December 2006

Unresolvable Dilemma: A Platform for Dynamic Creativity

No matter how hard we try to avoid the work/life balance issue (or believe we’ve solved it) it keeps intruding into our would-be perfect lives. Inevitably, we become frustrated because we never seem to get what we think we want: the idealized version of our life!

This article examines the very concept of work/life balance to identify a new approach to building a fuller, more prosperous entrepreneurial life.

First, talking about "work vs. life" presupposes that your work isn’t your life. This language just sets you up to think you’re always far from the life you want to live. So, we’re really talking about balancing our professional and personal lives. Viewing the perceived conflict this way enables another beneficial shift in thinking, because it includes "self" in the picture. Many married people/parents identify family as personal life and leave themselves out of the picture, which creates the setup for no individual "you."

Second, it's helpful to look at another perceived conflict—"self vs. others." If you see your needs in relation to both your professional life and your family, you put yourself back into the picture. You create a view of everyone who must be considered when allocating time and creating life strategies. This can go a long way to relieve the guilt that doesn’t seem to be diminished simply by spending more time with your family. Seeing the dilemma as "self vs. other" helps single women entrepreneurs determine if their personal needs are being met. Single women have a greater tendency to overwork, because they usually have fewer family responsibilities and may not have romantic relationships. Often, work becomes all there is—with eventual negative effects on their quality of output or physical and emotional health.

Making these shifts in language and thinking help you understand how to use your "me" time effectively. Time for self doesn’t need to take away from the family. It can generate renewed energy, creativity, motivation and joy. You may even identify additional revenue opportunities while still caring for your family.

Managing Paradox

The question is can we go even further to manage this choice—which feels more like an ongoing tug-of-war—more effectively? Well, it’s a paradox, a mental phenomenon where two things cannot logically coexist, but do. The good news is that a paradox can be managed. But unless we’re aware of the paradox, it impacts our decisions in ways that consume our energy, time and money.

Seeing life through this lens—and helping people create more comfortable relationships with perceived dilemmas—is the expertise of Ragini Michaels, the originator of Paradox Management Training and founder of the Facticity® Wisdom School in Seattle.

Michaels’ work is producing profound results. For the last 30 years, she’s helped people from all walks of life effectively address what she calls "unresolvable dilemmas." It starts with understanding that opposites are the natural, hidden pattern of life. For example, where there’s good, there’s also bad. Like two sides of a coin, one cannot exist without the other and, in fact, each defines the other. Similarly, our "professional" and "personal" lives define each other, as do the concepts of "self" and "other."

Unresolvable Dilemma: Recoding Your Mind and Body

Michaels' work then helps us understand that we unknowingly treat many perceived conflicts as "either/or" questions, when we are actually confronting an unresolvable dilemma. You can solve the dilemma of either Mexican or Chinese food for dinner by ordering one or the other. An unresolvable dilemma, however, doesn’t go away because you choose one. To manage it, you must create room for both options.

In the context of "professional vs. personal life" or "self vs. others," your relationship to both sides is ongoing. Peace comes not by choosing one side and ignoring the other, but by relating to both sides. This opens the door to understanding that "balance" is not a steady state but an ebb and flow. To ebb and flow is restorative and rebalances the entire system. That’s you!

To be fair, it takes some work—and some true perceptual shifts—to make this happen. Michaels says, "Understanding is a wonderful thing, but until that idea or insight or understanding truly gets into your body, muscles and brain via new neural pathways, it remains just an idea. To be able to truly live in paradox, there must be an actual neuro-physiological change in the brain. This is what I delight in helping people accomplish."

My exposure to Paradox Management has allowed me to view the work/life balance question very differently than before. Creative avenues are opening, leading to new income-generating ideas, new awareness of how I relate to the stresses of my entrepreneurial life and a more relaxed approach to success and prosperity.

Ellen Brook is the principal of eB Communications, a firm specializing in corporate marketing and communications. She is also an artist and founder of eB Designs in Silk (www.ellen-brook.com). Ellen can be reached at ebrookok@yahoo.com.