Trading Up from Self-Sabotaging to Self-Actualizing
By Lee Wotherspoon, Ph.D.
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ARTICLES
1. Self-Actualizing Means Learning from Life How to Make Your Life Better
2. Learn From Your Peak Experiences How to Make a Great Life
3. Convert Your “PEAKS” Into “GOALS” and GOALS to “ACTIONS”
Harness Your Days to Your Goals
Integrate your Goals on Your To Do List
4. Becoming More Resilient Helps You Become More Self-Actualizing
5. Understanding Mental & Emotional Grooves
The Relationship Between Self-Indulgence, Self-Sabotage and Self-Actualizing
How Indulgence, Ignored Parts and Insecurities Create Vicious Circles
Self-Sabotaging Behavior is Trying to Warn Us of a Weakness
The Part Reinforcement & "Grooves" Play In Our Lives
6. SOS - Successfully Overcoming Sabotaging Behaviors
Keep a Checklist of Your Sabotaging Behaviors on Your “To Do” List
Grade Your Progress On Your Goals, Actions & SOS Areas Each Day
7. Use Meditation and Reflective Dialoguing To Learn From Your ExperiencesUse Reflective Dialoguing to Develop Your Inner Counselor
Use Deepening & Directing Questions as Your Inner Coach
8. SOS - Successfully Overcoming Sabotaging and Self-Defeating Actions
Meditating on What Your SOS Behaviors are Saying
Slow Down and Listen To Your Deeper Levels
Helpful Questions to Dialogue with Your SOS Behaviors
9. Using Meditational Reflective Dialoguing in Special Situations
For Making Decisions
For Dealing with Feelings of Fear and Insecurities
For Overcoming Resistance and Harness FatigueFor Balancing out Your Life and Having More Fun
For Progressing Through the Stages of Competence
10. Summary of the SAGE GOALS basic Daily Harnessing Approach
@Copyright Lee Wotherspoon, Ph.D. 2006
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PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION
Returning from a recent trip, I came the closest to getting killed in a car accident I’ve ever come. On the way to the airport the day before, I’d noticed that the steering seemed to be acting funny and told myself I should get it checked. Driving home from the airport the next night on a rain-slick expressway, my car began slipping toward a truck on my right. I jerked the wheel to avoid it and I swerved toward another car on my left. The car suddenly began fishtailing, spinning out of control, then going sideways down the highway with cars whipping all around me.
I fought to get it under control, but couldn’t. I continued spinning all the way around until I was going backward facing into the headlights of oncoming rushing traffic veering and zooming past me in the dark at 70 mph with their horns blaring, and mine too as I tried to warn cars out of my way.
When I came to a stop – I was in the high-speed lane facing into traffic – and the engine had choked out in the midst of it all. I was able to restart the car. But I was facing the wrong way, and with the head-lights of cars, trucks and even a bus whipping past so fast there was no way to turn around without risking getting broad-sided. There was no letup in the traffic and no breakdown lane, so the only thing I could do was to get the passenger wheels up on the curb as close to the guard-rail fence as I could with half of my car in the passing lane as I furiously blasted my horn and flashed my brights and emergency lights while driving directly into the head-lights of the oncoming traffic until I got back to the last exit ramp where there was enough visibility to be able to maneuver a terrifying race across the four-lane expressway and get turned around facing the right way.
I drove slowly home, shaking and shuddering to think how close I'd come and how horrible it would have been for my wife if instead of me coming home that night it was the police coming to tell her that I'd been killed in an accident.
The next day I found out from my mechanic that what had happened was the front end sway bar on my car had become loosened.
That incident led directly to my deciding that it was time to write the words you're reading here. The only thing that any of us really has is time. And we can never know how much. As Hugh Prather, wrote in his first book, Notes to Myself, “I may have 30 or 40 more spring times to live – or maybe only 30 or 40 more seconds.”
Near-miss accidents and incidents such as this remind us that life can be cut short in an instant. They tell us to not put off anything we'd regret not doing. The next morning I decided to make sure the learnings I've gotten from the work I've been doing studying fulfilled lives these last 25 years is put down in words so that people other my clients can benefit from it.
Most of us spend much of our time more or less on auto-pilot, living relatively low-quality lives.
The habits that we build up can dampen and dull our awareness and appreciation of life. This can
cause us to stop listening to life's messages and looking for, growing from and appreciating its gifts.
A sudden death scare can shake us out of that state and make everything much more intensely beautiful and poignant. The secret in life is to learn how to attain and sustain that level of awareness on an ongoing basis. When we learn how to do that, we begin to live on a higher plane of existence throughout our lives. We begin to become sensitized to the clues both inside us and around us that can guide us to more fulfilled lives.
By studying the lives of self-actualizing people who’ve achieved that kind of life, I’ve learned and
taught others how they can do that too. If you want to learn how, doing this work can teach you.
It takes effort but it's worth it. SAGE work is a way to build a more deeply satisfying life. It can
help you identify and prioritize your goals. It will teach you methods to overcome any obstacles
that block you from achieving the things you want and having the kind of life you want to have.
It has 3 separate tracks, which you can explore independently, sequentially or together, whichever
you prefer:
- The basic text of the book is an explanation of the tools and strategies that can be used to achieve a fulfilling life.- The instructions explaining how to use the tools to get that kind of life are in bold face.
- Tales of people who are using the tools and applying them to live a self-actualizing life are shown in italicized script.
Feel free to use them however you would like. As they say in AA and other 12-step programs:
Take whatever suits you best and feel free to leave the rest.
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CHAPTER 1:
SELF-ACTUALIZING MEANS LEARNING FROM LIFE ABOUT HOW TO LIVE
During the first half of the last century while other psychologists focused on mental illness, studying disturbed, institutionalized individuals and trying to help bring them up to “normal neuroticism,” Abraham Maslow was the first psychologist to study optimal mental health. He focused on the people who led the healthiest and most fulfilled lives. He referred to them as “self-actualizers” and spent his life describing what they were like.
I’ve always been interested in studying “what works.” Whenever I’ve found something that worked to get good results, I’ve wanted to learn why it was successful and how to replicate that success. Largely this is due to my upbringing. My mother saw her primary role as encouraging me to learn in order to achieve a better life. She was forever typing and taping to our refrigerator quotes that she found enlightening And so over the years I picked up that habit as well as her example of learning from all the sources around me that I could find.
