Words We Heard: ‘The debt you have has no bearing on who you are as a person.’
Does anyone really feel like there are enough hours in a day? It’s always hard to gain control of your to-do list. The best tools I’ve found are time management and budgeting – both terrifying ideas, at least for a college senior about to enter the “real world.” As daunting as both may seem, it puts me at ease to have everything written out and organized so I can see gaps, room for improvement, what time I have to relax, etc. So this past week, with my parents’ advice, I made my first real budget. I had started to lose touch of my organizational tendencies as life became a little busier, and I wanted to hone in on something unexplored.
And that got me thinking about success. Is it measured in an Excel spreadsheet? While many of you are not mapping out these gritty details for the first time, it’s always nice to think about what baby steps we can make in easing everyday stresses. Success is often about the little things, like getting a project done or fitting a lot of meetings into one day, that build towards larger goals. For me, those little things can be anything from responding to an email quickly to finishing up a strong paper for a class, but they’re what keep me going!
–Ellen
- “Because we’ve been trained to think of debt as bad, we end up feeling like we are a bad person for having it. The reality is, debt isn’t good or bad. Debt is debt.” –Girlboss’ resident financial expert, Pamela Capalad
- “Do what you believe you are meant to do. Ask a lot of questions. Learn as much as you can about the norms and how we operate and work and what success looks like. Success looks like different things to different people.” –Priya Dhingra Klocek, founder of Consultant On The Go, in an interview with Women of Cincy
- “Success correlates just as closely with confidence as it does with competence.” –Olympic gold medalist, Julie Foudy, in her book Choose to Matter: Being Courageously and Fabulously YOU
- “According to Statistics Canada, we spend almost 30 percent of our waking hours doing unpaid labor, from cooking and laundry to pet care, landscaping, and errands. This load weighs especially heavy on women, who typically spend twice as much time on household chores as men.” –Caitlin Collord of Managing Life’s Work in an interview with Aviatra Accelerators
- “One of the top questions I get asked is how I managed to land a job where I get paid to do what I love. While I wish I could share the secret recipe for marrying your passion to your bank account, the reality is that success takes a willingness to experiment, a ton of persistence, and a hearty dash of luck.” –Lucie Fink about starting her career in media, in a post on Refinery29
- “I recognized what is important for me in life; it is not necessarily the doing as much as the being; the doing emerges out of the being.” –world renowned pianist, Harry Pickens, in a video in Creative Mornings’ Compassion series