Work . . . W-O-R-K!

(Note: I began this post on Monday, thought I'd finish it on Tuesday before I was to leave on Wednesday morning, but here it is, Thursday and I'm now in a guest room at the Allenberry Resort Inn and Playhouse in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania where I'll finish it and post it. This is the location for the annual Veteran Speakers Retreat that I've now hosted for the past 12 years including this year. This is my last year hosting the event as I turn the reins over to members of the dedicated planning committee who have backed me for the past 12 years. But, just like Johnny Carson, of the "Tonight Show" fame, you just know when it's time . . . and it is time.)

One of my favorite TV characters was a beatnik by the name of Maynard G. Krebs. Maynard G. Krebs was the sidekick of one Dobie Gillis, played by Dwayne Hickman on a the TV show titled . . . "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," aka, just "Dobie Gillis." Krebs was played by Bob Denver who reappeared a number of years later as the first mate on the schooner, S.S. Minnow on another TV show called "Gilligan's Island." But, the

Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik, was allergic to work. Whenever anyone mentioned the word work, Maynard would shriek the word . . . W-O-R-K! I guess that was my first real exposure to the concept of an anti-work ethic. I, like many Greatest Generation folks (which I just barely qualify for, having been born in 1945 - if I had been born in 1946 I'd be a Baby Boomer) and certainly the majority of Baby Boomers, was raised with a strong work ethic. I began my business life at 12 as an independent paper boy with one of the largest paper routes at my newspaper.

So, after being a lifelong entrepreneur and displaying my work ethic for over 50 years, I, for some reason think back to that time, to that TV show and realize that, maybe, Maynard really had a point. Think about it. How many people do you know who are doing unfulfilling work? How many refer to their jobs as the "salt mine" or the "old grind?" How many refer to their "9 to 5?" How many do you hear talking about "putting in their 40 years" like it's a sentence? (Actually, it may be a life sentence, when you think about it except one makes a bit more than a few cents an hour and doesn't necessarily make stones out of big rocks . . . or do they?)

So, here's the thing. We know there are no real "free lunches." There is a price for everything, right? But, why does work have to be, well . . . W-O-R-K? Sure, since Adam and Eve (you determine how you wish to define this concept), I mean, since animal life forms in whatever shape or species made their debut on this planet, there has been a need to "make a living." In the most primitive form, it means going out on the hunt and "bringing home the bacon," so to speak. That really is the most basic definition of work. Doing what you have to do to survive. It could be as a carnivorous predator fresh meat or as a gatherer seeking the manna that has been provided as part of natures wonderful food chain. But, you had to be proactive to catch and kill your food or find and pick your vegetables and fruit.

This is a point where I could move off in a tangent about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but I've discussed that before in this blog, so I'm not going back there. But, ponder this thought from Maslow about the human species, "The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short." Have humans always sold themselves short and, even more importantly, are humans still selling themselves short?

Maslow also said, "I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane." Is it insanity to continue doing what you've always done, but expect a different outcome? Einstein defined that concept as insanity. But, isn't it some form of insanity to keep doing what you've always done knowing that the outcome will be the same? I hear people say, "the harder I work the behinder I get." Or, "I can't stop doing what I'm doing (working at an unfilling job) or I'll lose all this." My questions is, "All what?" Now, we start entering another realm, the realm of values. But, that's also a tangential topic for another time. But, really, is "all this" worth your life? In the criminal realm his or her crime is the criminal's work. A criminal's work may be stealing, conning, pick-pocketing, shop lifting, even murdering for hire, etc. There is a saying, "Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time." But, the majority of law abiding people don't engage in any crime, yet, they condemn themselves to 40 (or more) years of hard labor. They didn't do any crime, but they still do the time.

Complexity Creates Jobs and W-O-R-K!

