Arrival fallacy or why we think happiness is always around the corner. It will not come to us after that promotion, marriage, or child is born; if it does, it will only be temporary.

When I get that promotion, I’ll finally be happy. 

Or when I marry her. When I have a child. Win that deal. Be the number one in school. Win the championship. Move to that new city.

We tend to condition our happiness and fulfilment to some event in the future. We tell ourselves we are not happy yet, but we’ll be when this event finally happens.

We prepare, plan, wait and fight for it, and when it finally happens, we realise that eternal happiness and bliss haven’t arrived yet. It is as elusive as ever.

This is what behavioural scientist Tal Ben Shahar aptly called the arrival fallacy, which is the belief that if we achieve a goal or arrive at a destination sometime in the future, we will be happy and contented.

Happiness is always arriving, but it never seems to arrive. It’s always in the future.

The Hedonic adaptation, or why reaching goals won’t make you happy

Psychologists have demonstrated that people rapidly assimilate their highs and downs. We settle into our baseline happiness level immediately after something that makes us happy or sad. This is what they call Hedonic adaptation.

It is also known as the Hedonic treadmill because if you pursue happiness by adding positive experiences, you will work hard for those experiences, like on a treadmill, but your overall happiness won’t increase by much. Your body adapts to what you get, then goes back to normal.

It’s like when you receive a pay rise. The first month, you feel happy about it. The second paycheck may still be nice, but by the third one, you will have gotten used to it and will be thinking about the long time you will need to wait for the subsequent rise. 

If you link your happiness to achieving your next goal, be it at work, romantic life or any other area of your life, Hedonic adaptation will make sure that when you reach it, you will quickly get used to it and it won’t add much to your overall happiness. 

Nobody said being human was easy.

Goals still matter

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have goals and objectives in life. Goals still matter.

They may not add to your overall happiness when you achieve them, but goals have an essential role in your life. It is difficult to achieve much without goals.

Goals help us aim for what we want to achieve and measure our progress. They set us on the right track and let us know when we have arrived at the destination. The happiness or satisfaction we will feel when we get there may be short-lived, but it is still there. 

Having a goal to strive for gives us purpose and direction. Aiming for the goal can actually bring us more happiness than reaching the goal itself, even if we often don’t notice this. 

Enjoy the process, enjoy the journey

You will live a happier life if you stop fixing your happiness in some future event and enjoy the process of getting there. 

Enjoy the journey, not the destination.

As James Clear said in his best-selling book Atomic Habits, “You do not raise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” 

You may have very lofty goals, but if you don’t have the right systems in place, you will never reach them.

The process, system or journey, call it as you wish, but that’s what really matters. I will go a step further and say that not only should you focus more on the process than on your objectives, you should also try to enjoy it more.

The moment you stop obsessing with your goals and start enjoying the journey to get there, a happier state of being will come to you. 

For that, practising mindfulness or meditation helps. As many meditation gurus know, your life isn’t happening in the past or the future, but only in your present, so stop regretting the past and being anxious about the future, and start enjoying the present more. 

This includes enjoying the little quirks of the journey or the process that will get you to your goals.

Another thing you can do to enjoy more the process is to practice gratitude. Be more grateful for the wonderful things life puts in front of you. I’m sure plenty of them already exist, but you just ignore them.

Stop obsessing over that big promotion or buying that big house, and be more grateful for life’s little pleasures. 

The secret to happiness is…

There is no secret recipe to happiness. Happiness is not and will never be a permanent state. Sometimes, we will feel happier than others, but sadness, pain and suffering are also part of life and will always be. 

Still, it helps to get some things clear. Happiness is like love; the more you seek it, the more elusive it is. Happiness usually only happens when you stop actively looking for it.

Happiness doesn’t reside in achieving goals and objectives. It won’t come sometime in the future. 

People with a positive mindset are likelier to be happy. Also, people with meaningful relationships who spend time with people they love and like will live happier lives. Lastly, one of the secrets of happiness resides in wanting and needing less, not more. 

As Seneca said, “It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”

There is no secret recipe to happiness, but if there were one, it would at least have these three ingredients: a positive outlook, meaningful relationships, and wanting little.

Life is more like music than a journey

I recently heard an audio clip from Alan Watts that was linked to the arrival fallacy and everything discussed in this post.

He said we often thought life was like a journey but that it was more like music. Westerners are used to reducing the time between A and B when travelling, so the trip is no longer about enjoying the journey but about reaching our destination, the sooner, the better.

If we take life as such a journey, we are entirely missing the point. For Watts, life is more like music. It is playful, and its whole point is to enjoy it from beginning to end. When listening to music, we are not waiting for it to be finished (unless the song is terrible); we want to enjoy it while it lasts, all of it. 

Watts reminds us that in our Western education system, we go from 1st to 2nd grade, from primary to secondary school, then to university, then to the job market, and then we go after the next promotion. Our achievements are always somewhere in the future, and before we realise we reach our retirement age, we are sick and tired, and life has passed before us without us noticing and enjoying it.

The arrival fallacy is thrust upon us through our education and work systems.

Stop.

It doesn’t have to be this way. 

Stop waiting for the next big thing to happen, and enjoy the moment you are in. After all, life is only lived and enjoyed in the present.

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post Arrival Fallacy: No, Happiness Isn’t Somewhere in the Future appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

Authenticity is one of my values, but what it means to be authentic and live an authentic life?

Authenticity is one of my personal values. 

I don’t want to pretend to be someone I am not. I want to live by my values and be who I am. I don’t want to be surrounded by inauthentic people, either.

But what does it mean to be authentic?

Philosophers and psychologists have been arguing about what authenticity for a long time. Let’s look at it in more detail.

What does it mean to be authentic?

Existentialist views

First, we will turn to existentialism for some of our answers. 

Related to this, please read Existential Coaching: what is it?

Existential thinkers like Kierkegaard and Sartre wrote extensively about authenticity and what it meant to be authentic. For them, authenticity meant living the life we were meant to live, living it according to our values and purpose, not the values of someone else. 

Existentialists believe we build our essence and who we are through our actions and decisions. We are free to live the life we want, but this should be lived according to our values and purpose, or it risks not being authentic. We should live our lives according to our values and norms, not those imposed on us by society or others.

Sartre introduced the concept of living in “bad faith” to signify people who were not living according to their values. Living in bad faith means not being authentic. 

For existentialists, this is one of the biggest sins a human being can do.

If we follow their argument logically, we should first know ourselves (or all our different selves, according to multiplicity theory), who we are, and our values and purpose well in order to be really authentic. You cannot be guided by your values if you don’t know what they are. 

Enter Maslow

Maslow also wrote about authenticity in his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. As was to be expected, he linked it to self-actualisation in the sense that more self-actualised people tend to be more authentic, as they understand themselves better and don’t need affirmation or commands from others.

For Maslow, authentic people are capable of listening to their inner voices about who they really are and what their natural desires and characteristics are, not the ones imposed by others. Authentic people know what they want and know equally clearly what they don’t want. 

Inauthentic people are just the opposite:

“Other people, in contrast, seem to be empty, out of touch with their own inner signals. They eat, defecate, and go to sleep by the clock’s cues, rather than by the cues of their own bodies. They use external criteria for everything from choosing their food (“it’s good for you”) and clothing (“it’s in style”) to questions about values and ethics (“my daddy told me to”).

Abraham Maslow, in The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

And you, are you guiding your ethical decisions on what your daddy told you? 

Authentic Leadership

In the 50s and 60s, leaders had to be tough, charismatic, and commanding, but in the 70s and 80s, this started to change, and softer skills and traits started to be valued. There suddenly was a preference for a more humane and humanistic leader who would understand the needs of their team members to motivate them. 

