by Janelle Legge | Jul 22, 2017 | Self Actualization
Being creative, innovative and developing your own individualistic style are core self-actualizing mindsets and behaviours. They take commitment and self belief.
It’s almost impossible to self-actualize, reach your highest potential and thrive when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder to see what everyone else is doing and then judging yourself in relation to this and adjusting your behaviour accordingly. Causing you to just blend in with everyone else. It’s one of the biggest distractions and blocks to connecting with and cultivating your creativity. It’s also one of the biggest things that will hold you back and keep you stuck at your current level.
Not honouring your creative self eventually leads to unhappiness, frustration and boredom.
If you’re feeling disconnected from your imagination and own inspirations and creative ideas, then it’s likely that your creativity was shut down at some stage. Maybe for you this happened when you were growing up? Parents and teachers can unknowingly squash the natural exuberance and creativity that children love to display, particularly if it’s triggering their own disowned spontaneous, creative and more individualistic selves.
This can play out in many different ways. The ambitious parent who was never allowed to pursue their own creative interests growing up gets annoyed and critical when they see their own child expressing similar desires and discourages their creative efforts – without even realizing this is happening. The frustrated artist who begrudgingly teaches for a living because they can’t survive off their artwork alone, unintentionally criticizes and squashes the natural talents of a gifted student.
Or maybe it’s happened in your professional life? A common scenario here can be the toxic, envious colleague who sends personally attacking feedback on a presentation you made because it didn’t fit with their idea of how you should have ‘done it’. Or being bullied or stonewalled in the workplace because it’s a ‘tall poppy syndrome’ culture where anyone who displays vitality, innovation and creative potential gets stripped down.
Creativity can get shut down and stifled for a whole range of reasons.
If someone’s criticized or attacked your creative efforts in the past and it’s been keeping you stuck, then it’s time to leave those experiences behind and start telling yourself a new story around this.
Connecting back to your childhood is a potent way to reconnect with your creative, uncensored self.
Here’s an example of what I mean by this. Growing up, I loved playing out in nature and creating make believe places using nature as my props. My grandparents had a beautiful big willow tree in their garden and we had a huge pine tree and gum trees in our backyard at home. I also loved dressing up with friends and being in school plays and did Art all through school. So for me, being out in beautiful nature and being around anything to do with art and performance are potent ways to reconnect with my creative side.
Self-Actualizing Mindsets – Self Reflective Practice
Create some space and time to reflect on what you most enjoyed doing as a child.
How did you like to express yourself through creativity and play?
Where did you like to play growing up?
What were your favourite games?
How did you best like to express yourself, your ideas and your imagination?
Patterns such as suppressing creative self-expression, people pleasing, always comparing yourself to others and being overly outer-focused instead of inner-focused get passed down through generations.
Until you decide to break the pattern and start doing life on your own terms.
Where do you need to lead more and have the courage to express yourself in ways that your authentic self can shine through?
Are your environments supporting your creative self-expression or do you need to surround yourself with new, more like-minded people who want you to succeed?
When you honour and invest in your creative self and develop your own unique style, you inspire others to do so as well.
by Janelle Legge | Jul 15, 2017 | Self Actualization
One of the stand out traits of successful people is having the self-confidence and self-belief that you can shape your environment so that it supports you and works for you.
Knowing you can influence your environment in positive ways is one of the top self actualizing mindsets that leads to personal fulfilment and career and life success.
You’re also able to better empower others and support their success.
Feeling powerless to change your environment and circumstances comes from your past. It’s usually an indicator that you’re holding onto old beliefs around fear, security and power that you absorbed growing up.
If you’re not feeling satisfied with your life, your work or your environment, then do something to change it.
Self actualizing mindsets and behaviours are key to positive change and feeling capable and confident in the world.
Believe in your potential to grow. Try something new each day.
The fastest way to shift your self image and build self confidence is through real life experiences that empower you and show you what you’re capable of achieving.
by Janelle Legge | Mar 18, 2016 | Self Actualization |
Let’s face it, inner conflict is exhausting. It’s a total mojo and creativity killer. It stops you from being in the present. You can’t draw on all of you and your inner resources. Because you’re so busy having an internal tug of war. See-sawing between longings, dreams and desires and the parts of you that are heavily invested in remaining skeptical, stubborn and fixed on how things should be. Aka your inner killjoy.
Inner conflict most often boils down to a classic battle between your heart and mind.
Getting stuck in inner conflict is like driving a car with 3 flat tyres. It slows you down and everything takes more effort and energy. It impacts just about every area of your life. And the longer you stay stuck in this zone, the more it starts to drive you crazy.
When you’ve got two or more very distinct warring factions inside, you need to pull out some clever, creative moves to break the impasse. Otherwise it can just go on and on, wasting you precious time and energy, eroding your sanity! Some people literally waste years at a time paralyzed and stuck in inner conflict. If you can relate, then you know how awful and upsetting this can be. You know you’re stuck, but you just can’t see the way out and forward.
