Have you felt it? There are many words to describe it – that feeling of being stuck, stagnant, “in a rut,” and tired of the same old thing. If you’ve lived enough years to be in midlife, then you can probably look back at what you anticipated your life would be and realize that reality has been a trip on the crazy train or a series of detours and roadblocks. How does that match up with the ambition you once held? Does it make you a failure if you aren’t pursuing that high-profile career because you’re raising kids and just trying to keep them safe, clean, clothed, and fed? My two guests today have done the research, asked the questions, and compiled the information for you – and the results may surprise you!
My guests today are Hana Schank and Elizabeth Wallace. In 2016, Hana and Liz published a series of essays in The Atlantic, called The Ambition Interviews, which focused on women, ambition, and the realities of work/life balance, motherhood, and what counts today as ambition and success. The essays were so powerfully relatable that they went viral. They were shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media, ultimately becoming their best-selling book, The Ambition Decisions: What Women Know About Work, Family and the Path to Building a Life.
Hana Schank is a public interest technology fellow at New America, which is a think and action tank led by Ann Marie Slaughter, and are frequent contributors to The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Elizabeth Wallace worked fifteen years in print magazines including, Vogue, Nylon, Seventeen, US Weekly and Lucky. Today, she’s a freelance writer who has been published in Architectural Digest, and Domino, The Atlantic, Lenny, Refinery29, Travel + Leisure, Departures, Redbook, and many other publications. In this episode, we discuss the crisis that led them to create The Ambition Interviews, why it’s important that we rethink and re-tool the definition of high-achieving, and ultimately how their lives have been transformed during this journey.
Desperately seeking someone
Liz and Hana were each in somewhat of a midlife crisis after turning 40. They wondered why they felt stuck in careers, parenting, marriage – and why life was so hard. Close friends since their college days, they reached out to other college friends, desperately seeking someone who “had it all figured out.” Since their friendship was forged and based on many hours spent talking through issues together, it was only natural in their relationship that they discuss these tough life issues together to try to gain perspective. What began as their discussions and emails to a few college friends evolved into the book, The Ambition Decisions: What Women Know About Work, Family, and the Path to Building a Life.
Post-It notes and Google Docs
Liz and Hana interviewed their friends about their dreams when they got to college, what happened in their lives following college, and the decisions they made about jobs, families, and life. What came from these interviews were the stories of these women’s lives, including career ambitions and choices made around issues like the economy, children, and passion. They analyzed the data by using Post-It notes and categorizing the information, looking for common themes that were of interest to their purpose. Being in the right place at the right time earned them the attention of The Atlantic Magazine, mainly because of their content about women in the workplace. They wrote essays that became their book, handling the writing process in Google Docs to allow both women to write but maintain a singular voice and tone.
What they learned about ambition
The main takeaway they learned about ambition is that it can’t be contained in a career. After interviewing ambitious women, some of which had achieved C-suite executive positions, they realized that the stay-at-home moms were no less ambitious. They came to understand that society’s idea of ambition is wrapped up in career, but there are so many other women without high-profile careers who are equally ambitious, wanting to be in charge and with goals to achieve. Another point that came out in their research is that the concept of ambition might look different from person to person and even across one person’s lifetime. Some people choose to focus that ambition solely on a career, while others choose to channel their ambitious energy in different directions.
What they learned about relationships
Regarding relationships, themes emerged from their research that resonated soundly with Liz and Hana about people’s home lives. There seemed to be an ambition cap in the marriages that were represented. There weren’t many power couples and there was a finite amount of ambition that each marriage could contain. The women who were categorized as high achievers were usually partnered with those who were stay-at-home parents or those who had cut back on a career to be the primary caregiver at home. It was unusual for them to find couples with two high achievers unless they were willing to pay big bucks for child care. Liz and Hana were able to see how partners make things work to allow for ambition in the marriage while functioning as a unit.
