Part 4: Your Longevity with SELF-CARE
Your longevity with SELF-CARE comes down to how you choose to live beyond your competitive life. For most people, there is a point at which they stop competing and decide to transfer the wealth of their earnings, knowledge, or philosophy. Think about longevity while you still have a significant part of your life left, beyond thoughts of biological survival. How do you establish a significance to guide your life?
In this post, we focus on the concept of longevity as a disciplined way to organize your time and effort according to your values. Consider how your work and experiences will be viewed in retrospect. Thinking back, what would be the organizational theme to your life? If the summary of your effort amounts to enjoyment alone, your legacy has little to no value to anyone else. If however, you seek to live a life purely based on purpose alone, you will likely have only a few relationships because you made little to no investments in them.
Actualization
In the commonly accepted model of human development held by the psychological community, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs endures as a guide to human motivation at an individual and sociological level. In this proposed model, the highest level of human development is to attain self-actualization. SELF-CARE actualization means to live according to your values that are extracted from a process of mindful discovery. When you decide what is most important to you and then do your absolute best to observe these values, you have fulfillment. If you do not, then you will have to repeat the process to uncover your subconscious beliefs, values, and repeat until you find success.
The process to self-actualize is not a final decision. We grow as a result of experience and reassess how to pursue self-actualization. Matching the person we have decided to become with the person that we exist as in the world is a continual effort to battle comfort, fear, and uncertainty. If you do not recognize this fact, you run the risk of becoming complacent. Complacency reduces motivation to pride, dulls the senses, and renders people vulnerable to manipulation. Ignore this and you fail to grow and keep what you gained from effort.
Struggle with Credibility
People often hold on to the past and their previous exploits because they are wary of the future. It is difficult to think about the future and the idea that if required, they may have to repeat the same process of facing uncertainty, deal with a painful loss, and potentially not make it. It is much easier to hold firm to a memory of the past which reflects a positive, self-serving identity that is proven credible. This is a kind of fear. To seek acceptance and validation and preserve a status based on the past is to fight against losing credibility.
The pursuit of credibility and self-satisfaction can be a life-long aim, but ultimately not the purpose of our life. As evidenced by the experience of people that work in hospices that deal with the last few waking moments of the dying, what matters is living life according to authenticity and being true to the person that we long to be. This is not to say that the struggle for credibility is pointless. The benefit of going through the process to uncover our purpose and the significance of relationships allows us to understand how we are valued.
Validation
Validation is what simple people seek by bragging about their past success. Believing they have proven themselves, they seek long-term dividends. They lack self-awareness. The competitive world does not congratulate past performance, apart from being respectful with a different motive (a self-serving one). Those that feign interest in your past exploits are looking for an opportunity to exploit you. The need for this validation, or the insecurity that prompts it is a vulnerability. Overcoming fears that the ego compensates for, requires effort.
Finding a validation according to your own decisions and choices in life as to your purpose the people that you have chosen to invest in and living according to principles that represent a longer more arduous path, creates a kind of validation that is a reward for your effort. This statement is not achievable without a depth of self-awareness that comes from doing internal dialog. Journaling is an effective way to explore ideas through narration and capturing them. SELF-CARE supports this method by providing a focused way to channel ideas.
Legacy
Insights that follow the effort to understand your condition, finding motivation for the effort that is required to transcend it and planning is building your legacy proactively. The principles of SELF-CARE around time management relationship management and goal setting are the building blocks toward building your legacy. Living thoughtfully daily with discipline and purpose align your effort with the values that make your life fulfilling. As a Leader in your life, your legacy is the significance you play in the life of others.
Your use of journals and the diligent work that follows from the use of those journals have the effect of maturing you. This is because you gain perspective on your life and hold yourself more accountable. You live more with less effort because you struggle less with distraction, anxiety, and confusion. More efficient and effective, you gain confidence and self-trust. As a more conscious and capable person, your efforts consume less of you. You gain more experience because you demonstrate problem-solving. Your legacy will inspire others to follow and build on the work that you leave behind. As a Leader, succession follows your work. This is your legacy.
Finding Peace
Peace is a byproduct of effort. In practically any tradition that teaches peace, you will learn about the ascetic work and dedication of a leader that struggled with overcoming ego and cultural resistance. Pursuing your full potential requires effort and discipline. Overcoming your complacency and distractions means that your purpose has to be a greater motivation than the fear and ego that cause people to retreat into comfort. To find peace, we need to do our best at what we are called upon or decide to do. To pacify yourself with a decision to ignore personal tension and the negative feedback provided by nature is a delusion and self-defeating form of peace based on fear.
As an ideal, peace of mind is the foundation upon which all other enjoyments in life depend. Excellent results, health, relationships, and all other virtues cannot be experienced without the peace of mind necessary to be in the moment. Finding peace in life follows the self-awareness to identify the best way to use your capabilities and then to do your best to use your skills and talents to support yourself. If you ignore this instinct, you cannot forgive yourself for the indiscretion caused by an attitude of negligence. Finding peace depends on satisfying this expectation. To build your legacy the right way, consider the dialog you would have with yourself in gratitude.