us that we are not crazy and that um you are not the problem. And sometimes that's a pretty feeling and liberating thing to experience. And thirdly, sometimes being equipped with this data means we make tiny changes to our behavior, not because it's what we want or what we deserve, but to protect ourselves because sometimes we just need to protect ourselves. Now, with a lot of this data,

think fails to talk about are other intersections of identity. We've talked a little bit about race, so definitely there is way more data that should be out there in terms of different experiences for black women and women of color, but also the different intersections of gender identity overall. A lot of these studies talk about women and men as incredibly binary, but these experiences for trans women and trans men are equally complicated and complicated even more so in different ways. So I don't want to erase

all of the different intersections of what this data can mean, there is just a gap on the information available. And I do think that is something I'd like to see change in the near future.

I need to breathe a sigh of stress, relief, I don't know. Talking about these things can feel heavy and I don't want them to, but man, I wish someone would have told me this shit. Because I was convinced that, I don't know, was something wrong with me? Why was I always taking notes? What the fuck? Why was I organizing my boss's personal receipts at my first corporate job? Oh, I know why. Because I was 21 and the only girl on the team. All of these things, it validates you. But.

Talking about validation, helping each other out. I'm so ready for what would Emily do. Hi, Emily. I'd really value your perspective on a decision I'm navigating. I'm choosing between staying in my current role versus accepting a job offer from top five Canadian banks. My current job offers strong flexibility and stability, which fits well with my life right now as a new mom.

love you. Congratulations. My baby's 10 months old. Congratulations. We're so happy for you. And this stage still feels very hands on for me. Yeah, of course. The new role could be a meaningful step up in terms of brand, career growth, and long-term trajectory. The trade-off is that it's hybrid, two days in office, which adds both logistical and emotional considerations at this phase of motherhood. I'm trying to evaluate this through a career lens, not just an emotional one. How should I weigh short-term flexibility versus long-term growth?

How do you advise clients to think about timing when big opportunities come during major life phases? From a strategic career standpoint, would taking this role meaningfully strengthen my trajectory? I wanna make a decision that future me will be glad about while still honoring my current season of life. I'd love your honest guidance. Oh, thank you for sharing that. And thank you for your detail, hon. Oh my gosh, we appreciate you. First of all, congratulations on your beautiful family. amazing. We're so happy for you.

Okay, you said something that really sat with me, which is, want to make this decision through a career lens, not an emotional one. I would argue it's okay to do both. The same way I would say if your job is causing you emotional distress, it's okay to leave, even if that's not the right thing, quote unquote, to do for your career. If I'm you and I'm in your position, let's take out the emotion, because I know that's something you want to focus on.

but let's actually quantify some of the variables that you have. What I want you to do is, and this is a great exercise by the way for anyone looking to transition their career, write down what your ideal state is. Like perfect world pie in the sky, right? There are no restrictions. What does workplace flexibility look like? How many days a week are you home? What does your commute look like? What are your hours? What are the culture things at work that will help make this transition easier? All of those things. Like what's the boss that you have like? What's your ideal salary?

Do that for this year. So what do you ideally want by the end of this year? Then redo that exercise for three years from now and see what the gap is. This year you want to make 110,000. Next year it should be 120 in order for you by year three to get to 150. uh Maybe your goal is to change job titles. What do you need to do to get to that three year goal? That's going to help you determine removing emotion and removing kind of the personality side of things.

data-wise, is this a good job offer? Forgetting your life circumstance. It sounds like you've kind of done this. So it sounds like, yes, this is a career-advancer, money-maker, but you're losing out on flexibility. If I'm you, I'd be having a conversation with these employers, and I'd be honest, I'm a new mom. My career is really important to me. Can we talk about what flexible hours looks like as I'm getting back into the workforce or getting into this new position? If they come back to you and they sound rigid, they sound stiff, it sounds like there's not a lot of people they...

uh employee who are new moms, that's something to think about because you might not get the ability to say, okay, I'm going to sneak out over lunch to do the doctor's appointment or, know, I need to leave work 20 minutes early today that you might need at this stage of life. So let's get a culture fit that leads into the flexibility. But I think the big thing is how much is this going to impact your lifestyle and lifestyle doesn't have to be emotional. It is data backed. Ask yourself, how many hours am I comfortable with commuting? How many hours am I comfortable, you know,

going into the office, ask yourself all of these things, and then see is there a price tag associated that will make you feel better about this. If I'm you, unless this is guaranteed to increase your salary and increase your job title this year and again in the next three years, I don't think you have to make the trade-off because it's the right career move. Your life is supposed to be balanced with work and sometimes that means we take a pause and we say, I'm going to stick with the job that's safe for the next eight months.

