Letting Go to Get Ahead

What stories do you tell yourself that influences your decisions, or defines your personal success in your career or life as working mom? 

Initially driven by collecting "shiny gold stars" in her tech and business career, Jess Galica had a career crisis, realizing the conventional path didn't lead to personal fulfillment. Motherhood and a desire for authenticity prompted a paradigmatic shift, inspiring her book "Leap: Let Go to Get Ahead."

Remember, it's not about doing it all, but rather doing what truly matters and aligns with your values. Tune in for a great discussion on how to forge your career path, on your terms. 

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Grab a copy of her book:

Leap: Why It's Time to Let Go to Get Ahead in Your Career

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today, on Working Mom Hour, we have the pleasure of hosting Jess Gallica. Jess' career spans a diverse range of experiences in the corporate world, from influential roles in Fortune 100 companies to innovative startups and strategic positions at Bain Company. Currently, she balances her time as a director at Siemens with her passion for executive coaching, particularly focusing on how high performing women can achieve control, fulfillment and success in their careers. Her commitment to exploring women's roles in the workplace began during her undergraduate studies at Georgetown University, examining media portrayals of working mothers. This exploration continued at MIT Sloan School of Management, where she led a pioneering study on gender differences in class participation.

Speaker 3: 0:50

Through extensive interviews and research, jess sought to understand the nuances of career reinvention. Her goal is clear to equip women with the knowledge and tools to build meaningful, intentional careers. Adding to this, jess has recently launched her book Leap why it's time to let go to get ahead in your career, which will get into the inspiration behind. Enjoy this conversation with Jess Gallica. Hi Jess.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Welcome to Working Mom Hour. Hey everyone so happy to be here, we're so happy to have you.

Speaker 3: 1:32

When we talked a couple of weeks ago, you brought up this concept of collecting shiny gold stars in your life or your career. Can you tell us more about this?

Speaker 2: 1:43

Yes, collecting the shiny gold stars. I mean, that was my mindset for the first 10 or 15 years of my whole career, building a career in tech and in business and really for me it was about kind of following the path of what everyone else told me was a good career. And then, you know, I worked at some of the best companies in the world. I got my MBA from MIT. I worked in management consulting at one of the most prestigious firms right, I did collect all of these shiny gold stars. And then I had a little bit of a career crisis, which came to a head in very early 2020, where I kind of pulled up and said, huh, despite everyone telling me that this is a great career and a great path to beyond, I myself actually felt very, very lost and very unfulfilled, and so I started to kind of question this notion that, you know, following the shiny gold stars maybe isn't the path to success, or at least not the path to success for me.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Was there like an oh no moment that hit you as you were coming to this discovery? And then, how did you like take yourself to your next phase?

Speaker 2: 2:48

I think there were two sort of waves that came together right and created this oh no feeling. The first was just this wave of time, right, Like I had been doing my career for over a decade at that point and it sort of felt like Goldilocks, right, Like it was like the porridge is too cold, the porridge is too hot, Like every job was just not quite right. And after a decade of doing that, there's just something about time that made me sit back and think my gosh, like I should have figured this out by now to some extent. Right, I should have had something click into place throughout these 10, 12 more years that I've been doing this. And then the second wave is, as I said, was a different one, which was I was stepping into motherhood for the first time.

Speaker 2: 3:30

So January 2020 is when I was pregnant with my now three year old. I mean, obviously, as you know, as moms, right, it totally changes your outlook on really everything, work included. And I remember having this very strange, like strangely clear and strangely strong desire for my daughter, which was this wish that she would be someone who's really authentic, totally comfortable in her own skin and just goes after what she wants. I realized that, wow, when I look in the mirror at myself, I'm totally not fulfilling that wish, and I think it clicked into place that gosh, I've got this such powerful wish for her that almost feels like it's like incepted in my brain because that's really not what I'm giving myself and it's really what I need. And so, yeah, those two things came together for me to finally, like light bulb moment, sort of wake up and think all right, I've got to start to do things differently and, of course, set me on this path which we'll talk more about, but towards writing my book and thinking a lot more about not just me, but all women's careers and lives.

