Great insight for strong women and the people who care about them.

Alpha women portray a strength of mind and independence in every sense of the word. Accustomed to taking charge, they can intimidate some people. Alpha women are confident and ambitious and unafraid to tell people what is what. That kind of power can be off-putting for some partners who are either overly competitive with the Alpha woman or too submissive. So how can a true Alpha woman maintain a strong and healthy relationship?

1. Alpha Women Need To Be Challenged

A partner to an Alpha woman needs to be able to hold his own. The Alpha woman needs someone to compete with, yet someone who is secure enough in their abilities to be gracious in victory and a good sport in defeat.

 

2. They Need Trust

They need to know that what they tell you in confidence will stay in that relationship vault. An Alpha woman needs to feel the allowance to be vulnerable and let their guard down once in a while. They need to trust someone not to stab them in the back for personal gain.

3. They Need Respect

The Alpha woman needs her partner to respect her decisions and not second-guess them at every turn. It is okay to challenge her before the decision is made, but not afterward. She needs her space and boundaries respected as well. This includes not being lied to for whatever reason. She respects someone who doesn’t belittle her when she is angry or put her on a pedestal she will fall off of eventually.

4. Alpha Women Need Their Independence

They need to be able to enjoy their personal passions and their friends. Alpha women don’t need a clingy person who can’t survive for a few hours without them. They want someone like them who also has a life outside of the relationship.

 

5. They Need Someone Who Can Keep Up

Alpha women have things they have to do and they know no one is going to do those things for them. They are moving at a high speed, time-efficient and booked solid almost 24/7. Someone who can hang with them and their high-pressure, high-intensity environment is what they are looking for.

6. They Need an Equal Partner

Someone who is an equal partner; someone who carries their own weight in the relationship – this is who Alpha women will respect. They need someone who has their own opinions, and who has their ego in a healthy place. In other words, they need someone to walk with them, not behind them or in front of them. Their partner doesn’t need to have the same opinions, hobbies, or friends as they do. Alpha women respect a partner who is a complete and self-sufficient person on their own.

 

7. Alpha Females Need To Laugh

Like many people, Alpha women love someone who can make them laugh and lighten the mood in their often stressful and high-pressure lives. They need someone who can bring a smile to their face, who can tease them and be teased in return without hurting feelings on either side.

8. They Need To Be Called Out When Necessary

This one is challenging, but Alpha women need someone who is strong and secure enough to call them out on their bullsh*t. Someone to remind them that they are not perfect and that they can, in fact, make mistakes from time to time. Everyone needs their ego checked occasionally, and the Alpha woman is no exception. Their power and personality makes it necessary to have someone who will reign them in a bit when they go off the rails.

 

 

 

9. Alpha Women Need Someone Who Is Informed

In order to be all of these things, a partner of an Alpha woman should be informed about things from current events to esoteric knowledge. They need to be able to have an intelligent conversation with the Alpha woman and express ideas on her level. In the age of social media and information bubbles, it is important for the partner of an Alpha woman to have a well-tuned bullsh*t detector.

 

 

10. Alpha Females Need Someone With Tact

Most importantly, they need someone with tact, someone who knows when to have that intense talk about something important and when to let it go. They need someone who can handle their moods and emotions without ruffling feathers. An Alpha woman needs someone who is thoughtful and sensitive enough to pick up on how she is feeling and broach difficult subjects in private.

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You have to read to the end to hear: “your kids don’t need all the stuff and experiences, being present is gift enough.”

Davon Cannon never thought he would spend $5,000 on a four-day summer vacation. But there he was, buying Universal Studios tickets for his three sons, reserving a room at one of the theme park’s resorts. On Saturday, they drove down to Florida.

“We’ve never spent that much money,” says Mr. Cannon, a 44-year-old IT manager in Grayson, Ga. But he can’t stop thinking about all the things his boys have missed over the past couple of years—the family get-togethers they didn’t attend, the lonely birthdays spent jumping in a rented bounce house, no friends allowed.

“I really just want to make sure they have the best time possible,” he says of moving on from those sequestered days.

After more than two years of canceled graduation ceremonies, virtual bar mitzvahs and spring-breaks-turned-staycations, parents are scrambling to make up for lost time. So many childhood milestones were missed, they reason, whether in state shutdowns, or positive home tests and quarantines.

“Are we messing up our kids?,” we wonder. Just how critical is a fourth birthday party to a happy upbringing? And why do everyone else’s celebrations and travels always look so perfect on Instagram? Maybe splurging can fix this.

“We’re going big,” says Kerry Doman, who invited me, during the course of our one-hour interview, to the combined birthday party she’s throwing for her soon-to-be 6-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. There will be a food truck. There will be a professional Elsa from “Frozen.” There might be 100 guests.

