I think for any of us who like we don't wake up in the same place every single day or think about with your kids like seasons change, you know, you have a ritual of what the school year looks like versus the summer know that your your ritual should be just as flexible right and they should serve you.

And the goal of any ritual is to quickly and easily get you back into feeling work like harmony.

So by saying that I'm saying there can be tons of times you do not feel like you are in harmony and that's fine. Like my goal is to get you into a practice where you can say, why am I feeling off like I can literally go into my home and say,

I'm going to say, my island's a mess. That's why I'm feeling off and I know what the fix is and maybe I don't even get to it for two more days, but at least I've identified why I'm feeling off.

You're listening to She with Jordan Lee Dooley, a personal development podcast for the everyday woman come invited leave ignited. Here's your host Jordan Lee Dooley.

Yeah.

Hey Tina, welcome to sheep. Jordan, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Yes, of course, I am so looking forward to this conversation, but before we jump into all my questions that I have, which I have a lot, so we'll try to keep it short and sweet. But before we do that,

can you just share a little bit of your background. What do you do and what led you to write a book about work life harmony? And by the way, I love the word harmony. I love that you chose that instead of balance, but just tell us a little bit about what led to that.

Okay, so what led to that was really starting my first company at 16, which was a marketing agency and then, you know, burning out for the first time at 27 and really rediscovering the things I love to do. And so, you know, I ran an agency for 20 plus years.

I've written almost 20 books now. My 20th book is coming this fall. I've taught it, I've done a lot of really interesting things, but what I realized and learned over the last few years, but how did you all those things and still have work like harmony and I'm sure you feel the swing or audience like harmony is what we're craving right. We want our family life. We want our personal life.

We want to feel gratified with our work and I had all of those things and wanted all those things and I had to cure for this burnout and really figure out how to have harmony because I realized really quickly balance just didn't work. Yeah, yeah, that's so true. So good.

Okay, so what does work life harmony look like? Like I think this is a phrase many of us love, but we're like, huh, that's a little different than what I've heard. So what does that look like and how is it different than the concept of work life balance?

Yes, so let's first talk about balance. So why balance didn't work for me at least. I think a lot of times when we talk about work, we somehow get the idea that we don't love our work, but what if you love your work like I've always always really have and I could work 24 hours a day. Right. That's just not healthy.

It's not what we should do. So balance meant the more I was working or in a season where I was really grinding, I then had to add more life on it. Right. So then you go from, I mean, I think we all remember those seasons of like we're working and grinding. It was like our life looked like the hills. Right. It's like you're working and grinding and staying up all night and then you're going to Cabo and you're part of like you're doing all these things and you're not ever having harmony.

You're just adding more stuff to balance a scale. Right. And so for me, harmony means yes, I'm in a season and maybe work is a grind, but I'm peppering in all those things, all those rituals, those really important moments that bring me back into harmony. Right. It's not balance. It harmony is to me. I love to describe it as like I'm making my favorite meal. Only I know all the things and flavors that need to be on that plate. And I know when a flavor shows up, that's not right.

Right. Right. And so harmony is also going to ask you to create boundaries, you really get in tune with yourself and in a current season with what you really want.

You know, every different season, I'm an East Coast girl. So what I want to do in the summer is very different than what I want to do in the winter. Right. So we're the same as people.

What feels like you're in harmony in the summer season might be very different in the fall. Like I don't know if you ever feel this way. I always joke that fall is back to school for adults too.

And somehow we get this renewed energy to like grind it out to the end of the year. Right. But in the summer.

It's all funny because I literally I still sometimes accidentally, instead of saying like in this season or this time of year, I will be saying I'll say something like in this semester, like I still breaking things.

I just messes in my brain. I've been out of school for who knows how many years now it's so funny.

But yeah, I totally agree. I think it's almost like you get a newfound energy or I don't know what the right word is, but I completely understand. Yeah.

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