Ask Caroline: Working 14 hours a day to hopefully one day be successful?
What do you do when what you're working as hard as you can (on a business, a relationship, or a creative project), and you're still not getting the results you want? How do you know when to keep at it, and when to pull the plug? Today on Ask Caroline, I'm answering a question from a reader I'll call Melody, who is working 14 hour days, yet losing money in her new business. She's "tired of chasing a never-ending to-do list without clear results that it's worth it." What's Melody's next move? (And where am I pulling the plug in...
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Ask Caroline: I need to work and earn money, but I have no clue what to do next.
Dear reader, Welcome to the first 2024 edition of Ask Caroline! I'm here to help you stop doing what you're supposed to do, and start doing what you're MEANT to do. In today's video I'm answering a letter from a woman I'll call Robin, who has come to a crossroads in her 50's and is struggling mightily with her career path. She's been through burnout and back, and now she needs to know: "How do I find out what to do next?" Right now Robin is wrestling with all kinds of job options, then deciding they are all bad ideas....
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The one thing you need to stop doing this holiday
Before I became a parent, I didn't understand that there are two types of children's books. There are children's books written for actual children, and there are children's books written for parents. When my first child was small and the pandemic closed our local library, I panic-bought kids' books online: I Love You More and More, I Give You The World, etc. Soon, I learned that such declarations of devotion are BORING to babies. Given a choice between I Love You, Little Pookie and The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat, the latter wins every time. (Playing with Paw Patrol...
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Important: Doing nothing wrong?!
The very first challenge in my book, You Don't Owe Anyone, is to do nothing for 15 minutes. To stop all effort and simply be still. It's hard, yes, but it's also the cure for much of what ails us. Doing nothing is a powerful antidote for the perfectionist poison we've been swallowing since childhood. (Plus, as Martha Beck has taught me, doing nothing is a profound act of resistance in a culture that expects us to live as machines, not human animals.) So nowadays when people decide to work with me in coaching, they know that I'm going to...
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Please oh please, don’t try this at home!
One of the most dangerous parts of my psyche is my tendency to think that if I just work harder, then SURELY I can fix it. This part of me is vulnerable to the "hustle harder" hype, the movie montage fix. Can you relate? Do you get swept up in doing more, while refusing to make trade-offs? Do you try to save dysfunctional relationships, resisting goodbyes? Do you override your limits, and then wonder why you're exhausted? If so, I am with you. I get it. As I tell coaching clients, the flip side of our greatest strength is also...
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Waiting for them to die so you can live?!
After years of verbal and emotional abuse - after years of constant criticism and control - this was her secret truth: "I'm waiting for my husband to die so I can begin to live." That's what one brave reader wrote to me recently. It's an incredibly difficult truth, and it was brave of her to tell it. And with her permission, I'm quoting it here. Yet as I wrote to her, "If you're waiting for him to die so you can live, then you have no power. You've given it all away. So, what if you turned it around? What...
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Spoiler alert! The intruders aren’t your biggest problem.
When I wrote to you about my recent dream - with the menacing intruders who broke in and took over my house for a party, then were so convivial that I nearly lost sight of the hostage situation - many of you said that that story resonated. To quote one reader: "The party at your house is exactly how it feels in my life ... Because you do start to feel that it's not all that bad, and you can be a part of it, even though you didn't want it! I still don't know what to do with that..."...
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This came as a real shock
When I read your emails, I have full-body responses. I don't read quietly; I exclaim, I cheer, I shout. I talk with my hands and wave them around. Always, I feel fortunate that you trust me with your words, your truths. As I read your emails this week, I came to one that featured some big traumas and losses. The writer had been through a lot, and she struggled with feeling that everyone was mad at her. The last line was what made me gasp: "I will be free someday, not on this earth but hopefully in heaven." Those words...
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You’re not lazy, you’re just at step 3.
Thank you so much for your brave, courageous responses to my questions last week! So many of you wrote back, which is fantastic. While the stories are different, there are common threads. Here's what I'm hearing from you. If you didn't feel guilty, if you were truly free ... Instead of exhausting yourself so that everyone else is okay, you'd take time to listen to yourself. You'd discover what you want and who you really are. Instead of appearing to have it all under control and managing people's expectations, you'd pay attention to whether you, yourself, are happy. Instead of...
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No, I’m not making this up…
Do you know that feeling you get when you realize that it's the anniversary of something truly insane that happened to you, and you look back and think: Whoa, I survived THAT? A year ago we were going through a lot collectively, with the pandemic and the politics and the massive injustices and tragedies involved. And on a micro level, this was a tough time for our household. Last spring, I was 8 months pregnant and 100% terrified to labor again. (There was some big-time physical trauma at my first birth.) Then our toddler tripped and sustained a break to...
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