Why shouldn’t you be great?
If not you, then who?
These are not questions that a new-age motivational speaker is asking you.
They are being asked by Abraham Maslow, one of the most important humanistic psychologists.
A man who spent his life studying the higher side of human nature.
So, once again, why shouldn’t you be great?
Maslow believed that all of us have some potential, as well as the impulse to actualize that potential and improve ourselves, but at the same time we have the impulse to shrink away from our greatest possibilities.
This fear of greatness, or "defense against growth," Maslow called the Jonah Complex.
I have already written about the Jonah Complex in multiple of my Instagram posts and have talked about one of the main reasons why we fear our greatness: we fear destruction.
Besides Maslow, thinkers such as Carl Jung and Rollo May also extensively wrote about how one’s growth and development is not only a constructive and creative process but a destructive one as well. And it is this destructive side that we fear.
To put it poetically: A part of your old self has to die in order for your new, greater self to emerge.
However, this time I want to talk about another reason for our fear of greatness. A reason that might seem more relatable and concrete than this fear of destruction.
(I am not sure if I covered the fear of destruction extensively enough in my Instagram posts, so if you think that’s also something I should write an essay on, please let me know.)
Our evasion of growth, Maslow says, can also be set in motion by a fear of paranoia.
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