Actualize Your Potentials

Every individual is born with certain potentials, gifts or talents he has received from the nature. These potentials can be in areas of logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, physical-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal etc. However they are in the seed form and need to be identified and developed.

We strive hard to fulfil our various kinds of needs like bodily needs, mental development needs, needs related to social acceptance and self-esteem but very rarely look towards our other most important need; the need to actualize our potentials. As the un-fulfilment of other needs creates discomfort within a person, so too the un-fulfilment of the need to actualize our potentials.

A person may have the potential of becoming a  great musician and have deep interest in music, but due to external factors he is be pushed to become an engineer, doctor or CA as those career fields appears to be more lucrative. Taking this direction can be dangerous for this person because he has overlooked his need to actualize his potentials. There is no surprise then why majority of working people are dissatisfied with their jobs despite having all materialistic comfort in their life. They find no joy and interest in their work, its challenges are perceived as burden and organizations have to constantly device new ways of motivating their employees.

Actualization of potentials also has a spiritual dimension. It leads one to the state of self-transcendence, a state where person become so engrossed in the activity or work that he losses sense of self and time. Being in that state is always energising and enlightening and each of us has some time or the other experienced it in our own life. This is also what Lord Krishna indicated to in Bhagwat Gita when he remarked, “Yoga: Karmsu Kaushalam” (perfection in work is yoga).

Key Factors for Career Decision-Making

Most of us, while making career choice either go according to the direction of our parents, friends or according to “what’s in demand” in the market. This approach to making career-choice is almost suicidal. One should consider the following factors while deciding which career path to take rather then only what others expect from us.

 

Gifts/Natural Talents: Each of us is born with certain gifts/talents. When a person make use of those gifts/natural talents in his/her work, a tremendous job satisfaction is experienced. Such person not only enjoys doing that work but also contribute a very high level of quality work to the organization. Lack of opportunity of using one’s gifts can create a sense of deep dissatisfaction within the person affecting both his person and professional life.

Interests: Interests means the areas or fields where a person likes to use one’s gifts/talents. For example a person with a natural gift for understanding and helping people can go for career fields related to Health Services, HR Management, Psychology etc.

Personality: Personality means the habitual ways in which we think, feel and act on most occasions. Personality plays a very important role in career-decision making. For example, a person with a preference for introversion, will be a misfit in the vocations requiring extraversion characteristics.

Values: Values means the things that, to us, are intrinsically valuable or desirable. They form the basis for our choices about what we will and will not do.

Preferable Geographical Area: It signifies the location or area where we would like to work and pursue our career.

Work Environment: It signifies the kind of work culture and people we would like to work with.

Desired Salary & level: It signifies our expectations in terms of the salary and the level at which we would like to work in the organizations.

If we are unclear about our future career paths, we should take the help and guidance on an experienced career-coach in making the right decision.

Lord Krishna on Self-Actualization

Most of us in our day to day life work hard to achieve our personal as well as our professional goals. We earn money, power, status, respect or whatever we could imagine of and strive hard to maintain them.  Moreover, our present day society is highly focused on immediate gains, specifically material gains. They have in fact become the barometer for one’s success. The ability of a person to earn money, status, power etc. as quickly as possible is cherished, and young persons are encouraged to do so. However despite having everything a person needs or  desires, still many of us experience a sense of  un-fulfillment or incompleteness, a feeling that something is missing in life.  Sometimes, this feeling of incompleteness can also cause stress, anxiety and frustration and at times it becomes so apparent that we become desperate to find the reason of this feeling of incompleteness.

 Many people in their pursuit of these goals tend to overlook their latent potentialities of what they could become or what they are meant to become. When this aspect of human personality is ignored, incompleteness is experienced.

 Carl Jung, the world renowned psychiatrist suggested that we all have an instinct that pushes us to grow toward completion, to become the best possible vision of ourselves. He referred to this goal as individuation, a state of self-awareness or self-actualization we strive toward but rarely if ever, achieve.

Abraham Maslow, another world famous psychologist defined self-actualization as "the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.  It is an ongoing process in which one's capacities are fully, creatively, and joyfully utilized. It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming”. To emphasize his point he remarked, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization”.

However, human beings are pulled in two different directions. One is towards the actualization of self and another is towards the gratification of “desires”. This produces a tension within a person and give rise to all kinds of negative emotions in him.

This wisdom is not new to Hindu Philosophy. In the battlefield of Kurushatra, Lord Krishna’s  advice and guidance to Arjuna was to make him realize and encourage him to actualize his true potentialities as Kshtriya(warrior).

In Geeta, Krishna reminds Arjuna that; “Heroism, power, determination, resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity and leadership are the natural qualities of work for the kshatriyas(18.43). Considering your specific duty as a kshatriya, you should know that there is no better engagement for you than fighting on religious principles; and so there is no need for hesitation(2.31).  O Partha, happy are the kshatriyas to whom such fighting opportunities come unsought, opening for them the doors of the heavenly planets”(2.32).

To emphasize the point that how important it is to do work based on one’s potentialities, Lord Krishna commented; “It is far better to discharge one's prescribed duties, even though faultily, than another's duties perfectly. Destruction in the course of performing one's own duty is better than engaging in another's duties, for to follow another's path is dangerous”(3.35).

When it comes to choosing which career one should opt for, most of us decide on the basis of “what’s hot in the market”, ignoring the career for which we have natural strengths because it has got some drawbacks. For this Lord Krishna advices;  “Every endeavor is covered by some fault, just as fire is covered by smoke. Therefore one should not give up the work born of his nature, O son of Kunti, even if such work is full of fault”(18.48).

Then Lord Krishna warns Arjuna that; “If you do not act according to My direction and do not fight, then you will be falsely directed. By your nature, you will have to be engaged in warfare(18.59). Under illusion you are now declining to act according to My direction. But, compelled by the work born of your own nature, you will act all the same, O son of Kunti”(18.60).

Abraham Maslow also reached to the same conclusion and quoted that;"If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life."

Only that learning can be called effective which makes us aware that our natural direction for growth is towards self-actualization needs, rather than towards gratification of “desires” at the lower need levels.