This gave then place to transformational leadership, servant leadership and wise leadership, which are all interesting concepts with valuable aspects (personally, I have a soft spot for wise leadership). The growing interest in authentic leadership should be understood in this context.

The thinking goes like this: people like people who are authentic, not fake, and we human beings can notice when someone is not being authentic, even if this noticing is often done unconsciously, so people who are authentic and show themselves as they really are, will engage and motivate better their team members.

It is a sound logic. As I already mentioned, authenticity is one of my personal values, so I cannot but agree with this approach. 

But it is not as easy as it sounds. What does it mean to be an authentic leader? And can a leader always be authentic? In all situations?

If we understand authenticity in the existential sense, as a leader acting in alignment with their values, then that is possible, even if sometimes those values could contradict each other depending on the situation (nobody said it was easy to be authentic!). On the other hand, if we understand authenticity as always being natural, honest, and frank and showing oneself transparently as they are in every situation, this could create some difficulties in some situations.

After all, a leader’s best choice in certain situations is to hide some part of the truth or tell a white lie to their team members, clients or partners. 

Would a leader doing this be truly authentic? In the existential sense, certainly; in the other one, I’m not so sure.

Authenticity in a world of deepfakes and beauty filters

If you look at the state of the world today, you would be forgiven for thinking we are living in probably the most inauthentic times in history. 

And perhaps you would be right.

After all, we are living in a world where people can turn other people into porn stars by just tapping into an app. Technology allows deepfakes that look increasingly verisimilar; it is almost impossible to detect some of them. 

We also live in a world where millions show how they live to their followers, but they aren’t showing all of it, only their most glamorous bites. People use filters to improve their pictures or carefully set up the elements of a picture to make it seem better than it really is. Everybody seems to be living a grand life, eating in Michelin-starred restaurants and visiting white-sanded tropical beaches, but then again, we all know their mundane everyday life isn’t always like this.

We seem to be living in a world of pretending to be someone we are not or where other people can make us look like someone we are not. 

It does look like we might be living in the more inauthentic times in history.

And still, I believe we have the potential to be more authentic than ever. There are more and more tools and help out there to help each of us navigate this challenging world, understand who we are, and live the life we are meant to live and want to live. 

Know thyself, and live an authentic life

This is what it means to live an authentic life. Many people seem to be lost in a materialistic and ultimately nihilistic way of life made up of illusions and pretending, but many others are awakening and realising this is not the life they want to live.

Meditate, start a coaching process, see a psychologist, ask for feedback from your friends or colleagues, do exercises to understand your purpose in life, identify your values… In a nutshell, know and understand yourself better, and once you do, stick to being who you really are.

That’s what it means to be authentic, nothing more, nothing less. Life is nothing but a journey to discover who you are and live the life you are meant to live authentically. Nothing more, nothing less.

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post Authenticity or living the life you are meant to live appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

I lied. I don’t really love everybody, I can’t, but at least I can try to have a positive regard for all. Let me explain.

I try to meditate every day, at least ten minutes in the mornings, a bit longer at the weekends. I do it with the help of an app called Waking Up. 

Last Saturday, I was halfway through a 30-minute meditation, feeling good, connected with my immediate experiences and trying not to think about anything. Suddenly, I realised somebody was chatting outside my flat, at the doorstep. I could hear them talking, and I started to feel frustrated and annoyed. 

A feeling of rage was starting to come up within me because these two women were chatting on my doorstep. Couldn’t they go somewhere else? I was trying to meditate!

Then I realised what I was feeling, and I stopped it there. I was trying to do Metta meditation, which focuses on feeling loving-kindness for others and oneself, and I was doing the opposite. 

Instead of love, I was feeling rage. 

I also realised that those women must be cleaning the staircase in our apartment building. They were chatting while they were cleaning my doorstep and stairs. They were cleaning that for me and my neighbours and having a conversation while they were at it, and I was feeling rage, frustration and annoyance. What kind of ungrateful idiot was I?

I could have been in their place, I could have been them. I then realised they deserved my love instead of my rage. 

What makes you, you?

What makes you, you, and not somebody else? Is it your values, your memories, your body, your beliefs?

None of the above. I think it is just your subjective experience. Only that makes you, you.

We all have had this little thought experiment at some moment in our lives. What would happen if I went to sleep and woke up the next day as my friend, neighbour, colleague, or love crush? You wake up, and suddenly, your hands look different, you have women’s breasts instead of a flat chest (or the other way around), and you are in someone else’s bedroom. 

But you know you are still you. Because you are having that subjective experience. You are the one seeing, hearing, touching, and thinking about it. 

The only thing that makes me, me, is that I was born in this body, and since then, I have been having my experiences and thoughts and remembering them. I could have been born in someone else’s body. I could have been one of the women cleaning my staircase.

I believe I deserve love and respect for the mere fact that I exist and I am a human being. Ergo, the same should apply to everybody else.

I should try to love everybody. I should feel loving kindness, compassion and acceptance for anybody. 

But should I?

Unconditional positive regard or unconditional love for everybody?

Humanistic coaches and psychologists have unconditional positive regard for their clients. They accept and support them regardless of what they say and what they do. For the mere fact of being human, they deserve that acceptance and support, or so goes their thinking. 

Unconditional positive regard is an instrumental part of humanistic coaching. It is one of the main factors making the coaching work. The premise is that as the coachees perceive they are being accepted and positively regarded by a significant other, they will accept themselves and will feel freer to pursue their self-actualising tendencies and reach their full potential.

Could we translate this into unconditional love? Could we love everybody unconditionally, just because they are human and worthy of love?

Love is too strong a word. If I love everybody, then what is the emotion I reserve for the people closest to me? Stronger love, maybe. But I’m not entirely convinced by this argument.

I cannot really love, with genuine love, anybody I cross in the street. I just can’t. This would dilute the meaning of love. It is too important and powerful a concept to be extended to everybody.

Love may be too strong a word, but we could learn from humanistic coaches and therapists and start having an unconditional positive regard for all the people around us. 

That I can do.

Free will and the deterministic trap

I can hear people complaining, “What happens with nazis, child molesters, rapists, criminals and all the people voting for a rival political party? Do they also deserve unconditional positive regard?”

We cannot possibly have a positive regard for them. They are all terrible people (especially those voting differently from us!)

Well, we can, and we should.

Many thinkers argue that free will doesn’t exist; it’s an illusion. Our brains seem to act on their own accord and then justify our actions through a posteriori rationalisations. We may be living in a deterministic trap where we are not entirely free of our actions.

If you were born with the same genes, in the same family, had the same life experiences and were living in the same context as a criminal, would you have acted differently? Probably not. You would probably be a criminal, too.

You would be determined to act the same way, so you would carry out the same actions.

People deserve to be regarded positively and unconditionally. We need to try to understand other people, put ourselves in their shoes and see where they are coming from. That doesn’t mean we need to forgive them or condone all their behaviours or that they should be free to roam and do harm to others.

Our actions have consequences, after all.

Building a better future

I don’t love everybody, but I try to have a positive regard for all. I could have been that other person after all.

What would happen if everybody did the same?

Perhaps we would create a decadent society of softies where everything goes, and a few cynics dominate the others, but I doubt it. I think we would be living in a better society, a more empathetic and harmonious one. 

We build a better future through our actions, but also through our attitudes and emotions. I choose love over all other emotions. Even if I won’t be able to fully love someone who has hurt me or my family, I will try to understand them and accept them as they are. 

I will have an unconditional positive regard towards them. I will do the same for everybody else around me, and I encourage you to do the same. 

We will then live in a better world, and you will probably feel better about it, too.

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post I could be anybody, so I love everybody appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

Can a world without work provide an opportunity for humanity to redefine success on its own terms? We may find out sooner than expected.