Ms. Doman, who runs a website geared toward parents in the Detroit area, has been working on the September fête since June. But she knows that booking the vendors and sending out the invitations are no guarantee that Covid-19 won’t interrupt her plans. Plenty of milestones continue to be missed as the latest wave of infections fuels a fresh round of cancellations and inconveniences. A positive test could mean a rescheduled, scaled-back party, or just their family of five, gathered around the table with a cake.

“It’s slightly deflating,” Ms. Doman says of the fact that plans are still so tenuous. She reasons this is just our reality right now, and it’s teaching her kids resilience. “It’s a great learning experience that, hey, there are disappointing moments in our life.”

Still, wouldn’t it be nice if our plans worked out for once?

“I wanted to give him this party so bad,” says Whitney Hoffman-Bennett, an Atlanta mom whose youngest son celebrated his third birthday—and first party—last month. She never thought she would be the parent shepherding her three kids to soccer, gymnastics and any sleepover they get invited to.

“I have a hard time of saying no now, mostly because I feel like I had to say no for so long,” she says.

Trying to make up for every missed event and activity generates more stress and guilt. We’re exhausted trying to have it all. We worry about overcompensating—will our kids see this year’s treats and special occasions as their new normal? Even as we mourn what was lost during the pandemic, we’re wringing our hands about everything that was gained—freedom, flexibility, quiet moments—as some of us head back to offices and the pace of our old lives.

Ms. Hoffman-Bennett, who works at marketing-software company CallRail, is quick to rattle off the milestones she was able to witness while working from home. With daycare closed, she caught her son’s first steps, heard his first words. It was magical, and makes her feel a pang about the fact that she returned to work three months after having her older children.

“I was, like, God, this is so great. We’ve missed it all,” she says.

Anxiety is at the heart of modern child-rearing, says Andrew Bomback, a physician in New York and author of a forthcoming book about the cultural history of parenting.

When you have a baby, “You’re taking on this performance role,” he says. Judgment comes from other parents on the playground, comments on social media and the older woman at the grocery store who really thinks your newborn should be wearing socks.

A trip to Disney World or the first-day-of-kindergarten photo shoot takes on added pressure and significance because it proves to ourselves, and everyone else, that we’re good parents.

“We’re experiencing this family moment,” says Dr. Bomback, “And we need to let everybody know that we’re doing it in a really successful way.”

Do our kids actually care? The pandemic has had steep mental-health consequences for many, especially school-age kids. But are big milestone celebrations—many of which are only available to the privileged, anyway—more important than a weekday evening spent snuggling together with your kid on the couch?

I felt awful about the fact that my two kids, who are 3 and 5 years old, hadn’t experienced much travel. But when we finally took them to Washington, D.C., this spring, my son’s main recollection of the trip, reported to his preschool class on Monday morning, was that he had gotten to have a Popsicle before breakfast. (True.)

Some parents’ concerns about their kids are really projections of their own anxieties, Dr. Bomback says. “They just assume that kids are feeling the same.”

If you’re struggling with feelings of grief or anger, try writing down all the activities you’ve had to skip, suggests Pooja Lakshmin, an Austin, Texas-based psychiatrist and chief executive of Gemma, a mental-health education startup. Next to each one, list your deepest fear associated with the loss—for example, that canceling your child’s birthday party will ruin her summer or make him a social pariah at daycare. Then ask yourself how likely that worst-case scenario is.

“You’re reality-checking the situation,” Dr. Lakshmin says.

Pick one item from the list to splurge on, she advises. Then accept that you won’t be able to fully replace the missed milestone, no matter how much you spend.

Victor Aragon, a customer-service worker in Chicago, has taken to ordering impromptu gifts for his son and daughter recently: a special-edition CD from South Korean boy band BTS, a wrestling figurine.

He can’t quite shake some of the losses of the last couple of years. There was the dance recital that was recorded in the studio with no audience, the First Communion with only immediate family allowed. He feels cheated on his kids’ behalf, and worries they weren’t able to make deep memories to carry into adulthood. The presents help him cope, a bit.

“There’s days where I feel that I’m happy that I’m able to do that for them,” Mr. Aragon says. “And then there’s days that I’m sad that I wasn’t able to give them more.”

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Checking in with employees only works if you do something with what you learn.

Ask your employees to describe their day in just an emoji, and you might receive some enlightening information.

In light of labor shortages and the Great Resignation, more companies have been adopting employee engagement software to regularly take the temperature of the workplace–and some employee retainment experts consider them a new essential.

There is no shortage of software options to choose from–companies like Officevibe, Culture Amp, and TinyPulse all offer similar services. Essentially, they allow companies to send their employees short “pulse surveys” that ask them questions pertaining to their work experience and satisfaction with their jobs. Workers might answer questions by using sliding scales, emoji, or multiple-choice options, though some surveys allow for more detailed follow-up explanations.

