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The American psychologist Abraham Maslow famously proposed in 1954 the “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” which theorized that psychological health culminated in self-actualization. Maslow saw that as being able to fulfill your potential, becoming your true self.
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The pyramid of human needs devised by Maslow was based on the idea that human motivations follow a prioritizing pattern. The 5-level hierarchy of needs goes from purely “physiological” towards “love”, and “esteem,” with each stage needing to be satisfied before moving on to the next.
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Maslow’s ideas are regarded as humanistic psychology, arising in part as a reaction to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism. This line of thought sees individuals as inherently striving towards self-actualization, where their capabilities and creativity are fully expressed. This point of view also regards all people as inherently good and more than the sum of their parts.
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In 2018, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, from Columbia University, published a study that updated Maslow’s work with modern statistical methods and proposed 10 specific characteristics that are shared by self-actualized people.
Kaufman updated Maslow’s methods and language and utilized surveys of over 500 people on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to zero in on these 10 characteristics that each made a distinct contribution towards self-actualization.
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Taken together, this total pattern of data supports Maslow’s contention that self-actualised individuals are more motivated by growth and exploration than by fulfilling deficiencies in basic needs.
Another significant takeaway from the study is that people who reach self-actualization ultimately appear to be on the path towards self-transcendence. This observation confirms Maslow’s extension of his own theory in later years with concrete data. The more self-actualized we are, the more one with the world we feel.
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To take the test of self-actualization yourself, go to Barry Scott Kaufman’s website:
https://scottbarrykaufman.com/selfactualizationtests/
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If you find yourself not scoring as high as you would like, Kaufman thinks you can develop such characteristics by changing your habits.
“A good way to start with that, is by first identifying where you stand on those characteristics and assessing your weakest links. Capitalize on your highest characteristics but also don’t forget to intentionally be mindful about what might be blocking your self-actualization […] Identify your patterns and make a concerted effort to change. I do think it’s possible with conscientiousness and willpower.”
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The trouble with most [of the people] who have been after me [“wanting to work with me” on self-actualization] is that it seems they have in the back if their heads some notion of self-actualization as a kind of lightning stroke which will hit them on the head suddenly without their doing anything about it. They all seem to want to wait passively for it to happen without any effort on their part.
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I think that practically all of [the people who “wanted to work with me” on self-actualization] have tended unconsciously to define self-actualization in terms of the getting rid of all inhibitions and controls in favor of complete spontaneity and impulsivity. My impatience has been largely because of this, I guess, that they had no stubbornness, no persistence, no frustration tolerance, and so forth - apparently just these qualities they consider as the opposite of self-actualization.
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One thing about this whole business is that self-actualization work transcends the self without trying to, and achieves the kind of loss of self-awareness and of self-consciousness that the easterners, the Japanese and Chinese and so on, keep on trying to attain.
Self-actualization work is simultaneously a seeking and fulfilling of the self and also an achieving of the selflessness which is the ultimate expression of real self. It resolves the dichotomy between selfish and unselfish.
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IDEAS CURATED BY
CURATOR'S NOTE
A 2018 study updated Maslow’s famous “Hierarchy of Needs” through modern methods and showed that self-actualized people share 10 specific traits.
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