Making Self-Actualization Actionable #1

After a lifetime of studying and modeling self-actualizing people, Abraham Maslow wrote a chapter about his experiences in a book, Challenges of Humanistic Psychology that James Bugental edited. He titled of the chapter, “Self-Actualizing and Beyond.” What I found wonderful about this chapter is how he described both his original motivations for the modeling project and how he then set about to create benchmarks for self-actualization. So given that one of our key discoveries in Neuro-Semantics is the “secret history” of NLP in the work of Maslow and Rogers and that benchmarking is one of our key contributions to the field of NLP, I thought I would quote extensively from the chapter and relate it to current work that we are doing in Neuro-Semantics.

Modeling: 1935

Forty years before Bandler and Grinder modeled the three Human Potential Movement leaders (Bateson, Perls, and Satir), Maslow modeled two people who showed extraordinary development of human excellence and began the Human Potential Movement. What he discovered was that in

“… trying to understand two of my teachers that he loved, adored, and admired and who were very, very wonderful people … [I] sought to understand why these two people were so different from the run-of-the-mill people in the world. These two people were Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer.” (The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, 1971, Chapter 3, p. 40)

Maslow’s modeling then began out of astonished amazement at two individuals who “were most remarkable human beings.” Unlike the NLP modeling of skills, this model wasn’t about what they did, but what they had become- being more than doing. Now in terms of doing, they were both famous-Max was the co-founder of Gestalt Psychology and Ruth the founder of Cultural Anthropology, the mentor of Margaret Mead, first wife of Gregory Bateson.

“I made descriptions and notes on Max Wertheimer, and I made notes on Ruth Benedict. When I tried to understand them, think about them, and write about them in my journal and notes, I realized in one wonderful moment that their two patterns could be generalized. I was talking about a kind of person, not about two non-comparable individuals. There was wonderful excitement in that. I tried to see whether this pattern could be found elsewhere, and I did find it elsewhere, in one person after another.” (41)

This modeling is driven by the scientific attitude of seeking knowledge about human excellence, something that Maslow spent his entire life searching this out. He selected “wonderful people” “… and then tried to figure them out and found he was able to describe a syndrome-the kind of pattern that seemed to fit all of them.”

Maslow selected people who were visibly successful and who were also inwardly success because he wanted to discover the farther reaches of human nature:

“When you select out for careful study very fine and healthy people, strong people, creative people, saintly people, sagacious people- then you get a
different view of mankind. You are asking how tall can people grow, what can a human being become?”

What did he find as he searched for human excellence? He found that these self-actualizing people were living for what he defined as the being-values-the values of being-the values that were valuable in and of themselves, inherently, innately, and were not valued only for their instrumental use. He commented that these B-values are “the meaning of life for most people.”

“Self-actualizing people are, without one single exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves. They are
devoted at something … which is very precious to them … so that the work-joy dichotomy in them disappears.” (42)

Benchmarking Self-Actualization

In his 1967 chapter, Maslow was looking for the actual behaviors that led to and that indicated self-actualization- the benchmarks.

“What does one do when he self-actualizes? Does he grit his teeth and squeeze? What does self-actualization mean in terms of actual behavior, actual procedure?” (43)

That’s when he came up with “eight ways in which one self-actualizes.” I will be quoting him for each of these eight ways in the next weeks and adding comments about each.

1) Total Absorption

“First, self-actualization means experiencing fully, vividly selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption. It means experiencing without the self-consciousness of the adolescent. At this moment of experiencing, the person is wholly and fully human. This is a self-actualizing moment. This is a moment when the self is actualizing itself.” (44)

Maslow wrote that this “can be a very sweet moment” and that’s because in such moments of absorption, one can forget poses, defenses, shyness and “go at it whole-hog.” Such engagement! This is the very thing that Csikszentmihalyi has described in his description of a flow state. The flow state is where one becomes so completely engaged in an activity that one gets lost in it. One becomes so engaged with something, and the amazing thing is that it could be just about anything- an athletic event, a puzzle, rock climbing, reading a book, having a coaching conversation with someone, writing, cooking, making love, playing with a dog- the list is endless.

