How is your vitality level?
If you were to gauge your everyday vitality— your energy, passion, commitment, and excitement— where would you put it (0 to 10)?
Do you experience your vitality as a resource or as an objective?
The other day I got into a conversation with a guy at Starbuck’s Coffee Shop when I was back in Colorado. He saw me with layers of papers stretched out on a table and was curious what I was working on. So he did something outrageous, he asked me.
I told him I was working on a new Self-Actualization workshop, Unleashing Vitality. Well, if he was curious before, that really jacked up his curiosity. Maybe he was suffering from de-vitalization, de-motivated, or just finding life empty and dull, whatever it was, his tone of voice shifted, as did the sparkle in his eyes and his engagement as he sat down at my table and inquired how does the unleashing of vitality works.
“Well, it’s begins with your energies— the energy that gets you out of bed in the morning… your mental energies by which you give such rich and robust meaning to what you are doing that you can’t wait to get to it … which you feel in your emotions — moving and motivating your behavioral and linguistic responses.”
At that he said that was his problem; he didn’t have any energy left. Not like he used to. So what could he do? That’s what he wanted to know.
“Ah, so something is blocking or dampening your energies! Do you know how you are throwing cold water on your inner energies?”
And so began a great conversation— one of those conversations that I long to have— anywhere, with anyone— if they open up, have a willingness to explore. And he did. I ended up sharing a lot aboutSelf-Actualization Psychology and essentially gave him a very short version of the new workshop as well as some practical how-to steps about reclaiming his natural vitality.
So if you ask me, “Why in the world another Self-Actualization Workshop? After all, you already have three, why yet another one?” Well, there’s several reasons. One reason is that some people are not ready for all of the unleashing processes which is what we do in Unleashing Potentials (Workshop I). In that “Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop” we take people through 3-part drama. It is the drama of self-actualizing in 3-acts: the Construct, the Crucible, and the Zone (similar to what you find in the book, Unleashed!). The whole design is to facilitate the unleashing of one thing— just one— because if you can, in 3 days, unleash one potential, then you will know how and have the experience for unleashing many more things.
But everybody isn’t ready for that. And some don’t have the energy to do that or the persistence, patience, or commitment. They don’t have the inner vitality to go through the unleashing processes. So we need to go back to basics and especially the basics of human functioning. So in Workshop II, instead of using the Self-Actualization Quadrants, we use the Matrix-Embedded-Pyramid-turned-Volcano model of Neuro-Semantics. This is this model that transforms the static pyramid and hierarchy of the levels of needs into a dynamic model where your meaning-making encounters your neurological needs all the way up the levels. The Matrix-Embedded-Volcano explains and exposes your needs to your style of meeting your needs so you can evaluate if you are successful or not. Andvitality is the telling indicator.
If you are adequately, accurately, and effectively meeting your true human needs and wants, you experience a rush of vitality. If you are not, then you will be exhausting your energy, wasting your time and effort, feeling unfulfilled and perhaps feeling frustrated and futile about trying to figure out how to get what you truly want or need. And to create some powerful measurements, in Workshop IIUnleashing Vitality we use the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale that Tim Goodenough and I designed for getting a reading on how you are doing with gratifying your lower needs and higher needs.
The levels of needs—wants (the pushes and pulls of human energy and motivation) have requirements. There are certain conditions to adequately satisfying them. And you can fulfill them accurately and adequately or you can not. Do it and you have vitality, fail to do it, and you don’t. That’s why the rush of vitality provides both the reward for success and the indicator of where you are living your life.
Where are you living your life? Are you living at the survival level, the safety and security level, the love and affection (social, belonging, connecting) level, the ego-level of self-value and respect level? If you are, that’s fine. Do you know how to gratify that level and move on up? Or are you somehow stuck at that level? Do you need to understand and find better ways to meet your needs? InUnleashing Vitality we first check to determine your understanding and gratifying of your needs. Do that right, and you’ll unleash all kinds of physical and emotional energy— vitality for living.
Are you living at the being-level of the self-actualization needs and wants? That’s the goal of the human experience and what this new Unleashing Vitality workshop is designed to enable you to achieve. The goal is to understand your neurological drives and how they interface with your psychological drives of meaning-making and how to use both for experiencing an energetic lifestyle. Then comes the rush of vitality and you’ll experience it as peak experiences, magical moments, pure joy, and falling in love with life itself.
Now would that be worthwhile to you? If so, check it out. I will run the proto-type in Pretoria South Africa in Sept. and the second later in Imola Italy.