There is an increasing hysteria about AI, especially of the generative type, and its impact on jobs and the workplace, with some people advocating for a stop in AI research and many others saying that AI will end up taking all our jobs.

This prophecy is usually done with an air of doom and negativity, as though not having to work would be the worst thing that may happen to us. But would it?

I don’t think AI is going to take all our jobs any time soon. It may take some and enhance many others, but we are still far away from a total human job substitution by machines. 

Still, with the world of technology, you never know, things can change very rapidly, so it is worthwhile reflecting on what a world without work would look like. 

The meaning of life or lack thereof

I have written about the meaning of life in different posts, but this one gathers most of my thoughts. 

I believe there is not one meaning of life. We all give meaning to our lives differently, and the big secret is that each of us must find what gives meaning to our life.

For that, self-awareness and self-knowledge are essential, as we cannot pursue a life that makes us happy if we don’t really know who we are.

Many people in today’s society give meaning to their lives through their careers. They get fulfilment in what they do and find social status in the wealth and position they earn thanks to their occupation.

I won’t judge whether this is the right way to proceed or the desirable state of affairs, but this is the way it is. 

Human beings are social animals that play social games and require recognition from the group. We used to do this by being the best hunter or collector or being the shaman of the tribe. Now we do it by leading a company, being an engineer working on complex projects or creating new products and services for others to use.

We gain recognition, fulfilment and satisfaction in our careers, and we often find our life purpose in what we do. 

In a world where machines did all the work, what would happen with all this fulfilment, recognition and purpose? Where would we find them?

We don’t need work to be fulfilled, or do we?

In sociology circles, it is often cited a study from the 1930s on the effects of unemployment in society, the Marienthal study.

Marienthal was an Austrian town ravaged by unemployment after the 29 crash and the Depression that ensued. Some psychologists and sociologists studied almost 500 unemployed families living in that town.

The conclusions of the study were revealing:

“The unemployed experienced lower expectations and activity, a disrupted sense of time, and a steady decline into apathy. They tended to be lonely, isolated, hopeless and passive, yet prone to bursts of violence.”

There have been other studies about the psychological damage being unemployed can have on our minds, attitudes and outlook.

Marienthal and similar studies demonstrated unemployment’s negative and hurtful consequences, but they all did so in a context where some people worked, and others didn’t. It is not possible today to reproduce a society where nobody works to study the effects of unemployment on its citizens because we need people to be active for society to keep tacking along and for us to survive.

It is not the same, psychologically and mentally, to be unemployed in a society where the majority are working, and the social status is earned by the work one does than when not working is the norm and all are in the same situation.

The closest we have been to this kind of society is in societies where a big part of the population was enslaved and did most of the work, like in Ancient Greece and Rome. Back then, work was not a necessity for happiness and fulfilment. 

The “free” citizens of those societies got their fulfilment in philosophy, the arts, and politics, or the simple pursuit of pleasure and hedonism.

Enter self-actualisation and creativity

We didn’t evolve to need work to feel happy. 

What human beings need to be happy and feel fulfilled is self-actualisation. We need to express our creativity and feel we are learning and growing. 

During the last few centuries, we have relied on work to find the release for this need for self-actualisation, creativity and learning, but it wasn’t always like this, and it doesn’t have to be like this.

Self-actualisation is about knowing yourself, accepting who you are, and trying to reach the full potential of who you can become. You don’t need formal employment for that.

You can reach your full potential by doing something creative, like writing, painting or playing an instrument, or by focusing on a hobby, learning new skills, helping people in need, or myriad other ways.

A world without work could usher in a new Renaissance where robots and AI did all the work and created a world of abundance, and human beings dedicated their time to self-growth and creativity. We could also spend this time socialising with people we love and like, playing with our children, doing exercise, travelling or doing any other pleasant activity.

Then again, it is entirely plausible that many of us wouldn’t know what to do with so much time, and we would spend it seeking easy pleasure.

Sex, drugs and virtual reality

Knowing the inclinations of the human species, some people would profit from this newfound freedom given by a world without work to work on their self-actualisation and find deep happiness. However, many others would feel like the subjects of the Marienthal study and would feel lost.

This latter group would be easy victims to the quick pleasures made available to them. Ever-more potent design drugs would keep people perpetually high, playing their preferred superhero or having sex with their favourite actress in a perfectly simulated virtual world.

In this world, many people wouldn’t physically leave their houses ever but would virtually travel to other worlds and live a fictitious second life. 

Inequality in a world without work

Inequality has been rising over the last few decades, but if you think we are living in an unequal world today, wait until we get to one with no work for human beings. 

As Thomas Piketty showed us in his best-selling work Capital in the 21st Century, when income from capital surpasses the total income from labour, inequality rises. In a world without work, people would stop working, but someone else would continue producing the goods and services required for us to live a comfortable life: robots and AI. 

These would be owned by companies, who would, in turn, be owned by shareholders. These shareholders would receive ever-growing returns, as they would be responsible for all the economic activity required for society to function. 

In a world without work, labour income would be zero or very close to it. The masses would be paid a Universal Basic Income (UBI) or a similar scheme, paid for by taxing the companies producing the goods.

These companies would be the only ones producing wealth, so they would pay an enormous tax bill, a tax bill sufficient to sustain the rest of society. Still, they would be left with a huge amount of money, and the wealth differences between the shareholders and not-shareholders would only grow with time.

Unless we reach something similar to the Fully Automated Luxury Communism promulgated by Aaron Bastani, inequality will only grow in this society. 

Historically, whenever inequality has grown disproportionately, it has led to riots and revolutions. Still, it is not clear that would be the case when a big part of society is happy and fulfilled pursuing their passions and self-growth, and the other part is sedated, playing games and having virtual sex.

Meaning in a world without work

We don’t need work to be happy, but that doesn’t mean that a world without work would be an easy utopia where everybody would be happy.

The transition to a world without work would be disruptive and difficult, and many people would suffer. Some people would find happiness and fulfilment and finally be able to focus on their true calling and do what they were supposed to do. They would become experts in tropical birds or the big expanses of the cosmos, paint or write, or help disadvantaged communities.

Many others, however, would rely on escapism into a virtual world and would live a life that wasn’t theirs in a world that isn’t even real.

A world without work would be a more unequal one, with the few dominating the many. A handful of people would have access to all the wealth and, thus, all the resources, weapons, and political and economic power.

Would the happy ones and the distracted ones do anything about it? Probably not, but who knows?

But before we get there, we need to have a world without work, and for all the advances in AI and robotics and all the doom-mongering around us, we are still far, very far from it. 

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post The Meaning of Life in a World Without Work appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

Self-actualisation is the missing piece to the puzzle of a happier world. Here is why and how to get there.

According to Maslow, only 1% of the population ever reaches self-actualisation.

Considering he thought self-actualisation was the highest human need, that’s a sure recipe for an unhappy world. Promoting self-actualisation and making it likelier amongst our population might be the ultimate key to building a happier society. Self-actualisation is not a luxury; it’s a necessity if we want to build a better future.

But how do we get to a world of self-actualised people? 

First things first, what is self-actualisation?

I recently wrote a post on self-actualisation, its link to happiness and how to cultivate it, so I’ll try not to repeat myself much here, but it’s essential to clarify the concept of self-actualisation before anything else. 

Self-actualisation is the higher-state need in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It would sit at the top of Maslow’s pyramid if he had ever drawn one (he didn’t). It is what human beings aspire to when they have all other needs satisfied. 

Self-actualisation is not a destination but a journey; it’s about becoming the best version of ourselves, not a perfect one.

Self-actualisation manifests itself in our hunger for learning, growth, creating new things, and for achieving and maximising our highest potential.

In his later writings, Maslow called it humanness or being fully human. For him, self-actualisation was our eternal search to be the most human we could be. 