And it is this kind and quality of total engagement that e call “the genius state” in Neuro-Semantics. Building on the foundational work of DeLozier, Grinder, Dilts, and others, Accessing Personal Genius is all about this- how to turn on your “genius” or “flow” state so that it is yours- at your command. No longer do you have to wait for it, cross your fingers and hope for it, you can “turn it on” and step fully into the zone of your optimal state- at will.

Now given that this is one of the benchmarks of self-actualization, in fact, the first one, and that it is a total absorption and engagement with something outside of yourself- this again clarifies the old confusion between self-actualization and selfishness and why we say that Self-Actualization is not about you, it is through you.

Ready for living the self-actualizing life? Then get ready to move far, far beyond multi-tracking as you step into total absorption of a meaning and value that endows your life with a rich and robust meaningfulness.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

There are many dimensions of self-actualization, maybe there are as many dimensions as there are aspects of human experience.  As we in Neuro-Semantics keep studying, researching, training, coaching, and consulting on self-actualization and enabling people to live a self-actualizing life, we are discovering new dimensions.  To this end, I have designed the Self-Actualization Training, Certification, Competency skills, and Diploma around four of the key dimensions: vitality, potentiality, creativity, and leadership.  These are very different aspects of the self-actualizing life and so each of the trainings are very different as well.

The Vitality Dimension – Biological Self-Actualization

The focus in the first module is on identifying a person’s basic and higher needs so that a person can adequately and truly satisfy those needs.  When a person succeeds in doing this, it results in vitality-energy and motivation to live more fully and humanly.  It enables a you to discover your real self and to be authentically you.  How about that!?  How much is that worth? What then results from this vitality dimension of biological self-actualization is authenticity- being real and authentic in yourself as a person.

After all, if you do not have vitality and energy to live your life with focus and passion, then you will not be able to be your best self or fulfil your visions and values. It takes energy for the effort of self-actualizing.  Where can you get that kind of energy?  That energy comes from the built-in drives within your mind-body system. These drives are instinct-like but without content information.  So you have to learn.  You have to learn what these drives are and how to adequately and truly satisfy them.  Do that, and then as they go away, the next level of drives emerge. Eventually, you move beyond the lower needs to the higher being-needs that are the truly human needs that enables us to be fully alive, fully human.

The Potentiality Dimension – Psychological Self-Actualization

The focus in the second module refers to what is potential in human beings which can be made actual and therefore real in your everyday life.  To find, identify, and develop your potentials, begin by taking on the challenge of owning and exercising your human powers as a meaning-making in constructing great and positive meanings and also in releasing limiting meanings.  We refer to this as entering into the Construct and taking ownership of these powers.  This lies at the heart of Neuro-Semantics (as you can see from the front page of the website, www.neurosemantics.com).

Doing that then allows you to create a human Crucible whereby you can release old meanings that no longer serve you and which may, in fact, create leashes that prevent the unleashing of potentials.  From this then you can create the synergy of integrating meanings and performance as you move into “the zone” of optimum performance and do so at your will.  In APG we call this the “personal genius” or “flow” state.  The result that follows from this is a being-doing synergy that allows you to close the knowing-doing gap.

This is the core drama of self-actualizing and we talk about it as a drama in three acts: The Construct, the Crucible, and the Zone.  After all, self-actualization is a function of “both contemplation and action” (Maslow) or as we say, meaning and performance (challenge and competence).  To taking ownership of meaning-making powers and ownership of your core powers from which every skill is made enables you to act on your highest meanings and sacrilize your everyday activities.  That’s the synergy of self-actualization.  Would you like that?

The Creativity Dimension – Existential Self-Actualization

The focus in the third model is that of creativity.  Maslow described the first creativity is that of creating your self, that is, hearing your inner voice and unleashing your potentials (covered in the second module).  After that, your power of creativity does not end, it only shifts gear so that instead of creating your best self, you move outside of yourself to addressing the problems of the real or external world.  That’s why self-actualizing people are, by nature, highly creative and inventive. Unleashing your creative powers in creating your self now take a new form as you use them for problem-solving the problems that we have in human societies, businesses, governments, etc.

