Melissa NicholsoN INTRO

MELISSA NICHOLSON: We’ve all been through a lot in the past several years and you may be feeling a little bit of PTSD coming up. But however this goes, I want to share a few things I’m doing to help me stay sane over the coming week. 

Introduction

INTRO: Welcome to Job Share Revolution. The show about job sharing—a partnership between two people to bring two minds and skill sets to one full-time position. I’m Melissa Nicholson, former job sharer turned founder of the first U.S. job share company. But it wasn’t long ago that I felt like an utter failure at work and as a new parent. Job sharing was my game-changer. I reclaimed four days a week to fully engage in my life while my capable partner handled everything. Together, we achieved more than I ever could solo. Fast forward to many lessons learned to bring you the training and support I wish I’d had to change lives and the modern-day workplace. Let’s live life and slay work.

Melissa NICHOLSON

MELISSA NICHOLSON: Well hello beautiful human. It’s your friend and host, Mel. I am so grateful you’ve joined me today for this special episode of Jobshare Revolution. My hope is that this mindset episode gives you the peace of mind and some tools for self-compassion and self-love you need this week. If you find it helpful, it would mean so much to me if you share it with a friend.

I returned from our summer pause for self-care with this 10-part series I’m calling Reaching Your Goals Despite.  Despite all we have been through collectively. Despite return-to-work mandates or layoffs. Despite everything, from paying the bills to being present for your family feeling harder.

It’s been intimate and personal: Solo episodes, just me to you to help you design work on your terms. I hope you’ve found it strategic, actionable, and supportive at a time when you might not be feeling the most supported. I brought you a five-part series to answer all the job share questions swirling around in your head. The ones that hold people back from ever taking action. Sure, reclaiming half your time to focus on yourself and your family and leveling up while sharing the load with a work bestie sounds amazing. But how do you even start? The episodes went deep to answer your questions and dispel your doubts: Is job sharing right for you? Will it work in your job? How do you even find a job share partner? How do you get your boss to approve it? Can you even afford to job share? 

You heard from my student Elizabeth McQueen who gave you an insider’s look into what taking Job Share Academy, with hands-on support and weekly group coaching with yours truly, is like.

For the second half, I shifted focus during one of the best months to find a job to help you keep your career goals on track and safeguard your job, switch careers, and find flexibility in a tough job market. But there is something else going on here. If you’re a caregiver, whether a parent or caring for aging parents, or sandwiched like me —you’ve likely taken a hit that hurts financially with the childcare and eldercare funding crisis. I mean, what’s a laid-off parent to do with the childcare-layoff catch-22 keeping parents up at night deciding whether to drop childcare or keep it while on the job hunt? It’s a lose-lose. 

So here we are at a care crossroads with moms advocating hard to make care a priority in this election. We are more than ready to stop pretending we have two separate lives, that caregiving doesn’t negatively impact our careers and hold women back. But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

As a new mother who avoided the Motherhood Penalty altogether with the time, income, and flexibility I needed by sharing my role to being panini’d as a sandwich generation dual caregiver forced out of my business for eight months, this is personal to me. Empowering caregivers to advance their careers with the time they need to care with job sharing is central to my mission for Work Muse.

By the way, job sharing and caregiving are not just for women. Men want to do both and employers have an opportunity to meet the moment.

I believe there is real hope and want to tell you why I think this time is different. Last week, I was invited to The Care Gap’s Global Tour bringing doers in the care space advocating for policy change and caregiver-employer support together. There is a lot of work to be done but we are at a tipping point, care changemakers are joining forces, and the Care Movement’s time has come. I feel it. I feel it in my bones. By next week, Kamala Harris could be elected President of the United States of America, and she’s made care central to her campaign.

I am hopeful. I am also scared. But I am more hopeful than I am scared. You know I believe in manifesting and systemic change, it’s a long game. I am well aware of how hard going against the grain can be. I mean, I only want to change the way we work in the U.S. with job sharing after all. It’s no accident that the name of this podcast is Jobshare Revolution. Kamala’s mantra is “When we fight, we win.” And I firmly believe you have to wholeheartedly believe that to manifest it. 

But however this goes, I want to share a few things I’m doing to help me stay sane over the coming week. We’ve all been through a lot in the past several years, and you may be feeling a little PTSD coming up like I am. I’m not gonna lie. My kids were in 2nd and 4th grade, such little cuties, in 2016, and feeling so hopeful about the prospect of the first female president. My son Sam even had me make him a shirt that said “Make America kind again.” In 2024, they’re high schoolers now. I have to say it was pretty special seeing how excited my daughter Iris was to cast her first vote for a woman president. So I’m thinking about how I model for my kids too and I know it starts with me.

The first thing I’m doing is giving myself a lot of grace. For me, that’s not beating myself up for not getting as much work done, getting more sleep, and taking walks with Howard the Great, our Chiweenie. In fact, last week I missed an episode. That’s OK and it’s OK if you let a few things go right now. I am giving you permission to give yourself a hall pass. 

