“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
By this point, you have created your want-it-all list, determined what ego-RHYTHMs™ you’ve already visited, and estimated your rhythm duration.
The next step is to establish which ego-RHYTHM™ you are in today and to design the roadmap that will lead you from where you are now to getting the rest of what you still want.
You’ve already have learned a great deal about how every life has its ups and downs. You understand the concept of a personal rhythm and you either know or have a good idea how long your rhythm usually lasts. You know everything always works out and you’ve learned to avoid harsh judgment about what is in the past.
With this attitude of “know and accept” (the first two letters of KARL™, which we covered a few weeks ago), you focus on today and take a good look at where you are right now which gets you to the R in KARL™: relax. You need to identify your current main focus, as this is what will determine which ego-RHYTHM™ you are in. We are also going to take a look at approximately when you entered this rhythm so we can estimate when the next shift will likely take place. There is always a lot going on in different areas of our lives. Again, we are looking for the current main concern, idea, theme, or focus.
Let us examine this idea by using my own Mom ego-RHYTHM™ as an example.
My Mom ego-RHYTHM™ began when I got pregnant. I learned, like every woman who has ever gone through that experience, that I was not in control. When you become pregnant, your body begins to work like a machine designed to do one thing: To make you eat and live properly so that this baby can be born as healthy, and efficiently, as possible.
Pregnancy is a very humbling and powerful experience. No matter what cream you use, which potion you take, you get stretch-marks somewhere on your body and, afterward, your tummy is not as flat as it used to be. It’s a process that is largely out of your control, no matter how hard you try.
I felt as if I was now not “a person, but rather “the mother” – a tag which, I felt, stripped me of everything else I had worked so hard to become. Many women lose interest in sex for a while because we are so overwhelmed with figuring out what it means to be a mother. I was no different.
I had thought that having a baby was the result of a relationship and love of two people and expected that there would be endless family bliss from there on forward. I learned it wasn’t so. A new area had come. I was a mother now. I read books; I freaked out about every little cough, sneeze, and hiccup. I was over- protective and my body still didn’t look as it had before. Yet on television and in celebrity magazines, I’d see or read that such-and-such celebrity mom just loves being a new mom, couldn’t be happier, and with the use of the miracle diet – scratch that, no diet at all – the baby weight just fell off, and that being a mom was really not that difficult! In contrast to what I was reading, I was feeling like I lived in some alternate universe where hard work, no sleep, and a lot of stress were my reality.
I had a lot of figuring out to do.
Tell me, what happened when you gave birth? How did your life change – other than the enormous love you felt for bringing a new life into the world – what did you feel about your sense of place? I’d love to know – was it different than mine, or did you have an experience that was like mine? Thanks so much for sharing!
