The toughest conflict that I have faced lately with my clients is the conflict between traditional family approach and their careers. Somehow it has became a dogma in Ukraine, and I have a feeling all over the globe that woman can’t have it all and shall remain pleasing her man and staying less important.
Women are told, that it’s better for her own good to choose to follow his ego and remaining low and quite, and then run away from a relationship because it was suffocating and incapable of doing what they want. Yes it all starts with issues in the family where a father is incapable of accepting a woman’s success. The unhappiness that linger in these families, and the buffering affect it can have on children.
When you finally work through this conflict and forgive your parents (or don’t, because not everything can be forgiven), accept that they are just humans of another generation and didn’t know any better, you change. It becomes easier to speak up, to choose your own happiness, to get your voice back.
The important point is to understand where this conflict “lives” and what are the choices that you have made already were affected by it. One of my fave tools is to write down things you are happy and unhappy with in your life at the moment. It might be a relationship, job that you have, even a car that you bought. When it comes to unhappy part, think which aspect or phrase you can associate with the matter, and analyze where or when have you heard it before. Now consider as if this isn’t true- or may be it doesn’t work for you any more, or someone else does it in another way and they are happier with their choice. Imagine that you have it, how does that make you feel? What can change in your life if it was that way?? Write it down and leave it be for a bit. Come back to what you’ve wrote in a day or two and consider maybe it’s time to use your new strategy? Or learn more about it? Have an awesome day guys!