The third module is about creativity and innovation and to facilitate that we use four conversations- four well-formed conversations.  The first is the well-formed outcome conversation to set out a vision and mission.  Next is the well-formed problem conversation by which we identify and solve the problems that interfere with achieving our goals.  Next comes the well-formed solutions conversation wherein we brainstorm solutions and choose to fully invent the best solution.  Finally, the well-formed innovation conversation which, of course, is for innovating the solutions that transforms the problems and enables you to actualize the vision that you began with.  The result of this is a professional communication style that is a coaching facilitation style by which you become a highly skilled problem-solver.

The Leadership Dimension – Sociological Self-Actualization

The focus of the four module is on leadership.  After all, to unleash your own or another’s potentials for creative solutions is to bring out the best in yourself and/or others.  That’s what leadership is-bringing out the best in others and to lead to creating self-actualizing homes, businesses, communities, etc.  Self-actualizing leadership is situational and functional and is something everyone who is self-actualizing can do.  After all, we need good, caring, visionary, competent leaders in every home, every area of life, and at every level.  The result of this is the ability to create and innovate humanistic communities among any and all groups of people.

Self-Actualizing couples, families, businesses, associations, companies, and countries, however, do not just happen.  They have to be envisioned and then created by self-actualizing leaders.  And given the current crisis in leadership in every area and dimension of life, we really need much more mature and creative leaders in the world today.

These are the four dimensions of self-actualization that we present in the four trainings and when we combine them, this leads to a Diploma in Self-Actualization Psychology.  If you are interested, contact us.  The next one is this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the one after that is in Johannesburg, South Africa. See the contact information below.

www.seekingthepeak.co.za

info@seekingthepeak.co.za – for a Description of the trainings also-

www.self-actualizing.org

The next trainings that I will be involved in for the entire series in 9 days is:

• May 25- June 1 — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – contact jairo@pnl.med.br
• July 14-August 1 — Johannesburg, South Africa – contact — Barbara Walsh barbara@metaco.co.za
• In South Africa –  info@seekingthepeak.co.za

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

One of our purposes in Neuro-Semantics is to enable ourselves and others to actualize, or make real, our highest and best.  Highest refers to your highest visions about life, your values for how to live, and meanings for making life meaningful.  Best refers to your top performances, your best skills and competencies, and taking your actions so that they reflect you when you are in the zone of performance.  Yet to do that with mindfulness requires that we be able to assess where we are now and where we are as we progress, in other words, assessment of our self-actualization.  And that means creating benchmarks for self-actualizing development.

The first attempt to do this occurred in 1964 when Everett Shostrum met with Abraham Maslow and took the 15-17 characteristics of self-actualizing people, which had been discovered in over 20 years of modeling, and began to create behavioral indicators of those characteristics.  The result?  The POI, the Personal Orientation Inventory, a questionnaire of 150 force-choice questions around 10 subsidiary distinctions of living the self-actualizing life.  The POI was, and continues to be today, a well developed instrument for measurement and assessment.  And if it weren’t so expensive, I’d been promoting it in all we do in Neuro-Semantics, but alas, to take it and use it costs $128 for each person, each time.

When I complained about that some years ago (2009), Tim Goodenough challenged me to begin creating our own assessment scale.  In January 2010, Tim and I completed a prototype and ran it with the Leadership Team of Neuro-Semantics.  Since that time, we refined it, I wrote a description of it, and lo and behold, we have our very own Neuro-Semantic Self-Actualization Assessment Scale.  You can now find it on the website: https://legacy.neurosemantics.com/assessment-scale-form.

This Assessment Scale invites you to look at your driving needs— those lower and higher needs that drive your neurology, physiology, and psychological states of mind and emotion.  For each of the four lower needs and for the fifth level of self-actualization needs, you will find seven or more distinctions.  The scale invites you to gauge yourself in terms of how well are you adequately meeting your needs. Are you just “getting by?”  Then you would put a check in the middle.  If you are not getting by very well, then you will be to the left in the red zone.  If you are more than just getting by, you are thriving or optimizing, you will be to the right of the center line, in the green zone.

