Lean Out Podcast

Solocast: Work-Life Balance Lessons from Miranda Priestly

• Dawn Baker • Season 4 • Episode 16

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 15:16

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, Dawn Baker shares some stories of a recent summer trip. On that trip, she watched the new movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2. Careful to not share too many spoilers, Dawn discusses the work-life balance themes she identified from the movie and one of its main characters, Miranda Priestly.

** Subscribe to the Practice Balance newsletter by putting your email into the purple box HERE **

Relevant/mentioned links:

Lean Out Podcast episodes - Prevention with Marjan Bolouri, Functional with Tracy McCarthy, Solocast: How to Deal with Loss

Get in touch with Dawn: 

Welcome to the lean out podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Don baker. Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance? You've come to the right. Place. For inspiration. information. and a community. community. of like-minded. Professionals. Let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Thanks for being here. If you have kids, you know that it is chaotic right now because it's back to school time, and I'm sure a lot of things have been added to your plate this month. Even as a homeschooler, this has affected me as well because volleyball league is starting, lots of kids are coming back to the jujitsu classes, and we've been deciding on new homeschool curriculum because we have decided to change it up this year. The only thing that is winding down is our participation in summer camps. Every summer, we fill my daughter's weeks with lots of camps. Because normally she's not around a ton of kids, being that she's homeschooled, this is an opportunity for her to do some fun activities and get exposed to a larger, more diverse group of kids. The last camp we did was kind of a culmination because it involved animal care, which she's very into these days. It involved travel, and it was also a multi-day sleepaway camp. And I just have to tell this story because there are so many thought-provoking parts, and then we'll get on to the work-life balance lessons learned that I want to share with you today. So we all flew to Missouri for this camp. Missouri seemed a little bit too far for a 10-year-old to travel without us. So we drove to the camp, dropped her off, and then my husband and I drove on to an Airbnb that was nearby so that we could hang out while she was doing the camp. We were having a great time taking walks, playing pickleball, hanging out at the Lake of the Ozarks and whatnot, and one day, on our homestead camera, we saw something. Some cows had broken into our property, and they were now in the chickens' coop area. Our sheep were also wandering around, walking onto the deck and pooping all over the deck. And they had been enclosed in a lower meadow on the property, and obviously, they had gotten out as well. A side note that our area where our homestead is has an open grazing policy, and what that means is that ranchers are able to truck their cows into the area all season long for open grazing. And if you don't want them to graze on your land, it's your right to keep them out through fencing. Otherwise, they're just gonna come on the land and graze. Now, we do have fencing all around because we like to keep them out. We have our own animals that we wanna keep in. But occasionally, a group of cows will jump the fence at a low point and just get in there and start causing some havoc. Incidentally, if you've ever seen a cow clear a four-foot fence, it's an amazing sight because they are so big and you don't think that they can jump, but they can. They can also be kind of destructive, which is why we like to keep them out of the area. So here they are on this camera having jumped over electric fencing around the chickens' pasture area and their coop area, and then they started knocking over their food and their water bins Since we got these chickens, my daughter has become completely obsessed with them. So much so that it sparked her interest in animal science, so I'm all for it, but at the same time she's very pro-protective of the chickens and if anything happens to them, it's a really big deal in our house. So we knew that we had to deal with this issue, but of course it was a few days before we were scheduled to go home. Our property is not that easy to get to and no neighbors were around that we could contact to try to deal with this issue and then if we did, how would they deal with getting cows out of our property? I mean, it requires having a side-by-side and trying to shoo them out and, and herd them a little bit. So after long deliberation, we decided the best and easiest thing to do was have my hubby travel home on a flight that particular day to fix it all. There was a flight that we identified that would get him there that particular night, and so we bought the one-way flight and canceled his original return trip with us. Now, this turned into the biggest travel debacle that any of us has ever experienced, and we've traveled extensively across the world. Long story short, it involved a regional airport ground stop of multiple states, a mechanical airplane problem, a missed connection by five minutes after he ran full speed through an airport, and he didn't arrive home until maybe like a day before me and my daughter to fix this particular problem. But I really have to hand it to my hubby. I was so impressed by the way he dealt with this extremely frustrating travel situation of reroutes, cancellations, hotel rooms, paltry meal vouchers, and having the doors to an airplane shut right in his face. He was just so calm and at one point he was even positive. We talked on the phone several times during this two-day period that it took him to get home. It was supposed to be like a six-hour period and it ended up being two days. So after the just barely missed connection, he said to me, "I'm proud of myself for running from the A gate to the B gate without stopping and getting winded. I thought that was awesome at my age." And I was just taken aback by this comment because this was a great example of the stoicism that he's known for A lot of people think that stoicism means absence of emotion, but really what it is is confidence in the face of uncertainty and the ability to employ emotional agility. So I was just really impressed, and I had to give him a gold star. What happened to the chickens? So nothing really happened to them. I just kept watching them on the monitor the whole time, and they were all okay. We didn't know if they would go wandering away, but no one escaped to be lost forever. They all pretty much stayed right around their particular area that was already fenced off, just that the fence was down in parts. The destructive cows left, and no one starved or ended up getting dehydrated, thankfully. I recently shared this story along with a great podcast resource on stoicism in my Practice Balance newsletter. So if you're interested in hearing more stories like this, my lessons learned from them, and useful resources, including a link to the viral travel pants that I took on