Harnessing and Using the Three Deceivers
By Richard Eyre

Editor's note: Today's column continues a series on the Third Alternative of "Synergicity." Over the next few weeks, this column will continue to outline and explain the third alternative of "SYNERGICITY," and how the concept can replace the loneliness and isolation of "Independence."

Richard (and Meridian Publishers) are now in the process of deciding to publish The Three Deceivers as a book. We would appreciate your input on this (and your comments and thoughts on the column so far). Simply click Richard@Meridianmagazine.com and let us hear from you right now.

I want to be a little more personal than usual in today's column, and to tell you a little about what my wife Linda and I do these days. I am doing this because it will allow me to explain what I want you to understand about the progression from a "COI" mentality (Control, Ownership, and Independence) to an "SSS" mentality (Serendipity, Stewardship, and Synergicity).

We are on the speaking circuit nearly 100 days a year. We give presentations to corporate, school, association, and church groups, and our topics are always about families, parenting, and LifeBalance (balancing work, family, and personal needs).

We get a lot of the invitations because of our books. Frankly, we just love going out and being with parents and talking about how families can be strengthened, kids can be taught values, and all of us can better balance our lives. We have been around the world three times in the past couple of years, speaking largely to parents and to those who seek more balance between their work lives and their family and personal priorities.

We find that family is the highest priority of almost everyone, and that the needs and worries and the hopes and dreams of parents are pretty universal and really cut across religious, societal, political and economic differences. Parents in India or Indonesia have pretty much the same concerns as parents in Indiana or Illinois.

The main thrust of most of our parenting presentations is shifting initiative and motivation to the kids, and helping them to live responsibly in the world. Our most common title is, simply, Raising Responsible Kids.

Now, here's what's interesting, given what you know about me and what I write in this column about "The Three Deceivers": What we often tell parents is that "Ownership is a prerequisite of Responsibility" and that the job of a parent is to, over time, work himself out of a joy by helping children to become independent, to learn to have self-control, and to take ownership of their goals, their things, and their lives.

So how can we tell parents to teach their kids Control, Ownership, and Independence, (C, O, and I), and then turn around and write in this column that these three things are "the three deceivers"?

Here is the answer: Control, Ownership, and Independence are a level of life, a level of thinking, and a level of responsibility, that have to be learned and passed through if one is to reach higher levels. Children need to perceive ownership of things before they will begin to take care of them and feel responsible for them. They must gain a degree of control, particularly of themselves, in order to mature and to accept responsibility for who they are. And children must become progressively more independent of their parents if they are to become responsible adults who can live their own lives.

Much of what we present or speak about has to do with the right ways and the right timing for turning over more ownership, control, and independence to kids. We tell parents that their ultimate goal is to work themselves out of a job — to get their kids to a point where they feel ownership for their things and for their goals, to where they can control their tempers and their appetites, and to where they can think independently and thus overcome peer pressure and make good decisions.

But then guess what we say next! We tell those same parents that it is time for them (the parents) to understand that the very C, O, and I that they need to teach and give to their children can become a very big problem and a very limiting factor for them as adults. It is time for them, as grown-up and progressing individuals, to find and live by a higher and more spiritual law. It is now their role to develop a bigger and deeper paradigm in which they focus more on their interdependence with other people, their dependence on God and their stewardships from God, and in which they develop serendipity and synergicity so that their lives become more exciting, more full, more interesting, and more inspired!

So, knowing this sequence of "levels", perhaps calling C, O, and I, "the Three Deceivers" is a little harsh. (I did it to get your attention, but also because I really do believe that these attitudes, when they are carried too far and viewed as the "ends" or the goals of our lives, deceive us greatly, and limit the joy we can find, and undermine the quality of our lives.) Perhaps they should be called "the three stepping stones to a higher consciousness," or "the three prerequisites that should be practiced and learned and then discarded in favor of a higher level of living and thinking."

At any rate, the fact is that C, O, and I are very useful economic and responsibility-training concepts that people have to learn and pass through and live with temporally before they can shift to the more spiritual and much more eternally accurate paradigms of S, S, and S.

Next Week

You will remember that one of the indictments against the three deceivers — one of the reasons we should want to get away from them — is that they are self-focused. Serendipity, Stewardship, and Synergicity are awareness-centered and other-focused. This can be particularly true of the full Synergicity paradigm, because, as we will reveal and explore next week, service is a central part of synergicity.

See you then, and in the meantime, keep the feedback coming to Richard@meridianmagazine.com. I would especially like to hear from you parents this week. Do you agree that control, ownership, and independence are valuable lessons and attitudes to teach to our children, but that there comes a time in our adult spiritual progression when they can be replaced with the more eternally accurate paradigms of Serendipity, Stewardship, and Synergicity?

P.S. If any of you readers would be interested in the blog that Linda and I try to keep up, go to http://valuesparenting.blogspot.com/