Getting by refers to being able to fulfil the need so that the drive goes away.  That’s how the lower needs work.  When adequate gratified by true-satisfiers (things that truly correspond to and fit the need), then the disequilibrium, the inner tension, the driving urge reduces and then vanishes from awareness.  That will be a first sign of using a true satisfier.  Another sign: energy!  Vitality.  You will feel good and be able to focus on the next-level needs.

If you are not using true-satisfiers, but false-satisfiers, then the drive doesn’t go away.  In fact, the drive for that need, whether food, drink, shelter, money, sex, etc. will dominate more and more.  You may become obsessive about it, and then compulsive in your actions.  False-satisfiers and false-beliefs about our needs, for us humans, will create neurotic needs.  We will semantically load the need with meanings, understandings, beliefs, etc. that the need cannot bear and the result we will become obsessive-compulsive about the need or some false-satisfier (drugs, money, gambling, etc.) and the false-gratification makes things worse.

Now you can assess where you are and how you are dealing with, handling, coping, and hopefully mastering your innate driving needs.  The lower needs are “animal” needs because the higher intelligent social animals have those needs as well— the need not only for survival and safety, but for connection, bonding, belong, and for recognition of their place in a group.  The mechanism that drives these lower needs is deficiency and so Maslow designated them, the D-needs.  These are the needs that do not go away until fulfilled.  And when fulfilled, they go away.

The higher or self-actualization needs are those which are with us from the beginning— in nascent form– but which become fully present to us as we fulfill the lower needs.  These are the uniquely human needs.  These are our needs for knowledge, meaning, understanding, beauty, order, mathematics, excellence, fairness, justice, contribution, making a difference, giving love, etc.  The mechanism governing these needs is abundance and being-ness.  Abundance means that when you gratify them, they grow.  They do not go away, they do the opposite— they expand and become fuller.  Being-ness means that unlike the lower needs that are instrumental needs, means to an end, these are non-instrumental, they are ends (not means).  These are for living in, for being, they are valid and satisfying in and of themselves.

So where are you?  Go and take the assessment.  It will take 30 minutes when you do it the first time and then you can print off the results.  Each time you do it thereafter, will go quicker and quicker as you get more acquainted with it.  If you need a Meta-Coach or a Neuro-Semanticist to work through the completed form with you— check out Trainers on www.neurosematics.com and Meta-Coaches on www.metacoachfoundation.org.

It is this assessment that we use in the Unleashing Vitality training and the next time I will do that training and all of the other three Self-Actualization trainings will be May in  Rio de Janiero, Brazil (May 25 to 31 and June 1-3). If you are interested, contact: Dr. Jairo Mancilha — jairo@pnl.med.br

Modeling Excellence Series #11

While The Matrix Model originated from the Meta-States Model and not from any particular modeling, Bob Bodenhamer and I immediately used it as a modeling tool as we applied it to the experience of stuttering.  And in doing that we realized that we could use this model as a format or tool for modeling any human experience and especially complex human experiences.  In fact, the more systemic the experience, the more the useful the Matrix Model became.

Why is that?  How does that work?  The explanation goes to the fact that the Matrix Model is based on three axes- Meaning, Performance, and Self.

Meaning because all of human experience and therefore “reality” is a function of the meanings that we construct about things.  To understand any person or any experience that humans have we have to find out what meanings have been created.  What does the person think in representing something (see, hear, sense), how does the person frame those representations (classifies, categories, invents concepts), what metaphors and understandings used to put all of that together, etc.

Performance because from meaning comes embodiment, the feed-forwarding into ourselves so that we go into state, experience emotions, and create the biological energy to speak and act to influence the things and people in our world.  Performance because the body is designed to actualize our mental constructions.

Self because the earliest and most fundamental frames we build are about ourselves as we build up a matrix of frames about our worth, competence, relationships, temporality, and dimensions of operations (self, power, others, time, and world).  That’s then why we never leave home without our Self, and the Self that we take with us everywhere we go filters all of our subsequent experiences.