Often inner conflict comes from subconsciously, or consciously, buying into someone else’s dreams, judgments or value system. Usually parents or someone else from your tribe. Sometimes it’s peers or the people you’re spending the most time with.
This gets played out in a whole range of different areas in life. One of the most common is in career choice. So many times I’ve seen people who are miserable deep down inside because they’ve dutifully taken on degrees, jobs and career paths to ultimately gain approval and recognition from the outside. Eventually these decisions come back to bite. They eventually start to wonder why they’re not happy or personally fulfilled. It’s as if they’ve been living someone else’s life and dreams. False. Self. Syndrome.
The false self never brings lasting fulfilment. It leaves you feeling uncertain, empty and flimsy inside.
So what’s the antidote to inner conflict?
Image Art Journals
C G Jung believed that the Self has an innate drive to evolve and self-actualize. As a psychotherapist and coach, I’ve found this to be absolutely true. Your authentic, innate self wins out in the end when it comes to loosening the grip of inner conflict so you don’t become permanently stuck and pot-bound. The constant pressure and dissatisfaction you’re feeling inside eventually builds up to a point where it finally becomes unbearable. You just can’t stand the status quo stalemate anymore. You know you have to break free and take a risk and follow your passions and dreams. But not after having gone through a lot of inner conflict and emotional pain. Often your body will push things to a head. You start to have physical symptoms or an accident occurs out of the blue where you’re forced to slow down, take time out, nourish and intimately tune into your true self. Finally the noise and distractions have been turned down and you start to listen to and act on what your real self has been trying to tell you.
The best way forward is first going inwards, doing the inner journey, in order to find pathways and activities that enliven you. Creating the space to do this. Then committing to follow through. To follow your bliss.
So often the pathway or decision that’s ultimately the right one for you is NOT the one that’s coming from your rational mind. It’s tuning into what your intuition and heart have been trying to tell you.
It’s also about accessing and owning your own power. Not projecting it onto someone else, inadvertently opting for powerlessness and passive victim roles. To access your own power and the amazing resources inside of you, it’s vital that you accept your vulnerabilities. This ironically makes you stronger inside. To do this often requires visiting the underworld to find out out what fears and unmet needs are driving your choices, and which parts of you are overly attached to these.
Doing the inner journey makes you more self-aware.
But it’s more than just doing the inner journey.
What you ultimately need to do is have a round table discussion with the different selves inside of you whenever you’re feeling pulled by inner conflict. You need to develop the capacity to observe who in you wants what and why.
Then it’s about taking action because it’s only through doing and trying out different things that you get to really find out what’s going to bring you the most satisfaction and joy. It’s rarely a smooth linear process. It can be confusing and convoluted. But it’s always worth it. Being proactive and taking risks is the antidote to living a life full of regrets over what you never dared to pursue.
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living, is the one you’re living. And when you can see it, you begin to deal with people who are in the field of your bliss. And they open doors to you. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
Joseph Campbell
Janelle Legge is a Psychotherapist, Leadership, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Consultant and Coach who specialises in Relationships, Career Success, Life-Work Integration and Wellbeing. Janelle sees clients in person in Sydney and works with clients around the world via Skype. To book a skype session with Janelle click here.
by Janelle Legge | Feb 2, 2016 | Self Actualization |
If you’re feeling stuck and frustrated in your business and life, committing to become more self actualized will shake things up. In a good way. It will bring you unimaginable growth, rewards and new opportunities. You’ll feel more optimistic and abundant. Becoming self actualized enriches your life in so many ways.
But in order to self actualize, you have to be self-aware.
It’s about being open to experiences that promote self-discovery, self-reflection and self-exploration. So it requires a bit of courage, guts and staying power. You’ve got to be willing to get out there. See things through. Know when you need to course-correct.
Part and parcel with this is getting to know and understand what’s driving your negative parts. Why you stop. Why you struggle. Learning about your shadow side. Your psychological pain points, triggers and blind spots. Absolutely essential if you’re in business.
Because your level of self-awareness determines your levels of mental and emotional agility and self-mastery. Your ability to handle the failure, set backs and curveballs that come with being in business for yourself. If you don’t do the journey of self-discovery that this requires and get rid of the negatives in your life, you’ll trip yourself up and stay stuck.
So what motivates you? What makes you want to stop? What will keep you engaged?
Self actualization is about creating from your core. It’s about discovering who you really are, and what you’re capable of doing through embracing new experiences and opportunties that usually lie outside of your cosy comfort zone. It’s about leaping into the unknown and being prepared to take a risk from time to time through trying something new.
