Not too long ago, I received a note from a woman who had just returned to work after having her second child. While she had managed life with one baby quite well, juggling two little ones and a burgeoning workload was wearing her out. After a rough patch of limited sleep, she wrote me that even though she liked her work, she’d been thinking about resigning, and accepting that “I can’t have it all anymore.”
I wrote back that the first few months with an infant aren’t easy on anyone. But when things go wrong, I try to repeat this phrase: Don’t draw too broad a conclusion. The human brain is wired to avoid pain, and one way to redeem a bad situation is to try to learn a lesson. That way, the brain thinks, you won’t experience that pain again. But if you’re not careful, you can learn the wrong lesson, or draw such a broad conclusion that you cut yourself off from a lot of good things. And that could be even more painful than the first problem.