I am returning to you after a small hiatus, but the longest one I have ever had since I started this blog over 10 years ago. The past 14 months have been full of transitions for me, Sometimes, you just need to cut back on some things to get centered, and also get other projects finished.

The idea of getting centered and taking care of YOU is key to my message today. You may notice, if you follow me here or in my social spaces, I am someone who needs my plate full. I am not happy if I am not making something and sharing it. Over the past 10 years of this blog, I worked full time as a creative leader at a Chicago ad agency while donating my time to charity work, raising and guiding my family, creating things and publishing them here, leading a girl scout troop…the list goes on. It was no surprise to anyone who knew me that by the summer of 2017, I was burned out. I felt creatively and emotionally spent. I found “the negative” at work everywhere I looked. I spent my dinner time with my family crying. My husband urged me to find a new job, thinking that was the fix. That was not a possibility for many reasons-the main ones being that my previous employer was…let’s just say…not good at letting people go work anywhere else. Also, he legally had us all handcuffed with insane non-competes. But besides all of that, I did not know what I wanted anymore. I was actually asking myself, what did I want? Every career decision I ever made was for the benefit of someone or something else, including staying somewhere unhappily just to help my own team.

So I dove off the rat race wheel and took a summer off. In the fall, I built my portfolio back up, dusted my resume, nurtured my network (which I let languish because of my employer’s paranoia and a 60-hour work week). I had a lot of coffees, met new and inspiring people, reconnected with colleagues I adored, stayed in touch with my old team, had quite a few interviews. But nothing clicked into something permanent. I began to sink into a depression of sorts as winter wore on. This happens to me in the winter anyway, but the feeling of not getting ahead or landing in a “job home” during this imaginary timeframe I gave myself was wearing on me.

What I learned was, when you hit rock bottom, you get cracked wide open. And that’s when all the good stuff comes pouring in. Subtle things kept popping up in my day to day and would repeat themselves thematically. I began to wonder if “someone up there” was trying to tell me something. For instance, a friend of mine recommended a meditation seminar out of the blue that also showed up twice in my Facebook feed and my email. Instances like that. When those things happen, I have learned that there is a higher blueprint working on your behalf and that it’s not a coincidence.
Listen. And I did.

Gradually, what happens, is you get in a flow. This whole journey has been so rocky, scary, bizarre, and magical. I realized I could not control anything except my own thoughts and actions. I can’t force anyone to hire me, or do anything, really. I began doing things that I could control. I began meditating and taking morning power walks for myself. The more I quieted and trusted, the more things were introduced to my world for me to do. For instance, an online seminar popped up in my feed on how to start an online store for the blog, or a tingling sensation to reach out to some old colleagues for freelance work that turned into a year’s worth of revenue. A friend recommended a podcast out of the blue that addressed issues I was dealing within my own head. Also, messages hinting that I needed to deal with what was blocking me, deep-seeded issues about money, abundance, worthiness, even getting past shyness. This last one forced me to introduce myself to people I didn’t know well. One connection made two more. If I was asked to donate my freelance time on something, and I had it in in me, I served. I trusted that the work could bring more in other ways, and it did.

Once I discovered through meditating that my purpose was to create and serve, it brought me into alignment with my true self. And then more inspiration came. The more I answered the inspiration, the more freelance opportunities came, too. What I realized quickly, was that not getting hired at those full-time positions wasn’t rejection, but realignment. I was meant to work for myself right now, to give me the flexibility to create things that needed to be made.

To that end, beside the shop (see above and check me out on Etsy!) I just self-published a book on Amazon! The idea came to me when I was researching some wall art I wanted to design for the shop, highlighting Midwest native plants to help pollinators (artist meet gardener!). Then I listened to a podcast episode on Cathy Heller’s Don’t Keep Your Day Job after my walk one day. Cathy’s guest was a food blogger who self-published a book on Amazon, and much to her own surprise was doing really well. Then EUREKA! I had the idea to use my poster art research into something bigger. The pollinator problem is real. Choosing and planting natives to help them is overwhelming. Why don’t I create a book that helps people tackle it in an easy way-the way people plan their garden beds-and with my own illustrations and writing? I can help others help the planet, in my own voice and style.

Thus the hiatus, my friends. When the muse speaks, you have to answer. If you don’t, she will find someone else to get the creative solution out there into the world. I wanted to deliver on this one. If you follow the blog, you know I love gardening, and I love the planet, and I love beautiful things. I hope you find all of those things in this book: BEE NATIVE! FLOWER POWER. I hope to make it part of a series, where I tackle different regions of the US. Planting just ONE native plant can make a big impact.