Speaker 3: 4:37

I love this topic so much I feel that it's like the basis for this entire podcast. Like I remember back to our early episodes where we talked about like our own stories of having this realization and same thing. Like it was like 10 to 15 years in, I think, one of our guests, into each of our careers I mean, and I remember one of our previous guests says, like said something along the lines of you're climbing the corporate ladder and you get to the top and you realize it's leaned up against the wrong building. Yes, it seems really common for women and I remember the even just the idea of having kids affecting, like influencing, my business decisions. Like I wasn't even married, I was engaged, I think I wasn't married, I wasn't pregnant and I knew that I couldn't maintain what I was doing in my role. And I didn't. I switched jobs and all that. So, anyways, I love that we're talking about this. The subtitle of your book, which the book is called Leap, is Let Go to Get Ahead. What do you mean by this?

Speaker 2: 5:43

Yeah, I really love the subtitle, to be honest, because I relate to it so much and I think there's a lot of ways to let go, but the two that I'm really focused on in the book. One is this idea of letting go of these very kind of rigid and what I think are stale narratives around what success looks like and the path that you have to take to get there. So the most obvious ones are like we've got the lean in kind of message hitting women and then we've got this opt out message hitting women when it comes to work and motherhood and it's like wait a second. The reality for most women lies somewhere in between. It's this idea of letting go of what other people are telling you good looks like and success looks like, and really getting comfortable with your own definition of success and that getting ahead can look and be defined by a lot of things and it should be personalized to you.

Speaker 2: 6:34

And then there's that idea of letting go to get ahead in the context of career changes or reinventions, which is really the focus of the book. There's this tendency to think about a career change as what you're giving up, especially around motherhood. There's very much this conversation around oh, you're giving up, you're letting go, you're stepping back. But what I show through the book, through so many stories from women, is that oftentimes those types of shifts and career changes and pivots, they actually kind of have this slingshot result which is that they help you to get on this different path that, in the long term, catapults you into much more, even traditional success, because you're more committed, you're ready to run that marathon, you're really aligned to that long term vision. So it's this idea of letting go of prescribed paths that we have to take and then also opening up to the possibility that, hey, maybe shifting and reinventing whether it's a step back or a step to the side actually will set me up for more success.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Yeah, do you have tips for women, Because it sounds really amazing. Right, I'm just going to let it go. I'm going to let go. I think every single woman has something they want to let go of. Do you have tips to help them? Let go sooner. It's scary. It's a scary, especially when you become a mother. There's so much more on the line.

Speaker 2: 7:59

Yeah, well, it's interesting. The book is called Leap right and I think sometimes people think I'm going to be hawking like quit your job and go do the new career, and actually I very rarely say that right. There's a lot of intention, there's a lot of planning, there's a lot of time that goes into any of these kinds of leaps and changes. So that can be helpful sometimes even just to get in that mindset of it's not the one moment that I'm making this wildly courageous leap, it's built over time. But I think the most helpful thing in terms of you know, gosh, where do I start right or what tip do I take, is that you really need to start building your own narrative right?

Speaker 2: 8:37

We have all these narratives that are thrown at us and I think about, you know, the generation of women who are kind of growing into their careers today or entering leadership positions.

Speaker 2: 8:46

They've been told all these things right, like girl boss, mom boss, break the glass ceiling, et cetera. So we've been internalizing those and at the same time we've actually never stopped to create our own narrative, like what do I actually want for my career? So I always say the first step is moving attention away from all those things that you're hearing externally and actually investing the time to sit down and put a plan together for what matters to you when it comes to work and other parts of your life as well, and it sounds really simple to say, hey, like, sit down, take the time, create a strategic plan. But there are so few women that actually have a practice of doing that. They're doing it in their business lives, right At work, a lot of the time, but they're not applying that to their own path. So I think that's the first step is getting away from listening to all the other paths that are out there and starting to actually think and build a vision for what yours should be.

Speaker 3: 9:47

Now, do you think this advice is like a privilege of seeding your level executive women, or is this something women at any level can do?

Speaker 2: 10:01

I think, at any level. Yeah, absolutely. I mean listen, to have choice, to make a change, to make a shift. Sometimes there is privilege baked into that, especially if you're making a shift or change that requires a shift in financial earnings as well. So I think there's definitely a place for a conversation around privilege and I would love to chat about that more.

