COOPERATE WITH LIFE

By: J. Maurus

Cooperation is a way of life in the case of the sane and the healthy. It helps to live effortlessly and to make the best and the most of it.

There is no satisfactory health or happiness that a person can obtain that neglects the source of life itself and the only all-embracing power there is.

We are cooperating with life when we remove the inner conflicts that cause resistance. Intelligent living consists in our ability to establish a healthy compromise between the pleasure-seeking elements of our nature and the disciplinary elements of our conscience.

A healthy mind produces a healthy body.
The way of wise cooperation is the achievement of a harmonious balance of our basic needs, such as security, acceptance, love and the Lord. Often, however, with our needs reduced, we are increasingly likely to function more positively, almost in direct proportion to how much we feel valued.

We are able to achieve results when we:
1. LIVE EACH DAY FULLY. Believe in today and in the work you are doing. Yesterday is a cancelled cheque; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is ready cash – spend it wisely.

TODAY

Be present – to yourself and to others.
Be interested – don’t try to be interesting.
Be pleasing – don’t expect to be pleased.
Be entertaining – don’t wait to be entertained.
Be lovable – don’t wait to be loved.
Be helpful – don’t ask to be helped.

An elderly man was working around the front yard of the house, whistling non-stop. The sound of the whistling was loud and clear, but its seemed rather aimless and purposeless, with no recognizable tune in evidence.

A visitor walked up to the man and said, “I see you’re fond of whistling.”

“Oh” he said, “it’s second nature to me now.”
Then pointing to the woman on the porch, he explained that she was his wife, and that they had been happily married for thirty-eight years when she became blind. Coming as it did so late in life, the blindness had been a deep-seated insecurity.

“I figured,” he went on, “if I just keep whistling while I’m outside the house, she’ll have the security of knowing I’m still with her.”

2.TAKE TIME TO REST. It is necessary to the body as is food. Good rest, a good night’s sleep is health. Rest is the best eraser of fatigue, the means to let off steam, to overcome interior conflicts. Sleep is nature’s way of building up energy. The ability to rest is the secret of wiser and more efficient work. It helps enjoy the normal pleasures of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson prayed: ”The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces: let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and honoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.”

Use these specific techniques to spend the day in a restful and relaxed way:
a.) An optimistic philosophy of life will aid you in controlling your negative emotions. Unhappiness causes you to be chronically restless and constitutes one of the major causes of insomnia.
b.) Keep in mind that recreation is mental medicine. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
c.) Take things in their natural stride.
d.) Enjoy your work. Man is a worker. Work is love and joy made visible.

Thank God when you wake up every morning, that you have something to do, that you have a job. Many people are jobless and the future will offer still less work.

Do your work with due responsibility and intelligence. Your attitude toward work determines how successful it will be.

A worker has the right to just and favourable remuneration insuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity.

Work keeps us from boredom. It gives life its savour and health. It is the source of prosperity and lays the foundation of every fortune.

Behold the tiny ants!
How they march in a line,
Carrying grains of sugar in their mouths
And piling them in a mountain heap!
What a lesson do they not yield to us!
Here’s the secret of success
In all great and noble undertakings
With small means –
Study nature through and through,
Read her lessons between the lines,
And you will fine it written
On every page in bold characters:
“Continuity, persistence”.

4. KNOW THE VALUE OF TIME. Take time as your counsellor – it is the wisest. Time flies, but you are the navigator.

Start each morning determined to make the most of the day. “If you have a time and place for everything and do everything in its time and place, you will not only accomplish more but have more leisure than those who are always hurrying as if vainly attempting to overtake what has been lost” (T. Edwards).

Take time to laugh,
It is the music of life.
Take time to think,
It is the source of power.
Take time to play,
It is the source of youth.
Take time to read,
It is the fountain of wisdom.
Take time to pray,
It is the greatest power on earth.
Take time to be friendly,
It is the road to happiness.
Take time to listen,
It is the way to be accepted.
Take time to work,
It is the price to success.

5. A SENSE OF HUMOUR. Humour is an innate quality in every human being, enabling him/her to perceive life objectively.

Humour is more an attitude in depth than a skill in witty remarks. It is rooted in the personality’s detachment from life situations. Sir Thomas More, as he was about to ascend the gallows, said to the master of the Tower (London), “Help me climb up. I can manage the trip down myself”!

Humour is a safety valve, an effective drug for longevity in our tension-ridden society. The person who laughs remains free. Psychologist Gordon Allport describes the value of humour thus: “Humour may throw an otherwise intolerable situation into a new and manageable perspective. The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure.”

Humour and sanity go hand in hand. A king said to his jester., “Say something silly.” The jester replies, “You are a great man!”

It has been said, and rightly so: “Humanity will have enough to laugh for when it realizes that man, woman, is a little less than angels and a little more than monkeys.”