004: Why We Must Take Action Or Die!

Welcome To Action Taker Tribe, I’m Jo and today's episode was an inspired piece of action that I took this morning, just completely out of the blue. I had thought that I would write a different episode today and talk to you about something entirely different. But then I was in the car with my oldest, Kitty. She's 16, we were driving to college, I was dropping her off for one of her few lessons that she has this week actually in person. As we were driving, I put on my playlist. Do you have a Spotify playlist, that's like all your favorite music? I have this playlist called my lifetime favorites and I've put every song I've ever loved in this playlist. And as we were driving, a load of music came up from like my youth, my sort of late teens, early twenties, the songs I absolutely loved listening to.

These were the tunes that were coming of age music that I listened to in the early nineties. I was a bit of an eclectic indie music fan. I had some strange eclectic preferences. So we were listening to Pearl Jam and Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, and Seal. As I'm listening to this, I'm starting to feel really, really emotional, almost to the point of tears welling up in my eyes. It's not totally surprising. I just had a birthday. I turned 46 and I do tend to get a little wobbly and emotional at these significant moments. I think I just sort of feel sometimes the weight of the fact that the years are passing and I start to worry about feeling regretful. But this year it's just a little bit different and I'm going to come to that bit in a minute. As I was feeling tearful and starting to reminisce and talking to my daughter about that time and going to concerts and seeing bands, I was just thinking back to who I was back then, you know, what the thoughts were- my hopes, my dreams. I had my whole life ahead of me. And I was full of enthusiasm for what I would become. It was a time of immense optimism and excitement about the future. And I guess sometimes I feel a little shocked that so many years have passed. If you're my sort of age, maybe you can empathize about how it feels that in your head and heart, you still feel in your twenties and yet you're heading towards 40 or 50 or beyond. Like, where have the years gone?

I feel the weight of that quite heavily because somewhere along the way between the ambitious times of my early twenties and now, I'd kind of got lost and I'd stopped growing as the years passed. And although some wonderful things have happened along the way, particularly with creating my family and overcoming infertility. Many beautiful, beautiful moments that I'm proud of and delighted by. When it came to my career and what I wanted to be, myself, as an individual I kind of lost my sense of meaning and just started to forget why or not even know why I'm here on this earth in this lifetime. Like, what will my legacy be? What will I be living for children? Who was Jo Ingram? I just lost my way. The weight of that really, really started to build up over the years. I think, you know, my thirties I didn't really worry about it. I just assumed something would come. That I would take a left turn or a right fork and find my thing and inevitably it didn't. Instead, I progressed in my corporate career.

I've moved up, I was paid a bit more. I got a promotion. I changed firms. I got a mortgage. Did all the things that you think you're going to do. But as I moved into my thirties, as a mum and into my forties, I started to feel really sad and at points desperate in my search for meaning. My search for who I am and what I contribute in the world. And if you're listening to this, I'm guessing that you've had feelings very, very similar, which have led you to the position you are in. Now that we're in now where we are doing something about it. So I've looked into this and I want to share what, what I've found. So first one, the great Tony Robbins, you may well already be familiar with his six human needs. So he talks about how we have four basic human needs that are absolutely essential.

They are the need for certainty, for variety, significance, and love or connection. These four needs shape our personality and they're absolutely essential. But then there are these two needs, which are like higher needs. These are the ones that form our spirituality.

They are equally as essential, if not more so, when it comes to higher forms of happiness. Growth and contribution, so growth is where we learn, and we must learn new skills. Contributions all about creating a positive impact.

Sound familiar? So we're totally in that growth and contribution part of the human needs. Tony Robbins says, if you're not growing, you're dying. You can think about the title of this episode and why I've called it take action or die. It's like, yeah, we have to do this. We have to grow. Or we’re just going to die inside and feel sad. If we're not meeting our own emotional needs. I think I'd underestimated for perhaps a decade or more just how important it was to keep growing and contributing. How important that was to my happiness. That was a piece that had been missing. That I'd been searching for.

