Self-Responsible Self-Actualization

When it comes to self-actualization, you have to do it yourself. No one can do it for you! (Hey, this is reminding me of a song!) You’ve got to walk the path of self-actualization all by yourself. Okay, enough of the song, that part doesn’t exactly work. Due to our social needs and social constitution, and that we are social creatures, we can and do walk the pathway of self- actualization with others— in relationships, collaborations, being a good team player, etc.

The bottom line about self-actualization is that it occurs through the individualizing process as we become more fully ourselves, mature, grown up, able to stand on our own two feet, autonomous, differentiated, and able to find the strengths, talents, and gifts that we have to develop and to offer to others. So it ends in relationships. It culminates in interactions, joint ventures, and shared experiences. Like Dorothy, we need friends to go with us to the Emerald City.

The truth is that it takes a lot of self-responsibility in order to enter and maintain the self- actualizing process. Why is that? Because it takes a lot of independence to be inter-dependent. Only then can we enter into relationships with others while maintaining a strong sense of self and contributing our voice, our opinion, our gifts, our creativity. It’s only through complete differentiation in discovering how to be true and authentic to ourselves that we are the enabled to become truly good and effective team players and colleagues to each other.

In all of this, it’s through fully accepting the challenges of self-responsibility that we are able to actualize our gifts and become a full participant in healthy relationships. Self-responsible self- actualization is all about having enough of self, and a strong enough sense of self, so that when we are in relationship, we can be fully present and available. In this, self-responsible actualization goes beyond self-esteem, self-confidence, ego-strength, and glories in the higher quality of self-efficacy.

All of this reminds me about the ongoing debate that’s been raging in educational circles for perhaps the past thirty years (at least in the United States). I’m referring to the debate about whether teachers should focus on the 3-Rs (reading, writing, and arthmetic) or whether they should put more focus on addressing a child’s level of “self-esteem.” Of course, an Either/Or debate like that doesn’t have to be dichotomized in that way; why not do both?

Yet even doing both doesn’t resolve the problem. That’s because when we take the time to ask educators what they mean by “self-esteem,” their answers are all over the place. Most use the term “self-esteem” as a synonym for self-confidence; the next largest group uses it an equivalent for “feeling good about oneself,” others use it for a sense of personhood and worth, yet others use it as a synonym to one’s social self, and so it goes. And with that confusion and ambiguity in what they mean by “self-esteem,” no wonder there are scores and scores of processes trying to raise the level of “self-esteem,” and all too often undermining the basic learning competencies.

What’s really needed is self-efficacy. This meta-state is meta to the other meta-states of confidence in one’s ability to do some particular task (self-confidence), positive feelings about oneself (self-appreciation), esteeming and valuing one self as a human being of worth and dignity (self-esteem), and acceptance by one’s peers and social group (other-esteem).

While self-confidence speaks about past skill and competency, the faith-in-oneself (con-fideo) that you can do something, and while self-esteem speaks about an abstract evaluation of unconditional value in oneself, we develop self-efficacy as we move above specific confidences in the realization that we count and don’t have to prove anything to be a somebody. Then, at that higher level, we can abstract that as we have used our mind-and-body, our senses, coping skills, etc. to figure things out, so we can with things yet to come. Self-efficacy is the feeling and evaluation that we can and do trust our talents, gifts, consciousness, etc. to cope and master challenges of the future.

Self-efficacy grows along side of what we call “ego-strength.” This is the state of mind that empowers us to look reality in the face without blinking. It enables us to face what is without falling apart, caving in, or activating the fight/flight syndrome. We have the presence of mind, the presence of person to face what we have to face without ego-defenses.

What children need in school and what we all need for ongoing learning, development, and transformation is self-efficacy to trust ourselves. To trust our minds, to develop a trust in our intuitions, to trust our problem-solving skills, to trust our questioning, to trust our ability to build supportive relationships, and so on — this is what develops a solid and vital sense of self- efficacy. And with that, then we are more ready to actualize our potentials, to explore latent talents, to experiment with weird possibilities, to think out of the box, to take calculated risks, etc.

As you can tell, self-efficacy is one of those magical qualities (meta-states) that facilitates the unleashing of potential. It’s one of the ways that we can enable the self-actualizing process so that we can increasingly move to actualizing more and more of our potentials. If we were to test for self-responsibility, if we were to benchmark it, what would we measure and test for?

• Do you think ahead and take initiative in your own growth and development?
• Do you assume full responsibility and accountability for your actions?
• Do you accept full responsibility for your happiness, mood, emotions, states?
• Do you stand up for your values and principles?
• Do you continuously question, explore, and expand your possibility thinking?
• Do you plan for new changes and transformations?
• Do you apply truths, principles, insights to yourself?
• Do you proactively approach your relationships?
• Do you discern what you’re responsible FOR and whom you are responsible TO?
• Do you access and awaken new resources?
• Do you keep expanding your problem solving skills?
• Do you regularly step back and evaluate where you are and make adjustments?