Self-actualisation makes us fully human, so without it, we cannot be fully complete.

Self-actualisation, the missing piece for a happier world?

A couple of months ago, I was reading Abraham Maslow’s writings on self-actualisation when an idea struck me like a wave crashing onto the shore.

The force of the idea hit me with full impact. Here I was writing about building a better future for all, a more humane and human future of work, a more humane society, and isn’t self-actualisation one of the missing pieces? 

Maybe one of the most important pieces?

In today’s Western society, we prioritise external achievements over internal fulfilment, and it’s making us miserable. We have more technological progress than ever but also more depression, anxiety and suicides than at any previous time in history. Something is not working well.

There are many things we need to fix in our world (although many others are better than ever, that’s also true), and self-actualisation is one of them.

Making it easier for people to follow their passions and purpose, helping them to learn and develop, giving them what they need to become their best version, or allowing them to reach their maximum potential, would make people much happier.

In sum, enabling people to go on their personal self-actualisation journeys would make all of us happier.

How to get to a self-actualised world

How can we get to this desired state?

Self-actualisation is a personal journey. Governments, corporations and other social agents could do more to promote it among the population (and that’s a discussion for another day), but at the end of the day, it has to come from inside each of us. Everyone has to work on their own path. 

You cannot impose self-actualisation on others, but you can teach and promote it.

In the article I mentioned above, I already covered three main tips to work on your self-actualisation: know thyself, be creative and don’t stop learning. 

There are three other tips anybody can undertake to self-actualise:

– Identify your life purpose and work towards achieving it. 

– Identify your passions, what you enjoy doing, and what will make you enter a flow state, and double down on those activities. 

– Cultivate a growth mindset and understand that mistakes and errors are only milestones in your growth and learning journey.

A protopia of self-actualisation

Some would argue that a world where everybody is self-actualised would be a utopia, but that’s incorrect. It would be a protopia. 

Kevin Kelly coined the term in 2009 when most thinkers and futurists were struggling with a binary discussion: are we going towards a utopia or a dystopia? Kelly chose neither, and he settled with protopia, which means a world in progress, becoming something different, slowly but inexorably. 

A utopia is stifling. 

In a utopia, all problems have been solved, so there are no opportunities for the new to arrive. A utopia is stagnant. It sounds great, but it wouldn’t be nice to live in. 

That’s why even if a world of self-actualised people sounds utopic, it is anything but. 

Self-actualisation means people are growing and evolving, and therefore, the world they inhabit is also changing. It fits perfectly with the definition of protopia. You cannot have a utopia of self-actualised people, as they won’t want to live in a stagnant and immobile world.

Protopias are slow to materialise, but we may already be travelling towards a protopia of self-actualisation. 

Today, more and more people are discovering their purpose, learning new skills and becoming the best version of themselves. The progress is slow, but it is there. 

Self-actualised people may comprise 3% or 5% of the population, I don’t know, and that is not much, but it is already higher than the 1% Maslow estimated a few decades ago. 

It is slow, but it is progress. That’s how protopias work. Let’s hope that the progress continues. If it does, we will eventually reach a critical mass of enough self-actualised people. 

Once we get there, the process will be unstoppable. Self-actualisation is the key to a happier world, so we better be on the right track. 

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post Why self-actualisation is key to building a happier world appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

The time for a Manifesto Against Hustle Culture has arrived.

Preamble

We, the movement against hustle culture*, reject the notion that productivity, continuously being on, and self-promotion are the keys to success. 

We believe that the constant pressure to hustle leads to burnout, stress, and an unhealthy focus on material wealth. We reject the idea that our worth is tied to our output and refuse to participate in a culture that glorifies overworking and underpaying.

Article I: The Right to Rest

We demand the right to rest. 

Rest is not a luxury; it is necessary for our physical and mental health and well-being. We refuse to participate in a culture that treats rest as a weakness or a waste of time. We demand that employers and society at large recognise the importance of rest and allow us the time and space to recharge. 

We encourage the continuation of trials on reduced work time (e.g., four-day week) until we find the right formula benefitting both employers and employees.

Article II: The Value of Leisure

We reject the idea that leisure is a waste of time. Leisure is essential for creativity, innovation, and personal growth. 

We demand that society recognises the value of leisure and encourages us to pursue activities that bring us joy and fulfilment, not just financial gain. 

We demand the right to seek self-actualisation inside and outside work.

Article III: The Right to Prioritise Mental Health

We reject the idea that success is only possible through constant productivity. 

Mental health is just as important as physical health, and we demand the right to prioritise our mental health without fear of judgment or stigma. We refuse to participate in a culture that glorifies overworking and promotes the normalisation of burnout.

Article IV: The Right to Unproductive Activity

We demand the right to pursue leisure activities for their own sake and not because of their expected benefits in terms of gained productivity or career advancement.

There is no need to fill all the hours in the day with productive activity. It is possible and desirable to have empty hours of contemplation, nothingness, or boredom, as these are also essential parts of life.

We hereby state that it is possible and even desirable to read books for sheer fun and pleasure, and not only because they will teach us the latest productivity hack or how to advance in our careers. 

Article V: The Right to Wake Up after 5 am

We demand the right to wake up at the time of our choosing. We promulgate that it is not necessary to wake up before 5 am to be successful and conduct a happy and fulfilling life. 

Ice-cold showers, meditation, journaling and daily exercise before breakfast might benefit some, but they should be optional choices and not a compulsory recipe for success.

Article VI: The Right to Avoid Toxic Positivity

Hustle culture is conducive to toxic positivity, so we demand the right to avoid it. All emotions have their function, they all have their use, and people should be able to express them freely at work.

We reject the notion that people need to always be seen as positive and cheerful. They should be let be themselves and bring their authentic self to work.

Article VII: The Responsibility of Employers

We demand that employers take responsibility for creating healthy work environments that prioritise the well-being of their employees. This includes fair pay, reasonable working hours, opportunities for rest and leisure, and support for mental health. 

Article VIII: Quality over Quantity

We demand a more significant focus on quality than on quantity.

Quality is more important than quantity in most facets of life, including work. It is much better to do a little quality, focused, deep work than continuously multitasking, hustling, and trying to be seen always on without achieving much.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we reject the hustle culture and demand a society that values rest, leisure, mental health, waking up at any time, responsible employers and quality over quantity. We refuse to participate in a culture that glorifies overworking, burnout, and the devaluation of human life. We request that the focus on hustle culture be replaced by a focus on healthier work cultures, such as a break culture.

* This movement doesn’t really exist, but someone should create it. 

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post A Manifesto Against Hustle Culture appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

Self-actualisation: what it is, why it is important and how to work towards it.

Self-actualisation is probably the most important element of a happy and fulfilling life you haven’t heard much about. 

Or maybe you have. It is not part of everyday language, but it has been discussed for decades in humanistic and positive psychology circles.

Maslow put self-actualisation at the top of his famous hierarchy of needs as the highest and most sublime need humans can have. Other psychologists have expanded on Maslow’s work in the last few decades.

But what exactly is self-actualisation? And why is it so important? Can it be developed and worked upon?

We’ll answer these and other questions below.

What is self-actualisation?

So many features and dimensions have been added to the concept of self-actualisation over the years that it no longer has a clear definition.

In A Theory of Human Motivation, Maslow defined it as “self-fulfilment, namely the tendency for the individual to become actualised 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.” 

In later writings, Maslow replaced the term self-actualisation with being “fully human”. For him, self-actualisation was the highest human need and being self-actualised meant being fully human or displaying the fullest humanness possible.

Self-actualisation is about being the best version of yourself, having a growth mindset, and constantly wanting to improve and learn new things. 

It is also about self-awareness, listening to your nature and being your true self.

It is a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional concept.

