Friday’s Game Plan column on FOXBusiness.com — about work-life balance has been getting an interesting response from readers. I think because it doesn’t espouse the popular notion of trying to have it all, but rather make some hard choices, it has touched a collective nerve.
Honestly, writing that column has given me a sense of personal freedom about my own choices to use my gifts and get paid for them and love every moment of that. I wouldn’t presume to impose that same decision on others, but it works for me and that’s what the column was all about. Has that way of living affected my personal life? Yes. Would I change any of it? No.
However, moving forward, I have a renewed vision about this. Perhaps instead of assuming a meaningful relationship might get in the way of professional growth, the idea is to find someone who understands with a capital ‘U.’
Last night I was watching the ABC series Brothers and Sisters and there was a moment that crystallized this. The Rob Lowe character, Robert, is a senator who wants to be president and he is married to a character named Kitty played by Calista Flockhart. They met because she was working on his campaign. While he didn’t get the presidential nomination, he was asked to be the running mate of the man who did. Kitty, very focused on their infertility issues, didn’t approve. But he explained he had ambition and she had fallen in love with the man with that ambition. It was still there. He hadn’t changed just because he had lost this round or because he had married her. He wound up turning down the offer to be vice president for the right reasons. She eventually assured him they were on the same page.
Fiction or no fiction, it was a real work-life balance moment.