I was also influenced by spending nearly ten years working at Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest, most successful corporations. There, the focus was always on learning what worked and what didn't, and using it. I carried this predisposition with me when I left the life of business and went into the business of life.
When I retired from business and started my counseling practice, some of my first clients were very bright, motivated people who had gone to Harvard. As I observed their lives blossoming during our work together, I noticed patterns emerging among them that seemed to contribute to that. So I decided to write to Harvard and proposed to them that they hire me to do a study of what we could learn from the commonalities among self-actualizing individuals. They liked that idea and hired me to do that. In the process of doing that project, I discovered a number of fascinating repetitions and patterns among these people's lives.
I got my Ph.D. on that topic and since then, my practice has focused on teaching people the things I have learned to help them become wiser or SAGE (Self-Actualization Growth Education) and how to go after and achieve their GOALS (i.e., Getting Objectives Achieved Logically & Swiftly).
Maslow first identified that the people he called self-actualizers led exceptionally fulfilled lives. His work charted the high peaks in human development by describing what their lives looked like. My work has focused on observing ways for putting together road maps and tool kits to help other people get there. If you’re willing to experiment with following the maps and using the tools you'll find here, you'll learn how to overcome any obstacles or self-defeating attitudes you might have and trade up to a life that’s fulfilling and full of adventure, excitement, contentment and joy.
LEARNING FROM LIFE
The first thing we learn in studying self-actualizing individuals is that no matter whether things go poorly or well, you can get learnings from everything if you look for them. If you attune your antenna in that direction, you’ll find that there are learnings every day in the things that happen that are worth holding onto and making use of as tools. If you train yourself to do that, it will change your life. Instead of repeating the behaviors that keep you stuck in holes, you’ll find yourself growing wiser, stronger, going for longer and longer feeling free of old problems, achieving more of your goals and enjoying your life more.
Will Durant, the historian who wrote The Story of Civilization study of history, was asked near the end of his life if he could distill the greatest amount of wisdom into the fewest amount of words. He answered: “Perspective is everything.” And he was right; when we shift our perspective and look at things from a different angle or level, it changes how we see it and thus feel about it. And feeling differently changes how we react to it, which changes our experience and quite often the outcome.
The more aspects or levels we see in situations, the more options we have to choose from in responding to them. For example, seeing life's experiences as opportunities for learning and growth shifts our perspective from thinking that life is just something that happens to you -- to seeing everything that happens to you as carrying messages to help you become wiser and stronger.
Getting our learnings from everything, even painful experiences, we become smarter and better able to convert our pain to growing pains. When we do that, we start to grow wiser and better able to handle things better instead of being frustrated or confused about how to make things better.
So the first thing is to train yourself to capture and hold onto your learnings each day. Otherwise, even though you think they won't, they're likely to slip away from you and you'll find you forget a lot of them. Emerson kept a journal all his adult life which he called his “savings bank” where he made deposits each day to his knowledge. This kind of investment in ourself is one that pays off exponentially in life.
I started my own first “learnings journal” nearly forty years ago after I had a good insight, then remembered I had had the same thought several months before. “That’s dumb,” I thought, "to keep reinventing the wheel.”
I was standing beside my assistant’s desk, and so I picked up a blank steno pad from a stack she had there and wrote the thought down, and put the pad on my desk to try to capture my learnings in it. Although it’s evolved in form (these days it’s in my computer) I’ve been doing it ever since. And doing that led to my taking early retirement from business and studying psychology, which led directly to my writing this. (I still have that original steno pad in my study.)
Start a “learnings journal.” Include in it any insights, strategies, tools or ideas you come across that could help you be more effective in any part of your life. Keep in it everything you observe or learn and especially things you "re-learn" that might be worth holding onto and using. Include anything you observe about yourself or others or about any part of life or life itself. Make the first idea be to look for and jot down your learnings every day. You might start with things you learn here that you think may be worth holding onto.
If you care to test this self-actualizing learning-from-life approach for yourself, try asking at the start of each day, "What did I learn or re-learn from the things that happened in this last 24 hours that's worth holding onto?"
If you do that, you'll find that there are worthwhile learnings from your experiences every day. And if you train yourself to hold onto and use them, you can dramatically raise your cumulative learning trajectory. Life is constantly sending us messages, telling us to go this way and not that. And the better we are at learning to hear and heed life’s signals and using them to go to more helpful levels in the situations we face, the better our lives go, sometimes in ways that are surprising and life-altering.
Here is part of a letter I wrote in my journal to a daughter when I first began to learn what I was missing and sacrificing both for myself and those around me by being a workaholic corporate manager:
”I recall when you were little and I had no time for anything but my work – and you would come to me and ask me to play with you. But I was always busy and I’d generally have some excuse to justify saying “Daddy’s busy – I can’t come right now.’ Or I’d stop what I was doing and impatiently and halfheartedly give you a bit of time, but often with my mind still back on my work, which I returned to as quickly as I could.
“But you never seemed satisfied. It kept getting worse and worse – to the point where I couldn’t sit down to work anywhere in the house without you continually coming and asking me to play something with you.
"It got so bad sometimes I’d scream inside my head, ‘Oh won’t you go away! Can’t you see I’m busy?’
"Until one day I saw how much hurt was in your eyes as you turned away after I’d turned you down again.“No matter what my words or excuses were, what I was really telling you was that any-thing I happened to be doing was more important to me than you were. That’s what you were trying unconsciously but so desperately to find out – were you really less important to me than any work I might have in my hand?
“And I, feeling the pressures of your pestering me, would just wish you’d go away. And each time that happened, it made the problem get worse.
“Once I recognized what I was doing, the problem really cured itself. I only needed to see that hurt little girl once to know what was really most important to me. And we played… as often as you wanted…and I wanted to, too. And you know, almost immediately you stopped having that consuming need to ask me, once you knew I’d say yes and really mean it, that seemed to be enough. You were then content to play by yourself…only occasionally coming back to check, just to be sure.