Speaker 2: 10:22

But specifically within this planning. I don't think that's something reserved for just women at the top. I think that's a healthy practice for anyone, right? Even if you are not planning to make a change. It's just taking a look at like, hey, what am I getting out of work? And maybe income is one of those, right, maybe getting that financial security is the most important thing to you right now in the season of your life or given the role that you play in your household. But I think creating that plan kind of gives women, no matter what, a sense of direction and also a sense of greater fulfillment from what they're getting out of work.

Speaker 2: 10:59

A tough job that you don't love, right, it's not your passion, but maybe it is creating that financial security for you and your family and your loved ones. And if you have that kind of written down in your plan, like hey, right now is about me creating financial security. What a thing to go back to, to actually feel like, ok, I am getting something out of my career. This is rewarding for me right now Because it's checking off this massive, massive box. That right now, for me and my plan is what matters.

Speaker 3: 11:30

Yeah, and I think that's incredible advice and it's OK if your priorities change, like my priorities for the first 10 years were really different than my priorities for the next three, which were really different than my priorities now.

Speaker 2: 11:44

Such a good point that they can and they will and they should. And I think when you're in this constant practice of sort of revising those, or I should say, if you don't have that right, if you don't have kind of the success metrics of what you want your career stage to be in, it's so easy to get lost and feel like you're failing right. But if you're really honest about kind of what stage you're in of your career, I think that could help a lot of women to feel much more rooted and much more fulfilled and what they're getting out of work at that point.

Speaker 3: 12:18

So, jess, why do you think there's such a strong desire for women to figure out their path of who they're supposed to be at work or what their trajectory is specifically for working women?

Speaker 2: 12:32

Yeah, I think there's a couple things and a couple of reasons why so many women struggle with this problem, and I think part of it is what we were talking about, which is all these narratives that women have been said, particularly women who are kind of reaching the heart of their career, right, like millennial Gen X. I think we have listened so much to these kind of sound bite narratives that we grew up with and we continued with as we entered the workforce. But, like I said, we've never really stopped to question those narratives and build a new story for ourselves, like, ok, people are telling me to lean in or opt out or whatever it is, but what do I want? Right? And I think what we're finding is those narratives just never fit women right. They were never really built for us.

Speaker 2: 13:15

And then, at the same time, I think we layered on top of that too, especially for moms, for working moms. I mean, my gosh, working moms are totally conditioned to kind of value their worth in terms of how they're in service to others. I think every mom will tell you like, oh my gosh, I'm the last person on my priority list, I am the last action item on my to-do list, and so I think, really, women are not making that time and that space to even contemplate their own selves and what they want. And so there's this real gap and there's this real void and women tapping into that. And yet we're people, right, and women have these desires and goals and those aren't going to go away. So I think there's this reckoning of we aren't setting women up to really do that and yet, as just beings, there's a desire to kind of understand your purpose here on Earth, right, not to get too meta, but the way you want to contribute at work and how you want to spend your time.

Speaker 3: 14:19

Yeah, I find that almost all the working moms I've talked to have some sort of like flex schedule or work part time or it's like they've taken the steps to make it work for their lives as a mom, like in service of their family. But seldom do I get to a place in the conversation where these women have designed their life around what they want. They may be out of sort of like a traditional 9 to 5 as a result of having a family out of necessity, but I do think there's so much opportunity for us, for someone in a position who is privileged enough to make certain choices like that, to design it to what we want from a macro level, not just like so that I because I need to pick my kids up at school or whatever it is- yeah, well, and I also think for us, the underlying guilt of choosing us over work, right.

Speaker 1: 15:21

So if we're working women, we have to make it worth it to be at work, which means we have to be high achieving, because if we're just sitting where we're actually comfortable and where we want to be, then that is selfish. Right. We have to be the vice president of the whatever right. We need those gold stars to prove we've made the right decision to stay in the workforce. I'm speaking from my experience, actually, like right after I had my daughter, like my vision was to be vice president of this big global agency. I didn't actually want that. That was the appropriate next step for me, choosing not to be a mother to my daughter full time.