Okay! So, going back to the "Adam and Eve time," everything was simpler. No computers, tablets, telephones, cellular phones, television, radio, newspapers, books, supermarkets, giant box stores full of more items than one can even conceive of for purposes that Adam and Eve couldn't have even thought about. You know what I mean. Life, as we know it today, is complex. Even some of the most simple and mundane things have become complicated by laws, regulations, rules and so on. Humans with this wonderful ability to think and reason and use logic have taken life from the simple, basic level to an unbelievable extreme. We have created jobs and W-O-R-K!

As infants we enter this world with unlimited creativity, complete innocence (not knowing the difference between good and evil and being neither) and an unlimited potential to soar. Yet! Only a tiny percentage of the billions of infants who have been born ever exercise much or any of this creativity and potential. Even before many children are old enough to enter the formal educational system they have already been indoctrinated into the world of W-O-R-K! That's how I grew up and, that's how I raised my son. But, please! Do not confuse work with being a productive human being. There is a difference and it may be all the difference in the world.

And, let's also not forget that in our current complex society, we NEED the billions of people around the world who work and jobs I would shriek the word W-O-R-K at, like Maynard. But, we have made the world and everything about it so complex that it can't function without all these jobs and people putting in the 9-5's for 40 years. I do not disrespect anyone who chooses to live this kind of lifestyle. Some of us actually create our own "life sentences" and we don't do 9-5's we do 6 (AM) - to 10 (PM's) and we don't do five days, we do six and seven days.

A Life Sentence To Put Bread On The Table

Yes! It's a complex subject and each of us has an opinion about it. Some of us just accept that this is life - period! Just deal with it. Some of us take Maynard G. Kreb's approach to W-O-R-K. Others fall somewhere on a continuum between the two extremes. It's great if we can get past this when we are young and break out of the 40 year life sentence and create a perspective where we fit work into our life and it's something we enjoy and gain personal and psychic fulfillment from. But, some just seems wrong to me when life is focused around the J.O.B. and we have to fit the rest of this short life we are each given as a miraculous gift in around the J.O.B.

My friend's 90 year old mother, born in the early 20's, grew up during the depression, and filled men's jobs during World War II, recently said to me of her late husband, dead for about 25 years now - he worked 45 years in the paper mill. He hated it! But, he knew he had to do it to put the bread on the table. He lived for about 10 years after he retired from that mill. So, out of 75 years of life, he realized about 10 of them to use as he wanted. But, worse yet is that for 45 years he hated what he had to do five days a week, plus an additional three years where his life was on the line as he fought in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Prior to the war he worked and, of course, as a kid growing up, his freedom and choices were limited and controlled by his parents.

I'm not saying that this was a bad life. I'm simply saying that we are given this precious gift and unlimited potential to do and be anything we want to and go anywhere we want to, but we are indoctrinated by a system that holds us back and takes the majority of our life from us in ways that most not only find unfulfilling (other than putting bread on the table), but dislike intensely or hate. Yet, we accept it as our only option and our lot in life.

This subject requires a lot more thinking on my part. I know what I'm feeling. I know my own experience. I know what I've seen others do with their lives. I'm simply pondering what I may be able to do to influence others to consider alternatives to this system. What do you think?

Step #1 – Dreams and Realization - 2012

A dear and, prematurely, departed friend of mine, Rosita Perez, frequently told this little story when she made presentations for major corporations and large, multi-national organizations. It went like this. Her husband, Ray, also a friend of mine, and a super guy, would come to her complaining about a number of issues that all seemed to need resolving right now. She’d remind him of one of the philosophies of Dr. Richard Carlson, who titled his best selling book by this philosophy, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: And It’s All Small Stuff.” Rosita would tell Ray, “Don’t sweat the small, stuff, Ray.” Ray would often reply, “But, this isn’t small stuff, Rosita, this is important.” To which Rosita would respond, “Ray, Being born, BIG STUFF! Dying, BIG STUFF! Everything else . . . small stuff.”