These three dimensions of experience provide the three basic categories that take in just about everything we need to consider when it comes to modeling a complex, systemic human experience.  And these three dimensions are not separate or distinctive dimensions, they are interactive and systemic. That’s because the meanings we construct are fundamentally meanings about ourselves in the various worlds that we navigate and as we do they are made actual in our body and so our performances.

Now we can follow the two loops of communication, the feedback- feed-forward loop of information in-energy out.  These two loops enable us to explore the outer game (stimulus – response) and then the inner game (thinking-feeling).  The outer game loop of stimulus or in the world that triggers us to respond is the obvious loop.  Information comes in and we respond with energy in our speech and behavior as we act to deal with that information. Yet this loop, while empirical and sensory-based and quantitative is superficial.  It’s just what happens on the outside that you can see and hear and sense.

The more significant loop is the internal one.  This is the thinking-feeling loop.  First we “think” and that doesn’t mean just consciously, but also unconsciously.  We think by representing, by languaging, labeling, evaluating, framing, associating, metaphoring, etc.  This is the feedback we give to ourselves as we draw conclusions, compute our meanings, interpret, make sense of and layer more thoughts-and-feelings about our abstractions. And as we conclude and interpret things, we then feed-forward into our neurology and body the energy that activates and mobilizes us.  This creates our emotions and our somatic-body-states.

This inner-game loop is the loop of feedback- feed-forward that creates our mental maps and sense of reality.  And among the conclusions we are drawing and the meanings we are inventing for our interpretations are all of our abstractions, conceptions, and ideas about our Self.

Matrix Modeling centers in following the energy.   In Neuro-Semantics we say that we “follow the energy through the system.”  And why?  Mostly to understand the system- the person’s mind-body-emotion system.  Then, once we understand how a particular experience or system works, we understand where we can intervene in the system to create a desired change.  We follow the information into the system to see where it goes, how it is processed, changed, interpreted, abstracted as it moves around the system, and then see how it is actualized and turned into neurological energy.

Matrix Modeling occurs by recognizing the cues of the sub-matrices within the Matrix so that we can tell when any given matrix flashes on as information or energy (emotion, feeling) is experienced in that matrix.  You can tell when it flashes on because the person will mention it, the person will talk about their worth (self), their skills, powers, responsibilities, etc. or the lack of them (powers), their relationships, other people, groups of people, etc. (others), some facet about time, the past, present, or future (time), or some domain of meaning (some profession or area where humans live).`

Neuro-Semantic News

• May in Rio — The Self-Actualization Psychology Training and Diploma.
• June in Kuala Lumpur – the Second International Neuro-Semantic Conference — on Coaching,  Coaching Excellence.
• July in Johannesburg – the Self-Actualization Psychology Training and Diploma.
• April in Oslo Norway — Coaching Mastery for ACMC Credentials.
• May in Hong Kong — Coaching Mastery for ACMC Credentials.

For Contact details go to www.neurosemantics.com click  Training — Dr. Hall’s Schedule.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Are you ready for training in actualizing (making real) yourself and your potentials?  Are you aware that this is precisely what you and all of us are made for?  And are you aware that this is what ultimately will make you “happy?”  And that this is what allows you to fully blossom and come alive to life’s richness and possibilities?  If so, then this may be the year that you begin your own self-actualizing journey and to Seek the Peak of your potentials.

The Neuro-Semantic Discovery of Self-Actualization And Creation of the Seeking the Peak Trainings

A number of years ago I stumbled upon a discovery that truly surprised me. Maybe surprise is not the right word, perhaps shock would be more accurate. I was surprisingly shocked when I discovered who was actually involved at Esalen during the first Human Potential Movement (HPM).  And who was there? Why the very who’s who of NLP- Gregory Bateson, Fritz Perl, and Virginia Satir!

Yet there’s more.  They were not only at the heart of the first HPM, and the first persons at Esalen which was created to launch the movement and to be the Think Tank of the movement, but they were second or third generation leaders of the Human Potential Movement.