and kind of do that. I'm being very long-winded. So here's your specific action plan. Let's make your list. Does this job actually hit the list of your VPL, your validation purpose and lifestyle? If it does, the question you need to ask yourself is, is the hit to my lifestyle going to be offset by the rewards of the future and immediate financial reward? Because if you don't get that, it's not going to feel like it's enough. You're going to feel like you're missing out on time with your kid, which is very valid. If the answer to all of those is yes, all of that is aligned.

Please give yourself permission to have a little emotion. If you feel like commuting to work is not going to feel right for you at this point in time, the lack of flexibility, the new job, if it mentally feels like it's going to be too much, that's okay. That doesn't mean this opportunity isn't coming back. It means you tell them, it doesn't feel quite right. Anyway, we could delay my start by a couple months. If you're the right person, sometimes they can do that. Or maybe it's, you know what? No, this isn't the right move for me.

But if you're feeling like this is gonna add stress and anxiety to your life because it is misaligned with your lifestyle, having VNP and the VPL isn't enough. You really need all three. So you are not gonna make the wrong decision. If you make a decision to protect your mental health and protect this new phase of life you're adjusting to, that's okay. That's a good decision. That's not a bad decision. The money will come back, I promise. Because once you're ready,

No problem, you already know you're qualified for that role. So go in, get those positions, go get the money you need to get. All of that's good, you're gonna get this back. Sure, maybe it's a year later than you wanted it to be. I don't think you're gonna look back and regret spending time with your kid if that's what feels good. Or if you're feeling like, no, I really wanna hit this milestone and balance both, which you can, which you will, and this feels like the right move and the money is there to justify the lifestyle hit, fuck yeah, let's go for it. I know that's hard, because it's like a personal decision you have to make.

but try to quantify it. If the dollars can justify the hit to lifestyle, great. But if you're just doing this for the hope of the future, you're gonna hate it a little bit in the present. So don't beat yourself up for making a decision out of both logic and emotion, because your emotion is also your gut feeling. And I think you need to honor that too. But you will make the right decision. You can have it all. You already do have it all. And we're so proud of you. do you know, like, what are some good indicators to keep in mind when...

making a decision that should be based on logic and should be based on like emotion or the mix. what are, I don't know, what are some indicators that you could be like, okay, this is a flag for this. Like maybe I should drown out my emotion a little bit for this. Yeah, I think it's the difference between discomfort and despair. So if we're making a decision purely based off of logic, I really should have gone to law school. That was the plan. Initially, I should have gone to law school. I would have made great money. I would have, oh yeah, honey. That was the plan. Can you believe?

I can't it. I can can. You're so smart. Thank you, girl. Tell that to my GPA. The logical decision should have been go down that path because that's where the big money was going to be for me. Emotionally, I was so not interested in that, the closer I got to it, that the emotion wasn't just discomfort, like, oh, I don't like 20 % of this. It was truly despair. The thought of it made me sick. When I was ready to leave my not so healthy job at a point in time, one of my first jobs,

The logical decision was to stay because in the future I was going to get great opportunity there. But my emotions were getting so heavy that it outweighed the logic. If your emotions start to go from, you know, this is something in the back of my head where maybe it'll bug me or maybe it won't feel great to this is paramount. I don't care how much money I'm making. I am miserable. I am unhappy. Your emotions impact how you feel overall. And if you feel like shit after work, you feel like shit at work and there very rarely is a dollar sign.

that will counteract your emotions. And usually if you're having heavy emotion, it's because this job doesn't fit your lifestyle anymore. And you don't work to live. You don't live to work, you work to live. But God, it's hard decisions. it's, you know, some obviously fathers have to think of this too, but so much of that physical labor just by nature of being a mom does fall on mom. um And it's hard. it's like, you know, do I want to take a pause in my career?

or accelerate my career or be somewhere in between. They're big decisions. Yeah. But we're so proud of you. And thank you so much. And if you have questions, friends, that you want us to answer, please don't be shy. Please click the link in the description of this and every single episode in order to submit those. But thank you so much for listening, and we will chat with you in the next one.