Man running on track surrounded by synergy mandala symbol in background — With a synergized life, men go farther and get there faster.

How do successful men like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs get to be successful? Because if you look at their histories it wasn’t luck or even intellectual brilliance that set these guys apart from normal guys like you and me. Any guy can practice the philosophy and mindset of unified purposeful living if he wants to succeed. Before I detail this simple but little-spoken-secret, we must define the term synergy.

Synergy. Sounds like a science term, doesn’t it? Synergy comes from the Greek word sin-ergo, meaning to work together in a system of trust towards a common goal. Individually synergy represents having all of your resources, all the parts of your life working together without conflict. Purposeful harmony in aligning your desires with your goals in life is what synergy is all about.

There are examples of synergy all around us even in our bodies. For example, thousands of tiny fibers in our muscles join together to pull in one direction to generate more force than any one muscle fiber could on its own. Or, with our five senses working together to create a cohesive image of the world around us, Or, in music where each note works together to create a magnificent musical piece. In the world, synergy occurs naturally, but with people, it has to be intentionally organized and enforced to succeed. When a man learns to purposefully unify all the aspects of his life, the universe conspires with him to materialize his dreams.

Just remember that synergizing your life requires dedication to a unified plan. Successful men do this all the time to get what they want.

They don’t waste time.
They don’t waste effort.
They don’t waste energy.
They don’t waste emotion.

They streamline. They plan. They execute. Every single expenditure of time and energy works toward a milestone on the way to their goal. And each milestone achieved paves the way to the next.

Successful men invest ONLY in activities that pay off dividends. No wasted time playing cards, video games, television, or watching porn unless that activity serves to feed their long-term desires.

To synergize your life, you must transform how you live into an epitome of economy. Like the Olympic swimmer with the perfect breaststroke that doesn’t waste one single calorie on wasteful movements; he propels himself from the springboard to the target line like a torpedo. Synergy is a harmonious mindset, where everything you have is focused on promoting the maximum chance of success at the lowest cost.

As an analogy that speaks to the value of an intentionally planned lifestyle. Consider any great painting you’ve seen recently. Didn’t every piece, every single dot of pigment in the painting serve a purpose in the grand design? Chances are there weren’t any stray or random blobs of color. Every single drop of oil or watercolor is meant to be there. Every swirl and dab of the paintbrush has intent, on achieving the artist’s goal of making you feel something.

So ask yourself, will you paint your life intentionally towards your goal? Or will you just spray some colors randomly on a canvas and hope for the best?

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

--Aristotle

Table of Contents:

Finding Harmony: unifying your life from within and without.
a. Synergy from within.
b. Synergy with other people.
Parts that fit: components of success.
Mindfulness in action: examples of synergy fostering success.
The tragedy of a life wasted: why purposeful living is so vital to men.
Conclusion.

Finding harmony: unifying your life from within and without.

There are different types of synergy in life. First, you focus on unifying yourself, and then you integrate with a network of like-minded people.

Synergy from within:

Have you ever heard ‘a house divided cannot stand’? Take that bit of wisdom one step further to realize that only a house united can ascend. Ascension equates to achieving harmony in which all your energy and resources pull together to work toward your primary goal, your Purpose. This requires planning out your time to invest in skills and networking that only have value toward reaching milestone achievements. These achievements can then be repurposed or combined to push toward the next waypoint on the path. Pick your purpose freely whether to become a wealthy businessman, a famous writer, or a fabulous artist. But the decision shouldn’t be taken lightly because your passion for that goal will be the fuel on your journey, while your discipline keeps you on the road to success.

Your goal must be a fiery passion, to be willing to sacrifice all your spare time and energy into that raging flame—otherwise, synergy doesn’t work. You can’t drive like Mario Andretti toward your dream with your foot on the brake pedal. The linking of your passion and your goal makes the magic happen in that your recreational ‘fun’ time can be funneled toward your dream. Your hobbies, your social connections, and even your choice of life partners must all be angled toward one single thing. Your one thing: your dream.

