Self-actualization is the topmost need in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It can be achieved through self-exploration and action. This need manifests itself when lower-level needs have been satisfied.
What can you really control?
You can control yourself. To achieve this, there is a need to learn how to manage yourself. Most critical is the need to control your interpretations of things that happen to you, and how you react to this interpretation. To avoid making wrong interpretations and ineffective reactions, one should always take time before making decisions and reacting to them as better management of interpretations and reactions is the first real step to personal growth.
How do you sabotage your own success?
You sabotage your own success by fearing to be successful. This type of fear is mostly based on some major assumptions of what might happen when you become successful.
You also hinder our own success by anticipating what you have to do to achieve it, what you will have to give up, what is it like to be successful, how to maintain the success and what will happen to you if you lose it. Lastly, failure to take responsibility for where you are or where you are not is another way of sabotaging your own success. This is because you cannot close the gap between where you are and where you are not until you establish who created it.
Why don’t you apply all the good things you learn and know?
The reason why you do not apply all the good things you know and learn is that you have not come to grips with the question of why you keep pushing things away. Moreover, you always try to avoid boredom by doing what would bring more excitement to your life rather than what is good. Sometimes, one fails to do the right things because they are so easy and needs new challenges. Lastly, you may fail to do what you know is right due to peer pressure and influence, and the need to be seen as a hero or heroine among your peers.
For whom (or what) are you doing all this?
Self-growth can be stimulated by first knowing that it is hard to please other people. Thus, an individual needs to always strive to do something for him/herself and for its own intrinsic value. This brings along a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment which you can never achieve when you try to do things to impress others or for another ulterior motive. A genuine sense of satisfaction can also be achieved when you stop doing things to compete with others and start competing with yourself. Shifting your focus from the outside to your inside while doing things also helps you in boosting your self-growth. Lastly, you need to shed your guilt about being selfish, as this hinders you from shifting from doing things for all the wrong reasons to doing things for yourself.
What is the best that you are capable of?
You are capable of achieving the best you dream of. This can be done by first developing a detailed plan of how to achieve it and enduring the difficulties encountered before achieving it. There is also a need for you to be flexible in your goal settings, make difficult choices, sacrifices, and exchanges, and above all take risky chances.
References
Maslow, A. H. (1981). Motivation and personality. Prabhat Prakashan.