Today, our guest is a multi-talented author and attorney, Lori Mihalich-Levin. Lori also has a very active blog and website platform, called Mindful Return, for parents who are returning to the workforce after having children. If you are returning back to work after maternity/paternity leave, Lori created a four-week program to help. Now, employers are also using this program to help!
About Lori Mihalich-Levin, JD: Lori believes in empowering new working parents. She is the founder of Mindful Return, author of Back to Work After Baby: How to Plan and Navigate a Mindful Return from Maternity Leave, and creator of the Mindful Return Maternity Leave E-Course. She is mama to two beautiful red-headed boys (ages 5 and 7), is a contributing author at Well Rounded NY and Fairygodboss, is the Maternity Leave Expert at Motherly, and is a partner in the health care practice at Dentons US LLP.
Show Highlights:
Resources:
Mindful Return Website
Mindful Return Facebook
Mindful Return Twitter
Book “Back to work after Baby” Available on Amazon
Can parenting and entrepreneurship go hand in hand? Many working parents believe the myth that you either have to sacrifice home life or business success—you cannot have both. My guest, Dan Kuschell, is here to tell you that this simply isn’t true! Dan is a serial entrepreneur with 12 successful businesses to his name. He delights in training budding business owners to use strategies to get more clients and develop a business that works for them. Dan’s success has been great, but he considers his family the greatest blessing of all. His path has always been inherently tied to his wife and children, and today Dan is going to show you how he does it.
After a severe health scare, Dan knew he needed to make some changes. His busy lifestyle included many sleepless nights and poor choices that built up to the breaking point. Luckily, Dan believed in the power of coaching, and he sought the help he needed to balance and repurpose his life. Dan thinks that there are three questions every working parent needs to ask themselves. What do you want? Who are you? What do you stand for? Dan has managed to not just balance, but integrate his parenting into his businesses. He prioritizes time with his children and makes business decisions with the family in mind. It’s all about his mindset from the outset, and you can get that mindset too! Listen this week to start making some changes in your own life.
Show Highlights:
Resources:
Dan’s Website
Dan on Facebook
Dan's Recommended Tool: Headspace Meditation App
Dan's Recommended Books:
Fatherhood is one of life’s greatest responsibilities, and yet so many of us feel completely unequipped for the role. Many first time and long time dads find it difficult to engage with their children, or otherwise feel overwhelmed with the pressures of work. How can we begin to redefine Fatherhood, and start building up intentional relationships with our kids? Luckily, we have places like Daddy Saturday to turn to. I’m talking to Justin Batt, Chief Daddy at Daddy Saturday, about how he has transformed his relationship with his kids, even as a working parent.
Daddy Saturday is a website dedicated to building resources and communities for fathers. It started when Justin’s oldest daughter was born, and he found himself being the sole caregiver on Saturdays while Mom was at work. These Saturdays with his kids became precious as he intentionally planned ways to have quality time, rather than simply checking out on his phone or becoming preoccupied with work. Now, he and his children are having grand adventures and encouraging people from across the world to do the same.
Justin is going to share all of his tips for Dads who want to transform their relationships with their kids. While it does require a mindset shift and a commitment to put the phone down, building intentional relationships with kids is incredibly easy. Fatherlessness is currently in a state of crisis, but Dads like Justin are trying to take back Saturday and encourage Dads to engage and take ownership of their responsibility. Yes, life and technology have their pressures and influences, but Justin is going to show us how easily we can build habits that will impact our children for a lifetime.
More in this episode:
• Being intentional and engaging with his kids on a Saturday became a community phenomenon.
• How Justin is encouraging other dads to change how they approach their weekends with kids.
• Fatherhood is a huge responsibility, but it’s also an opportunity.
• Be there for your kids during breakfast, or any other rallying point.
• Questions you can use to engage your kids.
• Why experiencing failure as kids can make strong adults.
• Justin tells the story of how he and his wife became business partners and life partners.
• Advice for Dads who want to start being more intentional.
• What is launching next for Justin and Daddy Saturday?
• A little bit of planning makes a world of difference.
• How to engage your kids as they get older.
• Focus on peak performance in our parenting, not just our career or our health.
• Learn all the nuts and bolts of how Justin runs Daddy Saturday.
• Sometimes, low-tech is best.