Speaker 1: 16:06

And then you have the stay at home moms who also want to exercise that part of their brain. But then there's the guilt of you know, and I, when I get together with moms, oh, I just stay home, I'm just to stay at home, I'm like you have the toughest job in the entire world. Yes, stop saying that you're just a mom or you're just to stay at home. So there's this like guilt. I think that we all haven't figured out how to push to the side, to step into what actually works for us, and if we recognize if we had this ability again I'm speaking probably to myself to recognize that if we can address that guilt and we can take this leap, we actually become much better coworkers, much better partners, much better moms, and so that is the end goal. But it's really hard for us to to get out of our own way.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's decades of conditioning right and decades of you know kind of narratives or like advertising right, the whole culture that we're steeped in. But I do think we're starting to see this movement towards a fresh attitude around this. I don't know if you all agree, but I feel like we are starting to see more people adopt the you know hey, you've got to put your oxygen mask on first kind of mindset of like let's take care of you, because, one, you deserve it, but two, to your point, it also makes you better at all the roles that you play in your life.

Speaker 4: 17:37

I was going to say this is a great conversation. Just jumping in on this all makes me think of the speech America Forever gave in the Barbie movie. We know women have to be this but not this, and that but not that. And it's like, exactly because we all put ourselves on this high pressure of like if I'm at a company, I've got to get to the top or climb the ladder, or what have you found out? You don't like managing people. Like do you have to do that? Like right, Right, Right, Right.

Speaker 4: 18:09

So it's just yeah, it totally, totally makes sense. I was wondering, jess, if you could shed light on what. If someone feels like lost in their career, like we were going back to this conversation earlier, what are a few questions you would say? If they have like a journal in front of them, what leading questions would you give them to start that exploration process If they're feeling a little uneasy about the next step?

Speaker 2: 18:33

Yeah, I always say the number one thing that I hear from women, right, who I'm working with or if I'm speaking or anything, the number one thing I hear is this doesn't feel right, whatever path I'm on, but I have no idea what I want next. And I can always say with confidence, without learning any more about that individual, what I can say is this you know more than you are telling yourself. I think the hard work is that so many of these things that we know that we want when it comes to our work, our career, our life, our life, our kids, right, so many of these things that we know we've just really buried deep down inside of us and like suppressed and not even given light to. And so I think the hard work comes and kind of unearthing those things right, like digging out all the dirt that we've thrown on top to really get to OK, when I'm brutally honest with myself and I take away that guilt and I take away that shame, what is it that I really want? And so I encourage women to start with just some reflection questions that get at that like start to build that, that muscle, that daily habit, or, you know, it doesn't have to be every day, right, but that consistent habit of really starting to get better at, you know, being radically truthful with yourself about what you want. And so it's questions like you know what lights you up and brings you joy, right? What are those moments when you're really in flow and you're loving what you're doing at work and start to see some of the themes of that? What's emerging that kind of is your strength or is that thing that you get energy from? There's obviously the reverse, right. Which are what are the things that just feel so painful? They might not even be hard, but they're just so hard to do. That helps you start to understand what you're trying to move away from.

Speaker 2: 20:12

And then, I really think, great questions about what you want out of your career. And, as we've been talking about in this stage, right, what do you want out of the next like 18 months? Right, the next year and a half? Is this a season for you that's about pushing it and getting to that VP title? Or is this a season for you that's about kind of like, pressing cruise control and kind of saying you know what? Like, I want to just take it easy because right now I've got a wild toddler at home or whatever the situation may be. I'm taking care of a you know, a sick family member and like I just want to hit the button and kind of coast for a bit. So I think it's kind of those two things, that like introspection around really who you are and what you like to do, and then that acknowledgement of what stage are you in and what do you really want to get out of your career during this particular time period.

Speaker 3: 21:02

It seems like that exercise could really start to like just even shining a light on what you want and side note, it doesn't matter, you don't need a why for what you want, you can want what you want. Yeah, and it seems like it would eliminate some guilt and shame, you know, because you're going after this art where we have all experienced, going after this arbitrary North Star, gold Star, but to have it down on paper like I want this.