“Like the time I was coming home from work, and you and your little sister called me to come play in the sand pile with you. And I almost didn’t stop and play because I was aware that I’d probably look a little odd to our neighbors playing in the sand in my suit. But you said, ‘Come on Dad’ and I’m so glad I stopped and thought about the price I’d pay whichever way I went. I probably would look a little silly if I did join you. But if I didn’t, and just went about my business of being a grownup, I’d pay the price of missing out on some fun with you guys and getting to build that sand castle with you. And who knows if I’d ever get invited to play in a sand pile again. “So I stayed and we played there for hours…with buckets and shovels and our shoes off. And the castle became a kingdom, and the king had a summer home, a winter chalet and even his own private ski slope.”
During that time my kids and I started going out on our Saturday “mystery trip adventures” on bicycles where we would stop at each corner and “sniff” to see if any of us felt drawn in a direction and if so, that‘s the way we’d go – or else I’d take out my ”magic quarter” and flip it to decide which way to go. We called it that because we seemed to run into magical experiences every time we went out. Like the time we discovered an old cave by the Ohio river near where we lived in Kentucky, and asking around, were told that in Civil War days it was where runaway slaves were hidden until dark when they could be ferried across to Ohio to the safety of the North.
It's been years since then and my kids have all grown. And we had more mystery trips, like times I rode my youngest daughter to nursery school on horseback. And the time my oldest daughters and I and clients and friends, a dozen of us, all hopped a freight train together where we met a couple of hobos named Guppy and Chase, with their bottles of hooch in brown bags. Guppy was so far gone into his alcoholism that he was practically incoherent, but Chase was so sharp he could make up a rhyme on the fly and break out in spontaneous song, like the time when I said to Guppy, “I couldn’t understand what you said because you mumbled”, and Chase stood up and began singing, “Oh Guppy, he stumbles over his tongue so he mumbles …and the words just don’t seem to come out right.” Later we caught a freight train and before long we were all singing and dancing and waving out the boxcar door to folks in cars at the crossings.
Or when I taught my oldest daughter how to go plane hopping, hitching free rides on cargo planes and private jets. When she wanted to go looking at colleges around the country with her mother, she said to her mom, “Let’s not fly commercially; that’s so boring. Let’s go plane hopping like you and dad have done.” So that’s what they did.
They got rides from Boston to New York then Washington and then out west, riding in the hold of a cargo plane on the return leg of a flight that had brought crates of guinea pigs out to a research lab. One night they stopped in Aspen, where they went to the ballet. The next day they got a ride out in a brand new demonstrator Lear Jet airplane. And my daughter got to ride in the co-pilot’s seat in the cockpit of a Lear Jet going over the Rockies to San Francisco.
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CHAPTER 2:
LEARN FROM YOUR PEAK EXPERIENCES HOW TO MAKE A GREAT LIFE
Maslow was the first psychologist to identify the importance of what he called “peak experiences” to our mental health, those times when we're flooded with a sense of well-being and wisdom and a sense that we are playing life the way it’s meant to be” -- and that all is right in our lives and in the world. Maslow discovered that self-actualizers have more peak moments in any year than most people do in their entire lifetime. That means they have 80-100 times more such experiences in their lives than other people do. Getting free to have a life full of those experiences is a big part of what a self-actualizing life is like.Have you ever wondered how some people are able to create great lives for themselves, and wondered whether you could learn how to be able to do that in your life? One of the first steps is to learn to identify for yourself what things make your life exciting and rewarding and then learn how to get free of the things that block you from that. This book will show you how to do those so you can have that kind of life.
What experiences have you had in your life that warm your heart each time you recall them?
-- Do you recall having experiences in your life where you felt, “ What a wonderful time!”?
-- Or a time of putting your all into something and then seeing your dream succeed.
-- Or a time you had a new insight or mastered something new and important to you.
-- Or perhaps a time when you were falling in love, and you were glad to be alive.
You were filled with warmth and good will. You smiled at people and they smiled back.
The world felt like a magical and trustworthy place. You felt high on life and grateful
just to be alive. Everything seemed fresh and new. Even the weather was great; or if it rained, it was the perfect rain.Those cherished memories and times we've grown the most are the diamonds and jewels that we value and that mean most to us. They're the PEAKS (Peak Experiences And Knowledge Surges) in our life, the experiences that make our life feel rewarding and well-lived.
Over the years I’ve had hundreds of peak experience mystery trips, mystery dates, parties and adventures, sometimes with hundreds of people. And I’ve taught others how to do the same in their lives. And I’ve had a long, wonderful marriage to the woman of my dreams who I go on most of my mystery trips with these days. Here’s a recent peak experience I had, that reminds me to listen to and follow those "tugs" toward the things we sense we're drawn toward):
For my birthday my wife Barbara, arranged a mystery trip for us to go to Vieques to swim in a bio-luminescent bay,
something I’ve wanted to do ever since I first heard a friend describe sailing in phosphorescent waters one night where
dolphins were leaping out of the ocean with blankets of glow-in-the dark water sheeting off their backs trailing behind
them in the sea.
Vieques is a treat to fly into on the short hop over from San Juan. It's an emerald green jewel in an aquamarine sea, with sandy beaches, rolling hills and small mountains and forests punctuated by tall palm trees poking up everywhere like tropical sentinels. It's a wonderful, funky, undeveloped island that is becoming the place writers and characters from Key West often move to. Young and old caballeros ride bareback on the horses that roam wild on the island (they use them like free taxis to get around). The islanders seem friendly and a little shy (they’re not used to having many visitors as it was only recently that the U.S. gave up its naval base that took up most of the island and had kept tourism from developing there).
We stayed in a lovely cottage by the sea at the Inn on the Blue Horizon, a place where not long ago there only were
cows grazing the land enjoying the views from sunrise to sunset. It’s just a short walk into the little fishing port and
beaches or to the bio-bay adventure place. So we went over and they took us out on a boat into a bay that
is a neon green ultramarine color by day, but black on a dark moonless night.
The water contains microscopic bio-luminescent specks of pyrrophyta which means fire plant.
The conditions there are perfect for a high concentration of these miniscule micro-dot photo-
synthesizing plankton that soak up the sun during the bright Caribbean days and store it as
chemicals in their infinitesimally small single-celled bodies.
You can’t see or feel them; they’re microscopic, so they’re completely invisible to the eye or touch.
Until something agitates the water which jostles the flagellites and stirs the chemicals inside them
causing them to mix. When that happens it causes them to light up, the way glow-stick lights work.
There’s a magical shimmering quality as the plankton illuminate like fireflies twinkling in the water.
