SELF-ACTUALIZATION FOOTNOTES

The starting point to personal achievement and self-actualization begins with definiteness of purpose coupled with a burning desire for its achievement. Equally important is accurate thinking and timely planning.

General background knowledge is important. The person who has a broad knowledge of many fields and an abundance of accumulative experience can come up with new and significant creative ideas easier and more rapidly than the individual who has specialized knowledge in only one field.

1. Collect and file notes, clippings, and ideas that seem interesting, provocative and original. Ask yourself, "How might I be able to use or improve on this or that?"
   
   
2. Engage freely in hobbies, games, crossword puzzles! Read at least one book a month.
   
   
3. Travel! There is a big learning experience out there. It doesn't have to be expensive or international.
   
   
4. Continually ask, "Why? How come? and Who says so?"...and then ask it again and again! Dumb questions are often penetrating questions in disguise.
   
   
5. Avoid rigid, set patterns of doing things. That's a little dull! Go on a retreat, or simply choose to meet new people.
   
   
6. Be open and receptive to your hunches as well as to other's ideas. Ideas are fleeting and quite often, fragile. Listen positively to them and above all, jot them down in your idea book or journal.
   
   
7. Stop...look...and pause! In other words, pay attention, to yourself, others and the things around you. This is how we learn.
   
   
8. Adopt a "let's try it attitude!" All of history's big ideas and breakthroughs were originally risks.
   
   
9. Polish your self-image, and have it say YOU are important! No matter what we are thinking or feeling, be it positive or negative, comes across loud and clear.
   
   
10. Choose to be bold, courageous and curious! Weak people seldom accomplish things of significance!
    
    
11. Sift fact from opinion or others' assumptions. This vital!
    
    
12. The world seems to tolerate mediocrity! Choose to be a winner! An innovator! An explorer! There is room here for everyone.
    
    
13. Laugh freely and often! "Life is a bubble...so why worry and trouble?" Serious, serious people are often bores in disguise.
    
    
14. Think BIG! It takes as much energy and effort to think "BIG" as it does to think "small".
    
    
15. It doesn't matter where you are from or what schooling you possess, but rather it is"what you do and how you do it" that really counts!
    
    
16. If it is said "it can't be done", ask him or her..."What have YOU done of significance that qualifies you to say it can't be done?"
    
    
17. And keep in mind Isaiah 43:18-19, "Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!"

Copyright © Daniel J. Yovich
Daniel Yovich (c. 1928 - May 10, 2013) was a game designer, former paint manufacturing businessman, and inventor who was a professor at Purdue University. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Organizational Leadership with Distinction and founded the Inventors and Entrepreneurs Society of Indiana.