Speaker 2: 21:31

I would say that I do think the why can be empowering if you look at it in the right way, right?

Speaker 2: 21:37

So I'm totally with you, mads, that you know there's no need to justify, right, to put your why, to sort of justify it. But I do think articulating your why can be really valuable, especially down the line. Right, you know I'm making this up, right, but like to make it real, if someone's kind of thinking like, hey, I kind of want to work part time, right, I want to leave a full time role and I want to go to part time, I think putting down your why maybe your why is like I want to spend more time with my kids from ages zero to five Like oh my gosh, it's, the time is fleeting, I want to prioritize time with my kids when they're zero to five, right. Or maybe your why is like I'm wildly burnt out I know I'm not showing up as a best spouse, a best family member, a best mom Like I want one day a week to myself to do what I want on my own terms. I think articulating that why and trying to be radically honest about it is extremely valuable.

Speaker 2: 22:38

And here's why, when you are three months down the road. Six months down the road, nine months down the road, and you're having one of those days where you're like what the heck did I just do? If you've made a change Right, like, oh my gosh, like I'm now, you know, these new headaches have emerged or it's not exactly what I imagined. Returning to that, why statement can be really grounding, right To say okay, okay, calm down. I'm seeing someone else like get promoted and that's creating all these you know feelings for me about why I went down the halftime or something. But you know what, let me remember I told myself this season is about working part time, slowing things down because my kids are only young for so long, right, and it's kind of becomes this nice like reassurance as to why you made these decisions in the first place.

Speaker 1: 23:23

So you talked about this concept around like we are experiencing a collective career crisis as women. Can you dive into that a little deeper?

Speaker 2: 23:36

Yeah, I talk about women having a collective career crisis and I think what I mean there is just this prevalence of women who are pulling up in their careers and opting kind of traditional corporate careers and feeling like this just isn't working for me and the amount that and frequency that we see that happening to women in my perspective moves it from being the problem of any individual woman to the problem of, at a systematic level, right For so many women who are in the workforce. I think there's a couple of things that are happening. I think that part of it is that women are, you know, especially those that are in male dominated industries or in traditional corporate environments where we know women are working in our wildly underrepresented in terms of leadership positions. Women have kind of again going back to this like generational thing, right. They've sort of gone in thinking almost like we're in this like post-gender era, right, where, oh, we can, all you know, get to the top at this point and you know, our moms open doors for us, etc. And I think they're getting into the workforce and they're realizing that, wow, there is still a phenomenal amount of bias that women face.

Speaker 2: 24:46

There's still this tremendous I call it a tremendous tax that women pay simply to show up and try to exist and thrive in corporate America.

Speaker 2: 24:55

And that's something as kind of simple as just feeling isolated when you're one of the only or the few women that are in that male dominated industry. It's the frustration of working and performing just as well as male peers and knowing or experiencing that you won't get promoted as frequently and at some point. Women you know doing this for years and years like they're just frustrated, right. They're frustrated of paying that tax and they're tired of it. And that taxes significantly higher for black women and other women of color who are paying the tax on being a woman in corporate America and also paying a tax because of their race. And so there is, I think, just this collective exhaustion and then pile on top of that a pandemic that hasn't even really changed but has maybe exposed the realities of the disproportionate amount that women take on in terms of caregiving. So we see those two things kind of intersect. It's like we've invited women to have it all and yet we haven't changed enough the systems and structure and all that infrastructure that is needed to actually make that promise a reality.

Speaker 1: 26:06

I don't want to give any of this very special show away, but it's. This whole conversation is reminding me of lessons in chemistry. You have not watched the series yet. Omg, it is really really well done, and you see how far we've come and you see how far we haven't when it comes to this conversation. So I'm going to just plug in a little lessons in chemistry if you haven't seen it. It is really phenomenally written.

Speaker 3: 26:36

So Jess, what do you think changes in us in terms of our work when we become mothers?

