7 Essential Self Actualizing Mindsets and Behaviours: How to Achieve Self Actualization and Back Yourself

7 Essential Self Actualizing Mindsets and Behaviours: How to Achieve Self Actualization and Back Yourself

If you’re not backing yourself and your own ideas then knowing the 7 essential self actualizing mindsets and behaviours is the antidote to living your life according to someone else’s ideas and rules.

It’s the pathway to evolving a style and philosophy that comes from your centre.

Choosing self actualization as a way of life, changes your life.

And if you look at artists, explorers, entrepreneurs, creators – anyone who’s totally rocking it and having a blast living their brand, you’ll find self actualization as one of the top common traits all these people share.

But most of us need regular inspiration and reminders to stay on the self actualization path.  And it’s totally doable.

Self actualization is about cultivating attitudes, mindsets and behaviours that let you discover from real experiences what’s personally meaningful for you. What you’re made of. And to create from this.

It’s the pathway to reaching your perceived potential. But you don’t stop there. You keep going way beyond this into infinite possibility.

Here’s how you can get on the self actualizing path, if you’re not already, and stay on it:

7 Essential Self Actualizing Mindsets and Behaviours

1.      Be curious

Curiosity coupled with optimism are trade mark qualities of self actualizers. Curiosity creates optimism, openness and excitement. When you’re in these states, you have more energy. You’re more vitalized in a natural and healthy way. It’s curiosity and optimism that keeps self-actualizers going, wanting to forge new paths, explore and test new ideas and see what happens next.

If you’re wondering what curiosity and optimism looks like in action in real life and in business, think Richard Branson, the high-end version of self actualization. If you can model just some of this kind of approach to life, you’re doing well.

2.      Grow your potential

Self actualizers LOVE to learn and see personal development as a birth right. They totally get the value of investing in themselves and know they are worth it. They’ve learnt from experience that the more they develop and stretch themselves personally and in their biz/career, the richer and more amazing their life becomes. And everyone around them also benefits.

3.      Back your own ideas

Self actualizers have confidence in their own ideas. They’re prepared to back themselves. It’s this kind of self-belief that frees you up to be creative and innovative. It’s not about waiting around for, or relying on, the approval or opinions of other people. Self actualizers believe they have agency in the world and can positively influence their environment and the lives of other people through their ideas and creations.

4.      Know and Trust yourself

At the centre of self actualization is being self-aware. Get clear on your values, beliefs and what you want out of life. Self awareness is also about being intuitively tuned into what you’re feeling. It’s seeing your feelings as a live stream of vital clues and information about yourself, other people and situations. Self actualizers know how to decipher and trust their gut-feel on things. And if this is an area where you feel you’re not strong, it’s something that you can learn. It’s about first “looking inward, then moving forward” ~ Rachel Zoe

5.      Love yourself

Being self-aware is also about self acceptance and self compassion. And applying the same consideration to other people. It’s about being okay with where you’re at – at any time in your life. Just being you and being in the moment. Self love is also about believing that you’re worthy enough to get your needs met. That you can go out into the world with self belief and confidence and get pretty much whatever it is that you want out of life.

6.      Complete Things

Self actualizers know when they need to be disciplined and focused and can stay on task until the job gets done. They also get the value of bringing in the right people and resources. It’s through building a track record of bringing things to completion, that you build self-confidence, self-trust and self-belief. The positive reinforcement you get from each successful completion encourages you to take on bigger and better things in life, knowing you’ve got the goods to make things happen.

7.      Live your passions

Self-actualizers are prepared to turn a personal passion into a successful enterprise, or at least give it a go and see what happens next. It’s a stand out quality that sets them apart. Most people don’t follow their passions, for a whole range of stories and beliefs that they have bought into. At a cost. Living your passions is enriching on all levels, because you’re doing and experiencing life through all of your senses. It’s great for building in new neural pathways from having meaningful and vitalizing experiences. When you live this way, you thrive.  So start taking your passions more seriously. Optimism and passion are great for your health. They release endorphins and all the feel good chemicals in a beneficial way. Your passions are vital clues as to which pathways will nourish and reward you the most on a mind, body and soul level.

So if you want to feel self confident and start backing yourself and your ideas, self actualization is where it’s at.

“Our self feeling in this world depends entirely on
what we back ourselves to be and do.”
William James 

The Invisible Fields Of Group Dynamics: Why what needs to be said or seen often isn’t

The Invisible Fields Of Group Dynamics: Why what needs to be said or seen often isn’t

For a long time now I’ve held the view that it’s what’s NOT being said or seen in a group that is the most interesting and zesty part. It’s what can potentially offer the biggest opportunity for transformation and change for everyone involved.

Recently I attended a workshop that left me with mixed feelings and lots of post-event reflections. Yes, the content was interesting but there were some real disconnects going on between the financial investment required to attend and what was actually being delivered. This led me to view the experience very much through a commercial lens of sales and marketing strategies and group dynamics.

The opportunity to fully immerse myself in the actual material was lost as my fascination and annoyance grew in response to what was really going on.

So why didn’t anyone else seem to notice what was going on at the time, or if they did, why wasn’t it talked about?

Group dynamics ARE powerful. When groups are run well, they accelerate and catapult our growth and learning.

Groups have the potential to be powerfully transformative.

When they aren’t run well, they also provide learning experiences, but more of the annoying kind. One of the gifts from the latter type of group experience is the wake-up call they provide. They snap us out of a collective trance, or rose-tinted admiration fest.

Groups bring up family of origin dynamics and the feelings associated with these. When we join a group, subconsciously we experience the group leader as ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’ in some shape or form. We also slide back into roles we played in our families growing up.

If a group is projecting idealized versions of ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’ onto the leader, then no one wants to upset or criticize ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’ – even when obvious flaws start to appear.

It’s as if everyone is under a magical spell – and we are really. It feels good when we think someone is amazing and has special value to offer. It offers us a sense of safety and certainty in uncertain times. We like to feel intimacy, acceptance and connection with others, it’s one of the great things about being in groups.

But when what needs to be talked about isn’t, invisible fields grow and become ‘pink elephants in the room’ that aren’t being acknowledged.

The tension and discomfort that this creates is usually picked up most intensely by the person(s) seeing and thinking about things in a different way to everyone else. This can feel lonely if that person happens to be you.

It takes courage to speak out and break a group spell. Raising what’s being avoided and left unsaid often evokes strong reactions. I’ve experienced this and if you have too then you know it takes internal fortitude, belief in yourself, and risking being not liked by ‘the group’.

Not always though.

Talking about what’s being avoided can come as a collective relief and release, enabling others to see and think about these invisible fields too. You might even make some new friends in the process.

Have you ever dared to break a group spell?

 

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