Janice Wilson, author and former IBM manager, has written a book that states any woman can learn how to balance work and play. Janice believes that women need all the extra-terrestrial and heavenly help they can get just to maintain their expansive lifestyles, and her book details how to create the powerful status of goddess and enjoy the balance of working and playing.

Ellen Laura: Why is it so easy for women today to get out of balance?
Janice Wilson: In order to gain acceptance and power in the workplace and at home, women are required to fulfill many different roles. One of the most important is to be a perfect mother who is available to meet all of our children’s needs. At the same time, women are encouraged to competitively pursue professional careers where we are highly productive. We should also be gourmet cooks, maintain smoothly running households, serve as caregivers for our aging parents and have nurturing, loving, passionate relationships with our partners. It seems impossible -to do all of this and still have time to play!
Women have been so busy fulfilling all of these roles that we have forgotten how to play. We feel guilty if we think of ourselves first. When we attempt to do something playful and fun for ourselves, we usually don’t enjoy it or stop doing it because someone else is demanding that we pay attention or take care of them. Women who have lost the ability to play have found that their energy, their energy, their health and their feelings of enjoyment are quite honestly gone! Because I had lost my ability to balance my work life and my play time, I experienced migraine headaches, painful surgeries, lack of energy, depression, irritability (ask my kids and husband) and a lackluster feeling for who I was and what I wanted. I was very successful in all of my job descriptions according to external standards, yet I was unfulfilled and experiencing physical and emotional pain. Everyone got what they wanted and needed except me! I had been living this way for so long, I didn’t know how to begin to think about what I needed or wanted for my happiness and balance.

EL: What led you to seek answers to your dilemma?
JW: I experienced a very frightening surgery and vowed that I was no longer going to sacrifice any more body parts or experience life-threatening diseases. I wanted answers, and I wanted to learn how to live and enjoy my life. I knew there were some people who lived happy and fulfilling lives and I wanted to be one of them, now! So I read every book and attended every lecture and seminar on how to balance my life, get what I wanted, love what I do, say goodbye to guilt, learn how to attain personal power, live my dreams and be happy. I’ll bet I read more than 400 self-help books and spent the last eight years listening to every tape and seminar on how to do it. The answers still eluded me. I looked around and saw that my kids and husband were happy, productive and fulfilled. What were they doing that I wasn’t? It hit me like a ton of bricks. They knew how to play!
Balancing work and play wasn’t initially my problem. I didn’t even know how to play, so I had to first remember that wonderful feeling of playing. I struggled to remember what I used to do when I “played.” I wrote down a list of things I enjoyed as a child and how I felt when I did them. That was fun, but it was a little more difficult to execute the “play principle” in my life. Who had time?

EL: Once you identified the problem and the answer, what was your next step?
JW: 1 became very daring, and I took something from my childhood list and re-created the action of what it was like to play. I had to experiment until it became natural again. I found that when I did this, there was a new energy, vitality and love in my life. I began laughing and even found that I was more productive in my work at IBM, more effective as a parent, more passionate as a spouse and generally happier. I found through my own personal experiences and through research that if 1 didn’t learn how to play again, my health would continue to suffer, my family would be stressed, and my life would continue on a downward spiral.

EL: How does your book guide women to balance their work and play?
JW: The book playfully charts the life of today’s woman. She is visited by a modern-day goddess who illustrates how to bring the fun and play back into her life so that stress and struggle are replaced by magic, mystery and miracles.

EL: Janice, I know what a goddess is in mythical times, but who or what is the goddess in your book?
JW: That’s a good question! In ancient Greece the goddess was a very serious subject. I have used the power associated with the goddess metaphor and created a magical, humorous, mystical and very practical feminine figure. This goddess is an authority on all of the everyday dilemmas women face today. She is a role mode! who teaches us how to achieve the balance between the responsibility of laundry and the excitement of a day at the beach, car-pooling with a high-stress job, and personal relationships with our desire to fulfill our OWfl dreams.
The word “goddess” conjures a mythical, all-powerful being who has a history of being the matriarch of love, beauty, power and war. What I created in my book is a way for the reader to feel this power, this beauty, this passion, this all-knowing wisdom of a goddess and teach her how to blend this knowledge with the everyday realities of work, home and play.
I like to imagine how our lives could have been different if when Gloria Steinem led the women’s movement, she told us we could be “goddesses” instead of “women’s libbers.” How would our lives be different today? What if we were told that we were magical and enchanting; that we owned our own power; that we could be calm and happy? What if our role model was this goddess who knows her true self and knows her passion? What if we were taught that we could be hill of integrity and joy? What if we believed that our persona had the natural power to heal and be healed and that we lived to applaud, not criticize; bless and not condemn? What if this was our feminine essence? What if we were really meant to be goddesses?

EL: Is there anything you can suggest for our readers to get started on the way to becoming a goddess?
JW: One of the steps involves asking for what one wants. It’s difficult for women to ask for what they want because being highly intuitive beings, they believe everyone should know what they want without asking. Also, asking seems to imply feminine weakness. Most women have decided it is easier to do everything themselves rather than ask and be disappointed. This has left very little time for play.
Now that we know how important play is for a balanced life, we need to learn how to ask for what we want to avoid
being overburdened. If we can do this successfully, we will create more time in our lives to play. There are eight silver bullets for this one:
• Know who to ask, when to ask for it and what to ask for.
• Maintain a non-demanding attitude.
• Be concise.
• Be specific — who, what, when where and how.
• Use the words would or will, not could or can.
• Don’t give up.
• Believe it will happen.
• Say thank you!
There is another step that will bring even greater happiness and fulfillment between the balance of work and play. It involves women learning how to nurture and support one another! If we can do that, we can achieve, fulfill and enjoy the many faceted experiences of being a woman with more love, laughter and miracles than we ever thought possible! Nevada Woman is doing so much for women to offer support, and this is precisely what is needed to become a goddess!
Perhaps we can change the course of history with the new interpretation of the goddess metaphor. I encourage everyone to read The Gift from the Goddess and begin to start creating more balance in their lives between work and play. Women will be surprised at the magic and miracles that will occur and the laughter they will begin to enjoy when they achieve this balance.

The Gift from the Goddess is available at Borders Bookstores or by ordering a copy from Janice Wilson Enterprises. Call or write Janice at (702) 233-8305; 8913 Canyon Springs
Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada 89117