How to Avoid Conflict

To get at the timing of life – our rhythms, that ego-RHYTHM™ concept I began to talk about in my previous post – I did a lot of research.

I say this with a wink, because for the most part my research took place at conferences I attended, during dinner and a few drinks at the bar, where there always seemed to be a good honest discussion to be found.

(That all works, of course, if you follow “Beate’s Cinderella Rule for Traveling Businesswomen”: “In bed before midnight, three-drink maximum, and walk to your room alone.” – More on this in a later post.)

I was intrigued by how men seemed to be free of internal conflicts about having a family and wanting at the same time to be successful. It wasn’t a choice they considered – it just didn’t occur to them that they had to choose.

I wanted these things, too. But I seemed to be unable to fit the balancing of the two into my life. I feared that perhaps single mothers couldn’t have relationships if they wanted a career as well. I felt limited, even stifled, by the limited choices that were open to women such as me.

During my quest to find a logical pattern in my daily struggles – struggles that are probably quite similar to those of women like you – and my search for a concept that would allow women to have it all, I watched my daughter grow up.

This really inspired me. Not the mothering part – every parent knows how profound an experience that is – but observing her mature. Just by being a mother, I could see and recognize that there was a definite rhythm to how life progresses. By observing my daughter, I began to make sense of the timing, the rhythms, in life in general.

The sleepless nights that young children have, those awful times when a parent must tend to a child, suddenly became a non-issue. They were over. Similarly, the loud and embarrassing (at least to me) temper tantrums – which used to make it impossible for us to go to restaurants – turned into a non-issue seemingly overnight. There were other examples like this: my daughter matured, changed and moved onto a new phase of her life.

The single most important thing I noticed was that what obsesses us at one time eventually vanishes, and is then replaced by another issue that becomes the next big deal that we struggle with.

There is a rhythm to our life, a sort of cyclical component to how life happens.

I finally saw it.

Did you ever feel that your life was slipping away from you? Did you sense that you never have enough time to do what really matters to you – and are you constantly telling yourself that you’ve fallen behind? Let me know – your experiences will help us all understand the nature of the rhythms of our lives.