You may be thinking this episode has everything to do with professional work and salaries and pay gaps. We touch a little on those things but the primary focus of episode 7 is deciding what, beyond monetary compensation, is a paycheck in our lives. We discuss intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation and share personally about the things in our own lives that bring great reward. 

Advice Not Given

• What motivates you in all of the different areas of your life? 
• How do you find and measure success? How do you determine what is a good return on investment of your time? 
• How you define your values often determines how your look at your time and priorities.
• Do you see yourself as a victim of circumstances where you aren’t able to earn a monetary paycheck or do you see this as an active choice?
• Women earn $0.79 for every dollar a man makes and  military spouses earn 26.8% LESS than their civilian counterparts. Let that sink in! No wonder many of us have foregone traditional jobs. If you want to really get into the weeds (and possibly very angry), peep this 2018 White House Study on “Military Spouses in the Labor Force.”
• Claire’s paychecks: seeing kids’ success from homeschooling and hosting monthly dinner company around her kitchen table. 
• Kellie’s paychecks: learning something new, setting up systems, bringing creative projects to fruition; sharing insights and putting skills into practice. 
• How do you look at the differences between  internal and external values/motivations? 
• Looking for “paychecks” in your life is all of these motivators PLUS managing your time and energy like we mention in Episode 3 (Boundaries).
• Mindset and contentment is very much connected. How do you reframe your inner dialogue? 
• Kellie suggests considering what metrics we use to measure the payoff of our investments of time? 
• Kellie’s advice for herself: zero in on her standards for measuring whether or not something is providing value; give more equity and attention to divvying up her time in thirds (one third for each of her major work/hustles); check in on her freelance project/website buildout.
• Claire’s advice for herself: check in with her writing goal/priority; write one essay for her project.

MENTIONS:

 What It’s Like to Be a Working Military Spouse

Carol Dweck’s Mindset (book)

Rule of Life (CS Lewis Institute)

Fabriq App

Peloton (Kellie’s crazy cool bike) Enter Code: RPMHQT for $100 credit towards accessories! 

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/milspogurus)