When two or more are gathered...

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Without exception in my experience, when people get together, especially in the context of shared investments, interests, standards and commitments, something extra happens—often unexpectedly.

The experience can be positive or negative—the concept is in principle neutral in that regard. What might show up could be very cool, or even nasty to some degree. I’ve had the good fortune to have the vast majority of these gatherings in my life be of the very positive sort. Most have been very positive, many transformative.

I’ve been reminded of this lately, with two conference-type events I recently attended in Denmark and one in Florida. The Danish programs were orchestrated by my Scandinavian GTD® licensee partners and their staffs and volunteers—one as a “master class” for a small group of senior professionals (all seasoned GTDers); the other, a larger “GTD Summer Camp” (click to see link for a short video of the event) for the same kind of crowd.

The Florida event was an annual event created by the Woodard^® group. On all three of these occasions, I observed people learning, connecting, and being highly inspired and motivated within the context of engaging with others with similar focus on information, techniques, and best practices in a common arena of great interest to them. Not only that, the openness, vulnerability, intimacy, and (dare I say) love that was universally present was palpable. Very similar to what we experienced with 700+ people at the 2019 GTD Summit in Amsterdam.

On a much smaller scale, here’s a piece of advice I got from a great friend decades ago: He said, “David, all the coolest things that you will experience in your life will either directly or indirectly happen because of your willingness to step out of your comfort zone and meet someone you’ve never met before.” In my 80 years I’ve never been able to disprove that. And randomly engaging with others is not really in my comfort zone. I’m what you might call a “closet introvert.” I have a public expression in my career that gives people the impression I’m an extrovert, but I’m not. I refresh when I’m quiet and alone. So getting involved in a more social and shared context is still something (like exercise) that I have to “get it together” to do.

Why does magic happen when we engage like this with others? I’m not totally sure, but it does seem to reflect the more esoteric truth that we are all connected—all part of the great universal energy field to which we all are tied. And these togetherness events—big or little—open at least a small gate to that.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow-men; and along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects. - Herman Melville

You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is. - Will Rogers