The second thing I’m doing is to put my oxygen mask on first. Self-regulation: I’ve been thinking about this one a lot. Last week, I printed up a pyramid chart for psychological safety in the workplace—a handout from my friend Rachael Lowell Ellison an organizational psychologist and workplace strategist for one piece of the SHIFT framework Rachael teaches organizations. I know I’m not the intended audience but I’m using it personally and thought it may be of help to you, too. So there are three pieces of this pyramid: 

At the bottom is self-awareness, becoming aware of reactivity by noticing it, naming it, and investigating it. Okay, so I just want to make sure that you caught that. You have to notice it, name it, and investigate it.

A few things that Rachael recommends that you can do are practicing mindful self-compassion, using the How We Feel app, and utilizing a research-backed practice called RAIN – R is for recognizing what’s happening. A is allowing it to be there. For example, you could say The election is happening, I’m feeling a lot of anxiety about this, and I’m going to let that be.  I is to investigate with kindness, and N is to nurture yourself through it. For me, this is putting one hand on my stomach, and one hand on my heart and slowly breathing in and out several times.

The middle part of the triangle is Self-Regulation, managing your physical and emotional state. You can do this with strategies like grounding, journaling, mindfulness, exercising, and breathing. Exercising and breathing are the two I know I will be doing in the upcoming week. Those are the things that help me the most.

The top of the triangle is Adaptive Action: Acting with Resonance and Purpose. A few ways she suggests that you can do this are with transparent communication, curiosity, boundary setting and enforcement, active listening, and facilitation. Again, this is for organizations but I look at our family unit as a small organization. I’m not wrong, right?   Clear is caring and transparently, I’ve been a little foggy-minded lately—thank you menopause—so this is really where I’m putting my energy. Like I know in my bones – this is the hardest part for me.

My main goal is to practice active listening, ask the right questions, and be careful with my tone of voice. Yep, I sometimes can get that terse mom tone of voice going on. I also want to be very clear in my communication with my family members. I fully expect everyone in our family to have lots of feelings this upcoming week. So I feel like this part is really important.

Several years back, I was honored to be the first guest on Rachael and former editor of Working Mother Magazine Jennifer Owens podcast The Breadwinners. It became one of my favorite podcasts. I’ve asked Rachael to post a video series she is doing for the seven days leading up to election day to help us all navigate election week with a bit more calm. I’ll link to the podcast episode, Work Muse’s Facebook community, and Rachael’s YouTube series in the show notes. 

The third thing I plan to do is take action that feels good to me. I’ve noticed taking action makes a huge difference in how I feel, regardless of the result I’m hoping for in any situation. At heart, I’m a social justice girl and I feel deeply about the issues that affect others. It’s literally why I’m doing this work around job sharing. It’s why I was on the working board of Naral Pro-Choice Texas for years. In the few days ahead, I plan to volunteer by phone banking or block walking. Doing something just makes me feel better. Every time I do, I have positive interactions with people and I realize how connected we all are. And if getting out the vote isn’t it for you, volunteer at a nonprofit, or help an elderly neighbor. I promise you will feel so much better.

Now if you happen to be in my hood and see me running blasting the A Star is Born soundtrack, you’ll know I had to pull out the self-care big guns to get it all out of my body. For the record, I am not a runner. Swimming, yes. Dancing, yes. Yoga, uh huh. Biking, sure. Running, no way.

Just before recording this, I heard former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on a podcast and almost couldn’t believe my ears. It was so fortuitous. Here is what she had to say, “A Care Agenda that has to happen in our country. I think we are the only developed nation that does not have affordable childcare. A child tax credit is so important. Home health care for our seniors. Family Medical Leave. So if you want to talk about how we can make a big difference in our economy, it’s the fullest empowerment of women.” That’s Nancy Pelosi. I’ll just leave it there. A perfect place for us, friend. 

I want to let you know how much your support, kind reviews and ratings, and your shares for Jobshare Revolution mean to me. They really do. 

We’ve got big things in the works at Work Muse for you all, and big things, these big things take deep work so that we can bring you the very best content from job sharing lessons to mindset minisodes to expert and job share interviews so you can make your big moves for the work-life compatibility you’re looking for. With that, we are on pause for just a few short months and we will be back in the New Year.

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped little engine that could social good business and podcast with a ginormous mission to change the face of work. And for Heaven’s Sake, make sure you are following the podcast. But better than that, make sure you are signed up for our newsletter workmuse.com forward slash newsletter—where we get into all the big issues and topics that can impact your life, including events that matter to you. Plus, you may even laugh a little that you pee. I’m just sayin’…Okay,  make sure that you’re signed up. It’s no ordinary boring newsletter; it’s personal, it’s deep, and it’s really freakin’ funny too. It will get your juices going and get you thinking. I’ll link to it in the show notes but make sure you’re signed up: workmuse dot com forward slash newsletter. Okay? Okay then.

I love you to the moon and back. You are my work muse. And remember, it’s all in you.