So, what does this story have to do with Step#1 – Dreams and Realization? It’s simple! We let the small stuff of life enslave us. There’s another saying that has passed around the Internet and is part of the chorus of a George Strait (country artist) top 10 song from 2010 that goes, “Life’s not the breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.” In other words, each of us have so many breaths we’ll take during our lifetime, but just breathing doesn’t have anything to do with experiencing life to its fullest.

Life Is For LIVING!

I like to think that life is for LIVING and I don’t just mean waking up every morning and doing the same routine things everyday. Let’s see, you shower, groom, catch a fast cup of coffee and half a bagel, drop the kids off at day care or school, commute to work, do whatever it is that you do at your job, watch the clock waiting for the end of the day, commute home, prepare and eat dinner, clean up, help the kids with their homework or take them to their soccer games or whatever, watch a little CSI,  Law and Order or American Idol, catch a bit of Jay Leno or David Letterman, climb into bed, pick up the book you’ve been trying to get through for two months, fall asleep and start the whole routine over again when the alarm goes off at 6 AM. Okay, so maybe your routine varies a little, but I doubt that it varies very much.

So, what were those dreams you grew up with. Remember when you wanted to be a fireman or a cowboy or a soldier or a racecar driver or an astronaut or a doctor? Fill in your own dreams and ideas for future occupations. Ladies, fill in your dreams here, too. They may differ from a man’s dreams. The dreams probably changed many times as you grew through childhood, adolescence, those tough teen years and, again, when you finally reached adulthood.

What other dreams did you have? Did you want to run and win marathons? Did you want to play baseball, football, basketball, golf or tennis competitively or professionally? Did you want to be an artist and paint or sculpt or take award-winning photographs? Maybe you wanted to be a best selling author with lots of fiction or non-fiction books to your credit. Or, perhaps, you were musically inclined and played in a rock band with your high school buddies or sang in a classical choral group. You might have even composed your own music. The list could go on endlessly.

But, why aren’t you doing those things? Why didn’t you pursue your dreams? Probably, because during your childhood you were being conditioned into the model created by the Industrial Revolution. This model, in my estimation, is now obsolete, but it’s still the prevailing model that most people live their lives by.

Four or five generations ago, men, primarily, since women were only a small part of the out-of-the-home workforce back then, would take a job in a factory or a coal mine or in whatever field they found work and they would stay in that job for their entire working lifetime, typically, 40 to 45 years. Then, they would retire, live for a couple more years and die.

Women, typically, stayed at home for all those years and handled the domestic necessities of life. Some women were schoolteachers, nurses, telephone operators, waitresses and airline stewardesses –so-called, women’s work. Everyone is still conditioned for this same model today, though women have probably made the most progress over the past several decades.

The school system is based on that model. It prepares you for when you’ll enter the workforce and get a job. Creativity is stifled. Thinking outside the box is frowned on. Doing what your dreams would lead you to do becomes unrealistic by those in authority and influence around you. You can’t make a good living as a musician or an artist or a photographer or an adventurer or a professional athlete. You need to be “serious” and get a job where you have security and can make some real money.

Life Happens!

So, you put those dreams on the shelf, push them to the back of the closet in your mind and just say, “someday.” When does someday arrive? Usually, it never does. And, why does it never come? Because LIFE HAPPENS! Now, life is going to happen whether you’re working in a field that pays good money or not such good money. It comes whether you love what you’re doing or despise what you’re doing. Life is going to happen because it just happens, period!

What exactly does “life happens” mean? It basically means the chances are reasonably good that, whether you’re a man or a woman, you’re going to seek a mate, create a secure home and have a family. Typically, once you identify the mate and go through the ritual courting process, you’ll bond in a marriage agreement. Then you’ll start to create little people just like yourself and the cycle begins again. Only now you are the parents and will begin conditioning the new little people into the same “system.” And all of this requires a stable, secure, responsible environment, right?

Wow! Do I sound cynical, or what? Well, actually, this is all very natural and the way the human life cycle has been since “Adam and Eve” (or however you define the beginning of our species). Here’s the rub. Everyone is born with a natural freedom. Once you understand a bit about life, you understand that you want to be happy. A fulfilling life means that you have done something that fulfills your dreams while contributing, to some degree, to the society you associate with.