After all, if there was a productivity race at work with a nine-to-five employee just punching a time clock against a man who lives passionately for his work, who do you think would win? I would bet, and bet big, that the guy who never even glances at the clock would win. After all, he’s having the best time doing what he loves and making every minute count toward his goal. He would crush the clock-watcher, then go on to defeat the next competitor in line too.

Synergizing with other people:

Synergy starts with 100% commitment to your desire, and then connecting with other similar-driven persons to become a force multiplier. A network of people, balls-to-the-wall go-getters with different skills working toward a common goal is powerful. A team that gets results quickly and efficiently.

This mindset is just a purposeful acceleration of human instinct. Humans already do this naturally in social interactions, relationships, and business dealings ideally anyway. So, in a sense, we’re just distilling and purposefully applying that tendency for maximum effect. How many truly monumental things are created by just one person anyway? Think about it…almost none. Even a great painter like my beloved Bob Ross didn’t make the canvas and his paints himself. Even many of his ideas he gained from interacting with and learning from other people. Great things come from people working together efficiently toward a Purpose.

Working together synergistically doesn’t mean everybody becomes the same, thinks the same, or acts the same. It’s people who are different using complementary skills to achieve wonderful things. Wondrous things like building a home, creating a business, or making a new technology to change the world.

When a man and woman use their different skills and temperament to build a life together like Ying and Yang, isn’t that a form of synergy? How intentional a man is in picking his mate with synergy in mind, has a HUGE impact on his life achievements. A carefully chosen woman who supports and boosts a man’s efforts gives that man a great advantage in life over a bon-bon-eating wife who demands all the latest clothes to keep up with the Joneses.

Socially, what’s better for success than a group of guys, a Brotherhood of men, who are willing to share prior experience, secret tips, and valuable advice with you for the success of all? Seems like a common-sense recipe for life success to me. If you have a network of guys supporting you who know things you don’t know, have tools you didn’t know existed, and possess skills you haven’t developed aren’t you well on your way to becoming unstoppable?

“Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals ten or a hundred or even a thousand! It’s the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge.”

--Stephen Covey

Connection with the best people is the best part of life synergy. — Coming together with the best people in life is just another form of life synergy.

Parts that fit: components of success.

Picking your Passion: Choose your dream goal for which you have a lifelong passion, unquenchable by whatever rainstorms life sends your way.
Developing key skills: Achieving key degrees or trade skills instrumental to opening doorways toward your Purpose.
Choosing goals shrewdly: Plan your path with milestones that benefit from tasks you enjoy and are already proficient at doing, so you can use your personal me time to promote your professional progress.
Creating a network: In your professional life find useful people to create a connected social web for support, advanced intel, and increased opportunities.
Recycling and repurposing: Take projects completed earlier but repurpose the work towards another job endeavor, or another milestone achievement.
Finding like-minded people: Build professional linkages with people with helpful skills, and complementary backgrounds, and bring out the best in you.
Fun time used for fuel: Choose hobbies that indirectly help advance your progress toward your milestones. Be willing to sacrifice comfort for your goals.
One step leads to another: Going for milestone achievements that naturally lead to the next, using the momentum to make each successive win easier.
Pick friends that boost: Pick friends that support your goals and never detract from your energy in pushing toward your dream.
Turn losses into learning: Take your setbacks and lessons learned to evolve into a more capable you, better able to field temporary losses for a global win.

“Two good people are better than one good person. Together we can do what no individual can do. This is the power of synergy.”

--Dele Ola

Mindfulness in action: examples of synergy fostering success.

A man who is good with his hands wisely chooses to invest in learning home repair skills. He then connects with several other like-minded guys toward a home-flipping business. Once that’s taken off to succeed, he channels his learned experiences, loyal employees, and business contacts, towards another business idea of creating more efficient cheaper homes for lower-income citizens. He chooses a woman who supports him and his business by becoming a realtor to help sell the homes he makes.

