Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it. – Brian Tracy

Teamwork is the concept of people working together cooperatively, as in a sports team – soccer makes the best example.

Business projects require multiple people to work together, and so teamwork is a very important concept in the business field.

Our daily lives can be very well guided by rules and guidelines from the business environment, so it is always worthwhile to learn something new on this subject even if it at first it doesn’t seem to relate.

What exactly is a team?

According to Webster’s On-line Dictionary a team is “a group organized to work together.” However, this definition doesn’t do much to help us understand what a team truly is. A more useful definition comes from Parker & Kroop (1999, p. 7), who define a team as “a group of people with a high degree of interdependence focused on the achievement of some goal or task.“

Teamwork basics

Not all the work that is done together or in close proximity of others is teamwork. Teamwork is the work done by a group of people that fits these four characteristics.

1. Shared goals. Members of a team have a common goal. Simply put: teams have work to do. Each component of the team works toward the same goal as the one next to him, even if they do different types of work.
2. Interdependence. Team members cannot achieve their shared goals single-handedly, but instead, must rely on each other.
3. Cooperation. This results from the interdependence of the members. Since members depend on one another, it is of absolute importance that they cooperate.
4. Boundedness and stability. Boundedness means the team has an identifiable membership and that its members, as well as nonmembers, know who is and who isn’t on the team. The stability aspect refers to the fact that the members of the team work together for a long enough time in order to accomplish their goal.

Now that we have a pretty good idea about teams and teamwork, let’s extrapolate a little.

I believe it’s safe to say that most people – if not all – want to be wealthy. By wealth I’m not referring only to money or other material aspects of wealth, but more to the fullness of the human existence. And if most of us want to be wealthy, it means that we have a shared goal.

Now let’s say that you want to become a movie director. It is obvious that you cannot simply go to a film studio and start directing films. You have to go through various causes and conditions and channels. You cannot achieve your goal all by yourself and must rely on others. This means that we’re interdependent in achieving our shared goal.

Most people know that we create our own destiny and some are even aware that we’re doing it in cooperation with the rest of the world. We only exist in cooperation with everything there is around us; we depend on working together. We continuously cooperate.

The last two characteristics of teamwork can also found in the daily life: the different organizational methods of our society (cities, countries, etc) have a certain amount of boundedness and stability.

The whole mankind is a big team. We should become aware of this and help each other out more often.

All that I can hope for is that by raising my voice I can help you help the greatest cause there is: “goodwill among men and peace on earth.” (Albert Einstein)

Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind. - Seneca

You are tired, you have to drag yourself out of bed each morning and your life seems to be somehow spiraling downwards… your enthusiasm for work gets lower each day and so does the interest in your hobbies and social life. You’ve got some vacation time banked but you’re thinking that you don’t have enough money to travel. You are wondering if going away, even for a little while, is worth the effort…

If you are in the above situation, then you really cannot afford not to travel.

If you are not in that situation: travel anyway, it will benefit you more than you can imagine; you might even achieve success because you did!

In this modern and busy life of ours, planning a getaway is not always an easy job. Most people have budgets to keep, schedules to follow, children to take care of… But the time when travel is most necessary is the time when you think you don’t have enough time / money to do it.

Getting away, even if for a short period and to a nearby destination, can do wonders for your well-being. As the opening quote beautifully puts it, it will “impart new vigor to the mind.”

I’ll share a little secret with you now (shh, don’t tell anyone): the inspiration to start this blog, the motivation and enthusiasm to keep working on it, the strong desire to help others, the power to start thinking and to seeing life in perspective would not have been possible without travel.

However, an important note must be made: by travel I’m referring to wandering (go someplace see everything) and not to tourism (go there see that).

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sight-seeing.” – Daniel J. Boorstin

Let’s see how travel will change your life

Traveling alone, or solo travel, is the quickest and easiest way for you to grow your independence and confidence. Most of the traveling that I’ve done has been solo travel, and one of the main things I’ve noticed upon returning from each getaway is the fact that I felt like I have accomplished a certain something. It’s an indescribable feeling that makes you feel like you’re on top of the world and everything is possible. That feeling is triggered by the fact that traveling alone allows you to do a lot of things about which you previously thought that you can’t do without name_someone_close_here.

Independence and confidence help you in both your professional and personal life.

Being alone and away from it all gives you time to think. It regroups your thoughts and allows you see life from a whole different perspective. It is always during long train rides that I find myself having the deepest thoughts about my life, and that is the time when the opportunity windows get clearer. After all, only from the outside can we look back in.

Also, traveling alone has certainly made me more organized – in both thinking and living.

Travel reduces stress and decreases burnout. Even if traveling can sometimes be stressful, travel stress is a good type of stress, because it is not the kind of anxiety caused by work or tension related to home life. Stress reduction, however you accomplish it, is always healthy.

Being stuck in one place for too long can make your mind stagnate and turn everything there is in your daily routine into a suffocating chore. Any kind of trip provides you with a break from the norm and that alone can fill you up with a vibrating energy.

Another thing which traveling does is it teaches you one really big thing that was never learned in school: expect the unknown. Dealing with unknown people in unknown places makes traveling an unforgettable and fascinating experience. And as new connections are created inside the brain, all your mental abilities are improved – so you’ll return home both relaxed and smarter.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. – Samuel Butler

Health issues …Is it good or is it bad for people to experience health issues?

While most people would argue that “NO, under no circumstance health issues could benefit me,” the way I see things is a little different.

But before getting to the benefits of health issues, let’s talk a bit about time.

UPDATE: I’ve been tagged by Maria from NeverTheSameRiverTwice and John from TechnologyForLiving with the ThinkDifferent challenge, a challenge requiring bloggers to see the positive side in a negative experience or event. I think this post fits in perfectly.

Time

The time that I am referring to here is the continuum of experience in which events pass from the future through the present and then into the past.

It is common among young adults to live life freely, without too many thoughts concerning what they are going to accomplish before their time is up. It is a natural behavior, because the point at which they will run out of time seems to be so distant into the future that it is almost like their time here is unlimited.

But as free and liberating as this perspective may be, it has two serious downfalls: it encourages procrastination and reduces the alertness of the mind. If you would live forever, would you hurry? I doubt it.

This situation is common not only among young adults, but also in most of the people who have slipped into the comfort zone of their lives, regardless of age.

I don’t think a 90-year old or someone with a life-threatening illness would delay any action. For them, every second matters, everything needs to be done right now; no one can tell them whether they will live another week or day or hour. They face the cold hard fact that the time we all spend on this earth is unpredictable and out of our close control.

The benefit of health issues: they rock one’s world

A health issue has the power to change one’s life in a more positive way than almost any other event. Why? Because rocking one’s world makes the already open windows of opportunity appear more obvious and urgent.

Health issues put one’s life in a new perspective, making it easier to be motivated into taking action – any action. And things get even better after the health issues get solved, as people become happier, more grateful and more helpful towards others.

Health issues make people realize that time is not unlimited and nobody knows what is left of a life. This makes it critical to get clear on who they are and what they deliver to the world.

Slipping into the comfort zone of living is easy, pleasant and undetectable; getting out of it is difficult and often requires rather brutal shakeups in the form of health issues or other similar events that are generally perceived as being “unpleasant”.

So, the next time you have a health issue, try and be thankful for it; see it as an experience that has the power to bring out what’s best in you and open your eyes to new perspectives.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn. - C.S. Lewis