Self-Actualization and the Neuro-Semantic Vision

One of my recent discoveries, as I continue my research and study in self-actualization, brought me in contact with an older book, one by Robert Carkhuff. In Toward Actualizing Human Potential (1981) he wrote a description of what self-actualizing people are like. And while the book mostly focuses on operationalizing the process of “actualizing” and measuring (which was what got my interest in the book originally), one passage at the beginning of the book made me think I was reading a version of the Neuro-Semantic vision. See what you think.

“People functioning at the level of self-actualization tend to be very creative and productive people. They are interdependent in their reception and contribution to input and feedback for all of their actions. They are experiential, experimental, and operational in their orientation to all new learnings.” (p. 38)

What are self-actualizing people like?

• 1) First, they are creative and productive.
• 2) Then they have the quality of being inter-dependent in interactions as they take and give effective feedback.
• 3) Then there is a passion for ongoing learning.

“Mastery at this level is dependent upon cooperative harmony between the various levels of need within the individual and between people. Self-actualization is a function of synergistic inner-personal and interpersonal relationships. When relationships, both within and between people are characterized by synergistic interdependence, people interact with others and the situation— not only in the service of themselves but also in the service of others as well as the situational objectives.”

• 4) He now adds synergy and suggests that this results in rich synergistic relationships which produces harmony.
• 5) Then there is service, service to others.

“Self-actualization is encouraged in a climate of trust and openness where appropriate information and skills are shared, and personally and socially validatable responses that make possible a system of negative entrophy are generated. In closed, suspicious, or strategizing climates, self-actualization creativity is inhibited and inhibition is manifested by frustration at external or internal limits. Regression from the level of interdependent self-actualization is not to the esteem or belonging needs level but to the independent self-actualization level.” (p. 38)

• 6) Next we have other interpersonal traits such as trust, openness, and sharing.

Does any of this sound like the Neuro-Semantic vision? It certainly struck me as very similar to what we set out originally. After all, our vision in Neuro-Semantic is to apply the principles and patterns to ourselves so that we become congruently authentically, creatively productive, cooperative and collaborative, great team players, highly ethically professional, and combine our forces so that we can do so much more together than apart. That’s all that I originally set out to do in putting for the Meta-States model as a process for incorporating “apply-to-self” into NLP.

From the beginning of Neuro-Semantics as a model (1994), I’ve been imagining that if those of us using NLP would first mobilize our own resources so we begin to move out of the deficiency motivation realm into abundance motivation realm (self-actualization), we could take NLP to a whole new level. We could rise above the conflicts that scarcity drives.

Obviously, since then the vision of Neuro-Semantics has been evolving and growing as we’ve added new models and patterns. This has been especially true in the past two years as it has dawned on me that the kind of psychology we are dealing with is not the psychology of therapy (psycho-therapy), but that of actualization (psycho-actualization). And as we have been making that our focus in the Meta-Coach trainings, all of this has helped us refocus the vision of Neuro- Semantics.

From the beginning my focus has been on finding ways to close the knowing-doing gap so that we can actually do and apply what we know. I wanted that for myself; and I wanted that as one of the key themes of Neuro-Semantics. And the reason is simply—only then can we truly unleash our highest potentials! Talking and philosophizing without taking action leaves us impotent and ineffective. So translating what is rich and exciting in our minds (all of our semantics) into our behaviors, physiology, and performances (our neurology) enables us to live and perform richly significant meanings.

If that’s the first part of our vision, embodying meaning, then the second part and the backside of that is to look at all of our behaviors and performances that we know are important to do, but which are anemic of meaningfulness and to enrich those performances with meaning. This is what Neuro-Semantics is all about, a rich synthesis of meaning and performance. This also describes self-actualization since actualizing our highest and best is a function of meaning and performance.

When we put all of this together, we see that the Neuro-Semantic vision involves becoming self- actualizers.and enabling others to become self-actualizers. The vision is to let the models and patterns change us, so that “being the change” we become much more effective change-agents. Neuro-Semantics, like Self-Actualization Psychology, seeks to find and model extraordinary people, self-actualizing people, people who are healthy in mind, body, and relationships so that we made explicit the strategies and processes for mapping such excellence.

Both Neuro-Semantics and Self-Actualization are about creativity. Both focus on the higher motivation of actualizing our talents so we meaningfully create new possibilities for ourselves and others. Then, we live not merely to survive, feel safe, get along with others, and feel good about oneself (the lower basic needs), but to contribute our own uniqueness.

Neuro-Semantics and Self-Actualization, by both dealing with the vision of creating and living the richest meanings possible, empower ourselves and others for peak experiences and peak performances. This means developing an increasingly creative mind, creative emotions, creative speech, and creative responses. And, moving to this level we experience the higher motivational state of abundance in contrast to the deficiency of the lower needs. This enables us to collaborate more effective, be an excellent team player, and contribute to the functioning of the whole. So self-actualization is all about walking our talk (congruence), actualizing in our bodies what we conceptualize in our minds as creative ideas, and making a creative difference in the world.

The bottom line? Living a life that truly counts. That’s the vision.