Melissa NicholsoN INTRO

MELISSA NICHOLSON: There’s just something in the air this year, and I was feeling the need to just talk about it with you, how I handle things when I’m having a difficult time when it’s hard out there.

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: Hey there. Beautiful human. Welcome back to the Job Share Revolution podcast. Thank you for joining me on the show today. I have to be honest, I typically do not come to the show without notes. Bullet points. A loose script even. But there’s just something in the air this year and I was feeling the need to just talk about it with you. How I handle things when I’m having a difficult time when it’s hard out there.

I hope that you were able to participate in the Be Your Best Self in 2025 Challenge. I shared that I created that challenge several years back for our community but soon realized that I was creating it as much for myself.

Everybody loved it. The AHA’s were off the charts. I got so many positive responses and if you haven’t had a chance to do it, go grab it. It’s not too late. It’s never too late. So all you have to do is go to workmuse.com/bestself. Share it with a friend. I think it will really help people who are going through something right now to put their heads in the right space and help put their hearts in the right space.

That said, I want to talk about, you know, just the day-to-day, how we are handling things. And I really had started to think about this myself in my own life before the election, actually.

I’ve been thinking about it for years able to access some things from some very personal, very troubling, tough, traumatic experiences. My life was pretty lucky go easy most of my life. You know, just the regular ups and downs that people have. The regular struggles. But I went through a really challenging time right in the middle of the pandemic. A lot of people did, and it was a personally traumatic time in my family of origin. My mom came into my care. There was some elder abuse in the situation and I wasted a lot of energy trying to explain to people, trying to get people to see what needed to happen in this situation, and the horrible implications of what they were doing. And I learned something—I learned that all I did was cost myself a lot of pain and suffering.

Nobody was going to change. They weren’t going to listen. They weren’t going to have a “come to Jesus” and open up their ears. It wasn’t going to happen. So I had to think about that. How was I going to get my life back in order and make sure that everybody in my life—my kids, my husband, myself—we all pulled through it in the end. And that my mom pulled through it too. This is really hard and I know I’m not giving like, all the details, but I’m not going to give all the details and that’s okay. I just think that it has brought a very unique perspective to the era and the time that we’re dealing with right now.

So I think I’ve shared this on the podcast before, but right around the election, maybe a couple of weeks before the election, a friend of mine who’s an organizational psychologist posted a graphic for some work that she does. It had to do with creating psychological safety in the workplace. And it was your typical pyramid at the bottom of the pyramid was self-awareness. The middle part was self-regulation, and the top part was, you know what actions are you going to take at the moment? When I saw it, I printed it right then and there. I tacked it up on a shelf in my office where I could see it, and I thought, “I’m going to use this for my family.” Like I’m going to use this for myself and my family.

We did an episode or two about how to handle things that are outside of your control, and I’ll link to those episodes in the show notes for you. We’re in this unique period of history right now. We just are. We have been and so many of us have gone through a lot. And if we haven’t been able to do the personal work, it’s going to be very hard to handle stress in the world that feels overwhelming and is completely outside of our control.

And for me, I can tell you that doing the work looked like finding a therapist, right when my mom showed up. One that could work with my husband and myself. And that wasn’t easy. It was the middle of the pandemic, and the therapist was stressed out, and everybody needed a therapist. And we were a complicated case that felt a lot easier to say, “You know, I can’t really handle this right now.” In fact, I had a therapist say to me, “90% of me is saying don’t take you and 10% of me is saying take you.” And I just remember saying, “Thank you very much,” hanging up the phone and becoming a mess of tears, thinking, “I’m looking for help. Why won’t anybody help me?”

So therapy was a big part of my personal journey in going through something very difficult, but also having a really open, trusting communication with my life partner, my husband, Mike. I think that was really helpful. And having an open, transparent relationship with my children, my kids, that was a big deal too, you know, throughout those years.

And if I think back all the way to 2016 even…I know random year. You know, at that time, my kids were in elementary school, mid-elementary school. And then during the pandemic were their middle school years, which they aged into the high school years. And now, we are mid-to-end of the high school years. That’s a lot of time that has been sucked up by a lot of strife in the world.

Whether it is all of these horrible climate change incidents, whether it’s political strife, whether it has been, you know, racial strife, or just horrific violence happening in the world—things that feel close to home because we are in every news channel every day paying attention to all the things, and it’s kind of hard to completely turn off from that.

So as you’ve thought about how you want to be in the world this year, and who you want to show up as, I hope you’ve also carefully considered what you want to say “no” to, what you want to put limits on, what you want to protect while still being able to tune in to the things that are necessary and needed so that you can actually be the helper. Because the best thing that you can do during a tumultuous time is to be the helper.

And of course, this is a job sharing podcast, and I am always going to advocate on behalf of job sharing. And I’ll tell you something. I went through the 2008 recession in marketing and advertising when every advertiser pulled their money and we were 100% commission employees. It was pretty rough, scary financial times. In fact, I have never had a job with a base salary. Isn’t that crazy? But I have always been self-employed or I was in marketing and sales, so I have just always had to use my grit, get scrappy, and move forward. So when I was job sharing, the most incredible thing was when you had these topsy-turvy times and you just really weren’t sure what was going to happen, you had that partner.

You had this person who was going through it with you, in it with you, who was completely vested in everything about your life, your work and your life.  It was such a secure place. Things that would drive other employees to quit left and right and give them a lot of angst would just kind of roll off your shoulders because you had that internal built-in support system, that person looking out for you.

And when they were having their little moment, you were going to swoop in and be their hero. They’re going to be your hero. You’re going to be their hero. And in these times, and it’s not just a cliche, I know it’s everywhere right now—look to community. Look to community. But I think that it’s very important that you get strong inside by doing the work to where you’re leading with empathy, compassion, and open-mindedness. That you tune out the things that are noise, that are unhelpful. That you tune in to the things that are the most needed pieces of information that are going to inform you and help you in the world. And you step away. You put your limits. You have your boundaries. I think it’s so important to take care of these things that make you feel solid and secure, so that you can be the helper and you can lean into your community. And you can see the people who really need the help the most that are not able to be there. They’re not able to take the chances to do the things that you’re able to do.

I know this is in many ways unrelated to Jobshare Revolution podcast, but we’re going through some very strange times, and I’m not going to normalize it. I want to make sure that I am bringing you something useful in your life. And if you can’t sort your life out and your work and your career and all of that, if you’re so angsty and so full of strife internally, you’re not going to be able to have a work-life balance. You’re not going to be able to enjoy any part of your life.

So I just hope that in sharing a few of my strategies for really becoming aware of what’s happening in my body, what’s triggering me, what am I feeling, and what kinds of things can I do to self-regulate? (I can be of help to you). Do I need to take a hike? Do I need to be in nature? Do I need to have a meditation first thing in the morning? That’s something I’m adapting thanks to the challenge. It’s something I identified that I need to adapt. And what things do I need to let go of? Those are just some questions I’m asking myself.

This is just a short episode. Your minisode. Your mindset motivation. I hope it has been helpful to you today. We will get back to our regularly scheduled job share goodness next week on Tuesday, same time, same place. If no one’s told you, I love you. I believe in you. And you will be okay. It’s all in you.