Speaker 2: 26:43

That's a great question. I mean, I think that motherhood transforms everyone, right, and I think probably in two ways. I mean, first, I'd say everyone's experience is personal, but the two things that I see the most commonly from the research that I did for the book, the conversations that I have coaching women, two things happen. One is you know we've all got 24 hours in a day and when you become a mom it shakes up how you spent your time and there's no getting around that, right. Like no matter what choices you make in terms of paid work outside of the home, motherhood takes on a phenomenal amount of those hours in a day and so no one really gets around having to reshuffle and rethink about how to split their time and their priorities. So you know, you're forced into reevaluating and restructuring. But I think the second thing that's maybe a little bit less obvious is that, listen, motherhood is such a hard thing, right.

Speaker 2: 27:41

As you said before, erica, it's like the hardest job in the world, right, and I think it's work that generally moms get a ton of value out of a ton of fulfillment.

Speaker 2: 27:53

It feels extremely purposeful, something that women are very committed to, and so I think when you have that experience, it sort of changes the lens that you look at paid work outside of the home too, because you think, wow, I've got this very purposeful, meaningful work that I've chosen in this one sphere of my life. Like, how do I feel about this other work that I'm doing? Is it creating that fulfillment? Is it, you know, adding that value and that purpose to my life? It's like the bar or the threshold almost gets higher for where you're spending your hours, and so there are some women who, if they have the choice and the flexibility, they start to question like, is this really where I want to be spending my time? And sometimes the answer is no or you know, no asterisk, right, I want to stay working, but I want it to look different. So, yeah, I think it's those two changes that I see the most often. I don't know about you all and how that resonates.

Speaker 3: 28:50

Yeah, it seems like it's a shit. You know, we we like working with parents because they seem to have this sort of like life perspective. Like our most popular episode on Working by my Hour is called Redefining Ambition and it's just a conversation about one woman who it's just her story having the big career and then having kids and looking at ambition in terms of how I want to spend my time in my life, rather than just narrowly focused on, you know, getting to the big corner office.

Speaker 2: 29:26

Yeah, 100%. I think there are a lot of women who have that redefining ambition experience and a lot of women who almost feel like they want that permission to do it right. So I could see people looking to that episode for almost like hope or permission, like, oh okay, someone else did it this way, it's okay for me to do that too.

Speaker 1: 29:45

So how can we find that courage to redirect our careers? Like, how, how could somebody do that logistically? Because I definitely hear in my head a few friends who are in careers right now that I know they don't want to be in, but that fear right, that finding that courage is holding them back nine out of 10 times.

Speaker 2: 30:09

Yeah, yeah. Well, there are some logistical challenges or logistical questions that you've got to answer and make sure you know, hey, what's feasible for me. Right, scaling back in a career, stopping working or the reverse of, you know, leaning in more, like those aren't always feasible, given just family dynamics and all of that. So I think part of it is really assessing what is in the cards for me. What levers can I pull and push harder on or push softer on? So certainly that's part of it that is important to acknowledge.

Speaker 2: 30:43

But if it really is about the courage elements of it, I think there's two pieces of advice that I give to women. The first is that go back to your why. Go back to that kind of you know I say mantra, not in the like woohoo, but you know the sort of why are you making this decision right? What are you saying yes to? What are you committing to? And I think the second thing is finding your cheerleaders right, knowing who can be those supporters in your life that you can go to, because there will be moments when you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm an imposter, or I made a mistake, or I'm not doing this as well as I wanted. Right, you will definitely grapple with those moments of doubt and fear. They won't go away once you've taken the leap. So I think finding those people in your life that can be those supporters to kind of cheer you along, is really, really important.

Speaker 1: 31:42

It always comes back to that, every single woman we talk to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:49

I was just going to say. I mean, there is something magical and so therapeutic about literally just hearing that you're not the only one feeling this way. Right, we can sort of pathologize all of these feelings of like I'm afraid, or I feel like an imposter, or I think I'm making the wrong decision, you know. But when you start to realize that everyone is feeling these things, it's like okay, there's nothing wrong with me here.

Speaker 3: 32:13

Last night my husband and I were talking before bed and I don't know where he heard it, or maybe he just came to it on his own. He was, like just a couple of days ago, thought to myself like what if I just operated believing everything's going to happen, that I want to happen? Like what if I just proceeded with confidence and eliminated any doubt in my mind? And like he's, like I've been doing it for two days and all these things have been happening and showing up in my life? And so I woke up thinking like I'm just going to do this too, you know, I'm just going to believe it all. It's all going to happen and it's really sort of like a hopeful, positive thing. Obviously, you're manifesting more that everyone can have their own sort of take on it. Meditation can play a big role, but my question for you is how do we manage fear in this process of taking a leap?