Become Self Actualized: Put In Some Positives And Get Rid Of The Negatives
Self actualization is also about getting rid of any negativity in your outer environment. This includes spending less time with people who are silently just waiting for you to fail. Sometimes even letting them go. When you dare to forge your own path in life, you unknowingly trigger a whole range of stuff in the people around you. Feelings like envy, criticism and judgment. Particularly if you’re out there doing things that they secretly want to do. But haven’t for whatever reason.
These types of people are toxic to be around when you’re building your own business and career. Because whether you realize it or not, their negativity is impacting you on a subconscious level, draining your energy and feeding your self-doubt. You need to become aware of who these people are and how to set up solid boundaries so they’re unable to negatively impact your enthusiasm and mojo.
You become like the 3-4 people you spend the most time with.
So if you’re taking action to live your purpose, go for your dreams, and self actualize to the max, you need to constantly be mindful of who you’re hanging out with the most. Otherwise you’ll stay stuck and frustrated at your current level of growth.
You’ve got to get out there, network with an open and curious mindset and meet like-minded people. Surround yourself with positive, can-do types. When you put yourself out there in the right way, choosing to be more self actualized, good things start to happen.
Title Image by Kalen Emsley
by Janelle Legge | Jan 11, 2016 | Self Actualization |
Happy New Moon in Aquarius! This morning I read an article on hiding, something most of us have done at some stage in our lives. Usually because of negative experiences we’ve had in childhood around being criticised or maybe even ostracised or persecuted for exuberantly and innocently expressing our true self. Maybe you can relate?
You could say hiding is pretty much part of the human condition. But by a certain age and stage in our lives we need to send this avoidant style of being-in-the world packing. Because ultimately we’re embracing faulty thinking habits to avoid change or potential criticism and failure. So we hold back from revealing and expressing more of our true self.
Sometimes hiding’s also about avoiding taking responsibility for a particular area of your life.
Hiding and fear does weird things to your mind.
Each time we seduce ourselves into hiding, we lose out on the immense value we can get from stretching and growing by expressing our true self.
3 Self-Discovery Questions To Unlock Your True Self
1. What areas of your life have you been hiding, or avoiding taking decisive action or responsibility?
2. How has this been serving you?
3. What’s the long-term cost to you?
Remember, structured clear thinking leads to structured, tangible results. Change is not always exciting, magical, or amazing. It can be about just knuckling down and taking care of the mundane necessities of ordinary everyday living. Yet when we commit to this, we actually buy ourselves more freedom and options further down the track.
It’s about embracing at specific times in our lives good old discipline. If your preference and strengths are around generating ideas and big picture thinking, you need to also be able to ground your ideas via clear structures, discipline and getting down to the nitty gritty day to day details.
Some of us literally run at the mere mention of setting limits and embracing boring structures and daily disciplines. We misinterpret it as having to be, dare I say it, ordinary. Yet thousands of hours of daily practice and having good structures in place in reality is what’s required to master anything worthwhile. To become extra-ordinary. So if this ‘anti-structure’ part speaks to you, now is the time to fall in love with your nemeses – structure, discipline and commitment – so that you can come out of hiding and make your true self more visible to the world.
Now is the time to take control of the quality of your thinking, stop buying into out-dated fears that no longer apply and adhere to structure. Do this and your results will grow and your true self will thank you.
Always DO YOU.
by Janelle Legge | Oct 29, 2014 | Self Actualization
If you’re struggling with self-doubt and rejection anxieties that are keeping you stuck, unfulfilled, and frustrated, it’s time to start over with a fresh regime.
Knowing how to self actualize revamps your life and negative thinking scripts in amazing ways. It’s potent. Ultimately, it’s about choosing high self-worth over crappy self-esteem. It’s about releasing attitudes and hang-ups that no longer work. And when you stay in full focus mode and keep on the path, the rewards are liberating and brilliant.
3 Ways to Self Actualize So You Can Thrive
1. Set new standards
Get clear on your values, beliefs, and what you want out of life. It’s stunningly shocking how many people don’t take the time to get clear on this. Clarity around what you stand for and aspire to gives you an inner compass for how to do your life and relationships. When you have inner clarity and ground rules for how you do life, things are smoother and less complicated in your outer world. It’s also how you get your needs better met. Stop wishing for magical fixes. Own your power. Set your own course in life. Step outside your comfort zone to reach beyond your potential.
2. Love yourself unconditionally
Accept yourself just as you are right now, and allow others to be where they’re at, warts and all. Unconditional self love builds inner strength. Release your attachment to how you think you, someone else, or a situation should be. Hang-ups around rejection reflect low self-esteem. And, they’re highly addictive. Don’t buy in. Raise your standards. Love yourself first. Watch the rewards.
3. Meet new people
There’s a saying that you become like the 3-5 people that you spend the most time with. Your environment and relationships constantly shape who you become. Low self esteem gets cultivated through hanging out with people who don’t value or respect you. Do an environment and relationship audit. Remove yourself from toxic relationships or people who want you to stay at their level. Get out there and expand your interests, follow your passions and find like-minded kindred spirits.