10 characteristics of self-actualisation

Maslow wrote about many of the characteristics of self-actualised people in different papers. The psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman has looked at them in detail, and after testing them and comparing them to existing research, he has grouped them into ten characteristics.

He explains them in his best-selling book Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization and has created a free test to find out how self-actualised you are based on these ten characteristics. 

Let’s have a quick look at these ten characteristics.

Truth Seeking

Self-actualising people like to get to the truth of things and people. They like to find out how things really are. 

For Maslow, truth is one of the most fundamental human values, recognised across all cultures. It is a universal value. 

Self-actualised people are driven by the search of it.

Acceptance

The first person one has to accept is oneself. 

Before being able to love others and be compassionate to them, we need to start with ourselves.

Self-actualised people understand this. They understand they are not perfect, but they accept themselves as they are, with their quirks and desires, without shame or apology.

Purpose

A favourite in this blog, purpose is essential to being a happy and fulfilled human being. It is also an essential part of self-actualisation.

Purpose is about having a mission that goes beyond one’s self-interest, knowing what it is and working towards achieving it.

Authenticity

Self-actualised people are authentic to themselves. 

They accept themselves as they are, so they have no problem with being authentic to their real self, regardless of the situation they find themselves in.

As Barry Kaufman says, they “can maintain their dignity and integrity even in situations and environments that are undignified”.

Continued freshness of appreciation

Self-actualised people enjoy and appreciate the little things in life. 

They are like grown-up children who haven’t stopped marvelling at all the wondrous things life has to offer.

Watching a sunset is wonderful, it doesn’t matter how many you have already seen. So is smelling the earth after a summer rain, listening to a moving song, watching the view from a high mountain, and other million things. 

Others may have become tired of these experiences, but self-actualised people keep enjoying and savouring them as if it were the first time.

Peak experiences

Maslow dedicated much time to studying peak experiences. 

In The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, he defined peak experiences as “transient moments of self-actualisation. They are moments of ecstasy which cannot be bought, cannot be guaranteed, cannot be sought.” 

They can be attained by different means. For example, giving birth to a child can be a peak experience, but so can be working in a flow state on something requiring concentration, finishing a marathon, making love or having a hallucinogenic-induced trip.

Humanitarianism

Self-actualised people have a genuine desire to help the human race to get better. They want to contribute to building a better world and a better society.

Good moral intuition

Self-actualised people know straight away when something is right or wrong. They have a well-tuned moral compass, and they are guided by it.

They don’t need to reflect on it. They just know. 

The right moral intuitions guide them.

Creative spirit

People manifest their self-actualisation through their creativity.

Self-actualised people like and want to create new things. They realise creating things is one of the most human endeavours, and they relish their creative spirit.

They squeeze their creative juices to the maximum.

That doesn’t mean all self-actualised people are artists or that they are the next Leonardo or Michel Angelo. Creativity can be applied to all human activities, not only arts, and we will all apply it in our levels of mastery, without necessarily being the next genius.

Read more: 6 Practical Tips To Unleash Your Creativity

Equanimity

Self-actualised people tend to take life’s vicissitudes with equanimity. 

They take them with grace and acceptance. 

They know that life has ups and downs, which are a necessary part of life, and they accept them as such.

A pyramid that isn’t a pyramid

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been drawn as a pyramid so many times that it is now difficult to imagine it any other way, but Maslow himself never envisaged it as such.

He thought some needs were at a higher spectrum than others and that you needed to have some basic needs covered before you could aspire to others, but Maslow never envisaged life as a videogame with different levels, where you need to cover one need before you go up to the next one.

Life is more complex and nuanced than that, and so are human needs. 

As Barry Kaufman tells us, “most people are partially satisfied in all their basic needs and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the same time.”

Following up with the videogame metaphor, we are all playing at all levels all the time, depending on our state of mind at the moment. I might be working on my self-actualisation because some of my lower needs are covered, but in specific moments I might feel unsafe for some reason, and my need for safety will need covering.  

The psychologist John Rowan compared Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with Russian dolls: “each larger doll includes all the smaller dolls but also transcends them.” When working on a higher-purpose need such as self-actualisation, the lower-level needs don’t disappear but become integrated with the higher need. 

Self-actualisation is at the peak of the pyramid that isn’t a pyramid. It is the highest-purpose need, but it is integrated with all the rest. 

It includes and transcends them all.

Why is self-actualisation worth pursuing?

Self-actualisation is the higher need we humans can have, so it is essential to being happy and satisfied.

It is as simple as that.

It is what we are meant to do, but we often go astray and lose our ways. Self-actualisation is your way to go back to what you were supposed to be doing. 

All babies are born with the desire and urge to grow and learn. During the first years of their life, toddlers and little children are sponges absorbing all kinds of knowledge and new skills. They explore the world and become better at being human beings.

Then most of us lose that urge and become stuck in adulthood. We get stuck in a job we don’t like, relationships we don’t enjoy, thought and behaviour patterns that make us unhappy, and unhealthy habits. We don’t learn new things, we don’t create anything new, we don’t grow.

We get stuck.

We don’t let our self-actualising nature express itself, so we wither and wilt like an untended plant.

Self-actualisation is worth pursuing because it will make us feel alive and bring a higher purpose to our life. 

It is what will give us real and profound joy.

How to self-actualise

All this is great, but how do you self-actualise? Is it possible to become a self-actualised person?

First of all, self-actualisation is an ongoing process, like life itself. There is no final destination where you suddenly arrive, and hey, presto, you are now self-actualised. 

You constantly self-actualise, but there is always room for improvement. It is a process of continuous becoming rather than being.

You can do different things to work on your self-actualisation, to work on this continuous becoming. 

The ten characteristics mentioned above would be the best starting point. Just look at them and reflect on how you do against each. 

In some, you will do great; in others, not so much, but that’s OK. You will then know now where to start.

Once you do that, you can focus on the three areas below. 

Know thyself

Self-actualisation is about following your nature, about being your real self. It’s about doing what you are supposed to do and not what your parents or society expect from you.

To do that, first, you need to know yourself well. You need to know who you are. You need to be self-aware. 

There are different ways to know yourself better, like asking for feedback from others or using the services of a coach. I explained them well elsewhere, so I won’t discuss the details here.

Another good option is to carry out the test on self-actualisation I mentioned above. By doing so, you will gain self-awareness in general and in all the specific dimensions of self-actualisation, so you will know where to focus more.

Once you know who you are, you just need to be yourself. Find your purpose, what you are meant to do, and try to live according to your authentic nature. 

Be creative

Creativity is one of the most human features. 

Creating things gives us purpose and meaning, so it can be highly satisfying. It is also fun.

All human beings have their own creative impulse. Don’t ever believe you aren’t creative.

We all are. 

So, create new things, build them, test them. Try and experiment with new things. Play an instrument, draw, paint, mould clay, write, try a new method or process at work, or, why not, start your own blog. 

Express your creativity the way that feels best for you. We all have our own different ways of being creative. 

Find yours.

You will know what it is when you do it.

Don’t stop learning

Learning is the source of one of the biggest joys in life, but it is an unappreciated joy for many.

Don’t be one of those many. Appreciate the joys learning brings.

There is so much knowledge, so many skills, so many interesting facts, so many valuable tips… so many things to learn out there, that you can learn something new every minute for the rest of your life, and you will still have plenty of things left to learn. 

But that’s fine, it’s not a race.

The self-actualised person doesn’t compete with anybody else, only with him or herself. They want to become the best version of themselves, get as close as possible to their potential as a human being.

To do that, the self-actualising person needs to keep learning and improving. 

They keep learning not because they must so they can get better but because of the joy it brings them. 

Learning is not a means to an end; it’s the end itself.

Towards full humanness

For Maslow, self-actualisation meant being fully human. 

