Do you earn more than your partner?

The woman and work survey 2010 commissioned by Grazia Magazine has shown that a third of women are now breadwinners.

Of those 2,000 females questioned almost half were either out-earning their partners (30%) or earning as much (19%), and one in 10 already had a house husband. The results also showed that only 11% of those questioned wanted to stop work completely.

These results are very interesting and shows a definite switch in attitudes towards women in the workplace and household. Gone are the days when a woman’s role was to stay at home and look after the family. They understand that it is possible to both work and raise a family and so many remain in their highly paid jobs, now sharing the role of parenthood with their partners.

The same can be said for mid-life women who are again finding their identity. They are challenging the stereotypes laid out in the media and are showing that mid-life women are valuable members of any organisation. Their experience and knowledge is helping them to compete with younger competitors and enables them to progress and earn a salary that can compete with their partners.

For top tips on returning to the work place in mid-life and re-gaining that lost confidence, read my latest book ‘Still 25 Inside’ which is packed with handy tips and exercises. You can download a free chapter from the book from my Age with Attitude website (www.agewithattitude.co.uk <http://www.agewithattitude.co.uk/> )  and it is available to buy from Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk <http://www.amazon.co.uk/> ).

AWA Module 3 – June 2010

Another fun packed weekend of work, delving into ourselves with a large dose of openness and honesty thrown in! Even the coaches were drained this month! It may have had something to do with having bedrooms being situated over a late night disco in the Hythe Imperial Hotel however!

This module was called ‘Be You’ as it focuses on learning more about who we are at our core and what’s most important to us.  Day 1 was all about the Attitude ‘I know who I am’.  We looked at how we spend our time, we learnt about our personalities as represented by six different goddesses and we worked on our personal mission statements.  All totally amazing!

It began with the team coming together again, having not seen each other since Feb, but it could have been yesterday. We are close, we are honest and we are raring to go; what could Lindsey have in store for us this time? Well, she delved deeper into our thoughts and behaviours, making us work to be clear and precise about what we want, what we don’t want in our lives and how we are going to get it! Attitude pours from this team, and we all want to put the effort in so we can go home revived, yet exhausted at the same time! NLP techniques are used and explored and it really helps to understand why we use the language we do.

We scored our responses and fine tuned our thoughts and came out knowing what’s important to us…each time is a refining or defining moment, we all agree. We all know our Goddess type now and what a revelation, the archetypes show us where we need to increase or decrease our behaviours in order to get what we want. Going to have fun discovering that! I’m Hera, typical of a business woman (or another term for bossy!!).

Day 2 was all about finding out more about ourselves when we are truly authentic.  Fascinating stuff.  We worked on our values in different areas of our life and we all learnt what was most important to each of us.  At the end of the last day the usual Goddess council reconvened and the usual suspects went through the usual motions of pouring out our wishes, concerns and potential changes that could be made…and lovingly we send the goddess out so we can talk about her behind her back!! However, we do this for the sole purpose of feeding back to her positive and helpful remarks with homework, if required, to be completed before the next course. We all had our share and mine always comes back to cooking properly!!!! I guess my Easter meal with Easter eggs as dessert didn’t quite count as learning to cook!

The Goddesses had everything from getting ones’ mojo back to dancing sexily ….looking for new business, to my cooking obviously (no fun there!) and journaling once more. We have this off pat now the girls’ are wheeled in and out with precision, timing and finesse, all taken well and we are very good at completing the tasks set.

We are looking forward to the final 3 days in Sept in Ashford Kent, what will be in store then I wonder? One thing is for sure, we will stay friends and stay connected, after all, we are the original Goddesses!

Audra Lamoon

Your Impact!

Experts in Developing People

Move out of the Grey Zone and into the Brilliant Zone!

A recent survey of 3,000 women conducted by Florette Fruit found that of those studied, two thirds were completely bored with their lives with a massive 90% believing they would be less bored if they could be more spontaneous.

This is what I call women in the Grey Zone, the comfortable yet uncomfortable place. Women in the Grey Zone need to take responsibility for their own lives and move out towards the brilliant zone!

