About a million years ago I heard Dan Savage talk about The Price of Admission in relationships. It’s probably the best relationship advice I’ve ever heard and helped me enter into a healthy and incredibly supportive relationship, one that I didn’t even know was possible. Basically, in any relationship you get a lot of good stuff: support, fun, love, etc. To receive all the benefits of that relationship there is a price of admission. What are you willing to pay for (live with) to have that? (I live with A LOT of dad jokes.) If you agree to pay that price, you have to let it go, or even embrace it, and not make your partner suffer for you paying the price you agree to. (At this point I genuinely laugh or groan respectively at each dad joke. Seriously, sometimes I wake up to them. Totally worth the price.)

As I talk to people thinking about their lives and what next steps to take, we’ve been looking at this concept more and more. What are you willing to pay to get a better job? To rejoin the workforce? To create boundaries with your parents or your partner? To allow into your social sphere? To take better care of yourself?

When I think about this concept with work I think about the mom reentering the workforce. Through the coaching process we’ve uncovered what she’s not willing to pay; a long drive, work that demands too much physically and emotionally, stagnant growth, isolation, and keeping her integrity. Now she knows that work in her field which makes her happy is possible. Or I think about the executive who has a dream job from an outside perspective. The pay is great, the location is stellar, the visibility from above is rare, BUT the work is not creative. It takes extra effort to do the work because it’s not the thing that sparks his energy. He’s paying for that position in ways that aren’t worth the price of admission.

How do you know the price is too high? Does your work exhaust you when, on paper, it doesn’t seem like it should? When you plan a visit to see family do you need time to prepare yourself? If you want to do something for yourself do you dread telling your partner because you know it could be an argument? Do you forget you have a book club planned because you never get a word in edgewise?

How do you fix it? It might be time to take a good, hard look at what price you’re paying. If you can renegotiate the price, make sure you know what you need. If you’ve never considered the price, an old fashioned pro/con list can help. Look at all the things that spark some energy and all the things that make you want to avoid it or fight about it.

Once you make the choice that the price is worth the benefit, you have to let it go. Make peace with it and move forward.

Look, we have one life and we own it. We get to decide what we’ll pay. Is the price in line with the worth?