There are certain basic needs that Abraham Maslow outlines in his Hierarchy of Needs. You can look this up yourself. Essentially, you all start at the base of the pyramid with very basic needs for survival and as you meet these needs you progress up the pyramid. However, nowhere in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, nor anywhere else, does it say that you need to conform to the standards or system of survival, personal growth and achievement of anyone else. Yet, by the time most of you reached the end of high school and, certainly, college, for those privileged to attend such an institution, you were conditioned to “get a job.” 

“I Did It My Way”

For some reason, call it providence or, maybe, just luck, while I went through the “indoctrination and conditioning process,” I didn’t buy into it totally. I started my entrepreneurial career at age 12 as the proverbial “newspaper boy” delivering 108 to 110 evening newspapers to my customers six days a week and collecting for the papers on Saturday mornings. I learned that the better the service I rendered, the larger the tip I’d receive. I, of course, had to pay the newspaper their share each week. So, I really was an independent businessman.

My father, a self-made and educated man, always held a job. He would have liked to have been in business for himself, but he grew up during the depression and hung onto the “so-called” security of his employment with someone else. Today, many of us know that the term “job security” is really a paradox. Even finding a “good” job is extremely challenging. Finding a great job or one that fulfills your dreams is next to impossible. And having any kind of job security is virtually non-existent for most people. My father fostered my entrepreneurial spirit during those formative years. To some degree, he guided me toward a certain degree of non-conformity. I never got to thank him because he died before I graduated from college, but I am ever so thankful.

After completing my four years of college earning a degree in Education, I was totally disenchanted with what the “job market” offered me. As I told one recruiter, I was perfectly capable of starving all by myself. I certainly didn’t need to sign a contract and indenture myself to starve. I went immediately to graduate school for a master’s degree in Television and Radio. The job offers were a little better, but not very much.

I had been operating my own independent recording business through college and graduate school and I had a contract with a small regional radio network based in Syracuse, NY. One day while I was having lunch with the vice president of the small, family owned group (he was the son of the founder), Al said to me, and I paraphrase, “You have to make a decision. You can find a full-time job and keep doing your recording part-time. The chances are very good that you’ll still be doing it part-time 40 years from now. Or, you can take a chance on yourself, go full-time into your own business and pull in your belt and eat a lot of franks and beans. But, this is the only way you’ll know if you have what it takes to make it in your own business.” I chose the second option and I’ve never looked back.

I always tell people I became an entrepreneur because I was just plain lazy and couldn’t deal with the idea of commuting to and from a job and putting in eight hours a day, five days a week for someone else. Instead, I chose to work about 14 hours a day, seven days a week working for myself. As the song, with lyrics penned by Paul Anka and popularized by Frank Sinatra, goes, “I did it my way.”

Reality, In Your Face!

So, here is the Realization. Like it or not, you’ve all been sold a bill of baloney. No one needs to conform to the system, though the vast majority will. You could have opted out when you were a kid and chosen to pursue those dreams. Sure, you could have failed. Hey, you might have ended up as a “lounge lizard” playing the piano or the iconic Hammond B3 organ for a bunch of sad, drunken lushes. You could have written songs that may or may not have ever been recorded by any of the artists you wrote them for. You could have gone treasure hunting and never discovered a single gold doubloon. You could have obtained your commercial pilot’s license and never found a position with a commercial airline. You could have trekked around the world and taken photos that never won any awards or had your photos displayed in shows in New York City galleries. You could have done any of your dreams and failed miserably and never made an amount of money that would have made your parents proud of you and your friends envious. But, you’ll never know, will you? THAT is the realization!