They key thing to remember is that the mind and body are inextricably connected, so when we change on the inside, we change on the outside.  In the past when feeling low or unhappy we may have undertaken some ‘retail therapy’. The problem is that the feeling of pleasure is normally short lived. In order to make change, we need to first tackle the root problem.

Think about what you really want from life and what you feel is lacking. Maybe you feel the fizzle has gone from your relationship, maybe you feel that being a stay-at-home mother isn’t enough, maybe it’s getting that dream job. Once you are aware of which areas you feel are lacking, then you can begin to take the first steps to getting out of the Grey Zone!

For top tips on how to create what you want, read my latest book ‘Still 25 Inside’ which is packed with handy tips and exercises. You can download a free chapter from the book from my Age with Attitude website (www.agewithattitude.co.uk <http://www.agewithattitude.co.uk/> )  and it is available to buy from Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk <http://www.amazon.co.uk/> ).

What are your relationship values?

After reading a recent story in the Express (http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/181151/Helen-Mirren-Loyalty-is-better-than-romance) in which Helen Mirren quotes loyalty as far more important in a relationship then romance I began thinking.

How many of us listen in awe as our friends tell us how wonderful their partner is? How they are treated with lavish gifts, flowers and romantic dinners. How many of us wish we had that in our relationship?

Although this may sound like the perfect relationship, for many it is not truly what they are after.

What’s essential is that men and women work out what’s most important to them about their relationship ie their relationship values.  For some truth and honesty are important, for others it’s romance and flowers.  The question to ask is ‘what’s most important to me about my relationship’.  This isn’t the one you are in now unless it’s perfect!  But the one you’d like to have.

In my latest book ‘Still 25 Inside’ I offer tips and advice on how to be true to yourself along with an interesting exercise to help you determine your relationship values. You can download a free chapter from the book from my Age with Attitude website (www.agewithattitude.co.uk) and it is available to buy from Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk <http://www.amazon.co.uk/> ).

I’m proud to be a Swoftie (Single Women Over Fifty!)

I was very honoured to be invited to a photo shoot for Woman’s Own recently to celebrate the rise of the ‘Swoftie’, single women over fifty. The magazine is out this week (12 April issue) and I’m, so thrilled with the outcome.  According to new research there are more of us in the UK than ever before and at the photoshoot I was joined two of these very inspiring ‘Swoftie’ women.

52 year old Dawn Pollard was a former air stewardess who loved travelling the world with her job, but the constant time apart put too much strain on her marriage and sadly it ended in divorce. She was in her late forties when that happened and decided to embark on a new career in property development and has never been happier. She believes that during her marriage she put off doing things because they didn’t have the time.

Do you dedicate any time to yourself or are you constantly in overdrive as a ‘wife’, ‘mother’, ‘employee’, ‘daughter’, ‘sister’ with no time for yourself?

54 year old Karen Rhoder felt that she needed to inject some fun into her life and find herself again after she experienced the breakdown to two consecutive long term relationships. She decided to try something completely different and embarked on the Age With Attitude course, which involves a spot of ‘firewalking!’ Karen is now a much stronger person as a result of experiences like these and says she has realised how important it is to keep and open mind and try new experiences.

Are you perhaps holding yourself back from trying new experiences because of fear or lack of confidence?

And finally there was my story. I ended my marriage because it had fizzled out, even though I tried very hard to make it work, but there was no going back. I was in my early forties when that happened and I shared custody of my two children with my ex-husband. When they were staying with him it gave me time to think about my life and I realised something was missing from my career. So I took a leap of faith at 45 and left my consultancy job to retain as a coach in neuro-linguistic programming, teaching people how to maximise their potential in life. Starting out was tough by the long hours paid off and I now run a very successful company.

At 47, I fulfilled another long-standing ambition – to write. My first self-help book Change Your Life With NLP has sold over 25,000 copies and my second book Still 25 Inside £12.99, Rodale), aimed at women in their 40s and 50s is due out next month.

If you ask most women of my age how they feel, they’ll tell you that they still think of themselves as young. Why should we feel our lives are on the scrap heap just because we’ve hit 50? My life is so much more fulfilling now than it was when I was young. I hope that by sharing these experiences, we will help inspire other women to believe in themselves and know that absolutely anything is possible.