Three Paths
Liz and Hana identified three groups of women in regard to their career paths. Traditional high achievers are women with successful careers, in many cases a C-suite executive with a high salary, a prominent position, and high self-pride. Opt-outers are women who had successful careers but opted out of the workplace to become full-time caregivers for their children. The Flex-lifers are those who made a deliberate and conscious life choice to not pursue higher positions or promotions so they could use that energy in other areas like parenting, hobbies, or volunteer work. Surprisingly, all the women interviewed said they were either happy or at least content with their choices.
Some surprising results
Only 12 of the 43 women they interviewed were still in the high-achiever category 25 years after college. Liz and Hana expected this number to be higher. After all, they knew these women to be smart and ambitious, with all the needed resources. If they couldn’t do it, then who could? The truth is that a lot of them, by choice, had steered their ambition into other areas of life. They decided that they didn’t want to be high achievers and consciously chose a different life path.
A transformative experience
Liz and Hana set out to answer questions about decisions and women’s lives, but the answers they got resonated with them both on a deeply personal level. The high achievers they interviewed came across as not at all conflicted about priorities and work. They weren’t worried about their decisions because they received meaningful validation from their work. Seeing this helped Hana make decisions to set off on a new career path. Liz had struggled with the manifestation of her ambition and where it fell; she felt bad about what she hadn’t achieved and had an internal bias against being a stay-at-home mom. The information has allowed her to become more comfortable and reconciled with where she is in life, and at the same time has made her want to push to do more.
What will surprise readers
The most surprising revelations in the book are that these are ordinary women, just like all of us. Some of them have really important and exciting jobs, some have regular jobs to pay the bills, and some have given up a career to do something they have prioritized as more important at this time. Women from all walks of life can relate to these women because we have all had similar experiences on our own paths. You’ll see that women are inherently skilled at being strong and resilient, always accepting the challenges that life offers. Some of the advice given in the book will be surprising and some will be mind-blowing to many readers.
Highlights of the Episode:
- 3:37 – How they gathered the info
- 7:26 – Writing the series for The Atlantic
- 14:41 – Ambition vs. Career
- 17:43 – The response they received
- 19:29 – What they learned about themselves and their relationships
- 25:29 – The upper limit on ambition in relationships
- 36:25 – What the results showed
- 40:31 – A transformative experience
- 46:30 – Getting back in touch with your fire
- 47:45 – What will surprise readers most
- 49:48 – The Fem Five
Resources Mentioned:
- www.hanaschank.me
- www.elizabethannwallace.wordpress.com
- Find Liz on Twitter: @lizardwallace
- Find Liz on Instagram: @lizzardwallace
- The Power of No: Because One Little Word Can Bring Health, Abundance, and Happiness by Claudia Azula Altucher and James Altucher
- What Women Know About Work, Family, and the Path to Building a Life by Liz Wallace and Hana Schank
The Fem Five:
1. Favorite book for women?
- Hana – Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing by Victoria Sweet
- Liz – When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
2. Favorite self-care hack?
- Hana- “Asking people for help”
- Liz- “Hot yoga or a workout first thing in the morning and a half-shot of apple cider vinegar.”
3. Best piece of advice and who gave it to you?
- Hana-From my father: “Whenever someone asks you to do something, say YES even if you don’t know how, because you will figure out how to do it.”
- Liz- From Hana: “Stop being the person that sets you up for failure because so many others will get in your way.”
4. Female thought leader or CEO you’re into right now?
- Hana – Jodi Kantor, the journalist
- Liz – Rep. Maxine Waters
5. One piece of advice you’d give your five years younger self?
- Hana- “Keep doing the project. Embrace the next portion of your life.”
- Liz- “Stop wasting so much time obsessing about what’s going to happen. Keep learning and adapting and using the skills you already have.”
Last Time on The NextFem Podcast
Helping Others Achieve Their Dreams Before You Achieve Yours – with Carmela Rea
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