As our electric (non-polluting, ecology-protecting) boat silently glided through the moonless night and dark water, we could see shooting stars and streaming arrows of lightning in the bay as fish darted out of its way and stirred up the flagellites.
Then we anchored and put on belts to keep us afloat and dove into the sea and became iridescent ourselves in the water.
Whenever anything disturbs the water around the phosphorescent plankton, they light up like lit-from-within diamonds. Every movement in the water is surrounded by greenish-blue-white splashes of light shooting out like underwater fireworks. Any stir in the water creates ripples of glow-in-the-dark diamond specks of light. As you swim through the water, you’re surrounded by a shimmering halo of light all around you like an aura. It’s like paddling through diamond dust.
If you take a handful of water and clap it between your hands or slap it on your body, it bursts into a spray like a sparkler shooting off sparks in all directions. If you scoop up handfuls of water and hold it overhead allowing it to stream down, it looks like thousands of sparkling brilliant quarter-carat diamonds rolling down your arms. Float on your back and you can look up to see the stars overhead and then down to see the diamonds rolling off your torso like quicksilver falling back into the sea and disappearing into darkness. Barb said the way the water clung to my face looked like sparkles in my beard, like it was studded with diamond droplets, the ways that dew-wet grass in early morning shines with water droplets in the sunlight, but much brighter in contrast to the dark night and because the drops are lit from within.
You could tell by the excitement and wonder in people's voices in the bio bay and on the boat ride back, that every one of us, no matter what age, felt like a little child that night. That's part of what makes something a peak experience that stands out in our memory and not just a vacation. It's the fact that it helps us recapture and keep alive the childlike sense of wonder and delight in the magic that exists around us in the world.
But we don't need to go to an exotic island to find those magical moments. We just need to slow down and stir ourselves enough to break out of our awareness-deadening habits and grooves and look for those adventures that can awaken it. If we open our eyes, minds and hearts to it, there are opportunities all around us to give ourselves those gifts that can delight us. Here's an experience a client related:
"The day was a typical one with its chores to complete and its errands to run. Toward dinnertime, a thick snowfall prompted me to say, 'Go shovel the walk before dark, girls. And hurry along -- it's getting late.'
"'Come on, won't you join us?" they asked. So with plans for dinner temporarily cast aside, I dug out my old boots, bundled up in a coat and gloves, and I ventured outdoors with my children. Intent on shoveling -- 'to get things done,' I thought -- as I heard the laughter and secret murmurings of the children behind my back. Then I felt a gentle thud on the back of my neck...then another...Snowballs!
"I cupped the cold fluffy snow in my hands, holding it an extra moment before forming a snowball of my own to retaliate. And my youngest daughter ducked and fell and laughed. Then she said, 'Hey, let's make snow angels!' Soon all the kids dropped to the ground and began waving their arms and lets to and fro in the snow, all wanting me to join them, hollering out, 'Come on, Mom, Won't you join us? It's fun!'
I fell to my back, spread my arms and released the snow angel that have been waiting inside me for twenty years! Lying there, delighted, I turned to watch the children and caught a glimpse of the gossamer flakes in the halo of the street light. I looked skyward...and for one precious moment, the world stopped. My mind locked into place the ecstasy of that moment: snow flakes glistening in the lights, landing gently on the tip of my nose and gathering on my eyelashes, the echoes of the children's joyful laughter and our yard filled with enchanting snow angels and snow-laden pines."
I wonder if one of the reasons we're given children isn't to open our eyes and heart to the magic in life in order to remind us what's really most important. It was the times going out with my children on our Saturday mystery trips and coming back with great tales and magical memories time after time, that I first began to sense something unusual was happening on those adventures, that we must be stumbling onto some of the principles that lead to peak experiences.
As children we naturally welcome those experiences when everything feels like an adventure. As adults we often lose touch with that sense of wonder and excitement. And yet in order to become fully actualized beings, we need to recapture that part in us to be able to identify the things that would make our life magical.
Maslow said one of the best ways to actualize ourselves is to identify some dream or goal or vision for our life and to work to achieve it. As you strive to learn how to actualize your dream, you build skills, grow wiser and stronger; you actualize yourself.
One way we can start to clarify our dreams is by identifying the patterns in our peak experiences. Then we can use the appeal of those elements to set some goals that contain them to motivate us to do the work to build up our will-muscle and habit patterns to stay at the tasks that are necessary to achieve those goals in our lives. Then as we go along, we can add still more dreams and goals.
Start a list of your peak experiences, of the memories you cherish most and hug to you as the most rewarding times of your life. Do a list of these in your learnings journal.Here is a list of P___'s peak experiences, and the patterns and learnings he's observed among them. A bright, thoughtful man, he's an accomplished artist and a successful high tech businessman, and a spiritually evolved and sensitive soul.
I'm thinking back to events in my past that now stand as high points or peak experiences resonating and showing me what matters. Whether it's the exhilaration of creative bursts or feelings of gratitude, these experiences taken together, interlace and provide new meaning. I want to share some of these with you as well as the themes that I can now extract and hopefully interpret.
The day I received the acceptance letter from graduate school was unforgettable.
I was informed that not only was I being accepted, but all of my financial needs
for the next two years would be covered as well. After eight years of night school,
working by day to support myself (as well as an art studio), the concept of being
free to work on ideas - to read and make art and talk to people and contemplate
was stunning. Imagine, I was going to be able to really pursue my ideas! Literally
jumping up and down for hours, I couldn't contain the rush of feeling. There was
the pure sense of accomplishment of years of hard work. There was the anticipation
of expanding my mind and the chance to jump-start a real art practice. And there was
a welling up of gratitude for what was happening.While I was at graduate school there were many moments where I would step back from the work I was making in wonder, realizing where I was and what I was doing. In awe that in fact I was living a life of art making and study. There were other moments during this time where simply being in this beautiful (if strange) setting, with people who also cared deeply about their own practice, gave me an overwhelming sense that all was right with the world.
A year after leaving graduate school I had my first opening of a one-person show in
Santa Monica. I'd been living in Los Angeles. Constantly broke, spending all my time
and resources on projects, my life and energy was geared towards the night
of the opening. It was a triumph. The evening of the opening was like pulling back
a curtain and sharing my world of ideas, giving birth. The vast white open space
was filled with my work, every detail considered, every piece related to all the others.