Speaker 2: 33:05

Well, it's interesting because one of the things I talk about is going is kind of vibing well with your husband's new mindset right.

Speaker 2: 33:13

Which is that, listen, with any change you cannot get rid of fear, right, yes, it's going to show up. So the goal a reasonable goal is not to eliminate it. I think the reasonable goal is how do I make sure that this isn't going to just stop me in my track? And I think there what can be really helpful is that, I mean, mads, your husband is right in the sense that, like, we all focus on the negative way more than we focus on the positive.

Speaker 2: 33:42

So when women are thinking about some kind of change in their work, shifting in a new direction, I mean, they focus so much on the what if this goes wrong? Right, like, what will I lose out on? What will other people think of me? What if I can't get back on track? What if I can never make this much money again?

Speaker 2: 34:00

Right, it's sort of like we perseverate on these kind of disaster outcomes, and I do think there's some element of that that absolutely should be part of the thinking and you should be considering okay, yeah, what does happen if this goes south? But what I don't see women doing is balancing that with the positive Sure, like what happens if this fails? But also add in okay, what happens if this succeeds, what happens when this goes really great? Like what, what praises? Will people be singing about me when they see this? Right?

Speaker 2: 34:33

So really, we need to kind of train ourselves to do that, because it doesn't come natural to most people. So it's really that awareness of like, okay, I've got to balance my natural inclination to go to disaster mode with really, really, you know, articulating, maybe it is even writing right, okay, what would happen if this all went really really well? You know that can help to make better decisions? I don't think, because I do think fear is. There's a good amount of fear, right, we don't want to be wildly reckless and not think about the implications of our decisions, but you want to make sure that it's the healthy, right amount of fear. And the way to do that is really to balance with that consideration of the reward that you'll get from taking risks.

Speaker 4: 35:18

Okay, I feel like this week's perfectly into my surprise question. So if we could all go around the screen and talk about either a little leap or a big leaf that paid off back in the day or this week, whatever you guys come pops into mind.

Speaker 3: 35:35

This on paper seems really big but in my mind is really small. So I don't know if it's the best answer, but I think moving we just like, we're operating out of, like inspiration, and it was thought. It was, of course, thought through, but we just did it like we knew this was right and just took the leap, even though we were leaving family changing schools, had just adapted our son like it was, had three kids. You know, we just did it and that that worked out.

Speaker 4: 36:06

I always like to say to you I like to do something that scares myself. Once a quarter I feel like that's a healthy way to put also when I moved from Baltimore to New Jersey during the pandemic also crazy idea, but it was like a reward that paid off, like later, almost where I then, you know it's all of a sudden like, oh, this was definitely the right decision, even though I was leaving so much behind and Erica, kindly let me move and still keep my job so that was cool.

Speaker 1: 36:36

I mean I moved during the pandemic to it, we all did.

Speaker 2: 36:41

We all did.

Speaker 1: 36:42

We all took that very scary leap from what we knew to areas that we didn't really. I'll choose something that's very in line with what we're talking about today, but when my son was born 11 years ago, I decided to leave what I thought was the agency that I was going to eventually have significant leadership in, and I decided to do it on my own, and I was terrified. I definitely needed those supports around me. If I did not have my husband is my biggest cheerleader telling me that this was a no brainer and supporting me. I don't know if I necessarily could have done it as well as I've done it, but it was terrifying. It was terrifying to rely on just myself and my expertise, without my bosses and my mentors, and to trust that I could, that I was good enough to do it myself, and and it paid off. I mean it's the best decision I've ever made.

Speaker 2: 37:49

Yeah, I think one of our me is, I mean, it's a real leap. And it's also a mental leap which really goes back to me starting to do the work to write this book. And in the very early days when I was doing this, I just got in my head like, oh, I'm going to write a book about this. I had no experience, no idea how to do that, and even something that feels so small, like I started posting on LinkedIn a few times a week publicly about sort of my experiences as a woman in tech. And then when I became a mom obviously a working mom and to someone that might sound like, okay, what's the big deal? You started posting on LinkedIn, right.

