JOSE AND LENA STEVEHS 143niques in his practice recounted the story of a couple who
had come to him on the verge of divorce. He taught them
about the balance in nature, the need to give up control and
their own agenda in favor of the bigger picture. He taught
them how to be sensitive to their spirit bodies and how to
read energy. This perspective proved to be invaluable to
their process of reconciliation and the development of their
communication skills. They ended their counseling closer
than ever and with a newfound respect for each other as well
as for all living things.
Seeing the big picture has its value in more ways than
one. A problem you are working on may be only one piece
of a much larger puzzle. The successful solution to your
problem could depend on the successful outcome of all the
rest of the pieces. Look at it in terms of the pieces of a
picture puzzle; if one little piece is missing, the whole picture
is incomplete.
Therefore, it is shortsighted and even arrogant to assume
that your current difficulty is isolated from the rest of life.
And if you treat the problem as if it were isolated and on its
own, you will find a satisfactory solution more difficult to
find. If, on the other hand, you work with the whole puzzle,
you automatically adopt a win-win attitude, as the success of
your solution depends largely on the success of others. In this
way you also become empowered because you are in effect
giving goodwill away. And when you give goodwill away, at
the very same time others are wishing you goodwill that you
receive graciously, and so the circle of abundance and em-
powerment goes.
Bess was a successful real estate agent. She had
been working in the field for over six years now and con-
sidered herself one of the top salespeople in her office.
But she recently encountered a tough problem. Her
clients, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, had a house to sell and
Bess had been trying to sell it for eight months. She was
having difficulty doing so, regardless of what she tried,
and Bess had tried everything. Instead, she experi-
mented with her newfound shamanic perspective.
She sat down, closed her eyes, and began a series of
shamanic exercises to see what she could learn about
the situation. The process was revealing, to say the least.
She saw that Mrs. Adams was quite attached to the
house and was secretly unwilling to let anyone else move
into the home where she had been raised, her children
had been raised, and her parents had both passed away.