We’re Tired of Choosing!
Today’s woman doesn’t want to choose anymore. Between work and home and personal life and career. She’s had it with the balancing act.
Heresy, right?
But why is it that men don’t really have to choose and that we women, after a half-century of social progress, still obsess over whether we can be happy? (And why is it we sometimes tell everyone we’re happy when we know we’re really not? But more on that in future blogs….)
Let’s look first at the idea of men realizing that they can have everything they want. You know: career, personal life, wife, kids. Basically, everything.
I have yet to meet a man who has given a second thought to the choice of either having kids or having a career. Men view it as their birthright to have it all. The only question a man faces is not “if,” but “when.”
A man knows when he’s ready to settle down (as many of us women have learned from the men we dated who weren’t ready). For the most part, a man is quite clear on whether or not he wants to have children and, if he is, when the right time is for that big step. And while this is going on, he’s probably in the back of his mind considering when it’s his optimum time to get serious about his career and start making something of himself. He’s not thinking he has to do everything at once – he figures he can have it all, and he’ll take the steps to accomplish his goals.
I believe that men and women pretty much want the same things. Sure, we’ve got slight differences in how we set priorities and handle details, but, for the most part, we want the same things.
The difference is that many women feel guilty about wanting their lives to encompass what a man’s life does. We women want to have it all and not feel bad or guilty about it. In my career, I’ve been inspired by men and how they can focus on a single project or idea – and not give anything else a second thought. Once you discover how much better you will do when you set yourself a main focus and learn to not freak out about the rest, you will be as liberated as I am today.
It seems that men master wanting it all and having it all much more easily than we women do. Is having it all a struggle that only women bear? Do men have the same concerns that we do? And, how does all this apply to you today, with the borders between gender responsibilities having softened? Although the majority of single parents are women, I know plenty of fathers who have chosen to raise their kids alone. Does gender change something in the equation of having it all? I am here to tell you that single fathers do experience some of the same issues single moms have. The issues that single parents face share some basic commonalities regardless of whether the single parent is a woman or a man.
But you can learn to balance, without guilt, and you can learn to live in the moment – without freaking out about the future. I’ll be sharing my thoughts – and my process – with you on this here. I’ll take you through my life, and how I learned a new way, a new approach, to living that has brought me success, happiness – and the realization that I can have it all without sacrifice.
I will be very direct about my personal life, the mistakes I made in relationships and in business. But I hope that my candor will speak to you – and I hope that my experiences, and what I learned from them, will help you.
Because I learned a lot about the phases of life, about staying in the moment, about never giving up.
Let’s do this together.
My name is Beate Chelette. I'm a woman, a mother, an immigrant, a U.S. citizen, a businessperson. In 2006, I sold my stock photography company to Bill Gates, the world's most successful entrepreneur, which made me a multimillionaire.
I am the American dream.
That makes it seem as if I had it easy. But I didn't. Not by a long shot. My life has been filled with trials - to put it mildly. Despite my many personal and professional setbacks, I never gave up. I had the audacity to keep going. I refused to believe anything could keep me from my goals.
But I had a lot of learning to do on my way to success, and I discovered hard truths about me, about living in today's world, and about how badly women treat themselves. You see, in my life I've had an interesting track record. I've failed and succeeded on several fronts - in the workplace, in marriage, in business - but I didn't surrender. I learned to look at myself, to forgive and move on, and eventually achieve it all without guilt. But this is not just about me: This is about you. It's about us.