Speaker 2: 38:31

But mentally it was a massive shift for me because it was this movement from okay, I'm doing what everyone else has told me is the right thing to do, and everyone else is like impressive, you know, at a cocktail party to say that I do this to being super vulnerable, super open and really kind of opening myself up to like, wait, why is she doing this? Right. And for me to choose that was like a massive mindset shift for me to finally say I'm choosing the thing that I want to do, even if I'm not sure how it will land with other people. And yeah, I'm so. Obviously it led to the book. It led to great conversations like this. It's led to you know my whole career focus now. So I'm super happy that I did it. That was a big leap for me.

Speaker 1: 39:16

That's a good one and you made a good point that I don't think we've really talked about as an underlying factor, right With the shiny gold stars, but we really, really care about what other people think.

Speaker 3: 39:27

Yeah, and I also feel that a lot of this is a woman's ability to listen to and feel and ultimately follow her intuition, rather than those external forces, and that like when we feel something, like when you felt I'm going to write a book about this like it's up to us to then act on it, and so these leaps aren't as painful as like they don't need to be painful when we're acting out of inspiration and when we know it's right. But it's like slowing down to actually listen, turn inward and act on that. It takes sort of like all the emotional work in the world.

Speaker 2: 40:15

Yeah, and it's so fascinating how we devalue that knowledge right, that gut, that instinct, that intuition.

Speaker 3: 40:22

Yeah, I think there's like a place for a why, as you described. I think that is very important. And then I think there's a place for acting out of inspiration, like just because you're feeling this is right.

Speaker 2: 40:34

Yeah Right, and your? Why, in that case might be, you're honoring your instinct.

Speaker 3: 40:39

I love that. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1: 40:41

All right. So what tool or tactic do you go to that really helps you in your working motherhood journey?

Speaker 2: 40:50

Yeah Well, first, I always like to shine a light and create transparency around all of the support that I get to work and be a mom at the same time. So we have, my husband and I invest in paid full-time childcare. We are lucky to live near both sets of grandparents that we can call on for extra help. So I mean that is just a tremendous amount of support that we get day in and day out. That's the hey. Let's just make sure we understand the foundation, the base that I'm coming from, and that's a massive tool that supports me.

Speaker 2: 41:25

I think the other one that I'm working on is knowing when I'm reaching my kind of boiling point, my limit right, my like tipping point in terms of just too much going on and getting more comfortable with asserting needs, my needs right.

Speaker 2: 41:44

So I'm sure we've all had those moments where I'm like I am just freaking out, I'm about to lose it with my kids or whatever it is, and instead of like getting mad at myself for that, or frustrated with like why can't I be a better mom to not get to that place?

Speaker 2: 42:03

Or instead of getting frustrated at like well, why is my husband not like stepping in or stepping up, right, it's really I'm trying to just get more comfortable saying time out, I need whatever. It is right. I need 20 minutes to go upstairs and just get out. I need 20 minutes to go walk and I think that my tendency right is to not do that, because we have this like superwoman narrative moms are super women, you know. So starting to move away from that and say like no, thank you, I don't need or want to be a superwoman. And when I'm reaching that point it's not because I'm a bad mom or I'm bad at my job or whatever. It just probably means that I need even more than 20 minutes. But you know, I need at least 20 minutes to just pause and break and refresh a little bit. And it sounds wildly, wildly simple, but I'm sure you can all relate that there are so many moms that aren't doing that today.

Speaker 3: 42:53

Jess, this was such an important and relevant conversation. Thank you for joining us. How can our listeners best connect with you?

Speaker 2: 43:00

Yeah, so all the work that I do, the book, the coaching, is found on my website, which is wwwreclaimyourcareerco, and then I do share content on LinkedIn as well, so you can find me on LinkedIn, jess Galica, and follow me along there.

Speaker 3: 43:16

Listeners can visit our show notes for the direct links to learn more from Jess and get her book Leap.

Speaker 2: 43:24

Thanks everyone.