Then there's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. So Maslow was an American psychologist and philosopher who started writing in the 1940s. He has a very famous pyramid that you might be familiar with. He says that once our basic physical and psychological are met, they are lower down the pyramid. You move up to the top of the pyramid and that's all about self-actualization. I just want to take a minute here because as I was researching this, so I could chat to you about it today, I was just really taken by the fact that lower down the pyramid, these physical and psychological needs, we are so blessed that we're even in a position that we're striving for self-actualization that we can honestly say that all of our physical and psychological needs are met, that we have homes and food and safety. We have families and love and connection. You have to have all of those in place before you're even at a point where you could be striving for self-actualization.

So I'm just feeling immensely grateful that I'm in a position where that's even ‘The Thing’ that I'm working towards. I think coming from that, that feeling of being blessed, it's just such a great vibration to really start thinking about how to create that growth- that self-actualization. He defines self-actualization as personal growth and fulfilling your potential.

It's about becoming the most that you can be. What that is, is a completely personal choice.

Some people might do it through being phenomenal at sports or do it in a corporate environment or building your own business. It's whatever personal growth means to you, but it's about achieving your full potential. That's also a continual process. It is in no way a destination. Maslow makes that really, really clear. Self-actualization isn't necessarily something that you achieve. It's a zone that you're consistently working within because of course, once you've achieved one part of your potential, then you have the potential to achieve more. It's a wonderful area of growth. It's often called a growth mindset.

As I was reading through the behaviors that Maslow identifies that lead to self-actualization, I was just feeling completely delighted because this is the zone that we're in. Right, listen to this, these are many of the behaviors he talks about. He says that when you're in the zone of self-actualization, you're fully absorbed in what you're doing. You're trying lots of new things. You're really listening to your feelings. You're being honest. And you're taking responsibility and working hard. These are our values, right? As we're building our business, this is exactly where we are. We are working within Maslow's zone of self-actualization. We're working within Tony Robbins two elevated human needs of growth and contribution. What an amazing place to be.

It's all about building our businesses and I really hope that you feel the same as I do. I really would love to hear from you and tell me whether this is the case for you. I'm just thinking, with building heart centered or purpose led businesses, it's all about self-actualization and growth and contribution. It's not for the money alone. I just want to take a moment here because money and building our businesses and impact are so entwined. I really truly believe that money is a currency of energy. As we build our businesses, the growth in the financial area should come too. I don't think that building our businesses means that we need to say, I'm just doing it for the growth and contribution. and the money is something that's dirty.

That's a completely different conversation for a completely different episode, but building our businesses and being able to pay our bills is really important too.

We want to create impact. We want to feel lit up every day with a sense of meaning.

That's the self-actualization part of building our businesses. That's where the two combine into making something beautiful in our lives and make us feel amazing. So here I am in my mid forties, and it's the first time since my early twenties, that I am feeling alive and passionate and inspired. And I feel that I have no choice, but to build my business. Do you feel the same?

It's just no choice. This is a calling. I have to do it. I'm learning and growing. This is a call to arms. Let's just keep going. Take the action.

Even though we are uncertain about the outcome and we don't know what the success will look like. But here we are. We're creating the visions for our business and we're consistently taking another step forward. Because if we don't, we'll just die inside. You know, feelings of numbness and feelings of regret. Isn't it true what they say of people on their deathbed? The thing they most regret is the things they never did. That they didn't have the courage to just step forward and do what their passion was and what was in their heart and fulfill their potential. This is our time. This is our time to lay to rest any regrets. So we're taking those action steps now, and this is our purpose, our direction, and our path to fulfillment. I have loved talking to you about this today. If you've enjoyed it, please subscribe. Please leave a review on Apple podcasts. For me, it really helps to grow my audience and reach more people with my message. And please, if you did enjoy it, share it with someone who might also benefit from tuning in. So, have an action filled week and I'll speak to you soon.