When Ants Tell Bees How to Make Honey
Three popular pieces of advice I discarded and what worked instead
Happy International Women’s Day (IWD) to all the wonderful women I know! This includes peers, mentors, coaches, and sponsors! Every day I learn so much from the amazing women in my life. Every year, IWD is my day to celebrate and reflect on being a woman leader myself as well.
Today’s post is about advice.
I’ve received many nuggets of wonderful advice throughout my career that have helped me grow. But the best one was from a woman mentor many years ago:
Sometimes the advice you get will be ants telling bees how to make honey.
I have held on to this piece of advice very strongly and even passed it on to other mentees and coachees. As a woman leader and working mom, much of the common advice hasn't worked for me. Today I’m sharing three such popular pieces of advice that didn’t work for me and what I did instead!
#1: Manage Stress through Meditation
I love this advice. I truly do! When I have managed to meditate, I do feel calmer and happier. However, meditation to me is the same as my daughter’s dream of owning a pet unicorn. I wish I could proudly say I meditate every day and feel better for it. But the truth is, it just doesn’t fit my personality.
I have never been able to block thoughts, no matter how hard I tried with meditation. I often get my best ideas when I'm away from screens and tasks. So, the idea of clearing my mind and blocking all thoughts doesn't sound good to me.
A few years back, I chose to ditch the meditation advice. Instead, I looked for other activities to help manage my stress. I focused on activities that energized me and creatively fulfilled me. My go-to activity is card making, but I also enjoy coloring and zentangling! Building something with my hands helps me focus my mind better.
#2: Build Resilience with Gratitude Journaling
I was often advised that showing gratitude can help us be stronger during tough times. If you know what you're thankful for, you won't be as negative going through the low moments in life. That's the hypothesis of gratitude journaling.
I sincerely tried it for a while. When I worked as a tech executive, was a busy mom, and studied for my MBA, I felt stretched thin. I was giving a lot more than I was receiving. Expressing gratitude felt like an extra burden on top of everything else.
Instead, I set up a happiness jar. A physical jar where I'd drop a note when I experienced something joyful. I try to put in at least one note a day, sometimes more! When I have my difficult days, I open a few notes from the jar to read. Thinking about my happy moments helps me bounce back better than gratitude journaling on hard days.
I built a quick and simple digital version of my Happiness Jar recently while learning to build web apps with Cursor/Vercel/NextJs/Supabase. I will be doing a separate post on this build experience but sharing the app here as well!
#3: Improve Well-Being by Compartmentalizing Work
Early in my career, I was told to keep work and life separate and to have rigid boundaries. I was strongly told to "set strict work hours and never allow meetings outside those times."
Unfortunately, many of the folks who gave me this advice had one common trait: their only job was to have a job.
My life is different. I'm a mom, a daughter, a spouse, and I run a household. I'm also a small business owner and a volunteer. I used to be an executive in a demanding tech job. While doing my MBA, I also added "student" to this long list of "jobs" that I juggle on any given day.
I found it hard to follow the work-life compartmentalization advice. There were those times when I wanted to leave early for a school event or a doctor's appointment. Then there were those times when I was really in the zone with interesting work and did not want to stop just because the workday ended.
My answer was to go for work-life integration instead of compartmentalization. I wrote more about it in my article on work-life tapestry.
Final Words
It is true that all advice is a gift. It is also true that you don’t have to keep all the gifts you get. Be open to advice, experiment and see what works for you. But also don’t be afraid to put your own twist on it to make it work for you. Or discard it entirely if it's not for you!
Love how you followed your heart instead of following what others say, especially when you focused on these activities instead of meditation. Thanks for sharing.
I love this! Funnily enough I’ve also come to the same conclusions about all of these things.
On the third one, my mom who blazed the career plus family path for me, always recommended being an integrator to me. Growing up she told me that the key was always to have enough flexibility in both work and life so you could choose on an hour by hour basis where you should be. It definitely paid off for her so I tend to always keep that in the back of my mind.