A guy puts in the time to study medicine as a cardiac doctor while keeping abreast of the healthcare industry and its global challenges. He joins up with an electrical engineer to design a device to self-diagnose heart-related issues and communicate with hospitals efficiently to improve their healthcare utilization and lower mortality rates. Saves lives and makes millions doing so…Then he leverages that money and fame to push into politics to redesign and revolutionize the entire healthcare system in America.

A software programmer creates an AI program to assist in SEO sales marketing, then takes that program and adds extra functionality to repackage it for use by a hospital to know what the best way is to explain what keyword phrases should be used to explain in clear understandable terms medical diagnoses, conditions, and treatments to patients and families. Just think of all the man hours carried over from one task to another, rather than creating a program from scratch. He then leverages his knowledge, contacts, and new-found wealth to help spearhead an initiative to revolutionize educational program development in failing school districts through the use of AI.

“An army is greater than a warrior.”

--Matshona Dhliwayo

The tragedy of a life wasted: why purposeful living is vital to men.

Have you ever read Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, To Be a Man? I’m specifically referring to the part about “a man should be able to lose all his winnings and start again and not speak a word about his loss”.

Yes, starting from scratch again is sometimes necessary. Learning from those losses is good too. Setbacks are after all a brutal fact of life. But, if you plan your life poorly and have to struggle yet again to take over the same ground and achievements over and over again, is that perseverance? Or rather a consequence of a lack of foresight and preparation?

With only one chance in life, why risk it by wasting your time with nothing to show for it?

Let me be honest here. Like many men, I have a very real fear. I worry that at the end of my life, I won’t make much of a mark in this world. I won’t be able to achieve as many significant things that satisfy me and make my daughter proud. Not wealth mind you, but an existential fear of not leaving behind a legacy on this Earth of who I was and my talents.

As a physical therapist for 25 years, I remember asking so many elderly men in the sunset of their lives, “So what interesting things have you done in your life?”

Far too many old men responded, “I worked, went to church and that’s about it.” Meaning, that after working and church the rest of their day was spent reacting to whatever came up. Things that they can’t even remember now because they were insignificant.

Were there no great risks taken? No memorable adventures? Nothing built or created? Did these old men grind it out at work, day after day, until they shuffled off this mortal coil?

Did they leave nothing significant in their passing to remember, working themselves unto death forgoing their dreams? Until eventually they even forgot they had dreams? They frittered away any non-work time to do everyone else’s bidding but their own. And now their short tombstone epithet will read: ‘A godly man who worked hard’?

Hell, no. I’m sorry but that’s just not good enough for me.

Will it be good enough for you?

That is so freaking depressing that it chills me just to think about it. So that’s why I’m a big believer in synergy in my life. I don’t want to waste my limited heartbeats of life on stuff that doesn’t matter or build things for bosses who don’t care a whit about me.

Do you ever fear that? A life with no consequence, of just being used up by your company at work, until you become expendable and disposable. And undeniably forgettable?

If you end up dabbling a little here and a little there.

If you just plod forward only to do the tasks bosses handed to you.

If you start over from one career and one job to the next starting over each time to scrabble your way back to baseline.

If you waste your life on dead-end activities that don’t help you reach your goals.

If you don’t synergize your life—That’s your likely future. Don’t let it happen to you. Ok, off my soapbox now, I promise…

Conclusion.

I’ve introduced you to the concept of synergy, its parts, and examples of how a synergy mindset can sculpt a life. I’ve even subjected you to my admittedly long-winded diatribe on why synergy is vital to a successful and meaningful life.

Now, you have to decide. Is that for you?

Can you be a disciple of synergy and religiously sacrifice creature comforts and pleasure for the achievement of your higher purpose? Can you force yourself to diligently weave the minutes of your day into an intentional tapestry of success? Every. Single. Day.

If you can plan your life, ignite your passion, and throw everything into the resulting fire of determination? —then you ABSOLUTELY can succeed at whatever goal in life you choose to pursue. Success then becomes a foregone conclusion. We believe in you, Brother.