Have you ever played a game of UNO? The special cards in this game can feel oddly familiar to working mothers: getting skipped for promotions, drawing extra tasks at work and at home, or constantly pulling new strategies out of thin air. This week, I’ve been exploring the connection between motherhood and career using UNO as a metaphor, showing how the challenges of juggling both roles mirror the unpredictability of the game. But beyond the fun comparisons, I want to take this opportunity to go deeper—both into why this metaphor is so powerful and how using proxies like this can be a valuable tool for tackling career challenges as a mother.
Motherhood and Career: Navigating Luck, Strategy, and Uncertainty
Card games, like life and career, involve a mix of randomness and strategy. Sometimes, you get lucky, and everything aligns in your favor. Other times, you draw a series of unfortunate cards and have to find a way to make them work. Motherhood and career both come with uncertainties that are often beyond your control:
- Career Challenges for Working Mothers: You don’t choose all your colleagues. You can’t control company policies, economic downturns, or whether your boss recognizes your contributions.
- Motherhood’s Impact on Career Progression: You don’t know how having a baby will shift your relationship dynamics, what kind of temperament your child will have, or what unexpected challenges may arise as they grow.
While these uncertainties are unavoidable, the key takeaway is that you can control how you play your cards. You can strategize, adapt, and—just like in a game—sometimes even negotiate the rules when you engage in open communication.
Why Metaphors Help Us Solve Problems
Using a metaphor like a card game allows us to step back from a problem and see it from a new perspective. Here’s why this approach is so effective:
- Emotional Distance for Better Decision-Making: It’s often easier to analyze a situation when we’re not emotionally entangled in it. A metaphor helps create a bit of space so you can think clearly.
- Breaking Down Career Obstacles into Manageable Steps: A big, overwhelming problem can feel impossible to tackle. But if you break it into smaller chunks, you can identify quick wins and understand which aspects require deeper, long-term work.
- Clarifying What’s in Your Control: It’s empowering to separate what you can change from what you can’t. Once you do that, you stop wasting energy on the uncontrollable and focus on strategic action.
Reclaiming Autonomy and Energy as a Working Mother
One of the biggest struggles for mothers in their careers is the feeling of lost autonomy. Your time is dictated by work, your children’s needs, and endless responsibilities. But career challenges—when tackled strategically—can actually become an area where you regain a sense of control and direction. By applying problem-solving techniques, you shift from ruminating on frustrations to taking purposeful action.
This is where coaching plays a vital role. Career coaching for working mothers helps break down issues into smaller, manageable parts while taking a step back to assess the bigger picture. And when you combine this structured approach with body awareness—learning to tune into what feels right for you—you gain the clarity and confidence to move forward in your career without burnout.
Take Action: Play Your Career Cards Right
If this resonates with you and you’re ready to take control of your career challenges, my Work Challenge Playbook is a great place to start. It provides step-by-step guidance to help you:
- Diagnose the key issue holding you back in your career
- Create a structured plan to tackle the problem
- Set small, manageable milestones for real progress
You have more power than you think. Not everything is random. When you take intentional steps to tackle career challenges, you reclaim your energy, confidence, and career growth—without losing yourself in what you can’t change.
So, what’s your next move? Let’s play to win.