8 Behaviors Leading to Self-Actualization According to Abraham Maslow
In the second edition of Existential Espresso, I recommended Abraham Maslow’s "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature."
It’s a book that I’ve been reading on and off for months, as well as re-reading parts of it multiple times.
You’ve also probably read at least one of the multiple instagram posts I’ve made talking about different Maslow’s ideas.
Once again, I cannot recommend this book enough. One of the things that’s great about it is that you don’t have to read it from cover to cover. There are multiple chapters that can be read on their own without requiring any context from previous chapters. Going straight to the chapter(s) that interests you the most is something I highly encourage in my "Reading Guide" for the Sisyphus Society.
This time, I want to share eight behaviors that, according to Maslow, lead to self-actualization.
You will notice that they are all connected to each other, and you will also notice what seems like repetition of the same ideas. This is because of the holistic nature of Maslow’s work and humanistic psychology in general. Although these are presented as eight different points, they should all make one picture.
Without further ado, here they are:
1."Experiencing fully, vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption."
Self-actualization requires having moments in your life where you are really in that moment, and nowhere else. It requires learning to engage in the moments of your life to the extent that you start losing your normal sense of self. In those moments, you don’t do what we usually do most of the time, which is think about your past or your future. You don’t think about the painful memories or the things you are looking forward to. You are inhabiting the present moment with full presence.
"At this moment of experiencing, the person is wholly and fully human. This is a self-actualizing moment. This is a moment when the self is actualizing itself. As individuals, we all experience such moments occasionally."
There is nothing grandiose about those moments. They are not exclusive to great artists or thinkers. On the contrary, it is enough for one to try to remember what it was like to be a child and engage in the moment without having their guard up against other people, against the world, and against themselves.
2. Making the growth choice.
"Let us think of life as a process of choices, one after another. At each point, there is a progression choice and a regression choice. There may be a movement toward defense, toward safety, toward being afraid; but over on the other side, there is the growth choice. To make the growth choice instead of the fear choice a dozen times a day is to move a dozen times a day toward self-actualization."
I have recently made an instagram post about this.
Sometimes in life, when you are presented with multiple paths that you could take, life is asking you not to stay safe.
Life is asking you to choose the thing that feels dangerous because that might be what is needed for you to go to your limits, and hopefully beyond them.
Although safety and comfort have their role and value in our lives, and there are times when fear is the appropriate response, we rarely grow under those circumstances.
We usually grow when we are ready to leave what feels safe and go towards the dangerous and unknown.
And if you feel like making the growth choice and going towards danger means engaging in different kinds of extreme activities, you will see in one of the next self-actualizing behaviors that living dangerously can be much simpler than it seems.
3. Listening to our inner voice
This one is very much related to the previous point. If you are willing to listen, it is your inner voice which tells you "this is the fear choice, where you stay safe and remain who you are," and "this is the growth choice, where you will have to go beyond your limits to become who you could be."
What do we usually do? We look at what others are doing and thinking, and we repeat the accepted behavior or pattern of thinking, or we obey orders that we were given.
Listening to your inner voice means "letting the self emerge," as Maslow says.
And he offers a pretty straightforward way to start letting your real self emerge.
"As a simple first step toward self-actualization, I sometimes suggest to my students that when they are given a glass of wine and asked how they like it, they try a different way of responding. First, I suggest that they not look at the label on the bottle. Thus, they will not use it to get any cue about whether or not they should like it. Next, I recommend that they close their eyes if possible and that they "make a hush." Now they are ready to look within themselves and try to shut out the noise of the world so that they may savor the wine on their tongues and look to the ‘Supreme Court’ inside themselves. Then, and only then, they may come out and say, ‘I like it’ or ‘I don't like it.’ A statement so arrived at is different from the usual kind of phoniness that we all indulge in. "
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