3 Ways to Rock Your Career as a Single Woman

It’s easy for single or childfree women to feel weird about loving their careers. In this blog you’ll learn:

Why we feel uncomfortable loving our jobs
Why you should love your work
3 ways to totally rock your career

No matter what job you have, what industry you’re in, or what type of job you’re stuck in at the moment, these 3 tips will help you create a badass career. So let’s get to it.

Why Childfree / Single Women Feel Weird About Their Careers

Why do we have such a weird relationship with our work? I think it’s because, in the grand scheme of things, women haven’t been holding ‘traditional’ jobs for very long. Remember that before WWI, even poor women generally became full-time caregivers after marriage. The woman who continued working through her thirties was typically a spinster.

After the sexual revolution of the 1960s, married women began holding regular jobs outside the home. Society reacted to this dramatic shift with confusion and a new set of rules, including:

Married women can work when it doesn’t interfere with child-rearing.
These jobs must provide supplementary – not equal – income for the family.
Women can’t care more about their jobs than they do about their husbands or children.

So a married women could love her job as a nice little side hobby. Something to occupy her when her kids and husband don’t need tending. But what about unmarried and childfree women? Sadly even women’s lib couldn’t get rid of that social stigma. The childless, single woman was still a piteous thing (or would be once her sex appeal faded), and any zeal she felt toward her job was just a sad substitute for a family.

The reason we childfree, single women feel so dang weird about loving our jobs is because ever since we started working, we’ve been told that if we love our work too much, we must be lacking or neglecting something more important. We still see this everywhere. On TV, in the movies, and in the books we read. Happiness for women comes from their family, and loving a job too much threatens to undermine that need.

Why You Should Take Care of Your Career

If we ignore the notion that a ‘career woman’ is someone who has to turn to her job for fulfillment because the rest of her life is lacking, we see that focusing on your career is actually really important. Not only does it get you the money you need to live your best life, but you’re committing 40 of your waking hours to it every week. That’s over one third of your waking hours every week. That’s a ton of time to spend on something you don’t really care about.

Your career isn’t just something you should care about in a theoretical kind of way. This is something you should actively care for. Take time to make it something that you’re enjoying and that’s contributing to your life in a really significant way. Trying to pretend it doesn’t matter because you’re afraid of looking like the loveless career woman is a bit silly. So let’s set that aside and fall madly in love with our careers, shall we?

3 Ways to Rock Your Career

Okay. So what are the three big ways you can take care your career and make it totally rock?
{Psst… read through to the end for an awesome FREE resource for loving your solo life!}

1. Make time for career development.

Rarely do companies offer career growth training to their employees anymore, so it’s up to you. Set aside an amount of time every week (ideally measured out through each day) when you can work on a skill that will help you move through your career.

This helps you by:

Displaying your dedication to your role
Getting the skills you need to advance
Keeping you motivated for your future

What is a skill you need to help you on your ideal career path? Find the resources you need and start using them.

2. Be a student at work.

This applies whether you like your current job or not. No matter how far it is from your dream job, there is something valuable you can learn there that will help in that future job Always go to work with the mindset of someone who wants to learn how to do their job better. Find the areas where you can improve and focus on them. Make weekly goals of one small thing you want to improve.

This will help you:

Get better at what you do
Show management that you’re willing to learn
Keep your ego out of your way

Keep a list of the things you learn through your job each week.

3. Be nice.

It’s obvious, but it took me years to really understand what this meant. I grew up believing that only certain people deserved my friendship or good behavior. When I did, I always felt like the outsider. Like this job (whichever one it was) wouldn’t last too long because only a few people really wanted me there or understood what an asset I was.

That didn’t work out too well, so I tried something different. And now I’m encouraging you to see everyone (yes, even that person) as a friend. You’re in a relationship with every one of your co-workers and bosses. Give each one of those relationships the attention it deserves. When I started seeing my co-workers as relationships I needed to work on, things got so much better.

This benefits you for three main reasons:

You won’t have enemies at work.
You won’t be drawn into low-vibrational gossip or backstabbing.
Bosses recognize people that play well with others as an asset.

You deserve to be friendly and kind to everyone you work with. It’s difficult, but I promise it’s worth all the extra effort.

Are You Ready to Love Your Solo Career?

There’s nothing wrong with loving your work and feeling fulfilled by it. The fact that you’re a woman (and a woman ‘without a family’) doesn’t change the fact that the work you give this world is valuable and meaningful. Love your career. Love the work you do. And most importantly, love your amazing, solo self.

If you’d like an in-depth, FREE resource to help you truly love your solo life, sign up for the American Spinster’s 30-Day Email Challenge. You’ll get a new challenge delivered to your inbox every day for 30 days. Take the plunge and sign up now!