Maybe you would have made a fantastic, exciting and fulfilling life for yourself doing exactly what you dreamed of doing. So, you might not have made all the money and couldn’t have afforded the MacMansion. But, you might have the pride in knowing that something you did directly impacted one or more lives positively. Instead, you conformed to what your parents, siblings, religious leaders, friends, teachers, professors and so on told you should do to have a nice, secure future and life. How did that work out for you? None of these people had any malice in the way they influenced you. They, actually, believed that this was the best course for you. And it was safe . . . or was it? And, by the way, there is ALWAYS a hefty price for security. It’s called freedom.

Perhaps, right now you’re saying, “But, It’s too late, now.” Or, you’re saying, “Ed is just a dreamer blowing a bunch of blue smoke in the air.” Well, you have the right to your own opinion. I once had dreams of building a huge multi-media empire and being a multi-millionaire media mogul. But, over the years, every time I went down that road, I became a prisoner in a prison of my own making. I ended up creating businesses where I wasn’t free and doing what I was passionate about. I ended up creating businesses with employees to manage. It turned out that building an empire wasn’t really my dream – it was a series of choices. The results of my choices and life happening, in my case, ended up with me building personal prisons. But, at least I tried.

 

“Your Assignment, Should You Choose to Accept It”

So, here is your assignment for Step #1. I know many won’t do it, but for those who do, you’re at the beginning of realizing your real dreams, life, freedom, happiness and fulfillment.

1. Make a list of your REAL dreams. These are the things you wanted to do when you were a kid and teenager facing an exciting future full of unwritten pages waiting for you to fill them in. It doesn’t matter how off the wall or unrealistic the dreams may seem now. Just list them.

2. Then circle or highlight any of those dreams that still stir excitement in your heart, mind and soul. Get your daydreaming mojo going and release adrenalin as you imagine, “What if?”

3. Now, make a brief outline of where Life has taken you. You know, the Life Happens, stuff. How free do you feel about where you are, now? How happy are you based on where you are, now? How fulfilled are you based on where you are, now?

You’re going to have conflicts and anxieties as you think about this seriously and deeply. Your spouse’s and kids’ (if you have any) faces will flash in your mind during this process. You’ll think about all the stuff you’ve accumulated and how could you possibly live without it. If you’re still employed, you’ll have questions and doubts about surviving without the income from your current job or business. If you’re retired, questions will arise about whether it’s too late or about working all your life for the “security” you feel you currently have and could you lose.

Reality, when you face it toe-to-toe and square in the eyes can be both ugly and scary. But, if you want to live free and be happy, it is a necessary part of this all-important first step.

Keep asking yourself these three questions:

       1. Are you as free as you feel you want to be, should be and could be? 

       2. Are you as happy as you feel you have every right to be? 

       3. Are you fulfilled in the knowledge that you lived your dream and your life on your own

       terms, didn’t sell yourself out and, with what you have contributed to society, can be proud of

       your legacy when that second “Big Stuff,” that Rosita Perez alluded to arrives?

You can’t do this exercise in ten minutes or an hour or a week. I’ve been working at it all my life and it continues even now on the other side of my mid 60’s. Even though I’ve been a non-conformist and serial entrepreneur all my life, I’m finally facing my own realities and realizing that I sold myself out most of my life. But, and this is a large BUT, I’m not dead, yet. So, I keep getting more chances.

Let me leave you with one other pearl of wisdom, a quote attributed to Wayne Dyer and often used by my dear, departed friend, Rosita Perez, “Don’t die with your music still in you.”

Good luck! You’re on Step #1 of your journey to living free. Hang on for the ride of your life if you choose to pursue your dreams, freedom and happiness.

We Don’t Need All That We Want!

This is the second post in the “12 Great Truths” series. I think this is pretty obvious. Most of us are familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. These are the basic motivators that cause us to take action. These needs are usually depicted in the shape of a pyramid with the most basic needs at the bottom forming the foundation. Here are the needs as described by Maslow and I’ve put them in the order they appear in the pyramid with the most basic needs at the bottom and the highest level need at the top.

Self-Actualization
Esteem Needs
Social Needs
Safety Needs
Physiological Needs.

