RocheMartin defines Emotional Intelligence by a set of 10 competencies and this is one in a series of blogs covering each one: Why develop Self-Actualisation, what is it exactly and how can you develop it?
Why develop Self-Actualisation?
…because
it’s the key ingredient for a life well lived!
Developing the competency of Self-Actualisation
Allows you to achieve what's really important to you.
Leads to satisfaction and balance across ALL areas of life.
Means you can reach your potential and fulfil your purpose.
Make the most of many and varied experiences.
Enjoy your time and feel enthusiastic about life.
...and developing Self-Actualisation will STOP you feeling like you're
Missing out in some way.
Not achieving your potential or falling short of your own expectations
Spending time and energy on things that aren't really important to you or that you don't really enjoy.
Spending too much time and energy in just one or two areas of your life, like work.
Going to wake up one day and wonder what happened to the dreams and plans you had for your life.
Just getting through life with no clear direction or purpose.
So what do you reckon? Do you think developing Self-Actualisation might be a good use of your time?
What is Self-Actualisation exactly?
Self-Actualisation is about being clear on your goals and being able to generate the ongoing energy, motivation and commitment to do what it takes to get them
As with all the RocheMartin emotional intelligence competencies, Self-Actualisation can be broken down into 3 components, which help to pinpoint areas of strength and areas for development.
The 3 components of Self-Actualisation are
Passion
Being able to link what you do to things that are important to you: your values, your purpose, your interests or the things you enjoy doing (which are normally your strengths).
If you can do that, you will be able to take action with passion and use that to keep you going if and when things get a bit tricky along the way.
Work/life balance
We have a limited amount of time and energy that needs to be shared across all areas of life.
Work/life balance is about
managing that energy so that you're able to allocate it across ALL areas of your life in a way that feels right.
maintaining that energy. Spending time on self-care so that you're optimising what you can do and don't find yourself without enough energy to do what you want or need to do.
Achievement drive
...and then using your passion and energy management to set goals and create realistic action plans that you can commit to.
...so another way of looking at it is that
Self-Actualisation is about making sure you get going and keep going until you're done!
Self-Actualisation is one of the Emotional Intelligence competencies that highlights the fact that being emotionally intelligent means developing ALL of the competencies.
Being able to generate passion at will for everything you need to do in life, is dependent on linking
what you need to do to
something that is important to you or that you enjoy.
Self-Actualisation is therefore dependent on the emotional intelligence competency of Self-Knowing, as you can't link what you need to do to something you don't know about!
You can find out more in my blog on Self-Knowing
...and my top 3 tips are to remember that
Your values / what's important to you may be different for each area of your life (work, relationships etc) AND for your life overall.
If you're satisfying your top 3 values in any one area, you are likely to be content with that area of your life.
If you're not satisfying your top 3 values, challenge yourself to do things in a different way or to think about things differently so that you can!
How can you develop Self-Actualisation?
Coaching is by far the most efficient, effective, engaging, empowering and enjoyable way to build any of the Emotional Intelligence competencies.
Helping you to develop, refine and embed your own personalised strategies for each competency.
And this blog contains some ideas for you to experiment with on your own that have worked for me and my clients.
If you’re interested in understanding your level of emotional intelligence using one of the RocheMartin assessments or would like to explore coaching for developing components of it like Self-Actualisation, you can book a free call here.
And if you'd like to try out my monthly emails that provide a roundup of my blogs as well as other insights, you can sign up here.