16. On Creating the Life I Want with Christine Bader & Eva Dienel

Overview

I was so excited to speak with Christine Bader and Eva Dienel about their important work at “The Life I Want.” Christine and Eva are both idealists and writers in their own right, and with this storytelling project they are telling rich stories to reframe the discussion about work in our lives.

It all starts with “The Life I Want,” not work.

And in this episode, we hear what brought each of them to reorient their own work to support their lives vs. living to work, taking them to Bali and Australia, respectively, for a period of time, as well as homesteads in Oregon.

For them, the future of work requires that we change our relationship with work, as individuals and as a society, so more people can live happier, more fulfilled lives. There are four pillars that frame their working model: 1) individual, 2) employers, 3) community, and 4) government, and we speak of each of these in this episode. While we talk about how in today’s model you need a super power to pull yourself towards working to live as opposed to living to work, finding more fulfillment for all can’t be only on the individual. They advocate that we also need safety nets to make it possible, such as employers stepping up and realizing that the work they provide employees is a product in itself, leaning on our communities, and government programs and legislation.

In this conversation, we also touch on the idea of creating your own measurements of success, the importance of valuing care in our society, and that the answers lie in fixing work for the most marginalized, as those solutions will likely work for us all.

If you want to be inspired to create a life you want and want to hear how to start to rethink what it would mean to take an alternate path, listen in and check out Christine and Eva's work at The Life I Want: https://www.thelifeiwant.co/ to read their beautiful stories of others who are showing us the way towards a brighter future of work that will work for all.

More about Our Guests

Christine Bader is a coach, facilitator, writer, consultant, and speaker whose sweet spot is the messy intersection of business and society. Christine is the author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (2014). From 2015-17 she was Director of Social Responsibility at Amazon, where she built a global team working to ensure respect for the rights of workers in Amazon supply chains and operations. From 2011-15 her posts included advisor to BSR and visiting scholar at Columbia University, where she co-taught human rights and business. After earning her MBA from Yale in 2000, Christine joined BP and proceeded to work in Indonesia, China, and the U.K., managing the social impacts of some of the company’s largest projects in the developing world. For 2018-19, she lived in Indonesia with her family as part of the Green School Bali community. She now lives in McMinnville, Oregon, in the heart of wine country, continuing to search for community and a way of life that is sustainable in every dimension.

Eva Dienel is a writer, editor, and communications consultant with more than 20 years of experience telling stories that matter—stories with an environmental, social, or human focus that engage people in making the world a better place. Her clients are global leaders in sustainability, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Participant Media, ClimateWorks Foundation, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), The Tiffany & Co. Foundation, Gap Inc., Futerra, and many more. Eva has a master’s degree in magazine publishing and bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She grew up in Oregon and now lives on her family's vineyard in Australia.

Together they are the founders of the storytelling project, “The Life I Want: A Future of Work that Works for All.”

At “The Life I Want,” they are telling stories that show a better future of work. For them, the future of work is not about robots and automation: It’s about changing our relationship with work, as individuals and as a society, so more people can live happier, more fulfilled lives.

They dive into the stories of people redefining the role of work in their lives; organizations that are radically rethinking work; and communities and societies that are supporting their citizens to work the way they want so they can live the life they want.

They aim to inspire people to rethink work—to make work work so more of us can engage with our families and communities and ultimately create a better world.

Now Christine and Eva share many things in common including this pursuit - they are both writers in their own right; they are both idealists; and they are mothers of twins.

Topics Covered

  • What brought Christine and Eva to reorient their work to support their lives vs. living to work, and taking them to Bali and Australia, respectively, for a period of time.

    • “I had everything that one should have in a job: I had purpose, I had a great salary, I had a supportive spouse. But work still wasn't working.” — Christine Bader

    • “I like to say now I’m ambitious until three o’clock.” — Eva Dienel

    • “We're here on this planet, not just to work but to live.” — Eva Dienel

  • That we need both a super power - what you really want in your life - and safety nets to support finding our way to making work work for all (e.g., government, community)

  • The idea of creating your own measurements for success - define what you want for your life based on metrics you define vs. falling into the cult of productivity and society’s should’s

    • “If you have your measure of success: like for me when I when I quit my job I said, I want to run as many miles a week as I work, I want to spend more nights camping outside like those were going to be my measures of success for my life.” — Eva Dienel

  • Their working model of 4 pillars: 1) one's personal relationship with work, 2) employer roles, 3) activate your community both inside and outside of work, and 4) the role of government

  • The bright spots out their that are shining the light on where we need to go with work. For example, the story of Leslie Ford who during the pandemic started Moms Hierarchy of Needs: Allies at Work, a business that works with companies to better understand the needs of working parents. “Her theory is that if we fix work for working moms, we can fix work for everyone.” And the tech platform Circle In in Australia that is also doing important work in this space.

  • If we fix work for those most marginalized, we will likely solve work for all.

  • How we need to shift our focus towards one of valuing "care" in our society.

  • How work, especially in the U.S., doesn’t leave enough space for our lives.

  • The stories they feature are those of real people. For example, the one of Diana Riggs and Todd Severson who created Mac Market in McMinnville, Oregon, a community gathering space and market that highlights the small food and drink purveyors of Yamhill County.

    • ”We’re finding from our stories, collectively, is that when people do make some sort of intentional change to their work to support the lives that they want, and to support the lives of others, it actually improves the work that they're doing.” — Eva Dienel

  • That employers need to realize that what they provide is not just a product or service to their consumers, but that as an employer they are producing a product for ALL their employees, not just those at headquarters (this is why company’s HR brand has grown in popularity, but Eva talks about it with much more consideration; this isn’t a marketing ploy!)

  • Based on this conversation, I might be so bold to say, borrowing from Hillary Clinton’s famous phrase of women’s rights are human rights, that worker’s rights are human rights.

  • Christine’s last piece of advice - never take anyone’s advice! Because no one else knows what you really need to thrive or what is really going to make you tick. Yes! You need to know yourself and listen to yourself. And rather the advice is to turn, “You should... ” statements from others into ”I did....” statements. It's better to hear stories of their experiences for you to interpret for yourself.

  • Eva’s last piece of advice - create your own definitions of success and reconsider what you look to get from work. Can you look to other areas of your life to give you some of those things? For example, can you find purpose in giving to your community? In doing so, can you reclaim some of the energy you put into your work for your own agency?

Resources Mentioned

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16. On Creating the Life I Want with Christine Bader & Eva Dienel

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2021Kathy OnetoRight Aspiration, Right Success, Right Effort