Before we can rise above, we've got to tear some things down. There are myths we believe without even realizing that we can opt out and live a different way. There are scripts that play in our heads and tell us that if we just tried a little bit harder, we'd get it all right.

• “Women can have it all!”
• “I can't have it all.”
• “If I'm successful at work, I must be failing at home.”
• “I'm missing out.”
• “My husband is missing out.”
• “I just need a work-life balance.”

The idea that you can find the perfect balance is the biggest myth of all. Even when you find a rhythm that works for you, you won't get it right all the time. I don't.

But you can shut down the voice in your head that says you have to do things a certain way, provide a certain amount of time to your family, and be a certain type of person at work in order to have a good “work-life balance.” I think the balance we're chasing is bullshit, actually. But we'll get to that after we've talked about some of the biggest myths that get in our way.

THE MYTH OF WHAT MAKES US WORTHY, ACCORDING TO OUR GENDER

Sensitivity around traditional gender roles seems highest in couples where the woman not only has a career outside the home, but earns more than her husband does. One study on gender identity and income came to this unbelievable conclusion about couples where the wife is the higher earner: “When the wife brings in more money, couples often revert to more stereotypical sex roles; in such cases, wives typically take on a larger share of household work and child care.”²

A larger share!? Who's got time for that?

The economists justified it like this: “Our analysis of the time use data suggests that gender identity considerations may lead a woman who seems threatening to her husband because she earns more than he does to engage in a larger share of home production activities, particularly household chores.”³

In her feminist memoir The Fictional Woman, Tara Moss elaborates:

One posited explanation for this seemingly illogical phenomenon is that the division of housework and the effort put into the performance of the traditional good wife role is a conscious or unconscious strategy by one or both spouses to avoid criticism for the woman's choice to have a high-powered career, and the fact that the man's choice, or circumstance, means he does not occupy that expected breadwinner role … basically, she has to be seen as not neglecting her wifely duties (See, I'm still a good wife! I'm still a good mother!) and he doesn't want to risk further deviating from gender expectations by taking on “feminine” duties.⁴

So the woman in this scenario is doing more work at home to make up for the fact that she's contributing more money to the household than her husband. Like a huge apology. What the fuck.

We're culturally conditioned to value men according to how much money they make, so if we make more money than our husband, we feel like we're taking away his worth. And we feel so guilty about it that we try to act super-feminine—by doing extra work at home, because that's apparently what makes us a woman—to build up his masculinity and reassure him that his role hasn't disappeared.

Not only that, but we've been programmed to value ourselves according to how much our husband makes, instead of how much we make. So as our capacity to outearn our husband goes up, our feeling of worthiness goes down.

We're kicking goals and making amazing shit happen in our businesses. We're providing for our families, maybe even earning more than our husbands. But we don't relax and enjoy those wins—we feel ashamed of them.

The craziest part in all of this is that most of us haven't even checked in to see if our husbands feel the way we think they do. Nobody's actually asking us to earn less or do more at home. We're assuming that's what he wants and putting it all on ourselves, and we haven't even had the conversation. (We'll dig deeper into that in Chapters 13 and 14.)

THE MYTH OF “HAVING IT ALL”

We're told that women can have it all. So we put pressure on ourselves to achieve that. Now that we've managed to break into the business arena, we don't want to mess it up by admitting that we have to make some compromises. So we tell ourselves it's possible to be 100% invested and kicking goals at work and 100% present at home as a wife and mother. It must be possible! We're supposed to have it all!

The reality is, 100% investment in every area all the time isn't possible. It's never going to happen, and when we try it and fail we just feel guilty. So the script in our heads is telling us that we can't really have it all, even while we keep pretending to try. It's a recipe for more guilt, more shame, more overwhelm. Instead of celebrating our high-powered, high-earning careers, we're worried that our husbands feel threatened and our kids feel neglected. Instead of enjoying our marriages, our children, and our social lives, we're half-thinking about work all the time.

But I think women can have it all. I feel like I do.

It's just that “having it all” might look different than the picture we've had in our heads. It might look like taking your husband with you on your business trips and enjoying kid-free time on the plane. It might be encouraging your employees' personal goals outside of work, to build a culture of reminding people in your company (including yourself) that they're human. You might choose to employ people you're friends with so that you can spend more time with them day-to-day.

You might just have to be more choosy about where you invest and when, and make the decision to get over anxiety about missing out on the things you're not investing in right now. I like to say you can have it all, but you can't always have it all at the same time. I can “have it all” in terms of having everything I want right now, today, but that doesn't mean I want everything all at once.

THE MYTH OF “WORK-LIFE BALANCE”

The concept of “work-life balance” carries a whole mess of problems.

Firstly, “balance” is usually talked about as a female problem, not a male one. When's the last time you heard a man talk about “work-life balance” or “having it all”? It feels normal for a man to work and have children and a social life; nobody praises that guy for managing to “have it all.” So let's shut down this bullshit about women needing some type of special balancing skills (that men apparently don't) to achieve a basic level of satisfaction both personally and professionally.

Secondly, the term work-life balance is designed to make us feel shitty about work. It implies that “work” isn't really part of “life,” but just a thing you have to get through to enjoy the rest of your time. Excuse me, but I actually love my work. I love my kids, my husband, and my home, too, but it's not one over the other. I'm not trying to get the “balance” right so that I can spend as little time as possible working.

We're told what work-life balance is supposed to look like: We're meant to switch our phones off during family time, take regular vacations, and refuse to look at work emails after hours. But what's waiting for us when we get back? The emails and task list don't go away, so the work piles up. The thought of this gives me anxiety!

The problem is that most entrepreneurs aren't made for that kind of balance. We want to do everything well, all the time. And our business identity is so closely tied to our personal identity that it isn't easy for us to just switch off work mode. Work is part of who we are when we're flourishing. Work is part of life; they're not opposites.

If we try to compartmentalize our time, we just end up feeling guilty all the time. When we're at work, we feel guilty for our families. And when we're at home, we feel the pull to be involved with what's going on at work. The truth is, we love them both. And we try to make them incompatible with each other when they shouldn't be.

I'm calling it: It's bullshit. Balance is bullshit.

So what are you going to do about it?