Theories:

You can’t change the past.

You must accept the consequences, learn, and move forward. To better understand how you can change your life, I highly recommend that you check out How to Grow From Your Pain by Mark Manson.

If you want a different life experience, stop doing the same shit over and over again. Commit to Self-Actualization – becoming the best version of yourself through lifelong learning and growing.

Self-actualization is not a destination. You do not achieve self-actualization. Rather, you are continuously self-actualizing. It is an ongoing process of reflection, hard work, and making difficult, well-reasoned decisions that result in you accomplishing your goals.

I believe that self-actualization consists of taking action to ensure that you are satisfied with your life in consideration of the following key factors:

• Happiness & Fulfillment

• Health & Wellness

• Love & Community

• Activism & Altruism

Please note that these factors are all interrelated, interwoven, and connected. Improving one will make it easier to improve the others.

Self-actualization does not mean that your life is perfect and you have everything you want. No. It means that you are actively working towards accomplishing your goals and actualizing (making a reality of) your potential.

Self-actualization also does not mean that you are happy all the time and you never feel any negative emotions. Rather, it means that those negative emotions occur less often.  Instead of brooding in the negative emotions, self-actualizing individuals use constructive strategies to effectively understand, manage, mitigate, and alleviate negative emotions. To learn more about your emotions, I highly recommend that you engage with the following:

• The history of human emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith (Ted Talk)

• You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them by Lisa Feldman Barnett (Ted Talk)

• Recognizing Your Emotions as Data, Not Directives by Susan David (article)

• 5 Skills to Help You Develop Emotional Intelligence by Mark Manson (article)

• 4 Questions That Will Improve Your Emotional Intelligence by Nick Wignall (article)

• 4 Reasons Your Emotions Feel So Out of Control by Nick Wignall (article)

• Stop Trying to Be Happy by Mark Manson (article)

In short, you don't just feel a certain way, you produce it with your actions. If you want to feel differently, you must do different things. Give yourself permission to express your emotions in a healthy way (i.e., in a way that does not intentionally hurt yourself or others). Experience the emotions and then release them.

I have an unwavering belief that every person has the potential to self-actualize. According to Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist, "Self-actualization scores conformed to a normal distribution, much like IQ or height. What's more, self-actualization was not correlated with age, education, race, ethnicity, college GPA, or childhood income, and there were no gender differences found in self-actualization. While there are certainly environmental barriers to self-actualization, and some environments can help bring out the best (or the worst) in us, I found no evidence that the characteristics of self-actualization are limited to a particular swath of humanity."

Please note that there are many conditions in our current society that inhibit many individuals from self-actualizing. In this article, Dr. Saul McLeod wrote, “Like a flower that will grow to its full potential if the conditions are right, but which is constrained by its environment, so people will flourish and reach their potential if their environment is good enough. However, unlike a flower, the potential of the individual human is unique, and we are meant to develop in different ways according to our personality.”

Although society can significantly impact an individual’s ability to self-actualize, there are still many steps an individual can take to improve their situation and live the life they want to live.

If you want to have the experiences you really want, you must stop going through the motions and take control of your life. You live the life you want, you become successful, and you self-actualize, when you start actively thinking about the choices you are making and how you spend your time.

Your future is not something you go towards. It is something you create through intentional action. Life is one endless choose your own adventure. Every single day you can wake up and do anything. What will you choose?