That was shocking enough- the very persons modeled by Bandler and Grinder to create the NLP Communication Model were leaders of the first HPM. But the next shock surprised me even further.  As I looked into the presuppositions of NLP, the presuppositions that came from Bateson, Perls, and Satir, I discovered that they did not come from them, they came through them.  They came from Maslow and Rogers and the other original thinkers of the HPM.  How about that!

Digging deeper and deeper into all of this by re-reading and reading afresh the original works of the HPM leaders, another surprise emerged.  I had always thought that the first real modeling of people of excellence began with the NLP Modeling of Fritz and Satir and Erickson.  Wrong again.

Forty-five years before that modeling, and before either Bandler or Grinder were born (!), Maslow had launched his modeling of self-actualizing people. He started with Max Wertheimer (co-founder of Gestalt Psychology) and Ruth Benedict (mentor to Margaret Mead, wife of Gregory Bateson, founder of Cultural Anthropology).

Neuro-Semantics’ Self-Actualization Training

After I made those discoveries from 2004 to 2007, I launched the first Self-Actualization training and began training Neuro-Semantic Trainers for training it.  In the years that followed, three more trainings were developed.  By 2010 there were 4 workshops.  Then at the end of 2012 we put all of them together to create a Diploma in Self-Actualization Psychology. That training occurred just recently in Hong Kong under the sponsorship of Mandy Chai and APTI (Asia Professional Training Institute) and was a tremendous success.

Yet that is just the beginning.  Among the 22 Trainers at that training, many of them are planning to run one or more of the modules and some will eventually be training all four for the Neuro-Semantic Diploma.  So now, there is a very specific process whereby you can be trained in Self-Actualization!  What are the four modules?

• Module 1:        Unleashing Personal Vitality            – Energy to Live Fully
• Module 2:        Unleashing Personal Potentials      – Alive to your Uniqueness
• Module 3:        Unleashing Creativity                         – Creative Problem-Solving
• Module 4:        Unleashing Leadership                      – Bringing out the Best in Others

Here is the content of Seeking the Peak Trainings that you will be hearing about and seeing as modules that many Neuro-Semantic Trainers will be conducting this year and in the coming years.  The numbers indicate the theme of the 3-day modules, these are shorted in the full 8 day program to two-days each.

Module I: Unleashing Vitality
Your Highest & Best Energy for being Fully Alive / Fully Human
Energies for becoming Alive for the Higher Life: Discover your Real Self.

1. Developing Your Base – for Vitality in Self-Actualizing.
2. Seeking Your Peak – for a highly energized Meta-Life.
3. Living the Vitality – for the Eyes of the self-actualizing life.

Module II: Unleashing Potentials
Your Highest & Best Meaningful Performances: How to Actualize Your Highest and Best

1. The Construct: Meaning, Meaning-construction.
2. The Crucible: Transformation of old Meanings that diminish you.
3. The Zone: In the Zone of Peak Experiences.

Module III: Unleashing Creative Solutions
Creativity for well-formed Coaching Conversations for Creative Problem-Solving.

1. Well-formed Outcome –  designing a compelling future.
2. Well-formed Problem –   defining the interferences and challenges.
3. Well-formed Solution –   creatively resolving the problems.
4. Well-formed Innovation -actualizing it in the real world.

Module IV: Unleashing Leadership
Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies for Peak Performance Organizations

1. The New Leadership: Self-Actualizing Leaders who bring out the best in others.
2. Your Self-Actualizing Leadership Matrix for being an authentic leader.
3. Leading a Seeking-the-Peak Self-Actualizing Company with 3 bottom-lines.

This is just the beginning of our focus on enabling people to actualize their highest visions into their best performances.  In this new year, myself and many of the other Neuro-Semantic Trainers will be presenting one or more (or all) of these Self-Actualization Training Modules.  The next time that the whole series, the Seeking the Peak series will be presented will be in May in Rio de Janiero, Brazil (May 25 to 31 and June 1-3).  If you are interested, contact: Dr. Jairo Mancilha –  jairo@pnl.med.br.

See L. Michael Hall’s training schedule here.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.