Working towards self-actualisation means working towards full humanness. It means being the best version of ourselves, making the most of our most human capabilities.

It means listening to our inner self, knowing who we really are, and using that knowledge to live the life we are meant to live. It also means being creative, never stopping learning new things and living by our values.

An ideal world would be one where everybody, the entire population, was encouraged and had the time and everything they needed to work towards their self-actualisation. 

A better future would be one where self-actualisation was a value and a state of mind cherished by society, where we all made an effort to be the best version of ourselves.

It is a distant future, but not impossible. We are born to self-actualise, but some of us forget about it. We can build a society where we don’t forget it, and everyone is allowed to live the life they are meant to live.

Wouldn’t it be great to live in such a world? 

Definitely!

It is in our hands to build it. What are we waiting for?

Read also: Why self-actualisation is the key to building a happier world

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post Is self-actualisation the secret to a happy life? appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

Follow these 6 simple steps to use the Wheel of Life and live a balanced life

Different areas will gain or lose relevance in our life, depending on the stage we are in. The proper use of the Wheel of Life® can help us decide where to focus in each moment to live a balanced life.

Life is a complex endeavour, and living a happy and fulfilling life is not easy. We don’t have the same needs in our 20s or 50s. Different areas call for our attention at different times, and our resources are limited and finite. 

Where should you focus your attention?

The Wheel of Life, a simple tool created by Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation Institute, Inc., can help us find a balance.

Let’s look at how to use it in 6 simple steps.

Step 1 – Create your Wheel of Life

The first step will be to create your own Wheel of Life.

You can make it yourself by drawing it on paper or designing it on your computer. There are plenty of apps helping users do it and templates of it on websites like Mindtools or Wheel of Life.

It should look like a wheel with several spokes, like the picture below. The number of spokes will depend on the number of areas you choose for your wheel.

Step 2 – Choose your areas of focus

You should choose between 6 and 8 areas of focus.

These are the areas that are most important to you. They should reflect what it means for you to have a balanced life. 

The usual suspects would be family, love, health, career, and the like. You get the point. 

In my case, I decided to go with these 8:

• Love
• Family
• Friends
• Health
• Purpose and meaning
• Career
• Writing and creativity
• Learning

Most of them are self-explanatory, but others aren’t that obvious, so let me briefly explain why they are here.

Love and family are related but not the same. 

I love my friends and family members, but here by love I mean just romantic love: deciding to be in a relationship or not, enjoying that relationship, etc. I haven’t formed my own family yet, so family relates to my parents, brothers, nephews and nieces, who are all important for me. 

Many people have a spoke called spirituality or religion in their wheel. I am not religious, and I don’t like the connotations of the word spirituality, so I preferred to settle with Purpose and Meaning. After all, it is just about that, about finding a meaning to this thing called life and finding my purpose in it. 

Writing and creativity are essential for me right now, so I have decided to include them too. For you, this could be something else altogether: travelling, exploring new things, volunteering and community work, politics, or whatever rocks your boat.

Step 3 – Rate the importance each of these areas has currently in your life

All these areas are important, but we need to make some choices.

If they weren’t important, you wouldn’t have included them here (and if you have, but they aren’t, please take them out).

Not all of them will have the same importance for you, depending on your taste and the stage of life you are in. 

If you have recently been a mother or father for the first time, family will probably be vital for you. If you are starting your career, it may take centre stage. Or if you just found the love of your life, love may take precedence over all the rest.

See my ratings below. 

• Love – 7 
• Family – 6 
• Friends – 7 
• Health – 7 
• Purpose and meaning – 9 
• Career – 6 
• Writing and creativity – 8 
• Learning – 7 

These are my particular ratings at this moment in my life. Family and career are important, so they are included here, but they don’t need special attention right now and can take a back seat.

Lately, I have felt lost regarding my purpose and meaning in life. This has created some anxiety, so this is now an important area I am focusing on. 

My thoughts on the matter have made me realise that writing and bringing out my creativity help me achieve that purpose. They are an essential part of my path to self-actualisation and a happy and fulfilling life, so the scores here are higher than in other areas at the moment.

These are my ratings today. They would have been different a couple of years ago and may differ again in a couple of years. That’s called life.

Yours will probably be different.

Step 4 – Rate your current focus

Some proponents of the wheel skip steps 2 and 3 and go straight to step 4, always using the same areas and without rating their importance. 

I think that’s the wrong way to do this exercise.

If I had used the same default areas that some propose, the one on writing and creativity wouldn’t have been there. Also, if you don’t rate their importance, you are implying they all deserve the same attention, which isn’t correct.

Once we have rated their importance for us at this moment, we need to rate our current focus on them. An area might be essential for you, but you might realise you are not paying enough attention to it.

This is one of the main advantages of using this tool. It makes you realise where you are lacking focus and what areas you are neglecting.

For this rating exercise, think about the time you dedicate to each focus area and how much of your headspace they take.

Here you go my ratings:

• Love – 8 
• Family – 6 
• Friends – 4 
• Health – 7 
• Purpose and meaning – 8 
• Career – 6 
• Writing and creativity – 7 
• Learning – 5

I have rated low in Friends for several reasons, but mainly because I don’t see my friends as much as I used to or wished. 

I have also rated Learning low. I am learning new things, reading and doing online courses on things that interest me, but I could learn much more. That’s why it is just scraping a 5. 

Step 5 – Compare the ratings

The next step is to compare the ratings between the importance and current focus to find discrepancies.

If, like me, you rated Friends as important, but your current focus is low, that would be one of the focus points. 

The opposite might also happen. You might score something as not so important and realise that you are spending too much time and attention on it at the moment.

The objective is to find balance in your life, and you do that by making sure that you spend more time on the things that are important to you. 

Step 6 – Make an action plan and execute it

The last step is an evident one, but it is often forgotten. You need to make an action plan with the knowledge you have just gained and make sure you execute it.

Looking at my wheel, you will find discrepancies between the ratings, especially in Friends, Purpose, Writing and Learning.

These should be the focus areas of my action plan. 

I will make sure that my plan has some specific actions to spend more time with friends, focus even more on my purpose and meaning, practice my writing and dedicate more time to learning new skills and acquiring knowledge.

Then I will make sure I execute the plan. An action plan with no action is useless; it’s just an empty declaration of intentions.

I will follow up on my plan and make changes accordingly. Life always throws surprises at you, so it doesn’t pay to be too rigid with any plan. 

Be flexible with your plan, but have clear what its end goals are, and what areas of your life you want to focus on and make sure you do, one way or the other.

Living a balanced life

Life is complicated but, at the same time, simple.

Some things are more important than others, but for some reason, we often spend a big chunk of our time on things that aren’t so important to us.

For example, I used to spend hours a day scrolling on my phone. That was useless and something I didn’t really want to do, so I stopped doing it after I realised what I was doing. But it took me some time.

The Wheel of Life allows us to visually look at our priorities in life and our current focus on them and adjust accordingly.

It is a simple exercise, but it can be potent.

Next time you feel your life is escaping through your fingers and you aren’t living a balanced life, stop for a moment and use the Wheel of Life. 

Hopefully, it should help you to conduct a balanced, happier and more fulfilling life. 

It helped me.

Join the Newsletter to get more content like this

The post How to find balance with the Wheel of Life appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

I recently watched the movie Groundhog Day for the umpteenth time. Once again, it made me realise it is an excellent allegory about self-actualisation, personal growth, and how to live (or not) a good life.

Groundhog Day is a light comedy, but it is also one of the most philosophical and deep movies you will find. 

Rivers of ink have been spilt to write about the films’ philosophical and spiritual significance since it came out in 1993. 

I rewatch it every couple of years, and it makes me think every time. I love that in a film, book, or any work of art.

