Personal development

One of my primary questions in life has always been ‘what makes people tick?’ which has lead me down the path of learning as much as I can about human behaviour.

One thing that we all appear to have in common is that whatever we do we are only trying to meet our needs. We can meet our needs in positive or negative ways but they are always the target we are aiming for. I have come across several theories of what our needs actually are (Abraham Maslow, Dr. Murray Banks, Tony Robbins) but some things crop up again and again one of which is our need to continue to grow.

Tony Robbins in his 6 human needs model explains…

The force of life is the drive for fulfilment and all human beings share this need to experience a life of meaning. Ultimately, however, fulfilment can only be achieved through a pattern of living in which we focus our lives on two primary needs: the need to continuously grow and the need to contribute beyond ourselves in a meaningful way.

I expect we have all experienced times in our lives when we feel we’re stuck in the same place and the same old routine. When this happens we feel unhappy and often don’ know why. Just a couple of days ago I was talking to a client who said to me ‘I have everything in life I could possibly want but I just couldn’t understand why I was feeling empty and unhappy. After learning about the human needs it suddenly came to me-I wasn’t growing anymore’

So how do we take charge and ensure we continue to grow?

Have a big future to look forward to

One of the most important reasons to have a vision for your life is so that you always have a future that’s bigger than your past. By creating new and exciting goals to aim for you will always have things to focus on and direct your energy toward.

Enjoy your life

Life has the habit of throwing us unexpected challenges, which can easily put us off balance. If this happens we can let these things dominate our thoughts or we can choose to continue to enjoy life despite what’s happening. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t feel appropriate emotions at certain times but I’m talking about being less serious about most of our ‘problems’ and getting the most out of each and every day.

Focus on what you can do for others

To become truly fulfilled in life we need to contribute to others. When we extend our focus beyond ourselves it opens us up spiritually and we grow. The highest form of motivation is causal motivation; when we become actively involved in something bigger than ourselves we experience a greater sense of meaning to our lives.

Never stop learning

The paradigm of linear progression in life is no longer valid. We can no longer expect to have a job for life and experience progress just because we decide to turn up. We live in a circular world where we need to keep learning and renewing ourselves to stay ahead.

Learning is not just about acquiring new knowledge. You have to make space to do new things so unlearning old habits at the same time is also important so you continue to grow.

Increase your skills

I am always impressed when I meet people who are open enough, at any time of life, to want to get better. Getting better involves acquiring new and developing your existing skills.

Most aspects of our lives are dynamic. Our careers, social lives, close relationships and health are things we have to work at to keep fresh. If we keep doing the same thing over and over we don’t just stand still but begin to go backwards.

Avoid becoming too comfortable

In his book ‘Re-Imagine’ Tom Peters says ‘I happen to believe that all innovation comes, not from market research or carefully crafted focus groups, but from pissed off people’.

Tom is talking in a business context but the point is that if we get too comfortable we stop growing. We need to be innovative with our lives and the starting point is to become dissatisfied about something. When we get pissed off we can either stay pissed off or do something about it, which is when we have an opportunity to grow.

As you take time to think about your own level of growth what areas do you think need attention? How will you address these? What action are you going to take?

Read other articles >>>