So, starting with the most basic needs, the foundation of the pyramid, physiological needs include food, air, water, shelter, clothing and sleep. We could consider these survival needs since it would be hard to need something else if you were always hungry or didn’t have fluids to hydrate your body since our bodies are mostly composed of water. We also need to breathe and we’ll do whatever we have to in order to keep oxygen in our system, it’s basically as important as water. Then we want to have some kind clothing to protect us against the cold of winter and shield us from the sun during the summer. Of course, we want someplace to get out of the elements whether a cave, a tent or some kind of lean-to. And finally, we need rest. If you’ve never tried sleep deprivation – and if you have the nerve – try it some time. It won’t take you long to understand why it is one of the methods most often used by interrogators and those who use it as a form of torture to extract sensitive information from those trained to resist divulging such information like military personnel and intelligence agents. Be careful if you try it. Don’t drag it out too long. The consequences can be traumatic and even dangerous. Bottom line, humans will do whatever it takes to meet these needs before all else.

Once our physiological needs have been met, we move up to the next level, Safety Needs. These needs are also called security needs and include such things as some kind of steady and secure employment or a way of generating a regular living that will provide the basic needs and other security needs. The other security needs include access to health or medical care – we normally think of this in the form of some kind of health insurance; a safe neighborhood, a village or a community; and more secure shelter then the most basic shelter one might use to meet this physiological need. This shelter could be an apartment, a house or even a room in a communal living situation. It’s important to note, however, that we won’t concern ourselves with this level of needs until the physiological needs have been and continue to be met.

Moving up the pyramid, we begin desiring a way to fulfill Social Needs. Social needs are where we begin needing companionship, acceptance, romantic relationships where our nesting and procreation desires become evident. Once again, according to Maslow, humans need to satisfy the first two levels – physiological and safety needs before we have both the time and confidence to consider this third level. This level also includes such activities as joining and participating in community, religious and other forms of social groups that become important for fulfillment. We develop friendships, mates, participate in various functions and activities of different forms of community – playing sports, helping others, joining committees, becoming volunteer firefighters or rescue squad members and so on.

So, we’ve climbed up three levels of Maslow’s pyramid. We’ve met the most basic needs of survival. We’ve reached a level of safety and security. We belong to a mating relationship, enjoy companionships with other people in the communities we’ve joined, we contribute in some manner to the well-being of others in the community and we receive acceptance and a feeling of fulfillment. What’s next?

Esteem Needs are the next level. This is the level where we experience the second Great Truth. When we reach this level we begin doing things and acquiring things to make us feel good, create a feeling of self-esteem, perhaps, build our status in our community, look for ways to build our self-worth, seek various kinds of recognition and status and work towards accomplishments that feed other areas of esteem needs. This means climbing the corporate ladder, earning higher levels of monetary compensation, acquiring a larger and more luxurious home or multiple homes, more expensive trappings, transportation, often in multiple forms that visually announce your status. This list can go on endlessly.

I said this is where the Great Truth that “we don’t need all that we want” comes into play. The problem is that we don’t know that we don’t need all that we want. We want to display our success and the best way to do that is to acquire more and more trappings of success. We believe that since we have the income to acquire these trappings that we need them. Actually, they are wants, not needs, but we can very easily transform them in our minds to needs. Unfortunately, one day, many of us and, perhaps, most of us, will realize that all we needed was the use of these things for a short period of time. However, we’ve acquired them and most of these things we will acquire will depreciate in tangible value very rapidly. We’ll use the items for a season (figuratively or literally) and then they’ll just be put in the attic, the basement, the garage, the out building – or the worse scenario – we’ll rent storage space for them and pay insurance on things that continue to depreciate (reducing our “wealth”) and costing us even more to store them with no reasonable expectation of recovering any of that money. In other words, we shovel money down a big, black, bottomless hole. Some people will have enough presence of mind to get rid of these things, take the loss and move on. But, they’ll probably continue to keep acquiring more.