I have other exciting things brewing, too, including a podcast with a friend of mine! I think I am busier now than I was before.
But with much fewer tears at the dinner table.

Thanks for sticking with me. We are back on the posting schedule now and check out my Fridays with Flora on my youtube channel, published every other Friday.

Peace and Blessings

The post How Leaving My Day Job Helped Me Find My Life’s Work appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

The post INFOGRAPHIC TUESDAY: Do Men or Women Achieve Work/Life Balance? appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

I am not sure if you working moms out there have as insane of work days as I have been having of late. But for the past 6 weeks, it seems that from the minute I walk into my office from when I can scramble to get out, I was getting booked for meetings on end, right up against each other. Some were double and triple bookings, and even through the lunch hour (I mean, who needs to eat at my age!? It ends up on the hips anyway, right?)

There is no question, that with this recession, we are doing a lot more with a lot less-and that means resources at work. Things in my industry are thawing a little, and our company continues to grow, but as the staff grows so do their needs for me. But what good is a leader who can’t think straight? What good is feedback on a project when I only had 5 minutes to think about it or look at? As I was frazzled out of my mind last week, I realized that I was allowing my coworkers to dictate my work day. It wasn’t their fault-they need me. It’s my role. And I was doing all I could to be there, giving feedback and carving time for every meeting. Then all of a sudden, I am driving home late realizing I didn’t even get to my own work, I mean my real work! I think corporate America is killing itself with meetings! Not just at my little place, but even at the other larger companies I have been at. But I digress.

So yes, I realized that I was allowing everyone to book “the poop” out of me. Well guess what I did? I booked my own reoccurring one hour meeting for myself in the late afternoon Have things gotten better? Yes, a little. The truth is I need more than one hour to get work done. I am still stressed and crazed, but I know I have an hour clear for myself to concept, brainstorm with my team, read manuscripts, sign off on materials, and just plain think. At the end of the day-if Mamma’s not thinking, no one at the agency or the client side is happy. Know what I mean?

It does make things a little more difficult for others to schedule around, but they manage. In reality, some of those important meetings don’t need to happen that instant. It is a good exercise in prioritization for everyone. I urge you to stop the madness a little, even if it’s 30 minutes for yourself to clean your desk, be sure to get it on your calendar. Some people use lunch as sacred time. I had an ACD that put a line in the sand and went out for one hour everyday at lunch. He would decline any meeting during that time (unless it was a client). I envied his dedication to that. I think it helped his mental health and creativity. SO whether its blocking out your lunch for you or getting “me time” on your calendar, start drawing some boundaries. You will start bringing a little bit of sanity and efficiency back in your work day.

The post CAREER: Own Back Your Day and Time appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

The reason the golden triangle is in my thoughts today is that this recession has forced us to have to do all three. Period. Clients are strapped for time, and they shorten their vendor time lines as a result. Budgets have been cut everywhere so projects have to be done with very little resources. AND it has to be exceptional. Opportunities have been so few that every project you do get needs to be a “home-run” or you won’t get another one your way any time soon. SO as we do more with less in our home life, we are also doing more with less in our work lives too. Less money, less staff, less time. But we have to deliver more, a lot more.

On a positive note, striving for “well” with cheap and fast has helped to hone my skills. I can think faster and ideate in short bursts of time simply out of necessity. I have learned to be thrifty with what resources I do have. My team has had to grow, stretch and learn skills that they may not have had to do if I had more resources. Wasn’t it Horace who said, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant. “?

But it was also Elizabeth Hardwick who said, “Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid. “? I can’t help but wonder if when we have truly recovered from this recession, will be able to horse trade again to get more time or more money to do truly exceptional work? Or has this become the status quo for the future? Have we trained everyone in business now to expect cheap, fast and the best you can get for that as what is acceptable? Has the golden triangle dissolved into history like the 40 hour work week, faxes, letter-writing and the rotary phone? I guess time will tell.

