I was asked yesterday what I thought the relationship was between wellness and self-actualization, and what bearing (if any) wellness and self-actualization had on corporate success. To me, the relationship between wellness and self-actualization is very central to my life. This doesn’t mean that I have always achieved the proper balance or trajectory! In fact, my career has been clearly marked by periods of severe imbalance. But ultimately my personal desire to be well has allowed me to make healthy changes that lead to greater self-actualization. You probably can reflect on a few periods like that in your own life.
When one is not well - physically, psychologically, emotionally, or socially (yes, I think there is such a thing as being social well or socially not well – it goes back to the idea that we define ourselves in context of community) - then all of one's personal resources are turned to either the pursuit of becoming well or the defense against pursuing wellness. That may sound strange, but for many people, it is so scary to confront and eliminate unhealthiness that they'd rather stay with the illness they've got than do the work to become well. After all, going from "not well" to "well" is change, and even when change is a good thing, it still scares us.
If all of our resources are engaged in either defending our illness or confronting it, what energy do we have to pursue true self-actualization? Of course, once we start confronting illness, we are at least on the path to self-actualization, but we aren't at the zero-point on the continuum yet - we are in the negative side until we reach basic wellness.
The field of psychology has done a lot of legwork on this topic. Starting with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which states that a person's needs are a hierarchy with meeting physiological needs as the foundation, followed by moving up to meeting safety needs, then needs for love and companionship, then meeting needs for self-esteem, and finally achieving self-actualization. However, the theory hasn't held up well, because this strict hierarchy hasn't proven to be true.
ERG (existence, relatedness and growth) Theory condenses Maslow's theory into three levels, and recognizes that they are not a hierarchy, and that in fact people can move both forward and backward in their progress toward self-actualization. The theory sounds good, but has never managed to demonstrate significant empirical support for its accurateness.
Achievement Theory focuses on examining the differences between people with varying levels of what is referred to as "goal-directed behavior." This theory has found - with better empirical support - that individuals have differing levels of need for achievement. For individuals with higher achievement needs, they "tend to choose moderate levels of risk, have a strong desire for knowledge of results or feedback, and have a tendency to become very absorbed in their work" (Jex, 2002, p. 244). This is part of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Chick-SENT-me-high) was writing about in his book Flow and in his subsequent book Creativity.
Ultimately, organizational psychology has had a hard time correlating the meeting of personal needs to organizational performance. But there is some underlying logic, if you will, that suggests that healthy workers make for a healthy company. Because if the individuals that make up the overall entity are not struggling just to get to the zero-point of "well," they can focus on their work and on their self-advancement (not just in terms of role and authority, but in terms of personal achievement, knowledge, gratification, and relationships). And if everyone is working on work and self-advancement, then doesn't it stand to reason that the organization would benefit?
My personal answer put my money where my mouth is. I know the key to my ultimate achievement is grounded in my overall health. Though I have recently gone through changes that many might considere dramatic, I am immeasurably happier, calmer, more inspired, and excited about working and learning. So in this one person's example - which can't be considered empirical, but certainly can be considered factual - wellness is essential to self-actualization, and self-actualization for me is critical to the success of my business.
Question for your weekend pondering - what’s your answer?
Reference:
Jex, S. M. (2002). Organizational psychology: A scientist-practitioner approach. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
(c) 2007, Andrea M. Hill