Now, it’s not my position to judge whether these purchases are right or wrong, good or bad, wise or foolish. Since this step on the pyramid is about individual esteem, we each have to make these judgments and choices for ourselves. Some of us will realize this early and make different decisions then others. Some of us may come to the conclusion that a less expensive car does the same job as a very expensive Rolls Royce. A Timex or Seiko watch tells the same time as a $5,000 Rolex. We may choose not to join the very costly country club that other professional colleagues or neighbors have found they “needed” to join. Does this make one person better or more important then the other? No! It just means that they have different value systems. There was certainly a time when I had a drive to make enough money to acquire all the trappings of success. But, when I reached a point where I was able to realize some of them, I found that they really didn’t make me feel any different and once the novelty wore off, like the diamond pinky ring I acquired – I never wore it. It simply laid in a jewelry box – with other jewelry I also didn’t wear. I even bought a faux Rolex at one time just to see if it attracted any attention. It really didn’t. I don’t even wear a watch now and I have a better sense of time without it.

I came to the realization a couple years ago that I was squandering the most precious commodity I had – and I didn’t even have to work for it, it was a gift given to me when I was born. It is my TIME! I wasn’t particularly happy even though I was living quite well. But, I felt like I was a prisoner in a jail I had built for myself. It was then that I began seeking, for me, what I needed to fulfill my esteem needs. I realized for me there were really only two things that motivated me – Time (to live and do the things I wanted to do for myself) and Freedom (to be able to do those things I wanted to do when, how, where and with whom I chose to). I also realized that ultimately, there are only two things that mattered to me. One is love – to love and to be loved. The other is happiness – and I discovered happiness is an attitude and a state of mine and I had complete control over my attitude and state of mind.

Now, I can use all the time I have left any way I desire.

I am free and my work is to live and work free – and I can do that for the rest of the time I have left.

I know I’m loved by people all over the US and in other parts of the world – these are not romantic relationships, rather friendships that have endured decades. I don’t currently have a romantic relationship, but if that happens, great, if it doesn’t, I’m still loved and fulfilled in that area of my life.

And finally, I can be happy for the rest of the time I have left (and I sure hope that’s going to be at least a couple more decades).

I’ve also learned to ask myself a simple question when I find myself in any kind of shopping environment – a store, warehouse retailer or on-line. The question is, “Can I live without this?” Interestingly, the answer is, mostly, always yes. I’ve found that I don’t need all that I want.

This brings us to the final and top level of the pyramid, Self-actualization Needs. I believe that I’ve reached that level. I know a number of friends of mine who have been at this level for quite some time. I also know some people who are older then I am who have not reached this level, yet. So, what does self-actualizing mean? It means that you are self-aware, interested in you own personal growth, have stopped caring as much about other people’s opinions of you and seek to fulfill your potential. Maslow described this need as follows:

"What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization…It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."

I hope you can, also, see that reaching the level of self-actualization doesn’t necessarily mean that one has acquired great status, a huge income, multiple luxury homes, expensive cars and clothes and all the other trappings. Some people will achieve those things and then realize that those are not the things that fulfill them. Others (as I described my own circumstance) will realize self-actualization without accumulating great financial wealth and all the trappings. Most of the focus of my life now, including this blog and my plans for my future, is about continual personal growth, realizing my potential and helping others learn how to live and work free to achieve their own fulfillment and happiness. Unfortunately, some people will always stay at the first level – like those who are homeless people and chronically poor. Many more will reach the second level. Others will achieve the third level and we would, typically, call this group the middle class. Less will achieve the fourth level and these folks make up, what we refer to as the upper middle class and upper class. But, self-actualizing, in my opinion, can be achieved by anyone when they reach the point where they realize they have something they can give to others and ultimately, the world. When we realize that we don’t need all that we want, but we have something we can contribute to others and the world, we will feel fulfilled, begin reaching our fullest potential and live a happier, freer life.

There is a lot more that can be said about self-actualization, but I’ll save that for another post.

Next time, “Giving is greater then getting!”

Enthusiastically,
Ed