My struggles for the past many months, the exhaustion, the hunger, the loneliness
and the fear were all lifted as I shared this body of work with the network of people
I'd come to know as well as the many strangers who had come to see the work.I'd been studying Buddhism for several years before going to a retreat in California. This was a silent intensive meditation retreat with ten hours of zazen every day. After a week or so there was a period of heightened awareness lasting minutes or days I'm not sure.
Years later in New York, my wife and I would walk together home from work. Picking her up around six o'clock, I'd walk from my small design studio to her office and we'd continue on to our home in the west village. This was a time when the joys of being together were being born. I remember frequently feeling that our lives were in some kind of real balance. Beneath our happiness we were interpreting vast shapes of meaning during that period.
In the work stream, I was running my own design business as well as making art and this was happening in the richest of possible lives. In these moments I could feel the special depth of connection and the health and well being that was being created. Many times since then I've known that to love and be loved and to share a future was more than enough. This has been a revelation. There's a deep peace I've experienced many times of souls touching.
Around this time another event happened where I connected deeply with another soul. In dying, my father showed everyone who saw him during his last days that death can be a blossoming. My experience of his death was one of beauty and transcendence. Yes it was terribly sad and difficult and filled with regrets. Yes, I suffered realizing the precious moments of knowing him that had slipped by. All of that was true, and yet as he was dying, we all could see that really he was in the process of being born into something. Putting work aside, I spent as much time as I could with him in his last months and everyone who came to see him during this time was somehow touched and deeply moved.
Ideas were cascading as I worked in my Brooklyn studio. Right after finishing some post graduate work I set up the studio and experienced periods when ideas flowed so quickly that I couldn't use them all. At these times I was humbled by the experience of being the vehicle, the channel for these art ideas.
Years later when a new company I founded, got off the ground and was still healthy and growing, I experienced accomplishment of a different nature. At these peak moments I realized that the vision for what I wanted to create was coming into being. I found myself able to move from one group of people to another, leading and inspiring diverse groups of people and building what was almost a religion centered on bringing digital and beauty together in an organization based on shared meaning. At these moments I could see that not only were my dreams for a new kind of enterprise coming true, but that somehow I was transcending my own abilities in the area of interpersonal skills. I was providing vision and leadership and was being recognized for it.
Connecting with people in life has been the greatest joy. Whether it's being in love and developing the bravery to express it, sexual delight, or experiencing the mysteries and unfathomable nature of love or friendship, the opening of the heart and letting love emerge elevates. These are peak experiences. There's the deep peace I get from touching the souls of others. There's the sense of mastery through accomplishment that I experience in different ways; when I'm creating and I step back and am amazed and when I realize that it's not just mine, that this creation is interconnected with wider worlds. And there's the simple appreciation of the opportunity I have, along with the abilities that I've been granted.I've found that connecting with people has taken many forms and some of the deepest bonds have formed with people who I know only through their writing. This has occurred at different times in my life. I've made friends with Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Heisenberg, Merton, Kazantzakis, Watts, Krishnamurti, Rilke, Rumi,and others. Revelation about a kinship with a writer strikes deep when it occurs. It's a relief to know that these minds understand me as I understand them. We're connected and sometimes I'm lifted right out of whatever bind I seem to be in, transcending and including the life I lived before the experience… In looking at these moments there are patterns with significance for how I intend to live my life in the future. I see that giving form to ideas has always been important to me. I grow from the exhilaration of the creative burst - giving birth to something - bringing a new creation into being.
Above it all is the potential for experiencing awe and gratitude. This is a trans-personal wonder that makes it all mean something and that as I live my life in the future I'll strive to live in such a way to deserve it's continued presence.One of the important things self-actualizers' lives teach is that our lives feel best when we have some goals or a dream that matters to us and we see ourselves making progress toward it. That’s why one of the best ways to actualize our potential is to have dreams and strive to actualize them. Having goals taps new veins of energy, adds zest to all the parts of our lives, and energizes our minds and emotions the way vigorous activities do for our bodies. Like a magnet, as our goals draw us forward in new directions, they draw out new capacities in us that want to be used. And we feel better about ourselves and grow more able to play our life on ever-higher planes.
Life's more meaningful when you immerse yourself in a greater purpose than simply living day to day, when you have hopes for the future and are able to see yourself moving toward realizing them. Our dreams are what give us things to look forward to. It's the little steps forward in life that renew and excite us. Like a perpetually renewed fountain of youth in life, having goals infuses us with hope and enthusiasm. And the harder life is, the more we need goals and dreams to feel our lives are more than just our present circumstances. Our dreams and goals, and a vision of a better life for the future are what help us “get free” from feeling trapped today.
In addition to being intrinsically rewarding themselves, peak experiences are important motivators to our growth. They provide the fuel that powers a positive self-actualizing spiral for us because they energize and motivate us to live our lives so we can have more of them. The more we have rewarding, soul-satisfying experiences that make us glad to be alive, the more desire we have to continue to do the work on our growth to have still more of them and go after even more and higher goals in our lives.
Try to add to your list of your peak experiences more of those times when you felt happiest and most fulfilled and most grateful to be alive.
We get out of life what we settle for, what we invest ourselves in. Our lives are about what we spend our time doing. And our actions show what level of stakes we’re willing to settle for in our life. Self-actualizers don't just “settle” or accept less-than-satisfying situations or lives. They work to make their lives not just less bad, but go beyond that to make them positively good. They do the work to learn how to overcome their problems and grow past them in order to be able to live and play their lives on ever higher and higher levels. And if we want to enough, we can too.
I was the son and grandson of steelworkers in Gary Indiana, and myself started as a laborer in the steel mills. I got free from that and became a brand group manager for Procter & Gamble, then went on to become a Director for Gillette.
But as I reflected on what the patterns among my peak experiences were telling me, I realized they mostly took place in the country. I love pine forests where the pace of life is slow enough to savor the seasons and nature. I love being able to do work that really matters, and have time to reflect and have long conversations that involve connecting with other people on a personal and caring level of helping each other outgrow problems in our lives and grow to be our best. I love the times when we stay up late at night talking about things that matter to us or that we struggle with. And when we separate, it’s with a deep embrace.
But I was in business when I identified these were the elements I was most drawn to have in my life. The life I was living bore no resemblance to what was most satisfying to me. I loved a life of reflection and nature and helping people. But the life I was living involved working 12-15 hour days, marketing products to consumers. I was an ambitious workaholic, working late every night at the office with no time for much else. When I stopped and really thought about it, I realized that the only thing I was getting out of life was a resume.
