<\/p>\n
I was recently told by a guy that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it was a good idea for us to continue dating because I was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153too career-oriented.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d [Insert the deer in headlights, eyes bulging emoji]. <\/p>\n
What?<\/em><\/p>\n I work in a culture where 11-15 hour days and weekends are the norm, where a \u00e2\u20ac\u01539 to 5? sounds like a dream. If this is your reality too, you may be the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Classic Corporate Worrier,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to borrow a phrase from Nigel Marsh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s TED talk in which he says he was eating too much, drinking too much and working too hard. Sound familiar? <\/p>\n After the initial shock and a lot of reading, here is what I learned and wished that I knew before going down a path of being completely career-focused so early on in my career. <\/p>\n 1. Work is really hard. <\/strong><\/p>\n In law school, I thought that I would work really hard now so that I would work less and less over time. My dad was a dentist and my brother is a doctor. Over time, medical professionals work less. This is not the case for Corporate America, nor is it the case for lawyers or other business professionals. You work a lot and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually really hard stuff and can be stressful during your twenties when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still trying to figure things out. The work takes on a life of its own. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not only the hours, but the stress that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re under during those hours. This works out OK for some people and not for others. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s OK if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re one of the people that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not right for. <\/p>\n 2. There is no such thing as work-life balance. <\/strong><\/p>\n In careers like law, private equity and other corporate professions that are prestigious and demanding, work-life balance does not exist. This is worth repeating: work-life balance does not exist. Your best bet is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153outsourcing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which means paying someone else to do things at home that you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have time to do. <\/p>\n 3. You will be one of very few women in your work environment. <\/strong><\/p>\n These types of careers lend themselves to male-heavy institutions. You may have been surrounded by females in graduate school, but this will not be the case in your career. For example, as of 2013, only 16.5% of partners in law firms were female, according to the National Association of Law Placement. This means you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be around a lot of men all of the time, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll need to connect with men \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all day every day,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d so be ready for that. <\/p>\n 4. Male coworkers hate seeing you cry at work. <\/strong><\/p>\n When you cry at work, it makes your male coworkers feel awkward at best and incredibly uncomfortable and judgmental at worst. They really don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like it. This is tough if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re overwhelmed by your job. Something to think about. <\/p>\n 5. Everyone is already married (although you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figure out when that happened). <\/strong><\/p>\n You will go from being in school where no one is married to your job, where everyone is married. This is unexpected, and if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not careful, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll put the pressure on yourself to catch up with your colleagues (because you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re competitive and type-A so this is just what you do). Remember to be on your own time with this one and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t drive yourself crazy over it (even if it means going solo to work events and describing yourself as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yogi who likes to cook\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in your welcome email because you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have family to talk about). <\/p>\n 6. Men who you meet socially will not necessarily love your success (they may even be intimidated by it).<\/strong> <\/p>\n Remember the bell curve? Well, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re toward one end of it. And there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good chance that a lot of people who you meet socially won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be on the same end of that bell curve as you. Suddenly, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re either at work with your equally-achieving, married male colleagues or you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re out at the bar dancing to 2 Chainz. Not great. <\/p>\n 7. If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t slow down in your career, then don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect your personal life to change.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What you focus on expands\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is one of my favorite sayings because I find it to always be true. If you focus solely on your career, then it will excel, leaving your relationships stagnant. Just something to think about if you actually want to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153settle down\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one day (and if you work a ton, any sort of setting down probably sounds great). <\/p>\n 8. The masculine energy that you use at work is not great for your dating life. <\/strong><\/p>\n Everyone has both masculine and feminine energy. Masculine energy is decisive, logical, direct, competitive, strong, plans and is result-oriented. Feminine energy is soft, relational, emotional, creative and journey-oriented. If you spend all day working and are using mostly masculine energy, you need to realize this and try to turn it off when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re dating. This reminds me of Patti Singer, who often coaches female millionaires by telling them to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153put their d*** away\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (pardon the expletive, but you get the point \u00e2\u20ac\u201d you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not attractive to masculine men if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re constantly in your masculine energy). <\/p>\n 9. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good idea to be involved with other women and\/or feminine activities to maintain some level of girly-ness.<\/strong> <\/p>\n In an effort to maintain a better standard of reality and embrace your femininity, you need to get around other women when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not working or at least do activities that bring out your feminine qualities (like yoga or book club or whisky tasting \u00e2\u20ac\u201d whatever the women in your office do). <\/p>\n 10. You need to take the time to reflect on whether this is what you actually want for yourself. <\/strong><\/p>\n Up to this point, you probably excelled in school and followed a path that everyone around you encouraged and applauded. Now that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in your career and things are going full speed ahead, you need to think about whether this is what you actually want. I stumbled upon a fantastic article by Penelope Trunk, where she says \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you can control where you spend your time and energy, and you should look hard for a husband early on. Line up the marriage first, then the career.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Her point being that if you are so career-oriented in your twenties and thirties, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll wake up one day without having a husband or kids, which is not what you wanted. <\/p>\n I certainly don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any of the answers to these problems, but these issues are all things I wish I knew earlier, and that I will be thinking about as I move forward in life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was recently told by a guy that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it was a good idea for us to continue dating because I was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153too career-oriented.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d [Insert the deer in headlights, eyes bulging emoji]. What? I work in a culture where 11-15 hour days and weekends are the norm, where a \u00e2\u20ac\u01539 to 5? sounds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}