The post WORKPLACE: What Happened to the Golden Triangle? appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

The post CAREER: Tagline gone awry appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

1: Women are better multitaskers, men are more focused

2: Women get emotional (we biologically have bigger tear ducts!), men are pragmatic

3: Women are better at details, men are about the big picture

4: Women research, then go for it- men trust their gut and go for it

5: Women listen & talk more, men talk less and are more direct

6: Women read (books, research, body language), men just “do”

7: Women mentor, men direct

Below is that interesting article I mentioned…

Women Vs. Men: Who’s Better At Business? From Forbes.com
Matthew Kirdahy, 05.28.08, 5:35 PM ET

Gender science tells us that women are more likely than men to remember they even read this story. In Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business, Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis offer decades of experience so we can decide who is better at what in the business world.

But it turns out that it’s not a question of better, just different.

“I think what we’ve been able to prove over the last 20 years is that there is not superiority or inferiority,” said co-author Gurian, who also wrote the best-selling The Wonder of Boys.

Leadership and the Sexes, published by Jossey-Bass, combines Gurian’s use of brain science in gender studies and Annis’ years of experience consulting top international companies on gender concerns. Annis adds real-life examples of what’s happening in business leadership.

Forget about individuals for a second, and observe everyone just as male or female on the job.

According to the book, due out in August, men are more apt to zone out in a meeting since their brains are designed to enter a “rest state” more easily than women. In that same meeting, women may run off topic before returning to the task at hand because they’re born multi-taskers.

Gurian talked to Forbes.com about how the book digs deeper into these differences and offers tips on improving communication, negotiations and leadership in the workplace based on the gender balance.

Forbes.com: Other than just years of practical experience, what type of research needs to be done to write a book on this sensitive subject matter?

Gurian: I’ve been in a number of corporations. That’s relatively anecdotal. [Barbara Annis] has done formal diagnostics and her corporation (Barbara Annis & Assoc.) has done over 2,000 workshops at corporations.

The brain science of the book is obviously the bedrock, and that’s my 20 years of that. Then my personal, anecdotal and then the book research, the scholarly research on what’s already out there. There are other reports already out there–women in leadership books, authentic leadership books–there’s a lot out there to see if I could match it with gender.

Then Barbara Annis’ workshops and all the anecdotal research she’s brought in … What I did is I basically wrote a book that brought together everything I could find that showed when you use brain-differences information, here’s the positive effect on people and on corporations.

What do you mean when you say that this gender science is a bottom-line issue?

There are two ways in which I’ve seen this happen. One thing, if you look at the endorsement blurb for Brooks Sports–I was working with them, and they saw immediately that when the folks learned about the brain differences, the workplace comfort increased, the power of that workplace increased. They understood, as leaders, how to help their sales teams. Help men market to women and women market to men. That’s an example of where it started with the HR level and the CEO level and trickled through.

Another example: Barbara and her corporation and others went into Deloitte & Touche about 10 years ago [to teach] the brain differences … the differences between males and females. In that case, their bottom line was affected by retention. They retained talent. [We] give that example in there of the $109 million that they claim they’re saving by retaining these people, especially women …

A third way to look at it is in the IBM way. They are a sort of a combination of both. They develop mentoring systems. They taught people male-female brain difference. And they made changes in both. They increased the diversity in their small business and market ability so they sold more products. They also retained more people.

Who will benefit most from the information in this book? Could it be of any special use to, say, hiring managers? While they can’t discriminate, could they use this information when considering the right candidate for a job?

I know that that’s how my teaching is used, and I know that what happens is folks absorb this. And HR people are very smart, they just haven’t seen this information. Once they get this information, they’ll say OK, No. 1, who am I going to hire? It’s not they’re discriminating–it just becomes something intuitive.

When they’re assessing people, they’re intuitively now assessing for things like how will this man work with this female team. If I want to hire this man, because I really love what he brings, how do I need to train him to work with this female team and vice versa? How will this female work with this male team? I want to hire her, [but] she might be overreacting to the things men do, or the men might be overreacting to the women. How do I train them to get over that so people don’t leave a year from now?

I think it’s absorbed, and it becomes intuitive, and then it’s also specifically about addressing gaps that we all have. We walk into our marriages with a gap. How does this woman work? How does this man work? I sort of see this as a part of the evolution of the human being, and they come to a workplace and the HR person becomes a part of their growth by providing them with these assets.

How truly different are men and women in business? Is one gender built to be a better business leader than another?

Not better. I think what we’ve been able to prove over the last 20 years is that there is not superiority or inferiority. It’s different. That can be broken down. Like negotiation–no matter where we go in the world, and we want to remember that the research that I put in my book is worldwide. This is hard science.