It made me think again, so I thought I’d share my thoughts and reflections with you this time, dear reader. Hopefully, my musings make you think too.

Groundhog Day: The film 

For the few of you who haven’t seen the movie yet (what are you waiting for?), please note that there are a few spoilers coming. 

The film is about a TV weatherman called Phil Connor, played by Ray Murray, who, for some unexplained reason, is stuck in a time loop and wakes up every day on the same day and in the same place: 2nd of February, Groundhog Day, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. 

The focus of the story lies in Phil’s character arc and development. 

He starts the movie as egotistic and cynical, and he ends up being compassionate, helpful, and wise. He passes through different phases: he is hedonistic and manipulative at first, then depressive and suicidal before his final breakthrough comes, and he realises the best thing he can do with his life is to learn new skills and help others. 

Some people have calculated that Phil lived between thirty and forty years trapped on the same day. He didn’t age one bit, and he couldn’t be killed, even if he tried it many times. He remembered every day, but those around him didn’t, so every day was like starting anew.

In search of pleasure

This movie is a straightforward thought experiment, which is laid out in front of the viewer from the outset: how would you live your life if you were condemned (or blessed) to live the same day every day, and you didn’t age, nor die, and people wouldn’t remember the conversations you had with them when the day finished?

The protagonist first takes the easy route, the one many of us would have taken: the hedonist route. He gets drunk, eats in excess, enters a car chase with the police, robs a bank, and seduces the pretty girls in town by learning everything about them. 

He uses his experience living the same day to satisfy his needs for instant pleasure. 

Who wouldn’t? In another phase of my life, I certainly would. 

Probably most of us have gone through phases in life where we equated happiness with pleasure, finally ending up disappointed and realising they are not the same thing. 

Pleasure and happiness couldn’t be more different and far apart (more about it below).

Depression and rock bottom

After a while (months or years, who knows? It’s difficult to know exactly how much time passes in this movie), Phil realises that the search for pleasure is a never-ending race with no final ending and that the pleasure thrill has to be bigger and bigger to have an impact on him. 

He also tries to seduce his colleague, Rita, played by Andy McDowell. Phil wants to believe he is in love with Rita but cannot really be in love with her when he is so centred on himself. He just wants to sleep with her, but she smells his lack of authenticity each time and refuses him with a slap on his face tens, probably hundreds of times before he finally gives up. 

Phil doesn’t see any exit from his situation, and he cannot take this anymore. 

He enters into a deep depression and tries to kill himself several times, but every time he wakes up in his hotel room at 6 am to start Groundhog Day once again. This is the saddest part of the movie but also brings out some of the funniest moments. 

This will be the breakthrough moment for Phil.

As often happens in life, we need to touch rock bottom to realise what we need to do and have a clear breakthrough in our personal growth journey. 

Self-actualisation and service to others

Phil will pull through and enter the phase of personal growth.

In his efforts to conquer Rita, Phil learns French and studies poetry. This makes him realise he might as well use his time more wisely, and he learns new skills. He learns how to play the piano and masters ice sculpting, among other things. 

Phil finally starts his journey of self-actualisation and self-improvement.

He also starts helping others. 

He starts with an old homeless man, who, despite all his efforts, dies in his arms every single day. Phil then realises he is not a god and cannot save him, but he can save others.

He uses all the knowledge he has amassed about each of the citizens of Punxsutawney and the events of the day to help them. He saves a kid from falling from a tree, a man from choking on his steak, changes the tire of some older women, and so on.

When he is a self-actualised man that is more focused on helping others than seeking his advancement or fleeting pleasure, is when Rita finally falls in love with him, and he reaches contentment and happiness in life.

This is the moment when the spell breaks, and he finally wakes up the next day, the 3rd of February.

Some learnings

This movie has plenty of learnings and valuable metaphors. We will focus on three here.

Pleasure vs happiness

We touched upon this above. Pleasure and happiness are not the same thing; when we focus too much on pursuing pleasure, happiness will evade us.

Dr Robert Lustig tells us that there are seven differences between the two:

1. Pleasure is short-lived, happiness is long-lived.
2. Pleasure is visceral, happiness is ethereal.
3. Pleasure is taking, happiness is giving.
4. Pleasure can be achieved with substances, happiness can’t.
5. Pleasure is experienced alone, happiness is experienced in social groups.
6. The extremes of pleasure all lead to addiction, there cannot be an addiction to too much happiness.
7. Pleasure is dopamine (it’s draining, leads to tolerance, and requires an ever-increasing hit to bring the same rush), happiness is serotonin.

I’m not sure I agree with all of them (I can think of many instances where you can have pleasure with others, for example), but they are a good summary. 

I particularly love the number three: “pleasure is taking, happiness is giving”, something it took our protagonist Phil 30 or 40 years of living the same day to realise. Sadly, it took me the same time to realise this, too, although at least I didn’t have to wake up on the same day.

When I was younger, I thought happiness was the accumulation of pleasure and the elimination of pain, so I gorged on eating, accumulating thrilling experiences, partying… you name it. 

I had a lot of fun, that’s for sure, but was I happy? Definitely not. 

Now with age, I realise that pleasure is OK, but it’s evasive and never enough, and that pain is just another sensation and isn’t too bad. It’s often necessary.

I also realised that you cannot be happy if you only centre on yourself. Real happiness comes when you follow your life purpose, connect with others, and try to help them.

We only live in the present

Phil Connors is doomed to live the same day over and over for decades. There is no future for him, as the next day will still be the 2nd of February, Groundhog Day, and the past doesn’t count. 

He can only live in the present.

This is something that happens to us all the time, actually. We worry about the future and regret our past actions, but life only occurs in the present. 

Life is a concatenation of present moments. The future and the past only happen in our minds.

The protagonist is trying to evade his present as he is unhappy with it. He only overcomes that anxiety and unhappiness when he accepts his fate and starts enjoying his present time learning new skills, and helping others.

As the ancients used to say, “carpe diem”. Seize the day. Enjoy it.

You will only live this moment this one time, so what are you doing to make the most of it?

Self-actualisation and service to others as the fuel for a happy life

The central theme of the movie is the importance of self-actualisation and service to others to achieve a fulfilling and happy life.

Abraham Maslow, Scott Barry Kaufman and other psychologists have highlighted how critical the need for self-actualisation is among human beings. 

We want to get better at doing stuff. We want to create new and unique things. We want to leave our unique imprint in the world. 

All that is our need for self-actualisation. 

We don’t all need to be Monet, Picasso, or Mozart to leave our mark on the world. We all have something unique to say and different ways to express it.

Phil Connors in the movie did so through his humour, acquired wisdom, piano playing, ice-sculpting, and helping others overcome their problems.

I find self-actualisation through my writing, coaching, sports, and by supporting and helping others, at work and outside.

This brings us to the second pillar of a fulfilled and happy life: focusing on others and not only on personal gain.

Phil really grows into a new type of person when he forgets about himself and starts helping others. When we are focused outwards rather than inwards, beautiful things start to happen.

That’s why a purpose or a vision should be oriented to others.

That’s why the really happy people are the ones that don’t think too much about themselves or how to respond to their needs. They help others, and by doing so, they help themselves more than they could by being selfish.

We all have our groundhog days

We all have our own groundhog days. 

We have all felt entrapped in our lives at some point, as we commute every day to the same job, watch the same series on Netflix, scroll the same social media, meet the same people, and one day merges into the next one.

Routine can be part of a happy life as long as you use the routine aspects of your life to change yourself and, like Phil Connors, become the best version of yourself and a fulfilled and happy man.

Hopefully, it doesn’t take you three or four decades of groundhog days like him, and you get to that realisation way sooner.

Join my Monthly Newsletter to get more content like this

The post Groundhog Day’s lessons on how to live a good life appeared first on Humane Future of Work.

