There are two temporal levels to self-actualization. The overview level is where you project into the future and decide the kind of person, the talents, achievements, and goals you want for yourself. This level concerns the what of self-actualization: self-esteem, contentment, a sense of safety in who you’re becoming.
The second level is more immediate and, in the end, more important: the how of self-actualization. Where the first is a vision, the second is a strategy, one that requires constant attention. This is where the real change happens, moment by moment, day by day, and it takes effort because the self is conditional by nature, shaped by habit, belief, and the expectations your own conditioning predicts. That conditioning creates mental boundaries that resist change, even while change is exactly what you are trying to bring about. Inside this sea of habituation, you have to actively navigate toward newer, more expansive states of awareness.
This requires an immediate kind of focused awareness. Within each moment that comes along, filled with who you are at that present instant, lies the key to specific aspects of your identity. That sounds obvious. Who you are at any one moment is who you are. But how many of us actually notice who we are being from one moment to the next, as differing moods and outside events reshape the content of our awareness? By carefully observing each of these personality moments, you come to know yourself more fully, and in knowing yourself, you begin to see how and why you might want to change.
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