The fruit and bonding of true synergy are priceless.
SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH ADULTS AND TEENS
Learning About Synergy
Discuss the meaning of “synergy.” Ask family members: What examples of synergy do you see in the world around you? Responses might include: two hands working together; two pieces of wood holding more weight than both could support separately; living things functioning together synergistically in the environment.
Discuss together the stories in this chapter. Ask: Does our family operate synergistically? Do we celebrate differences? How could we improve?
Consider your marriage. What differences initially attracted you to each other? Have those differences turned into irritations, or have they become the springboard for synergy? Together, explore this question: In what ways are we better together than we are alone?
Discuss the idea of the family immune system. Ask family members: Do we look at problems as negative obstacles to be overcome or as opportunities to grow? Discuss the idea that challenges build your immune system.
Ask family members: In what ways are we fulfilling our four basic needs—to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy? In what areas do we need to improve?
Family Learning Experiences
Review the section entitled “Not All Situations Require Synergy.” Develop an approach to making cooperative family decisions without synergy. As a family, go through the “Exercise in Synergy.”
Conduct some fun experiments that show how much easier it is to do a job with the help of another person rather than alone. For example, try to make a bed, carry a heavy box, or lift a large table by the edge with one hand. Then invite others to participate and help. Use you imagination and come up with your own experiments to demonstrate the need for synergy.
SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH CHILDREN
Pretend that you are stranded in your home for an entire month with just your family. Ask: What kind of family synergy is available for us to draw on to make it through—and perhaps even enjoy—the challenge? Create a list of contributions each family member could make: MOM
Great cook
Can sew
Loves crafts
Loves to hike
DAD
Can fix anything
Loves to read to us
Plays games
Can fish
SPENCER
Fun to play with
Loves sports
Is artistic
Hunts
LORI
Plays the piano
Good with kids
Loves to bake
Good organizer
GRANDMA
Great storyteller
Plays violin
Bakes pies
Was a nurse
Perform some experiments that teach the strength of synergy, such as the following: Experiment #1: Ask your children to tie their shoes with one hand. It cannot be done! Then ask another family member to help with one hand. It works! Point out how two working together can do more than one—or even two—working separately. Experiment #2: Give your children a Popsicle stick. Ask them to break it. They probably will be able to do so. Now give them four or five sticks stacked together and ask them to do the same. They probably won’t be able to do it. Use this as an illustration to teach that the family together is stronger than any one person alone.
Share the experience about deciding on TV guidelines. Synergistically decide what the guidelines should be in your home.
Ask your children to work together to create a poster for the family.
Let your children plan a meal together. If they are old enough, let them prepare it together also. Encourage them to come up with dishes such as soup, fruit salad, or a casserole where the blending of a number of different ingredients creates something entirely new.
Teach your children this system: “On a scale of one to ten, how strongly do you feel about your point?” Practice it with your children in different situations. It’s fun to use and solves lots of problems!
Plan a family talent night. Invite all family members to share their musical or dancing talent, a sports performance, scrapbooks, writings, drawings, woodwork, or collections. Point out how wonderful it is that we all have different things to offer, and that an important part of creating synergy is learning to appreciate others’ strengths and talents.
HABIT 7
SHARPEN THE SAW
One divorced man shared this experience:
During our first year of marriage, my wife and I spent a lot of time together. We went for walks in the park. We went on bike rides. We went to the lake. We had our own special time, just the two of us, and it was really great.
The turning point came when we moved to a different location and became heavily involved in separate careers. She was working the graveyard shift, and I was working the day shift. Sometimes it would be days before we even saw each other. Slowly, our relationship started disintegrating. She started building her circle of friends, and I started building my circle of friends. We gradually drifted apart because we didn’t build on the friendship we had together.
Entropy
In physics, “entropy” means that anything left to itself will eventually disintegrate until it reaches its most elemental form. The dictionary defines entropy as “the steady degradation of a system or society.”
This happens in all of life, and we all know it. Neglect your body, and it will deteriorate. Neglect your car, and it will deteriorate. Watch TV every available hour, and your mind will deteriorate. Anything that is not consciously attended to and renewed will break down, become disordered, and deteriorate. “Use it or lose it” is the maxim.
Richard L. Evans put it this way:
All things need watching, working at, caring for, and marriage is no exception. Marriage is not something to be treated indifferently or abused, or something that simply takes care of itself. Nothing neglected will remain as it was or is, or will fail to deteriorate. All things need attention, care, and concern, and especially so in this most sensitive of all relationships of life.1
So also with regard to the family culture: It requires constant deposits into the Emotional Bank Account to just keep it where it is now, because you’re dealing with continuing relationships and continuing expectations. And unless those expectations are met, entropy will set in. The old deposits will evaporate. The relationship will become more stilted, more formal, colder. And to improve it requires new creative deposits.
Imagine how the entropic effect is multiplied by the pressing environmental forces of the turbulent physical and social weather we’re trying to navigate in. That is why it’s so necessary for every family to take the time to renew itself in the four key areas of life: physical, social, mental, and spiritual.
Imagine for a moment that you’re trying to fell a tree. You’re sawing through this huge, thick tree trunk. Back and forth, back and forth you pull the heavy saw. You’ve been laboring at it all day long. You’ve hardly stopped for a minute. You’ve been working and sweating, and now you’re about halfway through. But you’re feeling so tired that you don’t see how you’re going to last another five minutes. You pause for a minute to catch your breath.
You look up and see another person a few yards away who has also been sawing a tree. You can’t believe your eyes! This person has sawed almost completely through his tree trunk! He started about the same time you did and his tree is about the same size as yours, but he stopped to rest every hour or so while you kept working away. Now he’s almost through, and you’re only halfway there.
“What’s going on?” you ask incredulously. “How in the world have you gotten so much more done than I have? You didn’t even stay with it all the time. You stopped to rest every hour! How come?”
The man turns and smiles. “Yes,” he replies. “You saw me stop every hour to rest, but what you didn’t see was that every time I rested, I also sharpened the saw!”
Sharpening the saw means attending regularly and consistently to renewal in all four dimensions of life. If sharpening the saw is done properly, consistently, and in a balanced way, it will cultivate all the other habits by using them in the renewing activities themselves.
Going back to the airplane metaphor, this habit fulfills the need for constant refueling and maintenance of the plane and for continual upgrading of the training and skill level of the pilots and crew.
I recently had two very instructive experiences—a flight on an F-15 and a visit to the nuclear submarine Alabama. I was amazed by the degree and amount of training those involved were required to have. Even the most veteran professional pilots and seamen constantly practiced the elemental and beginning steps and kept constantly updated on new technology in order to be current and prepared.
The evening before the F-15 flight, I was taken through a complete dressing procedure. I put on the flight suit and was instructed in all aspects of the flight and of emergency procedures should anything go wrong. Everyone went through the procedure regardless of their level of experience. When we landed, those involved put on a twenty-minute drill in arming the plane. This drill demonstrated an amazing level of skill, speed, interdependence, and innovation.