The Backgrounds of the Synergysophy

This was originally ment to be an answer to SKY's comment on the Synergysophy, but it developed to something else than just a comment.

Dear SKY,

I am truly glad about that you seem to be prepared to undersign the Synergysophy! You are really one of the very few people who have perceived the idea and thoughts behind it since 1999 when I published it.

The Synergysophy is a result of my personal experiences I would not like anyone to meet.

It's all about a long process starting from the depression in the shift of 1980/-90, including a period of almost ten years, when I worked as a maniac to keep the living standard of my family stable. This led inexorably to occupational exhaustion, which ended up in a total burn-out in the end of 1997.

To recover from it took more than a year, though I was seriously looking for help from medical doctors and psychiatrists. Nobody could help. When I suffered from sleeping problems, I got sleeping pills, when I suffered from deep depression, I got anti-depressive medication.

Nobody asked me about the possible backgrounds, and if someone did, I had not enough time to tell about it because of that the consultation hours are not more than ½-hour. I recognized that it was also about lack of interest.

Even doctors were and are exhausted and have their personal (mental) problems to solve. I even asked doctor's a couple of times; Do you need some help?

I had to take the "project" in my own hands, and went mentally back to my life experiences, working history and to my most successful operation's in order to really understand why something had worked, something not.

I found out that I have to find a solution from my original train of thought of the most successful projects.

Train of thought

1.) Look for factual connections (synergies), 2.) Connect, 3.) Target, 4.) Create interdependencies, and 5.) Utilize in a way everyone will benefit from.

By this is I wrote two articles about my experiences, and was the first in Finland to come out from the closet by making my burn-out public.

The articles, “Occupational Exhaustion as a Project” and “Burn-out and Back to Business” were published in 1998 in the leading magazines of industry and trade in Finland.

The Birthday Cake Theory

Occupational exhaustion is like a birthday cake. The candles characterize life values, the layers episodes of life, the strawberries experience and core competence. The whipped cream presents all the non-essential things, which lead up to exhaustion, depression and finally to burnout. Sooner or later, you have to throw the cake on the table upside down. The whipped cream fly away, the candles break through the bottom of the cake. The strawberries assimilate with the rest. Only the most important things remains and the life and work activities can continue constructively and soundly.

Destruction is cool!
Burnout and Back to Business

Every society needs explorers who can fly high enough to see the forest, what it is based on, how it evolves and how it blooms and dies. Forest experts have realized for a long time ago that forest fires are a vitally important part of the well being and breeding ground of the woods in a longer run. The woods contain an amount of seeds, which does not shoot up without the destructive heat of the fire.

The fire increases the nutrient content of the ground, and many breeds bloom faster thanks to the fire. From the forests point of view; fire is the basis of regeneration.

Only a couple of days after the articles came public, the medical superintendent of Helsinki University Central Hospital called me. He asked if I would like to participate in a doctor’s congress organized in the Finlandia hall in Helsinki. I naturally said yes.

By this I got a chance to stand on the platform and look into the eyes of more than 800 medical doctors’s and say precisely what I thought about them, and about the way they treat patients.

More than 50 leading newspapers wrote about my case, and I was in business again.
This explains how the Synergysophy was born, and about the backgrounds of Synergialaitos.Com (“Synergy Society” since 1999) renamed as SICU (Synergy Integrated – Connects the Unconnected) in 2005.

The Synergysophy has become a kind of a personal lifeline, which I have followed and believed in ever since, though it has been difficult for others to understand. Unfortunately there are more “Take-to-Get-Even-More” kind of people than people who really understand and follow the idea and concept of Give-to-Get.

The Synergysophy is not precisely the money making way of thinking in the short run, but offers me the freedom to think and act, and to connect the unconnected precisely in the way I am looking forward to, instead of being trapped in a traditional way of vertical thinking, or in traditional organization forms.

An ending word

Strangely enough, I wrote “Occupational Exhaustion as a Project” on my birthday in 1998, now its Christmas eve 2008.

The articles and the great media publicity I got led to that many other opened up about their exhaustion and burnout in the media including the first lady of Finland.

TOM