Self-Management and Self-Actualization

If self-responsibility describes one of the vehicles to self-actualizing, if we bring to life and make it real in our actual lives by owning our innate responses, and if we fully experience this meta- state of self-responsibility through self-efficacy and commitment to our own growth, then a key expression of a self-actualizing person is that of self-management.

Ah, self-management—the ability to manage ourselves. This was, and continues to be, the draw of NLP in spite of how so many people distort that message and use the tools of NLP for manipulation. Yet the misuse of a tool does not argue against the tool. It only argues against the misuse of it. It argues that anything powerful for good can be mishandled and used for hurt and destruction. And that’s all the more reason for applying to self and first developing the self- mastery and management before attempting to use it with others.

NLP without self-application and self-management seeks to do things to others and so quickly degenerates into a covert form of manipulation. But with self-management, then the tools (the models and patterns) become useful for co-creating with another the kind of experiences that lead to the best states and the most productive performances. We can then use it for self- actualization and working collaboratively with others.

The promise that NLP provides the map and navigational tools for “running my own brain” was what first attracted me to NLP. When I read the line, “If you don’t take charge and run your own brain, someone else will!” I intuitively knew the wisdom in that and so began my adventure into the area of self-management. Managing ourselves means managing our thoughts— our hopes and dreams, our imaginations and memories, our construct of meaning, and the quality of our representations and framing. Managing ourselves means managing our emotions— our states, meta-states, moods, and attitudes. It means managing our activities, choices, time, relational skills, growth, mistakes, learnings, health, and much more.

And if we are aiming to actualize our best, then we have to take charge to not only engage in self-leadership, but also self-management. The leadership part is actually easier than the management part. Catching a vision, setting the course, establishing the operational frames for the inner game, etc. is actually much more exciting than the everyday management tasks by which we translate the self-leadership into practical lifestyle, where the rubber meets the road is in self-management.

It is also in self-management that we discover the reality and quality of the self-responsibility that we’ve developed. Are we fully able to be a responsible adult in owning and exercising our responses to bring the vision to life? Are we truly able, as a responsible, grown-up adult, to figure out what we have to do to actualize our potentials and then use the discipline to follow through on our action plan? Those who are childishly dependent are forever in need for someone else to do it for them.

What vision or meaning do you want to actualize? It takes self-leadership to answer that question. Once you answer that question, then it will take self-management for you to create the action plan for managing your mind, emotions, time, energy, and responses as you make it happen. Can you do that? Will you do that?

Now apply this to each and every area of life. What vision or meaning in your career do you want to actualize? What dream or significance in your relationships? In your health and fitness? In your finances? When we exercise the meta-state of self-responsibility so that it becomes so habitual that it becomes part of our Matrix, part of the mental-emotional atmosphere that we live in, then we operated from the joyous pleasure of being a self-directed person. We are self- directed in our career, money, fitness, skill development, continuous learning, etc. And that puts us on the royal of being a self-actualizing person.