Typically, surveys are completed anonymously, though some give employees the option of revealing their identities. The platforms survey frequently–anywhere from weekly to monthly.

Checking in regularly

Quarterly and annual performance reviews are common ways for businesses to check in with employees, and more companies are embracing stay interviews–one-on-one sessions that aim to measure employee satisfaction. Pulse surveys are one more tactic in this toolkit, albeit more bite-size, and they can shed light on more time-sensitive matters and concerns that might be left out of a more formal review process. “The more avenues you give people to provide input, the more you get a chance to address those things while they’re still at your company,” says Pam Holmberg, vice president of people at the analytics cloud company ThoughtSpot, which has been using Officevibe on a monthly cadence since 2018.

Pulse surveys are also helpful in work environments where shift employees may not have frequent face time with their managers. The senior living community Belmont Village, which has several locations across the U.S., uses monthly pulse surveys from OnShift, an employee engagement software designed specifically for senior care centers, and sends more frequent check-ins to new employees. Because 40 percent of employee turnover happens within the first 90 days of new employment, OnShift CEO Mark Woodka says these surveys help managers provide additional training or address any issues that might otherwise lead a worker to leave. In 2021, Belmont Village averaged 70 percent new-hire retention–well above the industry average, which vice president of training Troy Yates attributes to the use of these surveys.

Analyzing hard-to-pin-down metrics

The types of questions asked on pulse surveys aren’t limited to those with one- or two-word or emoji answers. Many platforms devise questions that allow for elaboration. In an Officevibe pulse survey, for example, an employee may be asked to rank how involved they feel in the decisions around their work, or if they feel a sense of accomplishment around their work. “It’s deeper than, ‘Do you like what you do?'” says Officevibe HR expert and researcher Juliette Jeannotte. “These questions are driven by research, because employee engagement is a science. It’s something that we regularly study, and it’s not static in time.” Officevibe and most other software options also offer the ability to customize surveys.

To help management make sense of the data, some employee engagement software uses artificial intelligence. TinyPulse and Culture Amp use machine learning to detect themes in survey responses, giving leaders a bigger picture of employee satisfaction and an idea of the most recurring issues. Officevibe uses A.I. to prompt survey respondents to elaborate on negatively answered questions, and provides managers with A.I.-driven analyses of their survey results so they can more easily take action.

Creating a culture of transparency

After a pulse survey is completed, management of course sees the data–but it may be just as important for employees to have a look at their collective responses. Charlotte Kackley, HR manager at the financial services company Merchant Maverick (which operates remotely across the U.S.), sends pulse surveys through the software platform Gusto and inputs responses to a company dashboard. “That way, team members can see that their feedback was heard, and they can understand our objectives going forward,” she says.

Then, those objectives should be addressed in a timely manner, says Kathleen Quinn Votaw, CEO of the talent recruitment company TalenTrust–ideally, within 30 to 90 days. “It’s the kiss of death if you’re conducting surveys like this and you don’t make any changes based on what you’ve learned,” she says. In addition to clearly telling employees how you’re going to make positive changes, she says that business leaders need to practice accountability: admit where you may have fallen short, and thank employees for their feedback. “A little bit of humility goes a long way,” she says.

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Lots are saying remote is awesome. I agree with this Atlantic article: I want to meet you in person when we can.

“If, as it is said to be not unlikely in the near future—the principle of sight is applied to the telephone as well as that of sound, earth will be in truth a paradise, and distance will lose its enchantment by being abolished altogether,” the British author Arthur Mee wrote in 1898.

So, fellow Zoomers, how do you like paradise? It turns out that in nirvana, the customary greeting is “I think you’re on mute” and your colleagues may or may not be wearing pants.

Zoom and related technologies were necessary during the COVID-19 shutdowns. At a time when more than 40 percent of the U.S. labor force was working full-time from home, videoconferencing arguably saved the economy from much worse collapse. Even as workplaces have opened back up, these technologies have allowed some workers to increase their productivity and given businesspeople options if they want to avoid the appalling state of commercial air travel.

But these technologies are not costless in quality of work, or in quality of life. Videochatting may promise the benefits of face-to-face meeting without germs and commuting. But it can provoke burnout for many, and even depression. When it comes to human interaction, it is like junk food: filling and convenient, but no substitute for a healthy diet.

By now, you have no doubt heard of “Zoom fatigue,” the range of maladies, including exhaustion and headaches, that are associated with hours and hours of virtual meetings. Survey data from October 2020—when 71 percent of people who could perform their job from home were doing so all or most of the time—revealed that among those using videoconferencing often, more than a third were worn out by it. Not surprisingly, Zoom fatigue rises with frequency and duration of meetings.