Why purpose is an essential part of leadership and what makes a purposeful leader

To learn more about developing this Leadership Quality, read How Coaching Exercises Can Help You Develop into a Successful Future Leader

Leadership is 10% strategic acumen, 20% people skills and 70% purpose. 

These percentages may be a bit off, but it doesn’t really matter. 

The point I want to make is that purpose is essential for leadership. Without a strong and inspirational purpose, there is no leadership. It cannot exist.

In this article, we will establish why purpose is essential for leadership, and then we will expand on what makes a purposeful leader.

Why purpose is essential

Human beings are moved by self-interest but also by an overarching purpose that goes beyond ourselves.

Simon Sinek explained it well in his book Start with Why. People are moved by the why of things, not the what or how. They want to know their reason for being and inherent values, and if they are aligned with theirs, they will go for it.

Plenty of research demonstrates that people are more moved by something bigger than themselves than their own self-interest. 

Most people, with the exception of sociopaths and psychopaths, want to be good, want to help others, and want to make their little contribution to building a better world.

People usually want to grow in their careers, get a promotion, earn more money, be recognised by others, and many other things centred on themselves. That’s true.

They would like to do all that, but they would like to do all that by leaving a positive impact on the world, by making it better. 

They want to pursue a purpose worth pursuing.

“I am building a cathedral, and you?”

You have probably read or heard the apocryphal story about the three bricklayers or stonemasons working on a cathedral, with very different attitudes.

When asked what they were doing, the first one answered with an exhausted look, “I’m laying bricks to feed my family”. 

The second one was equally tired and responded in a similar vein: “I’m building a wall.”

The third one seemed happy to be doing what he was doing. When asked, he replied with a gleam in his eyes: “I’m building a great cathedral”.

Who do you think had the higher purpose, and who went to work happier every day?

Managers force compliance, leaders inspire through a purpose

There is an eternal debate about the differences between being a manager and a leader. 

One is more tactical, the other strategic; the former manages the day-to-day tasks, the latter inspires through a vision, et cetera. 

All the differences can be summarised in just one statement: managers force compliance, leaders inspire.

They inspire through an engaging and inspiring purpose.

A leader needs followers to exist, and in order to have followers, you need a purpose.

From all this, we can surmise that without purpose, there is no leadership. 

As simple as that.

The Purposeful Leader

All purposeful leaders have five main characteristics:

– A strong personal purpose

– A clear vision

– Values-driven

– Authenticity

– Followers

 Let’s look at them one by one.

A strong personal purpose

Before focusing on team, organisational or other externally focused purposes, it is essential to start with oneself.

We need to start with a strong personal purpose.

Why are you here? What are you supposed to be doing in this world? What makes you happy?

These are among the most important questions you should be asking yourself. Sadly enough, most people don’t think much about them. For example, only 25% of American adults say they have a clear sense of what makes their lives meaningful. 

It is a similar story in other countries.

A strong personal purpose can be approached from many different angles. You can have an integrated purpose overarching your life as a whole, or you can have different purposes for different areas: a health purpose, a career purpose, a purpose about your family life, etc. 

It doesn’t matter much. It is vital to have a clear life purpose, and then all the other purposes for the different elements comprising your life will naturally stem from it. 

You can do different exercises to find your purpose, like visualisation techniques, a vision board or a vision mandala, and many others. For example, I recently wrote about an approach to finding your career purpose, which you can adapt to other aspects of your life. 

I will write about other exercises and tools in the future, so watch this space.

A clear vision

We have all heard about organisational purposes, mission statements, visions and the like. 

It often sounds like management guru mumbo-jumbo, but it is crucial. 

Yogi Berra once said, “you’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.”

A vision tells us where to go, our direction of travel. If you don’t know where you are going, it will be difficult to get there. 

From Stephen Covey to Jim Collins to other management gurus and thinkers, all have highlighted the importance of a vision to engage the teams. I may not always agree with them, but the gurus are right on this one. 

A vision is important, but it cannot be any vision, it has to come from a purpose. 

It has to have a reason for being that is enticing and engaging, usually, that means it has to be about something beyond personal gain. 

The best visions are about making the world a better place in some way. 

According to research from Harris Kumanu, when employees understand the organisational purpose, share it, and have the autonomy to enact it their own way, then the magic happens. This is what brings high engagement.

A leader with a strong personal purpose aligned with the organisational purpose and who can translate that purpose into a clear vision for their team and organisation will be unstoppable. 

Values-driven

Having a purpose is about wanting to impact the world positively. It’s about having the right values, living by them and being guided by them.

As I wrote elsewhere, there are no good or bad values, as values are a product of our history, background, cultural surroundings, life experiences, and many more factors, most of which are subjective and relative.

That doesn’t mean all values have the same weight or that all of them will help us build a better society, live happy lives and have better relationships with each other. 

Some values promote harmony, while others encourage tension and conflict. Which ones are preferable? That’s another value judgement in itself. You see, it is difficult to talk about values without making value judgements. 

It is not my place to tell others what values they should live by or tell leaders what the right values are for them. That’s a choice each of us, including our leaders, must make. 

You need to live by your values, but be clear about what those values are and live by them. Really live by them. Don’t just use them as empty words to convince and persuade others, and yourself, that you have your heart in the right place. 

The purposeful leader knows their values and lives by them daily. Their team members and followers also understand those values and follow them because they are aligned with them.

They also believe their leader is authentic about them, which brings us to the next characteristic.

Authenticity

Nobody follows a phoney leader. Nobody likes fake.

We all love authenticity.

A purposeful leader needs to be authentic. Above anything else, they need to be themselves. 

This means they need to accept and love themselves first, which isn’t always a given. 

To be authentic, you must first be self-aware and know yourself well, then accept yourself and be OK with who you are. Once you do that, it’s easy to be authentic and not pretend to be someone else. 

It also helps to have a meaningful purpose that goes beyond personal interest. It is easy to be yourself and authentic when working towards achieving a lofty goal that will help others.

Followers

There are no leaders without followers. 

This sounds like a self-evident truth, which it is, but it is incredible how many people have never thought about this or never realised it. 

A leader without followers is not a leader. They have nobody to lead. I would go as far as saying that the followers make a leader and not the other way around. 

It is a specific situation and the followers who tacitly give the baton of leadership to a particular person. It is not the company structure or the hierarchy that will provide them with that authority.

A great leader will have followers who will follow them over the hill and take risks with them. 

Why? Because they feel inspired and engaged by that leader.

And once again (you see the pattern, right?), a leader will need an inspiring, engaging and aspiring purpose and vision to achieve that. Without a purpose, there is no following others over the hill.

In a symbiotic embrace, a leader gives purpose and meaning to their followers, and the followers provide purpose to the leader.

Purposeful Leadership

If you have these five qualities, congratulations, you are a purposeful leader.

If you don’t, don’t worry, they can be learned and developed. Like most things in life, with some effort and dedication, you can get to master them.

The starting point is the reflection on your life purpose. Once you have defined that, the rest becomes easier. If you find your real purpose, the one that feels right to you, all the rest will be more straightforward.

It will be relatively easy to create a strong vision that comes from your stated purpose or to find an organisation or a leader whose vision aligns with it. Focusing on values and being authentic will come naturally to you. If your purpose is in the right place, you will have people following you.

The most important thing to consider here is that being a purposeful leader is not an end in itself.

Your aim shouldn’t be to become a purposeful leader but to find your real purpose and live a life according to it and your values. That’s it.

All the rest will be a natural consequence of it.

For more on purpose, please read Purpose and the Lion Tracker we All have Within

Join my Monthly Newsletter to get more content like this

The post The Purposeful Leader: 5 Essential Characteristics to Be One appeared first on Humane Future of Work.