So I decided to leave business – I had my retirement party from Gillette at 35 -- and see if I could do something more meaningful. A friend and I had started a small venture called “Magazines from Around the World” that provided subscribers with a different English-language publication from a different country each month – Walkabout from Australia came one month, then the Drum from Africa, Soviet Life from Russia, Punch from Britain, etc.
I had that plus some savings, so I decided take early retirement and get a Masters degree in psychology and later I got a Ph.D., and wrote my first book, a book of letters to my children called “Dear Kids,” about the things that were the most important to me in life. I started a counseling practice and then found some land and moved to New Hampshire, where I’ve lived in a pine forest on a dirt road for thirty years now, writing and working as a self-actualization counselor and coach, teaching people how to have more rewarding and fulfilling lives and living such a life myself, a life that I couldn’t have guessed would be possible for me when I was working as a laborer in the steel mills.
We can each follow our own path in climbing a mountain because as long as we keep going up, we’ll all still come out at the peak. But it can also help to have a map from people who’ve climbed the mountain before us.
You can use these tools to get free of old problems and channel the energy that went into them instead to move your life forward in ever-improving trajectories toward your goals. Your peak experiences and learnings can be the sign posts on a map that can help you progress from wherever you are now toward a more rewarding life.
After you do your list of peak experiences, go through it and look for the elements that are repeated. Reflect on what your peak experience patterns tell you regarding what you’d like your life to be like. What kinds of activities, environments, people and experiences have repeatedly fed your soul in the past? What do they tell you about what makes you fulfilled? Write them down as learnings about yourself.V___ is a newly married professional medical practitioner in her early thirties. Exceptionally wise beyond her years, with levels of insight about what's true vs. false, developed by growing up in a family where no one ever had the courage to confront each other or tell the truth as they saw it. Growing up in her family not only didn't teach but punished children for having the courage to stand up for their convictions. But that not only didn't quell but honed her ability to tell true from false, a characteristic that stands her in good stead today.
Newly married to a dynamo of a man, she discovered she needed to strengthen her center and stay grounded in her deepest values in order to be able to stand up for herself and avoid being run over by the whirlwind that life with him can sometimes be.She wanted to outgrow her impulsive and insecure emotions, and learn how to make good decisions and then to stick to them. So she turned to SAGE coaching to learn how to do that. The first thing we did was to begin identifying what she valued most. After reflecting on her peak experiences and the patterns in them, here are some things those lists clarified about herself:
What things give me the most pleasure?
I enjoy teaching people
I love connecting with people
I enjoy reading a good book
I love learning more
I love going out with friends
I feel alive when I go out dancing
I love laughing with (her husband)
I enjoy reading about spirituality
I love the beach, sitting near the water
I love swimming in water
I love watching the sunset
I love it when I have a good day with my mother
I love laughing with my father
I enjoy spending time with my sisters and cousins
I love barbeques with friends on warm summer nights
I love trying new foods
I like playing with dogs
I like laughing with children
I like seeing a great movie
I love seeing the leaves change colors
I have fun teaching eager minds
I enjoy seeing that spark in someone’s eyes when I’ve helped them feel better
I love the feeling after a good day of skiing or a good long day of work
I love feeling so exhilarated you can’t help but laugh – riding my bike down hill
I love getting together with a group of my girlfriends over a drink or brunch
I love connecting with a younger woman and helping inspire her
I love listening to gospel music
I love samba dancingAnd here is what she identified as the elements she would most like to have in her ideal life:
My vision for my ideal life.
In my ideal world I live in a mostly warm climate near the beach. I have an old jeep where the top comes off, and a dog sitting in the front seat. I have a good relationship with my husband and we have many very close friends who we alternate having barbeques and social gatherings. My mornings start off with meditation and exercise, and I often take walks on the beach or swim in the ocean. I go to work in the early afternoon and have some flexibility in my hours. I work 3-4 days a week helping people where I connect with people and share my life experience with them.I have a place to go for religious communion with others and I continue to take classes and grow spiritually. There are places not too far away where we can go for dinner and on occasion we go dancing for fun. I speak to my family often and I spend time with them, especially around the holidays. I have a trip each year that I plan with all my girlfriends so that we can catch up and reconnect. I have time to travel and we spend time visiting our friends and delving into other cultures. We make enough to live comfortably, and we own our own home with a lot of light. I am a teacher and I help people find a better way to live their lives. I assist them to live more fully and to find contentment.
Once we've identified some things we'd like to have in our life, we need to harness ourselves to go after them.
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CONVERT YOUR “PEAKS” INTO “GOALS” AND GOALS TO “ACTIONS”Thoreau said he went to live in the woods to front the essential facts of life in order to learn how to live and not as, he said, come to the end of life only to find out that he hadn’t ever really lived.
Now that you've listed your peak experiences, go through them and reflect on what the patterns among them tell you about what things give you fulfillment. Then use that to make a list of all the things you would like to have in your ideal life. What would an “impossible dream” life be like for you? How would you earn your living, where would you live, what would your life look like, what would your days contain, what part would friends or family play, what adventures or perhaps business ventures have you ever thought you might like to try to go after. Include any dreams you’ve ever had that have intrigued you or that you have thought that you might want to explore or pursue some day.
Which of those elements in your impossible dream life might be possible if you were to go after them as goals? Write those down in your journal. Then reflect on which of those you’d be willing to put in some effort to pursue and try to “actualize”. Put them in a list of “GOALS” (Getting Objectives Achieved Logically & Swiftly).
Don’t worry about whether the lists are complete or perfect right now. You’ll add to, refine and fine tune them later. For now, just see them as stars to navigate by, reminders to keep yourself aware of what you’d like to be moving toward in your life. The first step is to identify some things you’d at least like to check out to see if you might possibly be able to actualize them if you tried. Whether it's to make a major change in your life, work or relationships, or to pursue a dream or break a bad habit isn't as important as that you identify some things you'd be willing to commit to give your best effort to go after that you think could make some part of your life be better
Remember, self-actualizing people are not perfect human beings who have perfect lives. It's just that they have learned to reinforce the attitudes and habits that contribute the most to their growth and fulfillment, like having and going after goals in their life. And they've reinforced the elements that lead to that happening and filling their lives with magic. One of the best ways to energize our lives is to put our heart and souls into going after goals that matter to us.HARNESS YOUR DAYS TO YOUR GOALS
After you have some goals, the next step is to connect your efforts toward “actualizing” them by integrating the goals into your daily activities to keep reminding yourself to take steps toward those objectives.
