Over the past few years, I've read a number of books that all contain a common thread. This thread existed despite the wide-ranging beliefs of the authors: atheists, Christians, Mormons, computer scientists, business people, psychologists, etc. While other common themes surely exist, the one I'm thinking of is self-actualization. Each book provided guidance on career and personal performance, generally focusing on living a more meaningful life. Each encouraged the reader to seriously and honestly examine beliefs, whether personal or cultural, that would hold the self back from some more desirable, more powerful existence.

Along with these books came a myriad of exercises intended to help me understand my true potential. These exercises resulted in a significant self-reflective inventory of sorts, which I’ve appreciated overall. I have a greater understanding of the parts I play in life professionally, relationally, and communally.

However, after much experimentation in internal examination, I noted something: all of this pursuit in self-actualizing ultimately fell short of the intended goal. There was something off about this internal view, something specific, to which I kept returning. It was an expectation of experience. My hope was that I would feel self-actualized; that I would come to a point, through deeply understanding and developing myself, where I would reach some sort of higher awareness. The ultimate aim was self-fulfillment.

In parallel with these pursuits, I was having another, very different experience: loss. After a decade building specific skills in my profession, skills I expressed largely as an individual contributor, I shifted roles somewhat dramatically. In my new role I was no longer responsible for my individual performance, but for the performance of an entire team. Further, this team was responsible for significant outcomes in the business itself.

The result? To be successful in this new crucible required less self-actualization and more other-actualization. Instead of focusing on how I could be fully realized, I needed to figure out how to help others do more and be more. Further, making this journey feel all the more perilous, I began giving up the daily practice of maintaining my individual contributor skills. This was a scary and difficult transition: I had relied on, indeed tied my identity to, these abilities. Now, I was having to let go, so that something greater could be gained. This was a great personal loss.

Nonetheless, I experienced both irony and deep fulfillment through these parallel processes. My attempts at self-actualization had clear limits. In a way, they had become pathological. They were starting to hurt my ability to truly grow. Simultaneously, the demands of this other, newer challenge required a clear shift to empowering and raising up others. It required believing that if I committed to the gritty, day-to-day hard work of tying my success to how successful others were,  primarily for the edification of others, that the world was abundant enough that all (myself included) would prosper in every sense of the word.

The result has been extraordinary. Where self-actualization only took me so far, other-actualization is taking me further.