There was a time in my life when I was sure that something was trying to keep me from succeeding. I would start something, usually a new job, and everything would be well for a while. The problems would slowly start creeping into my life. When that happened I would think, oh no, here I go again….

Some problems would be big problems, such as a major theft at my place of employment. Once there was a woman I worked with who was dating a Policeman. His patrol car had been vandalized. Of course I was initially part of the suspects who could have committed the theft and later vehicle damage.

Other times it might be problems with the Boss and I not getting along, or having different viewpoints on how something should be done, or not done. At any rate, it always appeared that when life was starting to go in the direction I thought it should, something would happen to slow things down, or create a temporary roadblock.

If it was not work, it would be car problems. My car would break down during those times when I had the least amount of money to fix it. If not my car, something else would break in the house. A window would get broken, the heater would have problems. It was always something that was going wrong and stopping the nice smooth path I thought I was on.

Over time I started to see a pattern, and I was in the middle of it. I had some areas that I needed to work on and I did. After I had myself in order, I noticed problems still occasionally happened. My car still would break down, or there would be a leaking faucet where I lived that of course would cost money to repair.

I also noticed another pattern in my life. Well, not just in my life, but in everyone’s life. Just like all the planets and the moon run on a cycle of sorts, so do we. I don’t mean we run on a set cycle of so many good days, followed by so many bad days. Our lives do run on a cycle of sorts, and it is a completely natural occurrence.

All life has upward cycles, and our life has downward cycles. If you are familiar with alternating current of household electricity, or a sine wave in math or physics, it is the same principle. We start on an upward cycle, and eventually hit the peak, then we start a downward cycle approaching the bottom.

It is how we manage these cycles that determine how successful we are in our lives. Knowing there are ups and downs in our lives, and expecting them to occur, we find out they are not as tragic as we thought they were. These cycles add balance to our lives.

We need balance in our lives. Without balance we would have no reference point to judge how we are doing. Knowing we have cycles in our lives, we learn to start planning for the times when everything is not going our way.