One thing that keeps people from reaching their goals is getting diverted and forgetting to stay focused on them. Thoreau once said that “If you've built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” Self-actualizers are masters at actualizing their dreams by continually taking some next steps to keep moving forward toward them. And you can do that too.
Another thing that blocks people from achieving their goals is clinging to the notion that we can expect to get things just because we want them but without doing the work needed to earn them. Wanting to have things both ways -- to reap rewards but not do the work in order to earn them – is one of the major obstacles that keeps a lot of people from achieving their goals.
While it’s true that some people are fortunate in that things come easily for them in some areas of their life, it’s almost never true in all areas (e.g., think of the disastrous personal lives of many celebrities). And it’s certainly not true for most people. For most of us, most things that we want to have in our lives simply won’t come our way just by good luck. We can only get them by putting in the time and effort to build the skills and to take the risks to have a chance at reaching them. A better life, income, career, relationship generally require that we work over time to achieve or acquire them – that we do the work necessary to learn and add the skills that can help us get them, and to overcome and outgrow our self-limiting behaviors that block or undermine us from the things we want for our life. That requires that you learn to harness yourself and your actions to your goals and priorities and to stick to them over time.
If you want different results or things to be different in your life, you have to be willing to do some things differently. Since the things we want to happen rarely drop into our lap, if we want to change or achieve things in our life, we need to harness ourselves so that we can sustain our efforts to keep after them on a day-to-day basis over time.
You’ve probably had the experience that when you have a lot to get done, it helps to make a list. And since you can’t change your life unless you change your days, you have to focus on your days if you want to improve your life.
To get started, commit to work with To Do lists each day for awhile to see how your life progresses and feels using some tools vs. how it feels when you’re not using them. If you aren’t used to working with a To Do list, try working with one for a few days in order to get used to harnessing yourself and to get comfortable with managing your time and directing your efforts more intentionally by putting things on your list and checking them off as you do them. Each day put down anything you want to get done on a “To Do Today” list. That includes any work you have to do that day, plus any personal, family or home responsibilities, chores, errands or reminders of things that you need to do.
INTEGRATE YOUR GOALS ON YOUR DAILY TO DO LIST
Once you’re working with daily To Do lists, the next thing is to break down your goals and priorities each day into manageable steps that you can take. Here's a way to start:
Incorporate on your ’To Do’ lists each day your long-term goals and the areas where you want to improve. See this as a way to remind yourself to keep taking next steps toward your goals. Carry two sections on your To Do list: (1) GOALS, i.e., longer term objectives you'd like to achieve and (2) ACTIONS (Accelerated Commitment To Initiate One Next Step) i.e., any Next Steps that day toward those goals that you would like to move forward or focus on. Also include all your regular day-to-day work, personal or home life actions that you need to do or to take care of that day.
Start each day by reviewing your GOALS and setting some ACTIONS that you commit to try to take that day to keep going toward your goals, no matter how small, in order to keep you moving forward.Think of this as a starter list to get yourself going. You’ll adjust the list as you reach some goals, drop or add others, or raise the bar on yourself. The important thing is to get started and keep moving forward on your priorities day by day. And while it may seem cumbersome at the start, it's easy to copy and paste the goals if you work on a computer, and it will soon become routine.
Here’s what my current year’s GOALS look like and an example of how I integrate them into a typical daily ACTIONS To Do list:
TOP GOALS This Year:
Bring My Book Alive
Help Clients Thrive
Open SAGE Wide
Weigh Under 185
Savor My Life
ACTIONS To Do Today:
Evaluate Yesterdays Work
Meditate on What I Learned
Recalibrate Today’s Work
Enter Learnings in Journal
Do an AM Aerobic Workout
Stick to Reducing Regimen
12 Hours Writing Time this Week
Revise and Edit 20 Pages today
Read Client Work & Prepare for Sessions
PM Aerobic Workout and Back Exercises
Free Reading in the Evening if Earned
B___ is a talented artist and woodworker, whose successful professional parents placed extreme emphasis on public success that masked the personal private failures and substance abuse patterns that he observed in them as he grew up. This created such a confused and conflicted relationship to "success" for him that much of his adult life he's been caught in a self-sabotaging vicious circle of seeing himself as a kind of "lone rider" artist and craftsman living in "noble poverty." Eventually he realized that doing that was a prescription to just live in poverty. And so he sought SAGE Coaching to help him complement his good artistic gifts and talents by learning the skills to be able to make a good living and a good life.
Here is an example of his list of goals for the year:
TOP GOALS:
A - ADVANCEMENT -- Include long-term objectives in planning each day’s work
B - BASIC -- Day's work planned beforehand to take care of basics
C - CHERISHING– Slow down to savor life’s precious moments
D - DISCIPLINES – Stick to and use the self-harnessing tools
E - EXPENSES – Keep Finances in LinePROFESSIONAL: MAKING A LIVING
>Stay on schedule - meet deadlines for all gallery orders
>Jury into new wholesale/retail markets
>Research ways to approach markets beyond galleries:
FINANCIAL: CLOSING THE GAP
>Define new priorities/goals/adjustments
>Stick to disciplined financial budget
CREATIVE: KEEPING PERSPECTIVE
>Stay in touch with Impossible Dream life path
FAMILY: CREATING MEMORIES
>Stay Connected
>Take turns planning mystery trips
PHYSICAL: HEALTH DEDICATION
>Raise the bar on exercise/diet - based on endurance training
>Schedule/complete mid-life medical check-ups
HARNESS: STICKING TO MY DISCIPLINES DAILY
>Raise the Evaluation/Meditation/Escalation bar - Update GOALS list
>Work to maintain minimum B/B+ average weeks
>Raise the Earned Rewards bar to reach highest levels of Balancing out yet
Here’s an example of what his GOALS list looks like translated onto his daily To Do list of ACTIONS.
