OUR ONGOING HUMAN POTENTIAL MOVEMENT

At the end of September (the 22nd) we concluded 12 days of the Self-Actualization series of trainings at Lucid Trainings in Cairo, Egypt. There were four trainings, each one was 3-days and each training, while part of the Diploma that we offer, is also designed as a stand alone training. We call the series of trainings, Seeking the Peak. This refers to the peak of human needs and values, what Maslow called the being-realm. This realm describes humanity at its best. It describes what all people, regardless of ethnic background, culture, or religion truly needs to be fully alive and fully human.

That phrase, fully alive/fully human is perhaps the very best description of what “self- actualization” means. And it fits our core theme in Neuro-Semantics. Fully alive speaks about your body and neurology—alive, energetic, vitality, passion, etc. Fully human speaks about your mind, heart, and spirit—a human being “fully functioning.” That was Carl Rogers’ term for self- actualization. Fully functioning mentally, emotionally, linguistically, behaviorally, and relationally. And that’s a function of meaning—your semantics. That’s why one of our central models for guiding, and even measuring, the self-actualizing life is using the meaning and performances axes which, in turn, sets up the self-actualization quadrants.

Over twenty years of ongoing research, Maslow, his students, and his colleagues identified 19 being-needs/values. They identified those qualities and experiences that make us fully human, that expresses our best humanity. And at the heart of these qualities is the being experience which refers to them being end values and not means values. Being fully alive and fully human speaks about living beyond the instrumental values that’s required to cope, survive, maintain safety and security, love and affection, bonding and attaching, and feeling social value.

But what is beyond those instrumental values? Maslow identified it as our higher nature. It is where we strive to fully express our best humanity. In Neuro-Semantics, this is our meta-life (to use Bateson’s term), it is the meta-place where we construct meaning which, in turn, determines the quality and effectiveness of our lives. So, what does the self-actualization trainings entail?

1) Vitality. When it comes to having the energy to live life fully, you have to gratify the four classes of lower needs: survival, safety, belonging, and social. If you do not truly and adequately gratify them, you will experience deficiency and because deficiency takes up a lot of energy, leads to being desperate. When falsely gratified, creates neurotic needs (compulsions). Gratify them truly and adequately, and you will release lots of energy—energy or vitality to focusing on your passions and values, living the “good” life of the being-values.

2) Potentials. Vitality also involves the meta-life of the being values and so unleashing your potentials up and down the hierarchy enables you to tap into your inner self, your true self, the self you can become. This makes for a highly meaningful life, an ever-increasing of your capacities, a deep authenticity, and it makes all of life an adventure. In Unleashing Potentials the processes for how to be released from what’s holding you back and how to be liberated for what lies before you gives you a key to personal empowerment and freedom. Modules I and II offer six-days of personal self-actualizing where you create yourself and lead yourself.

3) Creativity. Having created yourself, the best version of you, you are now ready for creating solutions to the real problems outside of your skin. Having discovered your inner construct in your meta place for inventing meaning, you are ready as a meaning-maker to tackle the challenging problems for making the world a better place. Having modeled creativity as involving four stages: outcome, problem, solution, and innovation, this module gives one the practical tools (using the Neuro-Semantic Precision Funnel) for creating solutions and innovating them with precision.

4) Leadership. Self-actualizing people with these abilities are now in a wonderful position to lead groups, families, businesses, corporations, even countries to become self-actualizing groups. It’s not easy. But given their problem-solving capacities, their meaning-making abilities, their bias for implementing and embodying what they do, self-actualizing people can lead the way. They lead the way as change-agents.

All of that occurs in 12 intense days of training. But, of course, that’s also based on previous trainings in NLP and Neuro-Semantics. In all, along with the required reading and self- application, the Self-Actualization Psychology Diploma is equivalent to two-years of study at a University. The difference is that this is rigorously personal and practical. The focus is on experience, experiential learning, and self-application. The focus is on the actual skills for actualizing vitality, potentials, creative solutions, and leadership. The design is that people graduate with the ability to actually do things.

Nor is that all. Following up on that are four additional trainings: Unleashing Authenticity; Unleashing Productivity; Unleashing Resilience, and Unleashing Collaborative Leadership— another 12 days. And why? The reason is simple: Neuro-Semantics is about actualizing your highest meanings and values into your very best performances. All of our models, books, manuals, trainers, coaches, consultants, therapists, etc. are designed to focus on actualizing excellence in people’s lives.

We had graduates from several countries— Egypt, Tunesia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Sweden. As a result, Meta-Coaches will be using the Self-Actualization Psychology to coach and trainers to do the trainings.