All over the world when you test men and women for facial cue recognition, women test … better. It’s a negotiation tool. This is an example where if you say to yourself–if you’re a man, and you say, “Hey, I know everything. I walked into this negotiation, there’s like $50 million at stake, I’ve got it wired.” But you’re not really great at reading facial cues–and especially if you’re one of these high-powered competitive guys who’s not very good at reading facial cues. You really want to team up with a woman leader and go into the negotiation as a male-female team, because she’ll bring many assets, but one may be that she’s better at reading facial cues than you are.

We have this example of a $50 million mistake. The guys thought they nailed it because they presented the data, but their female partner said, “no, no, no. Those two CFOs they needed more info.” The guys didn’t believe her, but she was reading facial cues that they couldn’t read. They didn’t believe her and they lost the deal.

As a man or a woman, what gender would you prefer being on the other side of the negotiation table?

Well, one wants to be ready for anything, and so of course the teams that you face are going to be men and women. Statistically, you’re going to face more men than women when you’re negotiating because more men are at the very top right now. But you’re still going to face some women too. The idea is to put together a team, not only to develop your own personal assets.

It’s about the self, the individual man or woman gaining more strength. It’s about them valuing the areas where they are strong. Then it’s about them creating gender partnerships between men and women so that they are getting the assets of both sexes.

This facial cue thing is an example. We are not going to next year produce as many men who are as good at reading facial cues as women because the brain differences are too profound.

The old idea of we’ll change each other–we’re saying, “Well hey, that’s how we’re losing all this talent and all this money. Let’s look at the natural assets.”

Take Sen. Hillary Clinton as an example of these natural leadership assets. She tends to possess the skills of both it seems, especially in competition.

Now, Hillary Clinton is a great example of sort of both. I was going to say that men and women both compete and bond, they just do it differently. Hillary Clinton, as I see her–of course I’m just observing her through the media, I don’t know her personally–I see a woman who is really caught. She is competing as a woman. She is authentic, but she’s cutting off from herself some assets because she’s trying to compete like a man.

When she cried and really touched those people in New Hampshire–if I were advising her I would say, do more of that. That’s authentic to you and that really touches people, but she’s caught. A woman right now running for office is caught. Especially running against a guy who is so dynamic. You’re constantly playing defense because [Obama’s] speaking skills are so incredible.

A lot of women will be sort of “competitive like a guy” in the workplace, but then when they go home, they realize that’s not fully authentic for them. They would like to have a more expansive or more authentic relationship in the workplace around competition. And they can help because they go home. Then they meet with their friends and then they’re not very competitive. So the workplace is trying to alter women, and some of that’s great. I think we need to compete.

I think our vision is that the workplace that wants to retain women and save those hundreds of millions of dollars also has to understand how women compete and how they bond and it is different.

We have this story in the book of this woman who was under a lot of stress and she cried. The guy said, “Oh, you’re weak.” Well, when they go through this training, they read this and go, “Wait a minute–that’s how she is actually being powerful.” It brings people to her. It helps people understand her, and she’s still closing just as many deals as the guy. Female tear glands are 60% larger than male [tear glands], so women are going to tend to cry more.

Who would you rather work for, a man or a woman?

I’ve had both. I like both. I just have to go into any experience, obviously treating everyone as an individual, but saying the conversations with woman will probably be longer. I have to be more patient because their magic is going to come through them verbalizing more and connecting more dots. With men, I have to generally say, the conversations will be a little shorter, the meetings with be a little shorter. We’re going to cut to the chase a little quicker. So some things won’t get discussed, but we’re going to go for the end product more quickly. I think there are benefits to both.

The post CAREER: The differences between managing men and women appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

Multi-tasking female consumers have little or no time for commercial messages. They spend less time at single-focused pursuits, like recreational shopping or watching television. Research shows that fewer women than ever are browsing shopping malls, and when watching TV or cooking dinner, they may be working online simultaneously.

SO it begs the question, why then, are men still mostly influencing and crafting messaging that should be targeting women-women that are consuming messages very differently than 5 years ago? Isn’t it time, that the very male-dominated industry of marketing and advertising put women at the forefront? Isn’t it time that women become leaders versus just the girl that goes and gets the lunch order? If it’s women that consume and influence the buying, then women should be the ones influencing that messaging. I don’t know, it makes sense to me, but then again, I am a woman.

The post CAREER- 3% of the country’s creative directors are women-but guess who does all the buying? appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

The post CAREER: Do working moms make great managers? YES! appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.

The post CAREER: Should smokers get some of their pay docked? appeared first on UrbanDomesticDiva.