Links
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSppCEe24NP3sJEVqaQq_DA
When was the last time you got a good night’s rest? I think we can all agree that sleep is important, but have you thought about some of the negative consequences of sleep deprivation? Do you want to know how to sleep better? We have an expert for you that will tell you everything you need to know about sleep!
Dr. Michael Breus is an expert sleep researcher. He is also a father, so he knows how hard won it can be to get sleep when you are a parent. With compassion and evidence-based wisdom, Dr. Breus is going to give you sanity-saving tools to get you the best night’s sleep. We will talk about everything from when you should take a nap, when is the best time to sleep train, and how to revisit your bad sleeping habits.
Whether you want more sleep or just more quality sleep, this is the episode for you! Sleep can allow us to give our all to our jobs while also giving our children the care they need. Sleeps heals and restores, and it’s time to take it seriously!
Show Highlights:
Resources:
All the info you need for sleep issues and work
http://www.thesleepdoctor.com/
Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems
You believe in your vocation or career that your time and energy is important, but you also believe in your responsibilities as a parent. How can you find a balance between the two? Can you follow your career or civic passions while still showing up as a parent? There are also more expectations put on parents than ever before. Between career and that social pressure, it can feel like you are burning the candle at both ends.
This is exactly why I am so excited to have my friend Will Mount on the show today. He gets the pressure. He feels the burden of wanting to care for his son well, while also pursuing a job as an attorney for Juvenile Defense. Social justice is important to both Will and his wife, but they also feel the weight of these unmet expectations. In this episode, Will will share what has worked for his family, how he has created his priorities to serve his family, and which challenges were particularly difficult for him.
You are not alone! Let Will’s story be an example of how to make it work as a working parent.
More in this episode:
Links:
We all wish we had just a few more hours in our day. Between ferrying children around, keeping the house running, and trying to be successful in our career, it seems impossible for us to be able to get it all done in a day. Luckily, there are people like Ari Meisel in the world who are hacking productivity through sleek systems, outsourcing, and automation. I first heard about Ari from his book, Less Doing. I then became involved with a company he started, Get Leverage. Ari has recently left Get Leverage in order to refocus his life on his real passion: interacting with real people to give them real solutions to all of their productivity challenges.
Productivity is all about reducing stress for Ari. He is a father of four kids, and he only works while the kids are in school. That means his working hours have to be productive. Today, Ari is going to share all of the systems he has in place for improving his productivity and prioritizing time with his family. After all, everything he does is to improve the quality of life for the people he loves. That passion is then imbued into each and every task he sets his mind to, and mindset is key.
Listen this week for all the tips and strategies you can use to find a little more time in your day. Ari mentions so many wonderful resources and tools that you do not want to miss.
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Resources:
Ari Recommends:
Are you a working Mom? And are you struggling to find the right balance, between your family and your work life? If so, you're really going to enjoy today's show, because we have Suzanne Brown with us today. She's a successful entrepreneur and also the author of Mompowerment - Insights From Successful Professional Part-Time Working Moms Who Balance Career And Family.
Suzanne is a Strategic Marketing and Business Consultant and she helps seasoned entrepreneurs to figure out their high-level marketing challenges by assisting them with the writing of their business plans and with working out their market potential. As an author, she noticed a need in the marketplace and decided to go ahead and fill it, not really knowing what she was getting herself into, at the time! She is also a Speaker and an avid international traveler. Suzanne is married to a really wonderful man, who is also her IT guy, amongst the thousands of other things that he does and she is a Mom to two boys, aged six and a half and almost four. Suzanne has been working part-time ever since her boys were born, so her career has really become woven into her family life. Listen in now, and find out how she manages to find the right balance between these two important aspects of her life.
There is a phenomenon that parents are facing today, with the vast number of cross-currents around what they're expected to do for their children, in terms of their physical and emotional well being. Parents also face having increasingly fewer resources today, when it comes to both time and a network of family and friends to help them. There have been a number of books written about these difficulties and today we have the author Amanda Turner on the show with us. She has approached this dilemma from a different angle with the publications that she's written, one of which is called Vagabonding With Kids. She even refers to parenting as an extreme sport! Listen in now, to find out more about Amanda's humorous approach to parenting and travelling with kids.