Before 2020, very few scholars were focused on the effects of virtual interaction, so research on what Zoom life is doing to us—and why—is in its infancy. One review of the emerging literature in the journal Electronic Markets found that Zoom fatigue has six root causes: asynchronicity of communication (you aren’t quite in rhythm with others, especially when connections are imperfect); lack of body language; lack of eye contact; increased self-awareness (you are looking at yourself a lot of the time); interaction with multiple faces (you are focusing on many people at once in a small field of view, which is confusing and unnatural); and multitasking opportunities (you check your email and the news while trying to pay attention to the meeting).

Scientists have found that videoconferencing affects many different kinds of brain activity. Among other things, it mutes mirror neurons (which help us understand and empathize with others) and confounds our Global Positioning System neurons (which code our location). In the latter case, virtual interaction creates confusion and burnout by placing the Zoomer simultaneously in one physical space and another—perhaps very distant—virtual space. Think of what happens to your phone battery when it is on Waze trying to figure out where you are. It might feel a lot like what happens to your mental energy when your brain is trying to figure out where you are—and it might help explain why an hour on Zoom can feel like four hours in person.

Although having virtual interactions may be better for well-being than having no social interactions, using video-calling to the point of fatigue has been shown to predict high rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction with life. Virtual interaction is notably problematic for students, which helps explain the disastrous learning outcomes during the pandemic, especially for at-risk youth. This principle extends to college students: One 2021 study in the journal NeuroRegulation found that almost 94 percent of undergraduates had “moderate to considerable difficulty with online learning.”

At work, virtual interactions appear to cause two main problems (besides basic unpleasantness): lower performance and suppressed creativity. In a 2021 report in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers who monitored 103 virtual workers’ fatigue during meetings found that when workers used their camera (versus having it turned off), they were less engaged during meetings that day and the one after as well. Scholars writing in Nature in 2022 found that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas. Virtual work may also lead to more siloing in the workplace as worker networks become more static. I have heard these complaints constantly in my field of academia, which relies on creativity and sharing ideas. As one friend who started teaching at a new university at the beginning of the pandemic told me, “Even after a million faculty meetings on Zoom, I still couldn’t pick three of my colleagues out of a police lineup.”

The balance of evidence to date suggests that some people suffer a lot more from Zoom fatigue than others, but that for millions it likely deteriorates well-being, and for some—especially young people—this can be catastrophic for learning and mental health. For happiness and productivity, virtual interactions are better than nothing. But in-person interactions are better than virtual ones for life satisfaction, work engagement, and creativity.

Like most things, the right amount of virtual interaction is not zero. But for many of us, the amount we’re getting presently is too high. Each of us should think about virtual interaction more or less like nonnutritious food: In a pinch it’s okay, but we shouldn’t rely on it for regular social sustenance, because it will hurt our health.

Accordingly, employers, teachers, and friends should use the technologies as judiciously as possible, keeping virtual meetings, classes, and conversations short and to-the-point. And each of us should practice good Zoom hygiene by insisting on boundaries around our use of the technology. When possible, turn off your camera during meetings; use the old-fashioned phone with friends; agree with colleagues before meetings to an absolute, drop-dead end time, ideally after 30 minutes or less. Also, pay attention to the creeping effects of Zoom fatigue, such as burnout and depression, and make sure you have regular breaks from the technology, such as no-Zoom weekends and a complete moratorium during your summer vacation, if you take one. Finally, on your Zoomiest days, program in some time with at least one real live human.

What bothers me the most about video-based technologies is that they make the realest part of life—human interaction—feel fake. If you are a fan of futurism, you know that some would say that such a feeling could be close to the truth of our situation: Many scientists and philosophers have suggested that we all might be living in a simulation of some advanced civilization. As fantastic as it sounds, Scientific American reported in 2020 that the odds of this are probably about 50–50.

I don’t know how to assess this hypothesis, but I don’t want it to be true. I want my life to be “base reality”—my temporal body to be genuine flesh and my soul something that is authentic and eternal. I want happiness and love to be real. This is, I suppose, a philosophical objection to our sudden move into virtual space with one another: Virtual interaction is a simulation of real human life. The images on the screen are not other humans; they are digital icons representing humans in a way that makes me interact with them like fellow humans.

Just as I want to be real, I want you to be as well. I want you to be something more than a two-dimensional pixelated image, assembled from a series of ones and zeroes through cyberspace. So, if it’s all the same to you, let’s meet in person.

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Mental fitness doesn’t have to be hard or fancy. It has to be consistent.

Not everyone prioritizes their mental fitness. But Prince Harry believes that they should: “We all have greatness within us,” the royal says in a video for the wellness startup BetterUp released this week. “Mental fitness helps us unlock it.”

