LIFE: Grown-up Internships

Having a bit of a thing for anything Neal's Yard this month's Reg magazine caught my eye in Waitrose with its day moisturiser freebie stuck to the cover. Not expecting there to be much decent stuff in it this month (a journalist once told me when you see a freebie it's because the content is light this month) but deciding the cream was a bargain at £3.10 I bought it. Get home and find under Sam's editorial opener that in fact there's something very worthwhile happening in Red magazine this month: grown up internships. I know from my coaching work that many of us are still grappling with the question of what to do with our lives so in my opinion this is one inspired campaign/idea/project. I admit to getting a little preoccupied myself from time to time with what I want to do for the rest of my life but do we need to know? Does it matter? As Baz Luhrmann famously sang, some of the most interesting people he's ever met still didn't know what they wanted to do when they were forty. Or something like that. I'm all for planning with the caveat of keeping one's mind open to interesting opportunities that might crop up along the way but if the work you're currently doing feels good then why worry about what you'll be doing in ten years time say? I'm not saying don't plan but why get freaked out about it and wind yourself up in knots when that might htaint the journey or hinder the process of discovery anyway.

I've found coaching working mums especially that sometimes it's good enough to keep putting one working foot in front of the other until the kids are all in school then re-evaluate what we want to do for the next 5 years. I don't think I'll ever advocate anyone planning what to do for the rest of their lives, especially with all the advances in medicine and gene therapy. "The rest of my life" could be a very long time.

If you fancy trying out life as an MP or a month at Liberty (or time at Red, Coty or The Royal Opera House) have a look at this.

PSYCHOLOGY: What is good enough?

I'm beavering away on the book I'm writing for working mothers. I'm writing the chapter that's devoted to the idea of ditching or delegating domestic tasks to free us up for more interesting things. I'm inviting working mums to tell me how they go for 'good enough' on the home front via a short survey (please do it anonymously or leave your name to go in the book) and have been reading up on academic studies of housework.

Psychologist Chloe Bird did a study of the amount of domestic labour performed by 1,256 men and women and its impact on depression levels. Men reported doing 42% of the housework and the women 68% (which doesn’t quite add-up of course and according to other researchers who’ve studied housework habits, that’s because men tend to over-report how much they do). Using clever statistical analyses Dr Bird determined the point at which people experience ‘psychological distress’ from inequity in the division of housework and concluded that: “inequity in the division of household labor has a greater impact on distress than does the amount of household labor.. on average women are performing household labor beyond the point of maximum psychological benefit, whereas men are not.”


Help with my survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7SGLSVP

Boll*cks to Perfectionism

I'm mulling over what changes I made to my life when I had kids and noticing that I'm much more comfortable with mess than I was when I first became a parent 4 years ago. Now I'm writing a book for working mothers my message as far as domesticity is to go for ‘good enough’ on the domestic front and bollocks to perfectionism.

Because perfectionism (I speak from experience – I am a woman who used to rewrite to-do lists if my son scribbled on them) is pointless, too much like hard work and annoying for everyone around us. I don’t know about you but I can turn into a demented fishwife when my husband puts his pants in my empty laundry basket or when the kids leave crumbs on my pristine kitchen work surfaces. Because let’s face it a perfect house doesn’t stay perfect for very long when you have small children.

I gave up striving to reach the bottom of the laundry basket a long time ago because the satisfaction doesn’t last long. Like Shirley Conran famously said, “Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom” I say if we’ve got time to watch the laundry basket we haven’t got enough going on in our lives! It’s staggering but true that academic research shows even where both parents work full time mothers still do more of every domestic task and men tend to over report the amount of each domestic activity they do!

I'm asking working mums to tell me about what they've ditched or do less of on the domestic front for my forthcoming book, Mothers Work. I'd love to hear from you - here's the survey.

Psychology: Say Cheese! Big smilers in photos are likely to live longer

From the British Psychlogical Society Research Digest, Issue 167:

Look at a person's photo and it's tempting to think you can see their personality written all over it: stony-faced individuals appear somber; others flashing a big, toothy grin seem more genial. An intriguing new study claims that these smiles are a reliable marker of underlying positive emotion and as such are predictive of a person's longevity.

Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger had five people rate the smile intensity of 230 baseball players according to photos featured in the 1952 Baseball Register. The researchers used a three-point smile scale: no smile, half smile (mouth only), and genuine 'Duchenne' smile (muscles contracted around the mouth and corners of the eyes).

Focusing on the 150 players who'd died by the time of the study and controlling for extraneous factors such as BMI and marital status, the researchers found that those who were flashing a genuine 'Duchenne Smile' were half as likely to die in any given year compared with non-smilers. Indeed, the average life-span of the 63 deceased non-smilers was 72.9 years compared with 75 years for the 64 partial smilers and 79.9 years for the 23 Duchenne smilers.

A follow-up study was similar to the first but observers rated the attractiveness of the same players rather than their smile intensity. Unlike smile intensity, attractiveness bore no relation to longevity.

'To the extent that smile intensity reflects an underlying emotional disposition, the results of this study are congruent with those of other studies demonstrating that emotions have a positive relationship with mental health, physical health, and longevity,' the researchers said.

LIFE & PSYCHOLOGY: Pizza Epiphany

Whilst not quite Saul to Paul on the road to Damascus I had an epiphany of sorts yesterday. Watching 3000 people gathered for the St Albans half marathon got me glassy eyed from the anticipation of the achievement they’d all soon be feeling. Despite constant encouragement from my husband that I ‘could bang a half marathon out tomorrow’ I haven’t been able to believe it myself. Then with all those post race endorphins in the air I said I’d do it next year (book publication PR permitting of course – Mothers Work is due out June 2011) because I kind of feel I ought to be able to do it.

We head home, eat a belly full of pizza and I find myself overwhelmed by the desire to get a dose of runners high myself. So that’s it - 4pm I’m out the door doing something unheard of: running in the afternoon. I’m a pre-breakfast girl, I just don’t do running after lunch. So I’m out in the sun taking it easy as I’m worried I’m going to feel sick or get riddled with stitches as that pizza’s still hanging around and before I know it I’ve got to 12K and it’s feeling easy. Might as well carry on me thinks and then desperate for the loo I call it a day at 14K. Now I say this without a hint of meaning to brag – more as a way to illustrate my stupidity – because this feeling of ease is new to me and I realise it’s all down to doing something different.

Seasoned readers of my monthly mail out know my fondness for DSD. My ‘different’ was timing, running a different pace and, crucially, eating stodge. If I hadn’t had done the difference who knows whether I’d have found the self-belief to get excited about next year’s half marathon? Maybe I’ll do one before then now I’ve discovered ‘easy’ running.

I wonder how many times a day we miss the opportunity to get a different, better result in our lives because we stick with what we’ve always done? What could the ‘difference’ be in your life today, this week, next week?

I’m not saying go eat pizza and start running (though it sounds like a bloody good combo to me), I’m saying give yourself a chance to learn, to excel, to be free and to discover something new by doing something different. I knew pizza was good but I didn’t know it was this good.

Life: Boll*cks to Perfectionism!

What a blast it was to chat on about being a GEM (a 'Good Enough Mother') live on stage at The Vitality Show yesterday. The mums seemed to love the quotes from real mothers on what it means to be 'good enough.' I think it gave themm permission to go easy on themselves when I dished the dirt on how other women do it. A show of hands in the audience revealed a shocking amount of t-towel and bed linen ironing going on across the UK and beds getting changed every week. What's all that then? What about the bed bugs trying to make a home? And the environmental impact? I've given up trying to get to the bottom of our laundry basket too, reasoning that I should (and do) have better things to do than strive for emptyness (except for 60 minutes once a week in a yoga class which is very worthwhile I grant you).

LIFE: Twitter

I've gone tweeting instead of blogging of late. That and immersing myself in writing my first book, Mothers Work. If you're a working mum I'd love to know how the back-to-work experience is for you. Join in at http://motherswork.wordpress.com and come tweet with me - 'jesschivers'.