this particular trip, then go over to Practice Balance and subscribe. You just have to go to practicebalance.com and a purple box will appear. You put your email in there, and then you will be on the list to get my newsletter, which usually comes out one to two times a month two times if I'm very motivated. So thanks for listening to that story. Okay, on to the other part of the show today, my lessons learned from Miranda Priestly. Now, if you don't know who Miranda Priestly is, she is one of the main characters in the movie The Devil Wears Prada. And while I was on the plane headed to Missouri, I watched the new movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2. I loved the first movie, as I'm sure many of you did. It came out in two thousand and six. But I heard a few grumbles about this new one, people saying that it wasn't as good. I personally got something out of it, however, that I didn't get from the first one. Interesting food for thought about work-life balance. Let me start out by saying that if you're the type of person who hates any sort of spoilers and does not want to know anything about a movie before watching it, and you intend to watch this movie, then hit pause now and bookmark this episode to come back after you've watched the movie. I do talk about specific scenes, but I have left out big plot twists, so the spoilers are mild. I'm sure a lot of listeners have at least seen the first Devil Wears Prada, but if you're not familiar with what the, these movies are even about, I'm going to read you a short synopsis I found on the internet. So here's the one for the original movie. The Devil Wears Prada follows Andrea "Andy" Sachs, a recent college graduate who moves to New York City with aspirations of becoming a serious journalist. To build her resume, she accepts a position as the junior personal assistant to Miranda Priestly, the formidable and ruthless editor-in-chief of the prestigious fashion magazine, Runway. Initially overwhelmed by the high-pressure environment and Miranda's demanding, often humiliating expectations, Andy struggles to fit in with the stylish and cutthroat staff. With the guidance of Runway's art director, Nigel, Andy undergoes a dramatic transformation in her wardrobe and professional demeanor. However, this career advancement comes at a significant personal cost. And that's where I'm gonna stop because they start talking about plots. Okay. So here is a brief synopsis of the sequel. The Devil Wears Prada two is set two decades after the original film following Andy Sachs and Miranda Priestly as they reunite, as they reunite to save Runway Magazine from decline in the digital age. After Andy's entire newsroom is laid off, she is unexpectedly hired as features editor at Runway to restore its credibility following a scandal andy reconnects with former colleagues, including Nigel Kipling and Emily Charlton, who now works for a major advertiser, Dior. The magazine faces existential threats, including new ownership and the potential to sell the brand to a tech billionaire, et cetera, et cetera. I will not go on from there. So in my opinion, the sequel was more than just crazy antics of Andy trying to please the demanding Miranda Priestly, which was very prominent in the first movie. Instead, they developed the Miranda character much more, and in the surrounding discussions that were had by the characters, they raised common work-life balance issues. I recommend watching the movie for the mere entertainment factor of the beautiful clothing, Italian landscapes, and catchy music. But also, here are the work-life balance lessons I took away from watching The Devil Wears Prada 2 Number one, treat coworkers, staff, admins, and all the people at your workplace with kindness and integrity. This will get you far when you go to ask for a unique schedule, decline a role that someone is g- trying to get you to take, want to take a sabbatical or whatever out of the box arrangement you're looking for in the name of work-life balance. Miranda Priestly spent years taking her art director, Nigel, for granted, and it only becomes obvious to her near the end of the movie. Many guests on this particular podcast have talked about the art of showing up with integrity and doing good work, being a team player, and how that took them so far when they asked to lean out. A couple examples I can think of off the top of my head are Marjan Velouri and Tracy McCarthy, and I will link their interviews in the show notes in case you've missed them. Number two, balance looks different for everyone. If you've read my book, Lean Out, you know that I talk about this in the beginning of the book comparing two different doctors, Dr. A and Dr. B. One of them has an extremely complex professional life that ends up bleeding complexity into her personal realms, and the other doctor craves simplicity as a foundation for both physical and mental wellbeing. Miranda encourages Andy Sachs to write an inflammatory bi- biography about her so that she can get famous, and she says, quote, "Put it all in there, how demanding I am, how imperious, how much of my children's lives I've missed, because people should know. They should know there's a cost." And then in the same breath, she says to her, "But boy, I love working. I just love it, don't you?" It's clear that her type of balance is different from someone like me, but that's okay, as long as you understand the trade-offs Number three, acknowledge the losses related to a change in your work-life balance. In the movie, there's this scene with Miranda and her husband, and she says, "How will I know when it's time?" And she's talking about retirement. And I have to be honest, this is a question I have been asking myself lately about anesthesia. She goes on to say, "If I leave, what happens? What will I have?" And when her husband answers with, "Your kids, your dog, and me," she doesn't seem super satisfied with this response. The thing I've realized in my own pondering of retirement is that you don't have to have everything planned out for years in advance. You can take the directional decisions one step at a time. And the loss of identity is a real thing, whether the change you're making is a positive, intentional one or if it's a change that is thrust upon you. And I've talked about this in an episode last year on the podcast about grief and loss. I really like this episode, and I think you will too if you haven't heard it. And otherwise, it's maybe worth a re-listen because the losses associated with changes at work are often under-recognized. And the link for this episode will be in the show notes as well. Well, that's all I have for the takeaways from The Devil Wears Prada 2. What about you? Have you seen the movie? What did you think of it? Share your thoughts by sending me a message through the fan mail link in the show notes, leaving a comment on the blog post associated with this episode at practicebalance.com, or sending me a DM on Instagram. I'm Practice Balance. Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast. If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services. You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker. Have a great day and we'll see you next time