In the video, the Duke of Sussex sat down with organizational psychologist Adam Grant, snowboarding Olympian Chloe Kim, and a BetterUp member to discuss ways to build and maintain resilience. BetterUp is a San Francisco-based leadership coaching company, which the royal joined last year as chief impact officer.

Most people are aware that if they don’t take care of their bodies, they don’t function at peak performance. But that same awareness does not extend to mental fitness, says Grant, who is also a member of BetterUp’s Science Board. “If we do not invest in mental fitness, performance cannot be sustained,” he explains. “Your body cannot function without your mind.”

It may be difficult for people to figure out how to consistently maintain peak mental performance on their own, but there are ways that employers and organizations can help. Here are three:

1. Normalize the behavior

It’s increasingly OK to talk about well-being and mental fitness at work, and that has helped shed any stigma around the topic in recent years. But it’s still relatively new for many. Team leaders should prioritize conversations about mental fitness with their teams, according to BetterUp’s Jacinta Jiménez, who is vice president of coach innovation at the startup and is also a psychologist. She recommends that organizational leaders start out by dedicating a team meeting to discussing the importance of mental fitness and how it helps sustain performance. Doing so can help others feel more comfortable when opening up.

2. Erect a strategy

After teams begin to normalize talking about wellness in the workplace, next up is building out different techniques to fortify mental fitness within the team. This will largely be circumstantial to the needs of a team and what resonates with an individual: It could be journaling, practicing mindfulness five minutes before the start of a meeting, or spending time in nature with a colleague. “There’s so many unique ways to build mental fitness, and so having the team develop their own unique set of behaviors that they want to invest in makes a big difference in terms of getting team buy in,” Jiménez says.

3. Don’t just talk the talk

To make for the most authentic experience, Jiménez says team leaders should follow their own advice and get personal with their teams. A leader modeling the behavior themselves (such as sharing any outcomes they noticed when journaling) can help motivate team members to try out similar behaviors.

And if teams can infuse a culture that’s open to speaking about wellness within their organizations, it can make a difference in what separates a good company from a great one. “If we can design individual routines, organizational cultures, and team norms that prevent burnout and languishing, it’s a lot easier to maintain performance,” Grant says. “I cannot overstate the importance of a leader or manager saying ‘I care more about your well-being, than I do about your results.’ ”

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Comparing ourselves to others is a slippery slope. Here’s how to stay on the positive side of it.

We all experience feelings that are difficult to handle. But between our emotion-phobic society and the debilitating uncertainty of modern times, we usually don’t know how to talk about them, much less handle them.

Well, that’s where the online community of Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy — the duo behind the @lizandmollie Instagram account — comes in. They, like so many creators, have built a place where people can gather to laugh and cry about things like productivity guilt, anxiety and Zoom fatigue. Below, Fosslien and Duffy offer tools to help you understand the feelings that arise when you compare yourself to other people and start to move forward from them. 

Left unchecked, comparison can make you miserable. Seeing people be better at something than you are can feel like a vicious uprooting. But with the right tools, you can use your envy to uncover what you value.

Here’s how to take your envy, decode it and turn it into positive action:

1. Listen to your strongest triggers

Twenty years ago, while waiting for coffee to brew, a young lawyer flipped through her law school’s alumni magazine. When she read about an alum who was a full-time writer, her stomach dropped like an elevator – but that’s what led Gretchen Rubin, now a New York Times bestselling author, to pursue a new career as an author.

That’s right – her career change didn’t happen because of a conversation with her boss or visits with a life coach. It happened because she felt desperately envious of someone else’s life. Comparison can teach you what you value when you see yourself envying someone doing something you want, even if you haven’t consciously allowed yourself to want it.

Self-awareness can help you turn your feelings into something useful, so the next time envy rears its head, ask yourself:

• What do they have that makes me feel less than?

• What void do I believe having it would fill?

• Do I really want what they have?

• If yes, how much, and is it worth taking action to try to get it for myself?

The more specific your answers, the better you’ll be able to redirect your emotion into actions and strategies.

2. Make sure your envy doesn’t become malicious

Comparison-induced envy can be a great motivator and guide. It can also make us bitter.

Psychologists distinguish between benign envy, when we admire someone and try to emulate them, and malicious envy, when we dislike the other person for having what we want. It’s the difference between “They have a penthouse apartment, and it’s cool how they got it” and “I hate that their home has panoramic views, and I want them to suffer.”

To be clear: Both are painful. Benign envy motivates us to work harder to improve, while malicious envy makes us nasty.

We often feel malicious envy when we perceive scarcity. But in many cases, another person’s ability to achieve something is evidence that it’s possible for us, too.

To shift your thinking from malicious to benign envy, try these phrases that we heard from reader Aya:

• “I’m inspired by _____. Maybe I can learn from them, or ask them to be my mentor.”

• “I haven’t done what they’ve done . . . yet.”

• “Every person is on their own journey. I’m grateful for mine.”