TO DO TODAY: GOALS into ACTIONS:
PROFESSIONAL
Current Business – Fill and send orders
New Business – Look for new markets:
Contact 3 new galleries
FINANCIAL
Daily: Fill in income/expenditures chart
Institute budget disciplines/cost-saving steps
Track budget: based on Income/Expense chart
CREATIVE -
Work on personal music/video
Complete a project you've started
FAMILY -
Stay connected - participate in – (daughter’s) journey picking a college
Do some things together - outside of sports/college-related activities
Work with (wife) on our diet/exercise/nutrition commitments
PHYSICAL -
Stick to daily exercise
Breakfast/Vitamins
Lunch - Fruit/Vegetables/Protein
Dinner – Eat Moderately
No Food After 8:00pm
HARNESS -
Grade previous days progress
Meditate – on the day’s learnings
Escalate –wherever it’s needed
BREAKING GOALS DOWN TO ACTIONS
So far, we’ve looked at the importance of being growth-motivated in living our life – i.e., of always trying to learn and grow from everything that happens. We’ve identified the value of using your peak experiences and dreams to identify goals to help you keep yourself motivated and doing the work needed to keep moving forward in life. And we’ve underscored the necessity of harnessing your goals to your day-to-day efforts in order to achieve them.A technique for connecting the dots between a long term goal and short term actions is to brainstorm and use "RIOT" (Random Ideas Or Thoughts). Just write down every step, large or small, that comes to mind that you might need to do between now and the completion, execution or launch of any objective. If it’s too long or complicated an undertaking to try to consider in entirety, just identify some key mile markers along the way. Don’t hold anything back or worry about whether a step or action will actually end up getting taken or how you’ll handle it. For right now, just see this as a brain-dump and put down everything that comes to mind on your Master list of things you might need to do.
Take this master list and reflect on how long you think it might take you to get these steps accomplished if you push yourself and treat it as a serious goal. Take into account the reality of your life and its demands on your time.
Next break the master list items roughly into categories of Early, Middle and Later periods and put some timeframes around how long you think it would take you to accomplish them.
Then set aside the Middle and Later parts and just focus on the Early list and estimate how long you think it would take you to accomplish these early steps. Put these steps onto a calendar so you have an idea when you could aim to complete them by. Don’t agonize over the placement of these steps on your calendar; a rough cut is sufficient for right now as you will adjust, add to and fine-tune your lists of steps as you go along and get more information.
Next take this list and identify any steps you could take toward your goal during this calendar quarter, and from that list, make a smaller list of the steps you’d need to take by the end of this month to be on target for your quarter’s objectives.
Then make a Week’s Work list of what you’d need to do this week to be on target for your end of the month goals. After you’ve done that, disregard everything except this list; focus on this week’s goals and each day, re-check it and ask yourself, “What do I need to do today to be on target to get my week’s work done on time? Put those steps on your “To Do Today” list and each day take a moment to evaluate your progress during the previous day toward each goal .
At the end of the week, use the same method to evaluate your progress that week toward your month’s objectives. And make your list for the next week.
Keep repeating this process day-by-day and week-to-week until you get to the end of the month. Then evaluate your progress this month toward your quarter’s objectives and make any adjustments you feel you need to make in order to be on target at the end of next month for your quarter’s goals.
Another method you can use to get started toward a goal is the "WIN THAT" Constant Question dialogue where you take some dream or goal you'd like to go after and repeatedly ask yourself, “What I’d Need To Help Accomplish That?” over and over until you get to something you can do right now. Put that step
on your To Do Today list and do it.Pretty much commonsense stuff – but if we apply it to the occasional ideas that come our way, it can have surprising results. Here's how doing something similar to that helped me get out of my home town of Gary, Indiana:
When I was twenty I was married, the father of a baby girl, living in a 3-room furnished apartment and working the midnight shift in the steel mills. I knew that I wanted to get out of that life. I had seen signs that I was creative and good with words. So I thought I might be able to succeed in advertising. I saw an ad that said Procter & Gamble was the country’s largest advertiser and was hiring in that area, so I decided to try to get a job there.
--Asking how I could do that, I knew I’d have to get an interview and convince them I could give some value.
--Asking how I could do that with no experience or credentials, the answer was to try to dazzle them.
--Asking how I might do that, I thought I might be able to do it if could show that I knew a lot about them.
--And if I could surprise them with a lot of good ideas about their products and ads.
--Asking how I could do that, I'd need to do some research on their products and ads.So after getting off work at the mills each morning I’d go to the library and pore over P&G’s ads in the magazines, and then I would come home and watch soap operas looking at their commercials and trying to figure out what they were trying to accomplish in each ad and then would critique it and try to think of what I might do differently to try to make it even better. I spent several weeks doing that research and preparing my letter and resume and sent it in.
When I got invited to come for an interview, I went loaded for bear. P&G had over 100 brands, and I was ready with my thoughts and ideas on almost every one I could find. I let loose with both barrels and they offered me a job in advertising on a brand group, where I became the youngest brand manager in the company and spent 10 years there.
That’s also how I started the little business that helped me get free from corporate life:
One time I was coming home from a skiing trip with a friend who was a reporter for the Associated Press. This was during the Viet Nam war, and he mentioned reading an article in the Saigon Post. So I said to him, ”I’d like to see what the war looks like to people who are living in it. But how do you read it; you don’t know Vietnamese?”
He replied “It’s in English,” and said that almost all countries had at least one English-language newspaper because it's the universal language. I said "I'd like to see those, and I bet other people would too. Why don't we do that as a business? We could call it something like “Newspapers from Around the World."My friend liked the idea and so we began considering how to do it. To figure out how to start it, I took a sheet of paper and used the Constant Question dialogue technique:
What would I need to do to do that? -I’d have to get hold of the publications so that I can offer them.
What would I need to do to do that? -I’d have to contact them and find out if I could import them here.
What would I need to do to do that? -I’d have to locate their source so I could get in touch with them.
What would I need to do to do that? -I could see if there's a directory listing publications overseas.
What would I need to do to do that? -I guess I could go to the library and ask if there is a directory.
So the next day I went to my local library and found Uhlrich's Guide to International Publications, which lists every English-language periodical in the world, with the publisher's name, address and telephone number. Having the phone number, we decided to call instead of write. We were a bit nervous before making the calls, but we figured the worst that was likely would be that they would tell us they weren't interested or that their prices would be too high for us to pay. But we wouldn’t know unless we checked it out. So we calculated the time zone differences and at four in the morning, we called the
