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Gaze at little things
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The Philosophy (beliefs and practice) of

The International Movement for the Art of Life

Living life as Art can transform your life as you recognise that one of God's gifts to us is the ability to both be AMAZED by, and to ENJOY, his creation and the life He gives us.

12 KEYS for LIVING LIFE as ART

by Werner May

  Key 7

Facing challenges calmly and looking for cooperation to gain synergy

If a challenge surprises you, if you are e.g. asked if you can assume the leadership of a group, if you are offered another job or if a move is imminent, what do you think? Do you think first, what shall I do? Will I manage to do it? Not bad questions but a better one could be: Who could help me, together with whom could I tackle the challenge?
Livinglifeasart faces challenges calmly for two things are certain:
First of all, challenges are something normal in life. They are part of it and imply learning and maturation processes. Secondly, you don’t have to cope with tasks all by yourself but should use synergy!
Who could help me? should be an automatic question. God doesn’t have lone fighters at work, in leisure time, in church, in the family in mind.
He sees everybody at least as a pair.

The Old Testament tells a remarkable story ( 1 Moses 11): The building of the tower of Babel. There, God asserts – I emphasize: God asserts – that the inhabitants of Babel share the same sense and therefore nobody can deny them anything.
But as their sense aimed towards something harmful God set about disrupting this unity by confusing the tongues.
God knows: Unity doesn’t only make strong but it accomplishes more than the sum of individual achievements.
One often cited example: Let’s say an ox pulls a ton. How many can two oxen pull? If they pull in the same direction, more than two tons, maybe 2.2 tons.
This “surplus gain” is called synergy and synergy is considered a principle of creation that can be observed everywhere.

Of course, this also means that God is on our side for he wants to contribute his own part. He basically always does something whether we notice it or not.
When this became a certainty that I am never alone, the “calm during the storm” can arise.
We face up to the challenge, with the authority as a human being, as a me, as the child of the highest. We keep up, we do not avert shamefacedly, we do not suppress. We want to see.

 

Imagine the possibilities we have if we don’t isolate ourselves! The unimaginable becomes imaginable! The impossible can become possible!
We can ask ourselves about different ways of support:

  • Who helps me by relieving me of something?
  • Who complements me and knows to do something I don’t but need?
  • Who could help me with advice?
  • Who encourages me?

It happens rarely that I perform a task all by myself. Most of the time I am already integrated in cooperation and synergy without noticing it. And still, the question about synergy is always worth asking.

Once we resolved who could help us, something else becomes necessary, that is to become one with this second person so that we pull in the same direction!
A few conditions are required for this.

  • How much trust can we develop with regard to other people maybe also to strangers?
  • Am I willing at all to accept help and thus admit weaknesses or at least limits of my own abilities?
  • How good am I in comprehending what it is all about, what I need, give, want…and in communicating this?
  • Am I ready to make my contribution to synergy? Without counting up what the other contributes?
  • Can I and do I want to become one in prayer? “If two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” (Jesus in Mt 18, 19)

When challenges turn from contrary wind into following wind I am able again to look for beautiful things or create space for beauty.
And the act of collaboration itself, to find each other, to enjoy progress and partial successes and just being together is normally also something beautiful.

 

Livinglifeasart Exercise:

  • Note down on a paper the names of all the people that would help you if you asked them (regarding different matters)... Looking at each of these persons in particular, do you have an idea what you could do with him or her?
  • Did you ever think about how something you are good in could become even better with the help of other people? What do you know best? Who could help you there?

 

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. Henry Ford

The one that prays gets a second person on board. Clemens Bittlinger

 

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Updated May 18, 2009     Home >> Philosophy Werner's Page >> Key 7