• “If my favorite role models stopped what they were doing, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy their incredible work.”

3. Pick a broader baseline

If you see a friend hitting a personal milestone, it’s easy to feel you’re far behind in life. But if you think of 10 or 20 of your acquaintances, chances are a bunch will be in the same boat as you – and might even be happily sailing along.

In an experiment, researchers asked people to assess their running abilities. They found that participants spontaneously compared themselves with the best runner they could think of and deemed themselves not so great. The researchers then prompted the participants to list the top 10 runners they knew personally. By reflecting on the seventh- or ninth-best runner they had rubbed shoulders with, people suddenly felt a lot better. Comparing themselves with a broader group diminished the enormous gulf between themselves and what they thought of as “good.”

Psychologists also find that broadening your perspective can be helpful when you experience what they call deprivation intolerance: when you don’t get what you want and that causes you to plunge into a pit of despair.

The next time you desperately covet what someone else has, swap out the question “Why don’t I have that?” with “Do I have enough?”

Chances are, you can survive without whatever it is you pine for, and not having it has no impact on your worth as a person.

4. Compare the nitty-gritty

A few years ago, Liz learned that a friend-of-a-friend had been promoted and would soon be leading a team of 200 people. Liz was overcome with envy. “Does my jealousy mean I should shift all my plans?” she wondered. “Have I been wrong about who I am and what I want?”

But the next morning, Liz awoke with the certainty that she didn’t want to trade places with her acquaintance. She wasn’t actually longing for the day-to-day that came with being a manager of managers; she just wanted the prestige and social validation of announcing a big, exciting accomplishment.

Thinking through a day-in-the-life helped Liz realize that she didn’t need to shift her entire career but instead should keep going in her current path and look for more opportunities to become more visible.

Here’s a list of questions that can help you make better comparisons:

• What would a day-in-the-life look like?

• What specific pieces of that life do I want?

• What specific pieces of that life do I not want?

• What experience does this person have?

• Is this comparison based on some imagined/ better version of myself or other people’s/ society’s expectation of me?

• Am I willing to give up the good things in my current life to have that?

5. Compare present you against past you

You may not always be exactly where you want to be, but chances are you’re not where you used to be, either. Pausing to take stock of your accomplishments – and the skills you’ve developed as a result – can help you feel proud of your progress and untangle yourself from malicious envy.

Though reader Eliza has always loved mountains, she avoided running or hiking because her asthma left her at a disadvantage compared with her peers. In her late twenties, she finally decided to go for it, even if that meant going for it at a slower pace.

“I will never be able to hike as fast as others,” she told us. “I’ll always be slower because of my low lung capacity. The only person I can and should compare myself to is me.” Eliza’s persistence and new attitude paid off: Just before her 30th birthday, she completed a five-day hike.

A simple way to make this type of self-comparison a habit is to take a few minutes at the end of each month to reflect on these prompts:

• What have I learned over the past few weeks?

• What was difficult, and how would I approach it differently given what I know now?

• What progress did I make?

Yes, comparing yourself with others is unavoidable, but by applying some of this advice, you can learn to use it to your advantage. Remember that you only see the tip of the iceberg, especially on social media – someone whose life seems perfect on Instagram may be dealing with struggles that you’re completely unaware of. One last good rule of thumb is to balance comparing up (looking at people who have more than you) with comparing down (looking at those who are worse off than you).

Adapted from the new book Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, 2022.

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Many leaders will adapt to change being thrust at them. Some of our employees need intentional help to deal with change. This insightful article shares why some of our peeps aren’t thrilled with returning in person.

In their recent McKinsey Quarterly cover story “‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours,” authors Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger made the point that many employers don’t really know why their employees are leaving in droves. After reading the story, Adria Horn, executive vice president of workforce at Tilson, a national telecom provider based in Portland, Maine, emailed Aaron De Smet. Horn is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve and an army veteran who served five tours of duty overseas between 2003 and 2010. The McKinsey story, she wrote in her letter, “leads me to my own thesis: employees don’t know why employees are leaving. And this is more important.”Horn compared her feelings after returning to the US from deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan to the struggles of employees negotiating the ambiguity of adjusting to a new normal of work, such as returning to the office after a long stretch of muddling through the crisis created by a global pandemic. Of course, the experience of working from home or in an office is in no way comparable to the intensity of serving in a combat zone. But the emotional reaction to returning from deployment does parallel what many workers are experiencing now. “This Great Resignation is actually a normal response that most people have never gone through,” Adria wrote. “I’ve experienced this kind of thing after every return from deployment.”Aaron called Adria soon after receiving the letter, and over the past month, the two have engaged in a running conversation about the causes of the Great Resignation, the nature of redeployment anomie, confusion, grief, and anger, and the opportunity for leaders to respond in ways that serve both employees and the company. The following is an edited version of their conversations, with excerpts from Adria’s letter.