Amanda writes under the name A.K.Turner. She has already written a parenting humour series and she's currently writing her travel parenting humour series, which is Vagabonding With Kids. She also writes a blog and has her own podcast. Amanda loves to connect with readers and parents and with anybody who is interested in parenting as a multicultural pursuit. Listen in to find out more about Amanda and the fabulous books she writes.
Show highlights:
Links:
Amanda's website: www.vagabondingwithkids.com
Amanda on Twitter: @vagabondingkids
Resource mentioned:
Book: Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
My guest today is Michelle Kallen, a senior associate in the DC office of the large, NY-based law firm of Paul Weiss. Michelle has a 3-year-old son and a husband who is a doctor in surgical pathology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Michelle shares how she spends her busy days working at the office, working from home, and taking care of her son, Gabriel. Managing work between clients and partners, writing briefs, and being a wife and mommy make for very busy days for Michelle!
What you’ll hear in this episode:
Do you struggle at times to know the best way to go about parenting your child? It can really be a tough call, especially when it comes to the emotional aspects. Some expert advice can really go a long way to help frazzled parents to navigate this often tricky road. Listen in, as Elisabeth Stitt offers you some really great advice on today's show.
Elisabeth is a Parent Educator and a Parent Coach and she will be joining us today, to talk about her her consulting practice and also about her new book, Parenting As A Second Language. She gives parents the concrete skills they really need, in order to become more effective, and she also supports them in the emotional journey of parenting. Listen in to find out what Elisabeth has to share with you today, about how to make deliberate and clear choices, when parenting your child and also about finding out if your parenting practices really are in line with your goals and your values.
Show highlights:
Links:
Elisabeth's website: www.elisabethstitt.com Elisabeth highly recommends that you sign up for her newsletter.
Parenting As A Second Language- A Guide For Joyful Navigating The Trials Triumphs And Tribulations Of Parenthood by Elisabeth Stitt is available from Amazon.
The guest on today's show is Karla Miller. Karla writes for the Washington Post Magazine's weekly @ Work Advice Column, where she answers questions on everything from co-worker clashes to employee rights issues. Karla also works full time at a local accounting firm and volunteers as a wife and mother of two children, who are now four and six years old. Listen in, to hear Karla's story.
Karla's Parent At Work Story started before she was even technically a parent while working for the same accounting firm that she does now. Her plan was to leave work and get her house in order about a week before her baby was due to arrive. About six weeks before her due date, she woke up to find that her water had broken. That was lesson number one: Children don't give a hoot about what your plans are. After spending a day in the hospital in labor, she was given an emergency C-Section. With that, came lesson two for Karla: You really do need excellent co-workers and a supportive work environment, in order to survive the experience of becoming a parent. Fortunately for Karla, she had all of that. Listen in now, to find out more about what Karla has learned through her experience of working and becoming a parent.
Today, Karla talks to Tom about:
If you're a new parent and you're finding it much more work and a lot less fun than you thought it would be, you're really going to gain a lot from this show. Today, in the first episode, Tom explains that his idea for the show came from his own experience as a father of four children and the juxtaposition of two books, Jennifer Senior's All Joy And No Fun and Bruce Feiler's The Secrets Of Happy Families. Listen in discover how you can live a happy life, even though you have children.
Today, Tom explains that Jennifer Senior's book is about the phenomenon that parents generally score lower on happiness surveys, when compared with people without children and that this flies in the face of the common belief that having children is the crowning achievement in life. Ms. Senior profiles parents who struggle with expectations placed on them, often by themselves, to raise well-adjusted children, with increasingly fewer available resources, such as time, money, or a network of support from family. Thomas points out that the book does, however, have a silver lining, in that most parents do experience a significant amount of joy and meaning in their lives, due to having children. Bruce Feiler's book, on the other hand, points to some possible solutions to the dilemma of parenting. He looks to the lessons learned in business and in other fields, to see if these methods can be used to teach families to function better. He gives an example from the book, of a family who adopted the use of agile management, a project management tool used in the software industry, to help with family meetings and to streamline the hectic morning routine.
Tom says that he hasn't managed to replicate agile management in his house, however, he does dream! Today, Tom tells you what you can expect to hear in his future episodes and he explains that although solutions are great, at times, it really helps just to know that the problems faced by parents are both common and survivable. Listen in today, as Thomas shares his own parenting story by reading the relevant chapter from his book, You're Pregnant, You're Fired.
Some highlights include:
Link:
Tom's website: www.spigglelaw.com/podcast