Employees are confused—as they should be

“Between 2003 and 2010, I deployed five times—Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, Indonesia. Every time I returned, I’d sit with my unit in a dark theater on post to receive a mandatory return and reintegration brief from the chaplain. The chaplain would show us a PowerPoint presentation for an hour, telling us all that things will feel different, that even though you’re happy to be back, you’ll feel like you don’t fit in, that your house and your routine will feel strange, that your family won’t understand you, and you won’t understand them or why. It just kept going with hopes of prepping us to be more aware of these internal feelings and to act on them accordingly, not emotionally. On the surface, I guess I appreciated the warning, but I never understood the ‘why.’ Maybe I’m just a slow learner, but it took me three deployments to understand why I was feeling this way over and over.”

Adria Horn: Coming back from deployment is hard. You’re expecting it to be great. You’re home again, this should be great! But the biggest feeling is that things are different. The kids are different. Your favorite restaurant closed, your pet died, and your softball team broke up. The couch your partner bought while you were away is great—but it’s not the couch you knew. Home isn’t normal, it isn’t as it was. Things don’t meet your expectations, and you seem to have lost control, so your return experience doesn’t feel good at all.

Aaron De Smet: In some ways, workers have been deployed and redeployed during COVID-19. Many got deployed to home for COVID-19, or to the front lines during a pandemic, and then those working from home have been redeployed as they have attempted to return from remote and get back to the office. Most companies could not really prepare workers for either the COVID deployment or the return to office—unlike the military, they have no real experience of anything like this.

Workers have been deployed and redeployed during COVID-19. Many got deployed to home or to the front lines, and then those working from home have been redeployed as they have attempted to return from remote and get back to the office.

Aaron De Smet

Adria Horn: It has been an intense period full of unknowns. It’s hard to be self-aware enough to see the full impact of all these changes. I redeployed five times, and I got better at reintegrating each time. I had the benefit of practice, which allowed me to acknowledge what I was feeling, understand it better, and move forward. But the pandemic is a one-time thing, and most people never got a briefing from their chaplain about what to expect.

Aaron De Smet: All the patterns and routines are broken. You’ve lost your tribe. Your sense of community and belonging at work depended on cohesive social networks, and so many of those have been disrupted during the pandemic. You feel left behind, somehow, and it’s very hard to process emotionally.

Adria Horn: It is. Especially because you don’t see things when they’re happening to you and everyone around you at the same time.

Aaron De Smet: Right! Everyone’s having this experience, so why does it seem odd to me? But it is odd. Interactions are awkward from the start—do we elbow bump or shake hands or do nothing? Every meeting or call has to be scheduled—no more dropping into your colleague’s office. Some executives have told me that they’ve had meetings where they are in a conference room and other participants are videoconferencing in from two floors away. This isn’t what they wanted when they brought people back to work.

Adria Horn: It’s hard to manage this if you can’t acknowledge it. People’s hopes and expectations are going unmet in ways that many don’t realize and can’t articulate. Being off balance that way puts people on edge; it throws them off-kilter.

Unprecedented challenges lead to unprecedented decisions

“During 2020, while working from the safety of my house yet leading the COVID-19 effort for my company, I felt deployed again. Months before the Great Resignation started, I told my company leadership team that a Great Something would come because it always does after the return-from-deployment high wears off. People spend their money in crazy ways, get married, divorced, make rash decisions, buy motorcycles and crash them, take their own lives, finally take that bucket-list trip. I’m not a doctor, not a scientist, just a five-time observer of deployment burnout—the high and then low after returning, and the caged feeling. People ultimately need to set themselves free. The emotional ties that may have bound people together during the pandemic work period has waned, and now they will seek opportunities not only to unpin their clipped wings but to fully expand them in ways they wouldn’t have let themselves do previously.”

Aaron De Smet: There are many different levels of grief now. People grieve for others who have died. They grieve over all the things they missed during COVID-19, like a vacation or going to the movies or seeing friends and colleagues. And with some companies transitioning back to the office, people are grieving doubly—they miss things they got used to during the pandemic, working from home, and they miss the way work was before the pandemic. Some coming back to the office expected it to be same as before, and they were hoping to get some magic from being back in the office, but for many it just feels awkward.

Adria Horn: It’s grief from a series of micro changes that we can’t even identify. People redeploying really do miss important things, like their routine, their trusted network of colleagues and friends, their sense of who they are at work and at home. But they think their grief trivializes the grief of people who lost someone. “I’m just upset because things changed,” they think. “My grief is unworthy. Why can’t I just be grateful for what I have?”

People redeploying really miss important things, like their routine, their trusted network of colleagues and friends, their sense of who they are at work and at home. But they think their grief trivializes the grief of people who lost someone.

Adria Horn

Aaron De Smet: Right. “Am I a horrible person?”

Adria Horn: But they—and their employers—shouldn’t diminish their experience. We all go through things in different ways. People are accumulating disappointment now. It’s real, and it’s spurring them to make decisions they normally wouldn’t.

Aaron De Smet: After any crisis that shatters existing norms or creates life-and-death stakes, people tend to step back and take stock. They ask themselves, “What’s the cost of this career track I’m on? How fulfilling is this? Is this what I want out of my life?” People are quitting now because they are taking stock after having been deployed during COVID-19. But it’s very rare to have everyone step back and ask these questions at roughly the same time.

Adria Horn: Since 2001, 1.9 million Americans have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s far less than 1 percent of the US population. With COVID-19, just about everyone in the world was deployed. They didn’t know that they were deployed, they weren’t equipped to know what was coming, and we still don’t know when or even if it will fully end. With a military deployment you have an end date.

Aaron De Smet: And this end date never seems to arrive. Just when it seemed like things might taper off, Delta arrived, and then Omicron. Parents think they’ve set up some kind of acceptable hybrid workweek, and then their children are sent home from school. The vagueness, the confusion, the sense of threat, and the lack of control just lingers. No wonder people are feeling burned out.

Adria Horn: In the past, I noticed that when people left Tilson, they tried to wrap things up. They wanted to cleanly hand off their work to a colleague, they wanted closure. Now they’re like, “I’m done.” They’re not waiting for closure. They’re leaving bitter, and they can’t put their finger on why they’re so upset. Some say it’s the working conditions, but I don’t think that’s really it. We have a phrase for that at Tilson: “The thing is not the thing.” It’s been true time after time.

Aaron De Smet: I hear this from so many employers. In the past, barring a traumatic event, people would only leave after wrapping up their projects, after setting things in place. But now they say they need to leave in a week.

What can companies do? Adapt, accept . . . and hug

“I think we’re actually in the beginning of a longitudinal study in human behavior. The employee response we’re seeing is a normal response to a traumatic period. If employers truly acknowledge this, they can empower employees to find their way. I think employers should stop trying to aggressively retain employees. If ‘the thing is not the thing,’ then set them free professionally and welcome them back if and when it’s right for them again. Employers should start tracking the number of return hires they have. This will be the better long-term gauge of how they’ve treated their employees after a traumatic event.”

Adria Horn: At Tilson, we’ve had a lot of discussion about turnover. It started out as it starts out for everyone: “How are we going to reduce turnover? Is the turnover an indication that we’re not doing something right?” But we have a few veterans on our leadership team, and we quickly came to see that this was a normal, even predictable, reaction. We offer strong mental-health benefits, but it’s been just as important during the pandemic to communicate constantly with our employees. During a series of monthly, virtual office hours, the COO and I made clear to our employees that the confusion they might be experiencing is perfectly normal. We told them that the things we’re all feeling now are part of a normal process. It may take you time. You may not be able to process all of this and feel that you can stay at Tilson. That’s OK. We’ll do professional separations. And then, if you want to come back, we’ll welcome you back. A few people have come back already. Employers should welcome them back. Don’t hold it against them if they leave suddenly.

Aaron De Smet: You’re saying that if you need to leave in a week, that’s OK. In a normal circumstance, most employers would say, “That’s unacceptable and never come back.”

We’re actually in the beginning of a longitudinal study in human behavior. The employee response we’re seeing is a normal response to a traumatic period. If employers truly acknowledge this, they can empower employees to find their way.

Adria Horn

Adria Horn: We say everyone’s been through a collective trauma and they deserve a break.

Aaron De Smet: One of the top predictors of life longevity is having broad social connections. People have lost that during the past two years.

Adria Horn: I have two children, one five years old and the other ten. The five-year-old is full of spit and vigor, just like I was as a kid. A few months ago, she was just giving it to me, mad about this and mad about that. And I was mad at her back. Then I read one of those parenting books, which had a chapter on hugging your angry child. It was exactly the opposite of what I felt like doing. But I started doing it. I started hugging her when she was mad, hugging her hard and long, and things just softened and de-escalated. That’s kind of what a lot of employees need now. I’ve never seen it quite like this in all my years at work, but that is what people need now. They need a professional and psychologically safe working environment, which I believe is the equivalent of a long, strong hug.

Aaron De Smet: They’re not getting hugs.

Adria Horn: People need to feel valued and supported, even when they’re not entirely sure why they’re feeling so fragile.

Aaron De Smet: It’s much more of a human problem than a typical business challenge. I mean, the labor shortage is a significant and challenging business problem—but ironically, it may be that the best thing employers can do for their business right now is to stop thinking of the Great Attrition as a business problem, and instead simply address it as a human problem.

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